Les Misérables, page 192
CHAPTER II--MARIUS POOR
It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends bybecoming bearable. It finally assumes a form, and adjusts itself. Onevegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion,which is, however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which theexistence of Marius Pontmercy was arranged:
He had passed the worst straits; the narrow pass was opening out alittle in front of him. By dint of toil, perseverance, courage, andwill, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs ayear. He had learned German and English; thanks to Courfeyrac, who hadput him in communication with his friend the publisher, Marius filledthe modest post of utility man in the literature of the publishinghouse. He drew up prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotatededitions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product, year in and yearout, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We willexplain.
Marius occupied in the Gorbeau house, for an annual sum of thirtyfrancs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained onlythe most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged tohim. He gave three francs a month to the old _principal tenant_ to comeand sweep his hole, and to bring him a little hot water every morning,a fresh egg, and a penny roll. He breakfasted on this egg and roll. Hisbreakfast varied in cost from two to four sous, according as eggswere dear or cheap. At six o'clock in the evening he descended theRue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau's, opposite Basset's, thestamp-dealer's, on the corner of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup.He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for threesous, and a three-sou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread ashe wished. As for wine, he drank water. When he paid at the deskwhere Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majesticallypresided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him asmile. Then he went away. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.
This Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water carafeswere emptied, was a calming potion rather than a restaurant. It nolonger exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called_Rousseau the Aquatic_.
Thus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him twentysous a day; which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a year. Addthe thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the old woman,plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty francs, Mariuswas fed, lodged, and waited on. His clothing cost him a hundred francs,his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the whole did notexceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent tenfrancs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to borrow sixty francsof him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had no fireplace, he had"simplified matters."
Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for everyday"; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. Hehad but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, andthe third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out.They were always ragged, which caused him to button his coat to thechin.
It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishingcondition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to traverse, others toclimb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured everythingin the way of destitution; he had done everything except contract debts.He did himself the justice to say that he had never owed any one a sou.A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He even said to himself,that a creditor is worse than a master; for the master possesses onlyyour person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can administer toit a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He hadpassed many a day fasting. Feeling that all extremes meet, and that,if one is not on one's guard, lowered fortunes may lead to baseness ofsoul, he kept a jealous watch on his pride. Such and such a formalityor action, which, in any other situation would have appeared merely adeference to him, now seemed insipidity, and he nerved himself againstit. His face wore a sort of severe flush. He was timid even to rudeness.
During all these trials he had felt himself encouraged and evenuplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself.The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is theonly bird which bears up its own cage.
Besides his father's name, another name was graven in Marius' heart,the name of Thénardier. Marius, with his grave and enthusiastic nature,surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts,he owed his father's life,--that intrepid sergeant who had saved thecolonel amid the bullets and the cannon-balls of Waterloo. He neverseparated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, andhe associated them in his veneration. It was a sort of worship in twosteps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one forThénardier. What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towardsThénardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew thatThénardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius hadlearned at Montfermeil of the ruin and bankruptcy of the unfortunateinn-keeper. Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to findtraces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in whichThénardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country; hehad gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He hadpersisted for three years, expending in these explorations the littlemoney which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news ofThénardier: he was supposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had alsosought him, with less love than Marius, but with as much assiduity, andhad not been able to lay their hands on him. Marius blamed himself, andwas almost angry with himself for his lack of success in his researches.It was the only debt left him by the colonel, and Marius made it amatter of honor to pay it. "What," he thought, "when my father lay dyingon the field of battle, did Thénardier contrive to find him amid thesmoke and the grape-shot, and bear him off on his shoulders, and yet heowed him nothing, and I, who owe so much to Thénardier, cannot join himin this shadow where he is lying in the pangs of death, and in myturn bring him back from death to life! Oh! I will find him!" To findThénardier, in fact, Marius would have given one of his arms, to rescuehim from his misery, he would have sacrificed all his blood. To seeThénardier, to render Thénardier some service, to say to him: "You donot know me; well, I do know you! Here I am. Dispose of me!" This wasMarius' sweetest and most magnificent dream.
