Chapter 171 A red ghost in the second year

Back then, if someone passed through the small town of Vernon, went to the grand and magnificent stone bridge to play (that bridge may soon be replaced by an ugly chain bridge), stood by the bridge railing and looked down, he would see I saw a man in his fifties, wearing a peaked cap, a duffel coat and trousers, with a yellowed red ribbon sewn on the lapel, and wooden shoes on his feet. His skin was burnt yellow, his face was dark, and his hair was gray. A broad and long knife mark stretches from forehead to cheek, bent over, bent back, prematurely aging, walking up and down in a small courtyard with a flat-headed shovel and a pruning knife almost all day long.Around the bridgehead on the left bank of the Seine River, there are all those kind of yards, each of which is separated by walls and arranged along the river, like a long earthen platform, all planted with flowers and trees, very pleasing to the eye, if the garden is bigger, it can be called If the garden is smaller, it will be a flower bed.Those courtyards are all facing the river at one end and houses at the other end.About 1817 the man in the short coat and wooden shoes of whom we are speaking lived lived in the narrowest of these yards, in the humblest of these houses.There he lived alone, lonely, silent, poor and helpless, with a woman who was neither old nor young, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither peasant nor burgher, to work for him.The little plot which he called his garden had become famous in the little town for the beauty of the flowers he grew.Planting flowers is his job.

Because of his persistence in work, attention to situations, and diligence in watering, he was able to cultivate several kinds of tulips and dahlias that seemed to have been forgotten by the earth after the creator.He can be ingenious. He retting small green manures to cultivate some rare and precious American and Chinese shrubs. In this respect, he surpassed Surangi Bodan.At dawn in summer, he has already arrived on the ridge, planting, pruning, plucking, watering, with a kind, melancholy, and kind expression, running back and forth among his flowers, sometimes stopping still, Spend hours in thought, listening to the singing of a bird in a tree or the babbling of a child in someone else's house, or staring blankly at a drop of dew on the tip of the grass that the sun shines like a diamond.His diet was very light, and he drank more milk than alcohol.Naughty children can make him obey, and his maid often scolds him.He was so timid that he seemed afraid of seeing people, he seldom went out, and saw no one except the poor people who knocked on his glass windows and his priest.His priest was Mabeuf, a good old man.But if some fellow, native or foreign, whoever it was, wanted to see his tulips and roses, came and rang the bell of his cottage, he would go and answer it with a big smile.This is the Loire gangster.

