HOW A BROTHER BECOMES A FATHER.
There were at this very moment in the Luxembourg garden--for the eye
of the drama must be everywhere present--two lads holding each other's
hand. One might be seven, the other five, years of age. As they were
wet through with the rain they walked along sunshiny paths; the elder
led the younger, both were in rags and pale, and they looked like wild
birds. The younger said, "I am very hungry." The elder, who had already
a protecting air, led his brother with the left hand, and had a switch
in his right. They were alone in the garden, which was deserted, as the
gates were closed by police order on account of the insurrection. The
troops who had bivouacked there had issued forth for the exigences of
the combat. How were these children here? Perhaps they had escaped from
some guard-room where the door was left ajar; perhaps in the vicinity,
at the Barrière d'Enfer, on the esplanade of the Observatory, or in the
neighboring square overshadowed by the cornice, on which may be read,
_Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum_, there was some mountebank's
booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had on the previous
evening kept out of sight of the garden inspectors at the hour of
closing, and had spent the night in one of those summer-houses in which
people read the papers: the fact is, that they were wandering about,
and seemed to be free. To be a wanderer, and to appear free, is to be
lost, and these poor little creatures were really lost The two lads
were the same about whom Gavroche had been in trouble, and whom the
reader will remember, sons of Thénardier, let out to Magnon, attributed
to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves fallen from all these rootless
branches, and rolled along the ground by the wind.
Their clothes, clean in the time of Magnon, and which served her as
a prospectus to M. Gillenormand, had become rags; and these beings
henceforth belonged to the statistics of "deserted children," whom
the police pick up, lose, and find again on the pavement of Paris. It
needed the confusion of such a day as this for these two poor little
wretches to be in this garden. If the inspectors had noticed these rags
they would have expelled them, for poor little lads do not enter public
gardens, and yet it ought to be remembered that as children they have a
right to flowers. They were here, thanks to the locked gates, and were
committing an offence; they had stepped into the garden and remained
there. Though locked gates do not give a holiday to the keepers, and
their surveillance is supposed to continue, it grows weaker and rests;
and the inspectors, also affected by the public affairs, and more
busied about the outside than the inside, did not look at the garden,
and had not seen the two delinquents. It had rained on the previous
evening, and even slightly on this morning, but in June, showers are of
no great consequence. People hardly perceive, an hour after a storm,
that this fair beauteous day has wept, for the earth dries up as
rapidly as a child's cheek. At this moment of the solstice the midday
light is, so to speak, poignant, and it seizes everything. It clings to
and spreads itself over the earth with a sort of suction, and we might
say that the sun is thirsty. A shower is a glass of water, and rain is
at once drunk up. In the morning everything glistens, in the afternoon
everything is dusty. Nothing is so admirable as verdure cleansed by
the rain and dried by the sun; it is warm freshness. Gardens and
fields, having water in their roots and sunshine in their flowers,
become censers of incense, and smoke with all their perfumes at once.
Everything laughs, sings, and offers itself, and we feel softly
intoxicated: summer is a temporary Paradise, and the sun helps man to
be patient.
There are beings who ask no more,--living creatures who, having the
azure of heaven, say it is enough; dreamers absorbed in the prodigy,
drawing from the idolatry of nature indifference to good and evil;
contemplators of the Cosmos, radiantly distracted from man, who do not
understand how people can trouble themselves about the hunger of one
person, the thirst of another, the nudity of the poor man in winter,
the lymphatic curvature of a small backbone, the truck-bed, the garret,
the cell, and the rags of young shivering girls, when they can dream
under the trees: they are peaceful and terrible minds, pitilessly
satisfied, and, strange to say, infinitude suffices them. They ignore
that great want of man, the finite which admits of an embrace, and do
not dream of the finite which admits of progress, that sublime toil.
The indefinite, which springs from the divine and human combination
of the infinite and the finite, escapes them, and provided that they
can be face to face with immensity, they smile. They never feel joy,
but always ecstasy, and their life is one of abstraction. The history
of humanity is to them but a grand detail: the All is not in it, the
All remains outside of it. Of what use is it to trouble one's self
about that item, man? Man suffers, it is possible, but just look at
Aldebaran rising! The mother has no milk left, the new-born babe is
dying. I know nothing of all that, but just look at the marvellous rose
made by a sprig of hawthorn when looked at through a microscope; just
compare the finest Mechlin lace with that! These thinkers forget to
love, and the zodiac has such an attraction over them that it prevents
them seeing the weeping child. God eclipses their soul, and they are a
family of minds at once great and little. Homer belonged to it; so did
Goethe, and possibly Lafontaine, magnificent egotists of the infinite,
calm spectators of sorrow, who do not see Nero if the weather be fine;
from whom the sun hides the pyre; who would look at a guillotining to
seek a light effect in it; who hear neither cries nor sobs, nor the
death-rattle nor the tocsin; for whom everything is good, since there
is the month of May; who so long as they have clouds of purple and gold
above their heads declare themselves satisfied; and who are determined
to be happy until the radiance of the stars and the song of birds are
exhausted.
