irs, 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. He made his appearance at meals; then they searched for him, and he
was not to be found. Father Gillenormand smiled. "Bah! bah! He is just
of the age for the girls!" Sometimes the old man added: "The deuce!
I thought it was only an affair of gallantry, It seems that it is an
affair of passion!"

It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring his
father.

At the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. The
phases of this change were numerous and successive. As this is the
history of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful to
follow these phases step by step and to indicate them all.

That history upon which he had just cast his eyes appalled him.

The first effect was to dazzle him.

Up to that time, the Republic, the Empire, had been to him only
monstrous words. The Republic, a guillotine in the twilight; the Empire,
a sword in the night. He had just taken a look at it, and where he had
expected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sort
of unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling,
Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille, Desmoulins,
Danton, and a sun arise, Napoleon. He did not know where he stood. He
recoiled, blinded by the brilliant lights. Little by little, when his
astonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance, he
contemplated these deeds without dizziness, he examined these personages
without terror; the Revolution and the Empire presented themselves
luminously, in perspective, before his mind's eye; he beheld each of
these groups of events and of men summed up in two tremendous facts: the
Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses,
the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea