





Marius was, at this epoch, a handsome young man, of medium stature,
with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow,
well-opened and passionate nostrils, an air of calmness and sincerity,
and with something indescribably proud, thoughtful, and innocent over
his whole countenance. His profile, all of whose lines were rounded,
without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic
sweetness, which has made its way into the French physiognomy by way of
Alsace and Lorraine, and that complete absence of angles which rendered
the Sicambres so easily recognizable among the Romans, and which
distinguishes the leonine from the aquiline race. He was at that period
of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in nearly equal
parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he
had all that is required to be stupid: one more turn of the key, and he
might be sublime. His manners were reserved, cold, polished, not very
genial. As his mouth was charming, his lips the reddest, and his teeth
the whitest in the world, his smile corrected the severity of his face,
as a whole. At certain moments, that pure brow and that voluptuous
smile presented a singular contrast. His eyes were small, but his
glance was large.

At the period of his most abject misery, he had observed that young
girls turned round when he passed by, and he fled or hid, with death in
his soul. He thought that they were staring at him because of his old
clothes, and that they were laughing at them; the fact is, that they
stared at him because of his grace, and that they dreamed of him.

This mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passers-by had
made him shy. He chose none of them for the excellent reason that he
fled from all of them. He lived thus indefinitely,—stupidly, as
Courfeyrac said.

Courfeyrac also said to him: “Do not aspire to be venerable” [they
called each other _thou_; it is the tendency of youthful friendships to
slip into this mode of address]. “Let me give you a piece of advice, my
dear fellow. Don’t read so many books, and look a little more at the
lasses. The jades have some good points about them, O Marius! By dint
of fleeing and blushing, you will become brutalized.”


On other occasions, Courfeyrac encountered him and said:—“Good morning,
Monsieur l’Abbé!”


When Courfeyrac had addressed to him some remark of this nature, Marius
avoided women, both young and old, more than ever for a week to come,
and he avoided Courfeyrac to boot.

Nevertheless, there existed in all the immensity of creation, two women
whom Marius did not flee, and to whom he paid no attention whatever. In
truth, he would have been very much amazed if he had been informed that
they were women. One was the bearded old woman who swept out his
chamber, and caused Courfeyrac to say: “Seeing that his servant woman
wears his beard, Marius does not wear his own beard.” The other was a
sort of little girl whom he saw very often, and whom he never looked
at.

For more than a year, Marius had noticed in one of the walks of the
Luxembourg, the one which skirts the parapet of the Pépinière, a man
and a very young girl, who were almost always seated side by side on
the same bench, at the most solitary end of the alley, on the Rue de
l’Ouest side. Every time that that chance which meddles with the
strolls of persons whose gaze is turned inwards, led Marius to that
walk,—and it was nearly every day,—he found this couple there. The man
appeared to be about sixty years of age; he seemed sad and serious; his
whole person presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military
men who have retired from the service. If he had worn a decoration,
Marius would have said: “He is an ex-officer.” He had a kindly but
unapproachable air, and he never let his glance linger on the eyes of
any one. He wore blue trousers, a blue frock coat and a broad-brimmed
hat, which always appeared to be new, a black cravat, a quaker shirt,
that is to say, it was dazzlingly white, but of coarse linen. A
grisette who passed near him one day, said: “Here’s a very tidy
widower.” His hair was very white.

The first time that the young girl who accompanied him came and seated
herself on the bench which they seemed to have adopted, she was a sort
of child thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost
homely, awkward, insignificant, and with a possible promise of handsome
eyes. Only, they were always raised with a sort of displeasing
assurance. Her dress was both aged and childish, like the dress of the
scholars in a convent; it consisted of a badly cut gown of black
merino. They had the air of being father and daughter.

Marius scanned this old man, who was not yet aged, and this little
girl, who was not yet a person, for a few days, and thereafter paid no
attention to them. They, on their side, did not appear even to see him.
They conversed together with a peaceful and indifferent air. The girl
chattered incessantly and merrily. The old man talked but little, and,
at times, he fixed on her eyes overflowing with an ineffable paternity.