These are darkly radiant, and they do not suspect that they are to be
pitied. But they are certainly so, for the man who does not weep does
not see. We must admire and pity them, as we would pity and admire a
being at once night and day, who had no eyes under his brows, but a
star in the centre of his forehead. The indifference of these thinkers
is, according to some, a grand philosophy. Be it so; but in this
superiority there is infirmity. A man may be immortal and limp, as
witness Vulcan, and he may be more than man and less than man; there
is immense incompleteness in nature, and who knows whether the sun be
not blind? But in that case, whom to trust? _Solem quis dicere falsum
audeat?_ Hence, certain geniuses, certain human deities, star-men,
might be mistaken? What is above at the summit, at the zenith, which
pours so much light on the earth, might see little, see badly, not see
at all? Is not that desperate? No: but what is there above the sun? God.
On June 6, 1832, at about eleven in the forenoon, the Luxembourg,
solitary and depopulated, was delicious. The quincunxes and flower-beds
sent balm and dazzlement into the light, and the branches, wild in the
brilliancy of midday, seemed trying to embrace one another. There was
in the sycamores a twittering of linnets, the sparrows were triumphal,
and the woodpeckers crept along the chestnut, gently tapping holes in
the bark. The beds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies, for
the most august of perfumes is that which issues from whiteness. The
sharp odor of the carnations was inhaled, and the old rooks of Marie
de Medicis made love on the lofty trees. The sun gilded, purpled,
and illumined the tulips, which are nothing but all the varieties of
flame made into flowers. All around the tulip-beds hummed the bees,
the flashes of these fire-flowers. All was grace and gayety, even the
coming shower, for that relapse by which the lilies of the valley
and honeysuckles would profit had nothing alarming about it, and the
swallows made the delicious menace of flying low. What was there
inhaled happiness: life smelt pleasantly, and all this nature exhaled
candor, help, assistance, paternity, caresses, and dawn. The thoughts
that fell from heaven were as soft as a babe's little hand that we
kiss. The statues under the trees, nude and white, were robed in
dresses of shadow shot with light; these goddesses were all ragged with
sunshine, and beams hung from them on all sides. Around the great basin
the earth was already so dry as to be parched, and there was a breeze
sufficiently strong to create here and there small riots of dust. A
few yellow leaves remaining from the last autumn joyously pursued one
another, and seemed to be sporting.
The abundance of light had something strangely reassuring about it;
life, sap, heat, and exhalations overflowed, and the greatness of the
source could be felt beneath creation. In all these blasts penetrated
with love, in this movement of reflections and gleams, in this
prodigious expenditure of beams, and in this indefinite outpouring of
fluid gold, the prodigality of the inexhaustible could be felt; and
behind this splendor, as behind a curtain of flames, glimpses of God,
that millionnaire of the stars, could be caught. Thanks to the sand,
there was not a speck of mud; and, thanks to the rain, there was not a
grain of dust The bouquets had just performed their ablutions, and all
the velvets, all the satins, all the varnish, and all the gold which
issue from the earth in the shape of flowers, were irreproachable.
This magnificence was clean, and the grand silence of happy nature
filled the garden,--a heavenly silence, compatible with a thousand
strains of music, the fondling tones from the nests, the buzzing of
the swarms, and the palpitations of the wind. All the harmony of the
season was blended into a graceful whole, the entrances and exits of
spring took place in the desired order, the lilacs were finishing,
and the jessamine beginning, a few flowers were behindhand, a few
insects before their time, and the vanguard of the red butterflies of
June fraternized with the rearguard of the white butterflies of May.
The plane-trees were putting on a fresh skin, and the breeze formed
undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chest-nut-trees. It was
splendid. A veteran from the adjoining barracks who was looking through
the railings said, "Spring presents arms in full dress."
All nature was breakfasting; the creation was at table; it was the
hour: the great blue cloth was laid in heaven, and the great green
one on earth, while the sun gave an _à giorno_ illumination. God was
serving His universal meal, and each being had its pasture or its
pasty. The wood-pigeon found hempseed, the chaffinch found millet, the
goldfinch found chickweed, the redbreast found worms, the bee found
flowers, the fly found infusoria, and the greenfinch found flies. They
certainly devoured one another to some extent, which is the mystery of
evil mingled with good, but not a single animal had an empty stomach.
The two poor abandoned boys had got near the great basin, and somewhat
confused by all this light, tried to hide themselves, which is the
instinct of the poor and the weak in the presence of magnificence, even
when it is impersonal, and they kept behind the swan's house. Now and
then, at intervals when the wind blew, confused shouts, a rumbling,
a sort of tumultuous death-rattle which was musketry, and dull blows
which were cannon-shots, could be heard. There was smoke above the
roofs in the direction of the markets, and a bell which seemed to be
summoning sounded in the distance. The children did not seem to notice
the noises, and the younger lad repeated every now and then in a low
voice, "I am hungry."
