Page 1050 - les-miserables

le Commandant Pontmercy.’ He sent back the letters with
the seals unbroken. At the same moment, Napoleon at Saint
Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives of Sir
Hudson Lowe addressed to General Bonaparte. Pontmercy
had ended, may we be pardoned the expression, by having
in his mouth the same saliva as his Emperor.
In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian pris-
oners who refused to salute Flaminius, and who had a little
of Hannibal’s spirit.
One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of
the streets of Vernon, stepped up to him, and said: ‘Mr.
Crown Attorney, am I permitted to wear my scar?’
He had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of
squadron. He had hired the smallest house which he could
find at Vernon. He lived there alone, we have just seen how.
Under the Empire, between two wars, he had found time
to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The old bourgeois,
thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent with
a sigh, saying: ‘The greatest families are forced into it.’ In
1815, Madame Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every
sense, by the way, lofty in sentiment and rare, and worthy
of her husband, died, leaving a child. This child had been
the colonel’s joy in his solitude; but the grandfather had im-
peratively claimed his grandson, declaring that if the child
were not given to him he would disinherit him. The father
had yielded in the little one’s interest, and had transferred
his love to flowers.
Moreover, he had renounced everything, and neither
stirred up mischief nor conspired. He shared his thoughts

1050 Les Miserables