Les Misérables, page 176
CHAPTER VIII--TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR
We have just spoken of M. Gillenormand's two daughters. They had comeinto the world ten years apart. In their youth they had borne verylittle resemblance to each other, either in character or countenance,and had also been as little like sisters to each other as possible. Theyoungest had a charming soul, which turned towards all that belongs tothe light, was occupied with flowers, with verses, with music, whichfluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and waswedded from her very youth, in ideal, to a vague and heroic figure. Theelder had also her chimera; she espied in the azure some very wealthypurveyor, a contractor, a splendidly stupid husband, a million made man,or even a prefect; the receptions of the Prefecture, an usher in theantechamber with a chain on his neck, official balls, the haranguesof the town-hall, to be "Madame la Préfète,"--all this had created awhirlwind in her imagination. Thus the two sisters strayed, each in herown dream, at the epoch when they were young girls. Both had wings, theone like an angel, the other like a goose.
No ambition is ever fully realized, here below at least. No paradisebecomes terrestrial in our day. The younger wedded the man of herdreams, but she died. The elder did not marry at all.
At the moment when she makes her entrance into this history which we arerelating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one ofthe sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possibleto see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, noone had ever known her first name. She was called _MademoiselleGillenormand, the elder_.
In the matter of _cant_, Mademoiselle Gillenormand could have givenpoints to a miss. Her modesty was carried to the other extreme ofblackness. She cherished a frightful memory of her life; one day, a manhad beheld her garter.
Age had only served to accentuate this pitiless modesty. Her guimpe wasnever sufficiently opaque, and never ascended sufficiently high. Shemultiplied clasps and pins where no one would have dreamed of looking.The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels inproportion as the fortress is the less menaced.
Nevertheless, let him who can explain these antique mysteries ofinnocence, she allowed an officer of the Lancers, her grand nephew,named Théodule, to embrace her without displeasure.
In spite of this favored Lancer, the label: _Prude_, under which wehave classed her, suited her to absolute perfection. MademoiselleGillenormand was a sort of twilight soul. Prudery is a demi-virtue and ademi-vice.
To prudery she added bigotry, a well-assorted lining. She belongedto the society of the Virgin, wore a white veil on certain festivals,mumbled special orisons, revered "the holy blood," venerated "the sacredheart," remained for hours in contemplation before a rococo-jesuit altarin a chapel which was inaccessible to the rank and file of the faithful,and there allowed her soul to soar among little clouds of marble, andthrough great rays of gilded wood.
She had a chapel friend, an ancient virgin like herself, namedMademoiselle Vaubois, who was a positive blockhead, and beside whomMademoiselle Gillenormand had the pleasure of being an eagle. Beyondthe Agnus Dei and Ave Maria, Mademoiselle Vaubois had no knowledge ofanything except of the different ways of making preserves. MademoiselleVaubois, perfect in her style, was the ermine of stupidity without asingle spot of intelligence.
Let us say it plainly, Mademoiselle Gillenormand had gained rather thanlost as she grew older. This is the case with passive natures. She hadnever been malicious, which is relative kindness; and then, years wearaway the angles, and the softening which comes with time had come toher. She was melancholy with an obscure sadness of which she did notherself know the secret. There breathed from her whole person the stuporof a life that was finished, and which had never had a beginning.
She kept house for her father. M. Gillenormand had his daughter nearhim, as we have seen that Monseigneur Bienvenu had his sister with him.These households comprised of an old man and an old spinster are notrare, and always have the touching aspect of two weaknesses leaning oneach other for support.
There was also in this house, between this elderly spinster and thisold man, a child, a little boy, who was always trembling and mute in thepresence of M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand never addressed this childexcept in a severe voice, and sometimes, with uplifted cane: "Here, sir!rascal, scoundrel, come here!--Answer me, you scamp! Just let me seeyou, you good-for-nothing!" etc., etc. He idolized him.
This was his grandson. We shall meet with this child again later on.
BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