Almost simultaneously with the two boys another couple approached
the basin, consisting of a man of about fifty, leading by the hand a
boy of six years of age. It was doubtless a father with his son. The
younger of the two had a cake in his hand. At this period certain
contiguous houses in the Rue Madame and the Rue d'Enfer had keys to
the Luxembourg, by which the lodgers could let themselves in when the
gates were locked; but this permission has since been withdrawn. This
father and son evidently came from one of these houses. The two poor
little creatures saw "this gentleman" coming, and hid themselves a
little more. He was a citizen, and perhaps the same whom Marius during
his love-fever had one day heard near the same great basin counselling
his son "to avoid excesses." He had an affable and haughty look, and a
mouth which, as it did not close, always smiled. This mechanical smile,
produced by too much jaw and too little skin, shows the teeth rather
than the soul. The boy with the bitten cake which he had not finished,
seemed glutted; the boy was dressed in a National Guard's uniform, on
account of the riots, and the father remained in civilian garb for the
sake of prudence. Father and son had halted near the great basin, in
which the two swans were disporting. This bourgeois appeared to have a
special admiration for the swans, and resembled them in the sense that
he walked like them. At this moment the swans were swimming, which is
their principal talent, and were superb. Had the two little fellows
listened, and been of an age to comprehend, they might have overheard
the remarks of a serious man; the father was saying to his son,--
"The sage lives contented with little; look at me, my son, I do not
care for luxury. You never see me in a coat glistening with gold and
precious stones; I leave that false lustre to badly-organized minds."
Here the deep shouts which came from the direction of the Halles broke
out, with a redoublement of hells and noise.
"What is that?" the lad asked.
The father replied,--
"That is the saturnalia."
All at once he perceived the two little ragged boys standing motionless
behind the swan's green house.
"Here is the beginning," he said.
And after a silence he added,--
"Anarchy enters this garden."
In the mean while the boy bit the cake, spat it out again, and suddenly
began crying.
"Why are you crying?" the father asked.
"I am no longer hungry," said the boy.
The father's smile became more marked than ever.
"You need not be hungry to eat a cake."
"I am tired of cake; it is so filling."
"Don't you want any more?"
"No."
The father showed him the swans.
"Throw it to those palmipeds."
The boy hesitated, for if he did not want any more cake that was no
reason to give it away.
The father continued,--
"Be humane: you ought to have pity on animals."
And, taking the cake from his son, he threw it into the basin, where it
fell rather near the bank. The swans were some distance off, near the
centre of the basin, and engaged with some prey: they had seen neither
the citizen nor the cake. The citizen, feeling that the cake ran a
risk of being lost, and affected by this useless shipwreck, began a
telegraphic agitation which eventually attracted the attention of the
swans. They noticed something floating on the surface, tacked, like the
vessels they are, and came towards the cake slowly, with the majesty
that befits white beasts.
"Swans understand signs," said the bourgeois, pleased at his own
cleverness.
At this moment the distant tumult of the city was suddenly swollen.
This time it was sinister, and there are some puffs of wind which
speak more distinctly than others. The one which blew at this moment
distinctly brought up the rolling of drums, shouts, platoon fires, and
the mournful replies of the tocsin, and the cannon. This coincided with
a black cloud which suddenly veiled the sky. The swans had not yet
reached the cake.
"Let us go home," the father said; "they are attacking the Tuileries,"
He seized his son's hand again, and then continued,---
"From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg there is only the distance which
separates the royalty from the peerage; and that is not far. It is
going to rain musketry."
He looked at the cloud,--
"And perhaps we shall have rain of the other sort too; heaven is
interfering: the younger branch is condemned. Let us make haste home."
"I should like to see the swans eat the cake," said the boy.
"It would be imprudent," the father answered; and he led away his
little bourgeois. The son, regretting the swans, turned his head
toward the basin, until a bend in the quincunxes concealed it from
him. The two little vagabonds had in the mean while approached the
cake simultaneously with the swans. It was floating on the water; the
smaller boy looked at the cake; the other looked at the citizen, who
was going off. Father and son entered the labyrinth of trees that runs
to the grand staircase of the clump of trees in the direction of the
Rue Madame. When they were no longer in sight, the elder hurriedly lay
down full length on the rounded bank of the basin, and holding by his
left hand, while bending over the water, till he all but fell in, he
stretched out his switch toward the cake with the other. The swans,
seeing the enemy, hastened up, and in hastening their breasts produced
an effect useful to the little fisher: the water flowed back in front
of the swans, and one of the gentle, concentric undulations slightly
impelled the cake toward the boy's switch. When the swans came up, the
stick was touching the cake; the lad gave a quick blow, startled the
swans, seized the cake, and arose. The cake was soaking, but they were
hungry and thirsty. The elder boy divided the cake into two parts, a
large one and a small one, kept the small one for himself, and gave the
larger piece to his brother, saying,--
"Shove that into your gun."