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Updated: June 8, 2025
Some abominable fright that will make us shudder, probably! Young men have such bad taste nowadays!" "Let us see, father," said the old spinster. The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper. "From the same to the same," said M. Gillenormand, bursting with laughter. "I know what it is. A billet-doux." "Ah! let us read it!" said the aunt.
Theodule seated himself, and M. Gillenormand rose. M. Gillenormand began to pace back and forth, his hands in his pockets, talking aloud, and twitching, with his irritated old fingers, at the two watches which he wore in his two fobs. "That pack of brats! they convene on the Place du Pantheon! by my life! urchins who were with their nurses but yesterday!
Marius replied with embarrassment: "Monsieur " M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with Marius and with himself. He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside. Bitterness returned.
Marius, be it said in passing, a militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of himself. A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection with this title. It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius who detached himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: "My son will bear my title." Marius obeyed.
His wife the second one had administered his fortune in such a manner that, one fine day, when M. Gillenormand found himself a widower, there remained to him just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole of it in an annuity of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which would expire with him. He had not hesitated on this point, not being anxious to leave a property behind him.
He never went anywhere except on condition of being the chief person there. There are people who will have influence at any price, and who will have other people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere.
To sum up, he was venerable in spite of all this. He had something of the eighteenth century about him; frivolous and great. In 1814 and during the early years of the Restoration, M. Gillenormand, who was still young, he was only seventy-four, lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain, Rue Servandoni, near Saint-Sulpice.
The lancer had reasoned as follows: "The old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension. It is well to disguise one's self as a civilian from time to time." Mademoiselle Gillenormand said aloud to her father: "Theodule, your grandnephew." And in a low voice to the lieutenant: "Approve of everything." And she withdrew.
It was Marius. On this cutlet, which he cooked for himself, he lived for three days. On the first day he ate the meat, on the second he ate the fat, on the third he gnawed the bone. Aunt Gillenormand made repeated attempts, and sent him the sixty pistoles several times. Marius returned them on every occasion, saying that he needed nothing.
These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner, they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late. The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane; his lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Marius as he bowed. "Pity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man of ninety-one!
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