Had anyone, at that same period, read the various memoirs of war, the various biographies, the Bulletin, and the Reports of the Grand Army, he would have been struck by a name which appeared from time to time, and that name was Georges Pontmercy.This Peng Meixu was already a soldier in the St. Easten's regiment when he was very young.A revolution broke out.The St. Easten United was incorporated into the Rhine Front Army.The old alliance in the monarchy era was named after the province. After the monarchy was abolished, it remained the same. It was not until 1794 that the organization was unified.Pontmerchu fought at Spears, Worms, Neustadt, Turkheim, Alzey, Mainz, etc., and at Mainz he was one of the two hundred men in Ushar's rear one of.He and eleven others blocked the entire army of Prince Hess behind the ancient fortress of Andernach. He did not retreat until the enemy's artillery opened a gap from the wall to the inclined embankment, and the large group of enemy soldiers pressed down. .He had been to Marchian under Kleber, and was wounded in the arm by a musket at Montbalisser.He then moved to the Italian front, where he was one of the thirty guards that defended the Tanda Valley with Joubert.Because of that battle, Joubert was promoted to brigadier general, and Pontmercy to lieutenant.Pontmerche was at Berthier's side on the day at Lodi, when Bonaparte, who had seen Berthier rushing about under the fire, praised him as artilleryman, cavalryman, and guard.At Novi he saw his old commander, General Joubert, fall as he raised his saber and cried "Forward!"In that battle, due to military needs, he led his infantry company from Genoa to an unknown small port in a sailboat, and encountered seven or eight British sailboats on the way.The Genoese captain planned to sink the cannon into the sea, let the soldiers hide in the middle cabin, and sneak away disguised as a merchant ship.But Pont Mercy tied the tricolor flag to a rope, hoisted it to the flagpole, and passed by under the fire of the British fleet.After twenty miles he was still more daring, and with his galleon he attacked a large British transport carrying troops to Sicily, and captured the enemy ship, loaded to the hatch with its men and horses.In 1805, he was attached to the Marais division and took Gunzburg from the Archduke Ferdinand.At Wettingen he picked up Colonel Mauperty, the mortally wounded captain of the Ninth Dragoons, in his arms against a hail of bullets.He had taken part in the heroic echelon march under enemy fire at Austerlitz.When the cavalry of the Imperial Guard trampled upon a battalion of infantry of the Fourth Battalion, Pontmercy joined in the counterattack and routed the Guards.The Emperor gave him the Cross of Merit.Pontmercy, again and again, saw Wilmser taken prisoner at Mantua, Melas taken prisoner at Alexandria, and Mack taken prisoner at Ulm.He also joined the Eighth Corps of the Grand Army that took Hamburg under the command of Mortier.Subsequently, he was transferred to the 55th Battalion, which was the old Flemish United.The heroic captain Louis Hugo, the uncle of the author of this book, led his company of eighty-three men alone in a cemetery in Eylau, and stood for two hours in the face of the enemy's onslaught. Peng Meixu was also present at that time.He was one of three people who made it out of that cemetery alive.Friedland, he's there too.Then he saw Moscow, then Berezina, then Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Vaschau, Leipzig and the Granhausen Pass; Thrilling situations at Thierry, Clarons, the Quais of the Marne, the Quais of the Aisne, and Laon.At Arneledek he was captain of the cavalry, and with his saber he felled six Cossacks and saved, not his general, but his squad leader.It was at that time that he was chopped to a bloody mess, and twenty-seven broken bones were taken out from his left arm alone.Eight days before the surrender of Paris, he and a companion switched positions and joined the cavalry.He has the kind of "two-handedness" called in the old days, that is to say, as a soldier, he has the ability to use swords and guns, and as an officer, he also has the ability to command infantry battalions or cavalry.Certain special branches of arms, such as the dragoons, who were both cavalry and infantry, were carefully trained by this military education.He followed Napoleon to the island of Elba.During the Battle of Waterloo, he was captain of the cavalry in Dubois' brigade.It was he who captured the banner of the Lüneburg Battalion.He took the flag and threw it in front of the emperor.He was covered in blood.When he was pulling out the flag, he slashed at his face with a knife, cutting off his face.The emperor was delighted, and shouted to him: "You will be promoted to colonel, you will be made a baron, and you will be awarded the fourth class of the Medal of Honor!" Pontmercy replied: "Your Majesty, I thank you on behalf of my wife who has become a widow." Afterwards he fell in the ravine of Oran.We now ask: Who was this Georges Pontmercy?He is the bandit of the Loire.

We've seen some of his history before.After the battle of Waterloo, Pontmercy, we remember, was rescued from the sunken road at Auin, and he actually returned to the army, passing from one field aid station to another, and finally arrived at the Loire camp. After the Restoration, he was placed on a half-salary staff, and then sent to Vernon to recuperate, that is to say, to be watched.King Louis XVIII denied everything that had happened during the Hundred Days, and therefore denied him his entitlement to the Fourth Class, his colonel, and his baronetship.On his part, he never gave up an opportunity to sign "Colonel Baron Pontmercy".He had only an old blue uniform, and when he went out into the street he always wore the little rosette of the Legion of Honor, Fourth Class.Prosecutors sent someone to warn him that he might be pursued by the courts for "unlawful conduct in wearing the Medal of Honor without authorization."When this notice was conveyed to him by an informal intermediary, Pontmercy replied with a wry smile: "I don't know at all whether I don't understand French or you don't speak French anymore. The fact is that I don't understand you." Then, he took the little Rosette to the streets every day, and ran for eight days in a row.No one dared to mess with him.Two or three times the Ministry of War and the Commander-in-Chief of the Province wrote him letters, inscribed "Mr. Captain Pontmercy" on the envelope.He returned the letters unopened.At the same time, Napoleon on St. Helena treated in the same way those letters sent by the nobleman Hudson Low to "General Bonaparte".In Pontmercy's mouth - if we may say so - there was the same spittle as his emperor's.

Once upon a time there were some captured Carthaginian soldiers at Rome who refused to pay homage to Flamininus, and they were somewhat in the spirit of Hannibal. One morning he met the prosecutor in the street of Vernon, who went up to him and asked him: "Monsieur prosecutor, I have this knife wound on my face all the time, is it all right?" He had nothing but the meager half-pay of the captain of the cavalry.He rented the smallest house he could find at Vernon, and lived there alone, in a way of life which we have seen first.During the Empire, he took advantage of the lull in the war to marry the Gillenormand.The old gentleman, resentful, could only agree, and sighed, "The noblest family has to bow its head." Mrs. Pontmercy was a well-bred, rare woman, and worthy of her. Her husband, admirable in every respect, died in 1815, leaving a child.The boy was the colonel's joy in solitude, but the grandfather unreasonably wanted to take his grandson away, declaring that he would not let him inherit unless the boy was delivered to him.The father had to make concessions for the benefit of the child. After his beloved son was taken away, he put his heart on flowers and trees.

Everything else, he also gave up, neither activity nor conspiracy.He split his heart in two, and gave one half to the sensual business he was doing, and the other half to the great work he had done before.He whiled away his time in hopes for a carnation or in memories of Austerlitz. M. Gillenormand had nothing to do with his son-in-law.The colonel was a "bandit" in his mind, and he was a "fool" in the colonel's eyes.Monsieur Gillenormand never mentioned the colonel in his daily conversations, except when he wanted to ridicule his "baronetship" and only occasionally insinuated a word or two.They had made a clear agreement that Pontmercy would never visit his son, otherwise the child would be driven away, his property inheritance rights should be cancelled, and returned to his father.To the Gillenormands, Pontmercy was a man of the plague.They're going to bring up that kid their way.The colonel might have been wrong to accept that condition, but he kept his word, thinking that it was right to sacrifice himself for nothing.Gillenormand's own property is not much, but the property of Gillenormand's daughter is very considerable.The aunt who did not leave the court inherited a large property from her mother's natal family, and her sister's son was naturally her heir.

The boy was called Marius, and he knew he had a father, and nothing else.No one talks too much in front of him.But in those places where his grandfather led him, the whispered conversations, cryptic words, and winking expressions finally made the child understand and know something in his heart, and, due to a subtle effect, he naturally He gradually made the views and opinions in his usual environment into his own inherently. As time passed, when he thought of his father, he felt ashamed and depressed. When he grew up in that environment, the colonel would steal away to Paris every two or three months, like a criminal who had left his assigned residence, and took advantage of Aunt Gillenormand's leadership. He also slipped away to stay in the church of Saint-Sulpice while Marius went to mass.He hid behind a stone pillar, frightened, afraid that the aunt would turn his head back, so he didn't move or breathe, and stared at the child.How could a tough man with knife marks on his face be afraid of such an old girl.

It was for this reason that he became acquainted with the abbe Mabeuf, curé of Vernon. The good priest was the brother of a priest of the church of Saint-Sulpice.Many times the priest of finance saw the man staring at the child, with a knife mark on his face and tears in his eyes.Looking at it, the man looked like a good man, but he looked like a woman when he cried. The financial priest was very surprised when he saw it.From then on, that person's face was imprinted in his heart.One day, visiting his brother at Vernon, he came across the bridge, met Colonel Pontmercy, and recognized him as the very man of Saint-Sulpice.The curate mentioned the matter to the parish priest, and, on some pretext, went to visit the colonel with him.We've been in frequent contact since then.At first the colonel was hesitant to speak, and then he began to talk about everything, until at last the curate and the curate learned the whole truth, and saw how Pontmercy had sacrificed his own happiness for the future of his child.From then on, the parish priest treated him with special respect and friendship, and the colonel also regarded the parish priest as a confidant.An old priest and an old soldier, as long as they are sincere and kind to each other, are the easiest to fall in love with and become close friends.In their bones they were one.One is devoted to the motherland below, the other to the heaven above, and there is no other difference.

Marius wrote to his father twice a year, on New Year's Day and on St. George's Day, letters of that kind only for occasion, dictated by his aunt from unknown rulers, and this was the only accommodation M. Gillenormand could make. The place.His father replied, but it was full of kindness, and his grandfather put it in his pocket after accepting it, never reading it.