Chapter 345 2 Marius Comes Out of the Civil War, Ready to Fight the Family

Marius was in a state of immortality for a long time.He suffered from high fever, coma, and severe brain symptoms for several weeks, mainly due to the shock after the head injury, not the injury itself. He used to call Cosette's name all night long in his miserable fevers and in his gloomy agony of death.Some of his wounds were too large, which was very dangerous. Large wounds suppurated, and under the influence of certain climates, poisons from the outside would often invade from the inside, leading to death.Every time the weather changes and there is a little storm, the doctor is worried.He repeatedly told the patient not to be stimulated a little.Bandaging the wound was complicated and difficult, and the use of adhesive tape to fix the splint and gauze had not been invented at that time."It was as big as the ceiling," says Nicolette, who used a sheet for the dressing. The gangrene was cured with difficulty using chlorinated lotions and silver nitrate.When his condition was critical, Gillenormand stood by his grandson's bed in despair. Like Marius, he was neither dead nor alive.

The porter noticed that every day, sometimes twice a day, a well-dressed old man with white hair came to inquire about the sick, and dropped down a large package of wound cloths. On September 7th, exactly four months after the dying man had been sent to his grandfather's house on that dismal night, the doctor finally gave his assurance that the patient was out of danger and the recovery period had begun.Marius remained on a bench for more than two months due to the consequences of a broken collarbone.Often there is a last wound which does not heal well, and the patient endures the long dressing with great weariness.

In fact, this long illness and long convalescence had enabled him to escape capture, and even public anger could not last six months unquenched in France.In the social situation at that time, the riots were everyone's fault, so we had to turn a blind eye to a certain extent. Moreover, Gisquet's disgraceful announcement ordering the doctor to denounce the wounded, provoked not only public indignation, but above all the king, the wounded were sheltered by this outrage.The court-martial dared not bother with any wounded except those who had been captured on the spot in the battle, so Marius was at peace.

Monsieur Gillenormand experienced first all the pains and then all the ecstasies.It was difficult for others to prevent him from spending the night with the sick, and he had his large armchair brought to Marius' bedside; he asked his daughter to make gauze and bandages from the most beautiful linen in the house.Mademoiselle Gillenormand, a sensible and elderly person, managed to keep the soft cloth, but at the same time to convince the grandfather that his orders were carried out.M. Gillenormand would not allow it to be explained to him that coarse cloth was better than linen, and that old cloth was better than new.He watched every time the wound was bandaged, and Mademoiselle Gillenormand shyly avoided it.When cutting off the dead flesh with scissors, the old man cried "Ah!"He kept asking the doctor questions, and he didn't find himself repeating the same questions over and over again.

When the doctor informed him that the patient was out of danger, the good old man was overjoyed and rewarded the porter with three louis.When he returned to his bedroom at night, he played the Jiahe dance with his thumb and forefinger instead of castanets, and sang the following song: ! Then he knelt in a chair, and Basque watched him through the half-closed door, convinced that he must be praying. Up to this moment he had not believed much in God. It was obvious that the disease was getting better day by day, and every time there was a new improvement, my grandfather would take a ridiculous action.He made many happy movements mechanically, running upstairs and downstairs for no reason.A neighbor, a pretty girl, was surprised one morning to receive a bouquet of flowers, which M. Gillenormand had given her.The husband had an argument because of jealousy.M. Gillenormand tried to hold Nicolette on his lap.He called Marius Monsieur the Baron.He shouted: "Long live the Republic!"

He asked the doctor all the time: "Is there no danger?" He looked at Marius with a grandmother's eyes and watched him eat without taking his eyes off him.He no longer knew himself, he himself no longer counted, Marius was the master of the house, and his joy made him abdicate, and he became the grandson of his grandson. This lightheartedness made him a most respectable boy.In order not to tire or bore the recovering man, he stood behind the sick man and smiled at him.He's content, he's happy, cheerful, lovely, young.His silvery white hair added a gentle majesty to his radiant countenance.This elegance is even more lovely when the wrinkles on the face are added to it.In jubilant old age there is an unnamed dawn.

As for Marius, he left his wounds to be bandaged and nursed, with only one thought firmly in his mind: Cosette. Since he had emerged from his high fever and coma, he had ceased to pronounce the name, and it might have been thought he had forgotten it.Precisely because he never forgets, he keeps his mouth shut. He didn't know what happened to Cosette, the passing of Machang Street was as hazy as smoke in his memory, and blurred figures floated in his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf, De The first family, and all his friends, were mingled dismal in the smoke of the barricades; M. Fauchelevent's strange presence in the blood of this adventure moved him like a riddle in the storm; He didn't know how he got his life, he didn't know who it was and how he was saved, and neither did the people around him; at most, he could only tell him that he was taken away in a street car that night. Come to the Rue de la Passione; in his vague thoughts past, present, and future seem thick with mist, but in this mist there is an unshakable point, a clear and exact outline, an unbreakable Something, a resolution, a volition: to find Cosette again.In his heart, life and Cosette were inseparable; he had made up his mind that he could not gain one and lose the other, and whoever, grandpa, fate, or hell forced him to live, he insisted on rebuilding his lost life first. paradise.

As for the obstacles, he was not unforeseen. Here we want to point out a detail: Grandpa's care and love did not win his favor at all, and rarely moved him.First of all, he didn't know all the inside information, and secondly, in his dream when he was sick, he might still have a fever at the time, and he was wary of this kind of doting, thinking that the purpose of this novelty was to tame him.He is nonchalant about it.Grandfather's pitiful old man's smile was all in vain.Marius thought to himself that as long as he didn't open his mouth and was at the mercy of others, things would be easy to handle, but as soon as Cosette was involved, he would see another face, and the grandfather's truth was revealed.And then things are going to be difficult; the family question is brought up again, whether the family is equal, and all the irony and dissent again, M. Fauchelevent, M. Chefeng, money, poverty, poverty, a stone on the neck, the future.To object violently, to draw conclusions, to reject.Marius was prepared in advance to fight tenaciously.

As he gradually regained his health, the dissatisfaction in his heart reappeared, and the old sores in his memory opened again. He recalled the past, and Colonel Pontmercy came between M. Gillenormand and his Marius again. A man so unjust and so vicious as his father couldn't be truly kind.As his health improved, he returned to that blunt attitude towards his grandfather.The old man meekly endured the pain. M. Gillenormand did not express anything, but he noticed that since Marius was brought back to his home to regain consciousness, he had never called him father.But not Mr., yes, but he managed to avoid both when speaking.

Things were clearly about to explode. Marius, in order to test his strength, made a little contact before the battle, as is often the case in such cases, which is called finding out.One morning, Mr. Gillenormand took a newspaper at random, and he expressed his opinion hastily on the National Convention, and blurted out the conclusions of the Royalist Party on Danton, Saint-Just and Robespierre. "The men of '93 are great," said Marius solemnly.The old man stopped immediately, and didn't speak again that whole day. In his mind, Marius always kept the strong and unyielding image of his grandfather in the early years, so he believed that this silence was a concentrated expression of strong anger, which heralded a fierce struggle, and he strengthened his preparations for battle in the depths of his mind.

If refused, he was determined to tear off the splint, dislocate the collarbone, leave the rest of the wound wide open, and refuse all food and drink.His wounds are his weapons.Get Cosette or die. He waited for his favorable moment with that gloomy patience peculiar to patients. The time has come.