Brick Club 5.5.7, 5.5.8
Marius is speedrunning a lot of processing. No one is really making it easier for him. “He, the poor, he was rich; he, the abandoned, he had a family; he, the despairing, he was marrying Cosette.” So many of these things are now arbitrarily his, or were never really gone, it’s no wonder it all feels like a facade. I’m peeved at Valjean for resolutely ignoring Marius’s desperation for understanding and letting him wander around in the fog. God! No wonder Marius is having trouble! Is he really concerned about money? Is Gillenormand supposed to be his newfound family? Is his father-in-law going to gaslight him for the entirety of their relationship?
Marius is looking to extinguish his demons, so to speak. Thenardier is gone in the wind and, as such, condemned to death. “This condemnation was the only thing which remained in regard to Thenardier, throwing over that buried name its ominous glare, like a candle beside a bier.” Marius! Heed literally every red flag and drop this!
There are so many threads here, asking to be connected. Except Valjean won’t say a word, the fiacre driver doesn’t know which officer “stationed him” and that it was the same officer who happened to kill himself later that night, Thenardier is a shadowy criminal, and everyone else with testimony is dead on the barricade. All Marius has is that “he could not doubt his own identity.”
Marius is actively and unreservedly very impassioned about this and it’s still vaguely ticking me off that Valjean is being so guarded about this. But I know Marius and Valjean doesn’t. Valjean doesn’t /know anybody except Cosette and I guess that’s fair for his circumstances. Marius could be a good and noble guy for decades and Valjean still wouldn’t share anything. “’Oh! if Cosette’s six hundred thousand francs were mine—‘ ‘They are yours,’ interrupted Jean Valjean.” He has always given alms rather than words.
