Page 1182 - les-miserables

‘Your grandnephew.’
‘Ah!’ said the grandfather.
Then he went back to his reading, thought no more of
his grandnephew, who was merely some Theodule or other,
and soon flew into a rage, which almost always happened
when he read. The ‘sheet’ which he held, although Royal-
ist, of course, announced for the following day, without any
softening phrases, one of these little events which were of
daily occurrence at that date in Paris: ‘That the students of
the schools of law and medicine were to assemble on the
Place du Pantheon, at midday,—to deliberate.’ The discus-
sion concerned one of the questions of the moment, the
artillery of the National Guard, and a conflict between the
Minister of War and ‘the citizen’s militia,’ on the subject
of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The
students were to ‘deliberate’ over this. It did not take much
more than this to swell M. Gillenormand’s rage.
He thought of Marius, who was a student, and who
would probably go with the rest, to ‘deliberate, at midday,
on the Place du Pantheon.’
As he was indulging in this painful dream, Lieutenant
Theodule entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois, which
was clever of him, and was discreetly introduced by Made-
moiselle Gillenormand. 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:—

1182 Les Miserables