Marius had acquired the mechanical habit of strolling in that walk. He
invariably found them there.

This is the way things went:—

Marius liked to arrive by the end of the alley which was furthest from
their bench; he walked the whole length of the alley, passed in front
of them, then returned to the extremity whence he had come, and began
again. This he did five or six times in the course of his promenade,
and the promenade was taken five or six times a week, without its
having occurred to him or to these people to exchange a greeting. That
personage, and that young girl, although they appeared,—and perhaps
because they appeared,—to shun all glances, had, naturally, caused some
attention on the part of the five or six students who strolled along
the Pépinière from time to time; the studious after their lectures, the
others after their game of billiards. Courfeyrac, who was among the
last, had observed them several times, but, finding the girl homely, he
had speedily and carefully kept out of the way. He had fled,
discharging at them a sobriquet, like a Parthian dart. Impressed solely
with the child’s gown and the old man’s hair, he had dubbed the
daughter Mademoiselle Lanoire, and the father, Monsieur Leblanc, so
that as no one knew them under any other title, this nickname became a
law in the default of any other name. The students said: “Ah! Monsieur
Leblanc is on his bench.” And Marius, like the rest, had found it
convenient to call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc.

We shall follow their example, and we shall say M. Leblanc, in order to
facilitate this tale.

So Marius saw them nearly every day, at the same hour, during the first
year. He found the man to his taste, but the girl insipid.






During the second year, precisely at the point in this history which
the reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of the
Luxembourg was interrupted, without Marius himself being quite aware
why, and nearly six months elapsed, during which he did not set foot in
the alley. One day, at last, he returned thither once more; it was a
serene summer morning, and Marius was in joyous mood, as one is when
the weather is fine. It seemed to him that he had in his heart all the
songs of the birds that he was listening to, and all the bits of blue
sky of which he caught glimpses through the leaves of the trees.

He went straight to “his alley,” and when he reached the end of it he
perceived, still on the same bench, that well-known couple. Only, when
he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that
it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a
tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines
of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all
the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment,
which can be expressed only by these two words,—“fifteen years.” She
had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that
seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale
flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence smiles darted
like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have
given to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Goujon would have attributed
to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this
bewitching face, her nose was not handsome—it was pretty; neither
straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian
nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,—which
drives painters to despair, and charms poets.

When Marius passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were
constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated
with shadow and modesty.

This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened
to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could
be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping
eyes.

For a moment, Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same
man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of
his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had
examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months
the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is
more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls
blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once.
One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting
to the feelings.

This child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days
in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had
sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived.

One sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass
suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all
sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden.
That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due
yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income.

And then, she was no longer the school-girl with her felt hat, her
merino gown, her scholar’s shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her
with beauty; she was a well-dressed person, clad with a sort of rich
and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black
damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crape. Her
white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the
carved, Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined
the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette
exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.

As for the man, he was the same as usual.

The second time that Marius approached her, the young girl raised her
eyelids; her eyes were of a deep, celestial blue, but in that veiled
azure, there was, as yet, nothing but the glance of a child. She looked
at Marius indifferently, as she would have stared at the brat running
beneath the sycamores, or the marble vase which cast a shadow on the
bench, and Marius, on his side, continued his promenade, and thought
about something else.

He passed near the bench where the young girl sat, five or six times,
but without even turning his eyes in her direction.

On the following days, he returned, as was his wont, to the Luxembourg;
as usual, he found there “the father and daughter;” but he paid no
further attention to them. He thought no more about the girl now that
she was beautiful than he had when she was homely. He passed very near
the bench where she sat, because such was his habit.






