This did not prevent him from multiplying plans, combinations, scaffolding, and projects for the future. In this state of reverie, any eye which had seen into Marius's interior would have been dazzled by the purity of his mind. In fact, if our eyes of the flesh were allowed to peer into the consciences of our neighbor, a man could be judged far more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks. There is a volition in thought, but there is none in a dream, and the latter, which is entirely spontaneous, assumes and retains, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the image of our mind. Nothing issues more directly and more sincerely from the bottom of our soul than our unreflecting and disproportioned aspirations for the splendors of destiny. The true character of every man could be found in these aspirations far more certainly than in arranged, reasoned, and co-ordinated ideas. Our chimeras are the things which most resemble ourselves, and each man dreams of the unknown and the impossible according to his nature. About the middle of the year 1831 the old woman who waited on Marius told him that his neighbors, the wretched Jondrette family, were going to be turned out. Marius, who spent nearly his whole time out of doors, scarce knew that he had neighbors. "Why are they turned out?" he asked. "Because they do not pay their rent, and owe two quarters." "How much is it?" "Twenty francs," said the old woman. Marius had thirty francs in reserve in a drawer. "Here are twenty-five francs," he said to the woman; "pay the rent of the poor people, give them five francs, and do not tell them where the money comes from." CHAPTER VI. THE SUBSTITUTE. Accident decreed that the regiment to which Théodule belonged should be quartered in Paris. This was an opportunity for Aunt Gillenormand to have a second idea; her first one had been to set Théodule watching Marius, and she now plotted to make him succeed him. In the event of the grandfather feeling a vague want for a youthful face in the house--for such rays of dawn are sometimes sweet to ruins--it was expedient to find another Marius. "Well," she thought, "it is only a simple erratum, such as I notice in books, for _Marius_ read _Théodule._ A grand-nephew is much the same as a grandson, after all, and in default of a barrister you can take a lancer." One morning when M. Gillenormand was going to read something like the _Quotidienne_, his daughter came in and said in her softest voice, for the interests of her favorite were at stake,-- "Papa, Théodule is coming this morning to pay his respects to you." "Who's Théodule?" "Your grand-nephew." "Ah!" said the old gentleman.