"Pity on you, sir! The young man asks pity of an old man of ninety-one! You are entering life, and I am leaving it; you go to the play, to balls, to the coffee-house, the billiard-table; you are witty, you please women, you are a pretty fellow, while I spit on my logs in the middle of summer; you are rich with the only wealth there is, while I have all the poverty of old age, infirmity, and isolation. You have your two-and-thirty teeth, a good stomach, a quick eye, strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair, while I have not even my white hair left. I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory, for there are three names of streets which I incessantly confound,--the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue St. Claude. Such is my state; you have a whole future before you, full of sunshine, while I am beginning to see nothing, as I have advanced so far into night. You are in love, that is a matter of course, while I am not beloved by a soul in the world, and yet you ask me for pity! By Jove! Molière forgot that. If that is the way in which you lawyers jest at the palais, I compliment you most sincerely upon it, for you are droll fellows." And the octogenarian added, in a serious and wrathful voice,-- "Well; what is it you want of me?" "I am aware, sir," said Marius, "that my presence here displeases you; but I have only come to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away at once." "You are a fool!" the old man said. "Who told you to go away?" This was the translation of the tender words which he had at the bottom of his heart. "Ask my pardon, why don't you? and throw your arms round my neck." M. Gillenormand felt that Marius was going to leave him in a few moments, that his bad reception offended him, and that his harshness expelled him; he said all this to himself, and his grief was augmented by it, and as his grief immediately turned into passion his harshness grew the greater. He had wished that Marius should understand, and Marius did not understand, which rendered the old gentleman furious. He continued,-- "What! you insulted me, your grandfather; you left my house to go the Lord knows whither; you broke your aunt's heart; you went away to lead a bachelor's life,--of course that's more convenient,--to play the fop, come home at all hours, and amuse yourself; you have given me no sign of life; you have incurred debts without even asking me to pay them; you have been a breaker of windows and a brawler; and at the end of four years you return to my house and have nothing more to say to me than that!" This violent way of forcing the grandson into tenderness only produced silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms,--a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious,--and bitterly addressed Marius,-- "Let us come to an end. You have come to ask something of me, you say. Well, what is it? Speak!"