Page 1051 - les-miserables

between the innocent things which he was then doing and
the great things which he had done. He passed his time in
expecting a pink or in recalling Austerlitz.
M. Gillenormand kept up no relations with his son-in-
law. The colonel was ‘a bandit’ to him. M. Gillenormand
never mentioned the colonel, except when he occasionally
made mocking allusions to ‘his Baronship.’ It had been ex-
pressly agreed that Pontmercy should never attempt to see
his son nor to speak to him, under penalty of having the
latter handed over to him disowned and disinherited. For
the Gillenormands, Pontmercy was a man afflicted with the
plague. They intended to bring up the child in their own
way. Perhaps the colonel was wrong to accept these condi-
tions, but he submitted to them, thinking that he was doing
right and sacrificing no one but himself.
The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount
to much; but the inheritance of Mademoiselle Gillenormand
the elder was considerable. This aunt, who had remained un-
married, was very rich on the maternal side, and her sister’s
son was her natural heir. The boy, whose name was Marius,
knew that he had a father, but nothing more. No one opened
his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society into
which his grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and
winks, had eventually enlightened the little boy’s mind; he
had finally understood something of the case, and as he
naturally took in the ideas and opinions which were, so to
speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and slow
penetration, he gradually came to think of his father only
with shame and with a pain at his heart.

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