The description of how Marius lives on 700 francs a year is a passage straight out of Balzac's type of realism, and it has all the mathematical fascination of a well-worked-out equation. Marius however is not, and never will be, one of Les Misérables. Unlike Gavroche and Jean Valjean, he does not expect suffering from life; he chooses it and thereby adds a halo of glory to the rosy glow of youth that already surrounds him. Marius' natural environment is not the slums but the Luxembourg Gardens; he belongs to the world of the wealthy, the leisured, the fortunate, and no matter how shabby his pants, he always wears them like a gentleman.
In Marius, Victor Hugo is painting his own portrait as a young man—the same political views, appearance, and youthful struggles—but it is a fair portrait, not retouched. Hugo recognizes what is admirable in Marius—his integrity, his generosity, his imaginative fervor, his genuine idealism, and his capacity for feeling; but he does not extol them beyond measure, and he does not fail to point out Marius' faults: the unconscious cruelty with which he makes his grandfather suffer and the humor as well as the beauty of his grand passion. To fall in love forever, without a word spoken, on the strength of a single glance, is sublime—but it is also incredibly stupid, and so, in some respects, is Marius.
