Marius Pontmercy

----I may have already mentioned that time in my book doesn't proceed in a nice linear fashion. It's more of a tangled bowl of spaghetti where you double back within people's flashbacks and are never quite sure what year, generation, or even century we are talking about. That said, don't blame me for the out of chronological order posts; I am merely summarizing in the order the author has written.
----Now, after Baron Colonel Pontmercy gave up his baby son to M. Guillenormand, life didn't go so well. The son, Marius, was educated as an apathetic aristocrat. He was nice enough, but snobby, knew nothing of the real world and was rather a spoiled lapdog in his grandfather's home. A decent person.
----One day, he gets a message: his father is dying. Having heard his grandfather's version of the dad, Marius only goes because it is expected. He doesn't care for his dad, has never met him, and thinks he's a scumbag for abandoning him. But when he reaches the house, Colonel Pontmercy is already dead! The son receives a note from his father, written in the last day:
----"For my son.- The emperor made me a baron upon the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the Restoration contests this title which I have bought with my blood, my son will take it and bear it. I need not say that he will be worthy of it. At this same battle of Waterloo, a sergeant saved my life. This man's name is Thenardier. Not long ago, I believe he was keeping a little tavern in a village in the suburbs of Paris, at Chelles or at Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do Thenardier all the service he can."
----Marius is completely unmoved by the request of a man he's never seen before who's dead now anyway. He tucks the note into his pocket, but only out of respect for the dead. He forgets his father and goes back to his grandfather.