Father Gillenormand at this period had just passed his ninety-first birthday, and still lived with his daughter at No. 6, Rue des Filles-de-Calvaire, in the old house which was his own property. He was, it will be remembered, one of those antique old men whose age falls on without bending them, and whom even sorrow cannot bow. Still, for some time past his daughter had said, "My father is breaking." He no longer slapped the servants, or rapped so violently with his cane the staircase railing where Basque kept him waiting. The Revolution of July had not exasperated him for more than six months, and he had seen almost with tranquillity in the _Moniteur_ this association of words, M. Humblot-Conté, Peer of France. The truth is, that the old man was filled with grief; he did not bend, he did not surrender, for that was not possible either with his moral or physical nature; but he felt himself failing inwardly. For four years he had been awaiting Marius with a firm foot,--that is really the expression,--with the conviction that the wicked young scape-grace would ring his bell some day; and now he had begun to say to himself, when depressed, that Marius might remain away a little too long. It was not death that was insupportable to him, but the idea that perhaps he might not see Marius again. This idea had never occurred to him till one day, and at present it rose before him constantly, and chilled him to death. Absence, as ever happens in natural and true feelings, had only heightened the grandfather's love for the ungrateful boy who had gone away like that. It is on December nights, when the thermometer is almost down at zero, that people think most of the sun. M. Gillenormand was, or fancied himself, utterly incapable of taking a step toward his grandson; "I would rot first," he said to himself. He did not think himself at all in the wrong, but he only thought of Marius with profound tenderness, and the dumb despair of an old man who is going down into the valley of the shadows. He was beginning to lose his teeth, which added to his sorrow. M. Gillenormand, without confessing it to himself, however, for he would have been furious and ashamed of it, had never loved a mistress as he loved Marius. He had hung up in his room, as the first thing he might see on awaking, an old portrait of his other daughter, the one who was dead, Madame de Pontmercy, taken when she was eighteen. He incessantly regarded this portrait, and happened to say one day, while gazing at it,-- "I can notice a likeness." "To my sister?" Mlle. Gillenormand remarked; "oh, certainly." The old man added, "And to him too." When he was once sitting, with his knees against each other, and his eyes almost closed in a melancholy posture, his daughter ventured to say to him,-- "Father, are you still so furious against--" She stopped, not daring to go further. "Against whom?" he asked. "That poor Marius."