ll you permit me to be absent for three days?"
"Four!" replied his grandfather.
"Go and amuse yourself."
And he said to his daughter in a low tone, and with a wink, "Some love affair!"
BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
CHAPTER VI
THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN
Where it was that Marius went will be disclosed a little further on.
Marius was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school and asked for the files of the Moniteur.
He read the Moniteur, he read all the histories of the Republic and the Empire, the Memorial de Sainte-Helene, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations; he devoured everything.
The first time that he came across his father''s name in the bulletins of the grand army, he had a fever for a week. He went to see the generals under whom Georges Pontmercy had served, among others, Comte H. Church-warden Mabeuf, whom he went to see again, told him about the life at Vernon, the colonel''s retreat, his flowers, his solitude.
Marius came to a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that species of lion-lamb who had been his father.
In the meanwhile, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed all his moments as well as his thoughts, he hardly saw the Gillenormands at all.