he service of Robespierre!
All who served B-u-o-naparte were brigands!
They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king!
All cowards who fled before the Prussians and the English at Waterloo!
That is what I do know! Whether Monsieur your father comes in that category, I do not know! I am sorry for it, so much the worse, your humble servant!"
In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand and M. Gillenormand who was the bellows.
Marius quivered in every limb, he did not know what would happen next, his brain was on fire.
He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds, the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon his idol.
It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do?
His father had just been trampled under foot and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom?
By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other? It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather and it was equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged. On the one hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks.
He stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated, with all this whirlwind dashing through his head; then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice of thunder:--