One day, the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and
shade, the sky was as pure as though the angels had washed it that
morning, the sparrows were giving vent to little twitters in the depths
of the chestnut-trees. Marius had thrown open his whole soul to nature,
he was not thinking of anything, he simply lived and breathed, he
passed near the bench, the young girl raised her eyes to him, the two
glances met.

What was there in the young girl’s glance on this occasion? Marius
could not have told. There was nothing and there was everything. It was
a strange flash.

She dropped her eyes, and he pursued his way.

What he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a
child; it was a mysterious gulf which had half opened, then abruptly
closed again.

There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to
him who chances to be there!

That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like
the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and
strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that
unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from
adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the
present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of
undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance, and which waits.
It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in
which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a
virgin looking like a woman.

It is rare that a profound reverie does not spring from that glance,
where it falls. All purities and all candors meet in that celestial and
fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of
coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming,
in the depths of the soul, of that sombre flower, impregnated with
perfume and with poison, which is called love.

That evening, on his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over
his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so
slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in
the Luxembourg with his “every-day clothes,” that is to say, with a hat
battered near the band, coarse carter’s boots, black trousers which
showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the
elbows.






On the following day, at the accustomed hour, Marius drew from his
wardrobe his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new
boots; he clothed himself in this complete panoply, put on his gloves,
a tremendous luxury, and set off for the Luxembourg.

On the way thither, he encountered Courfeyrac, and pretended not to see
him. Courfeyrac, on his return home, said to his friends:—

“I have just met Marius’ new hat and new coat, with Marius inside them.
He was going to pass an examination, no doubt. He looked utterly
stupid.”


On arriving at the Luxembourg, Marius made the tour of the fountain
basin, and stared at the swans; then he remained for a long time in
contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with
mould, and one of whose hips was missing. Near the basin there was a
bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent stomach, who was holding
by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him: “Shun excess,
my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy.”
Marius listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the circuit of the
basin once more. At last he directed his course towards “his alley,”
slowly, and as if with regret. One would have said that he was both
forced to go there and withheld from doing so. He did not perceive it
himself, and thought that he was doing as he always did.

On turning into the walk, he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the
other end, “on their bench.” He buttoned his coat up to the very top,
pulled it down on his body so that there might be no wrinkles,
examined, with a certain complaisance, the lustrous gleams of his
trousers, and marched on the bench. This march savored of an attack,
and certainly of a desire for conquest. So I say that he marched on the
bench, as I should say: “Hannibal marched on Rome.”


However, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had
interrupted none of the habitual preoccupations of his mind and labors.
At that moment, he was thinking that the _Manuel du Baccalauréat_ was a
stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to
allow of three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Molière being
analyzed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a
piercing whistling going on in his ears. As he approached the bench, he
held fast to the folds in his coat, and fixed his eyes on the young
girl. It seemed to him that she filled the entire extremity of the
alley with a vague blue light.

In proportion as he drew near, his pace slackened more and more. On
arriving at some little distance from the bench, and long before he had
reached the end of the walk, he halted, and could not explain to
himself why he retraced his steps. He did not even say to himself that
he would not go as far as the end. It was only with difficulty that the
young girl could have perceived him in the distance and noted his fine
appearance in his new clothes. Nevertheless, he held himself very
erect, in case any one should be looking at him from behind.

He attained the opposite end, then came back, and this time he
approached a little nearer to the bench. He even got to within three
intervals of trees, but there he felt an indescribable impossibility of
proceeding further, and he hesitated. He thought he saw the young
girl’s face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent
effort, subdued his hesitation, and walked straight ahead. A few
seconds later, he rushed in front of the bench, erect and firm,
reddening to the very ears, without daring to cast a glance either to
the right or to the left, with his hand thrust into his coat like a
statesman. At the moment when he passed,—under the cannon of the
place,—he felt his heart beat wildly. As on the preceding day, she wore
her damask gown and her crape bonnet. He heard an ineffable voice,
which must have been “her voice.” She was talking tranquilly. She was
very pretty. He felt it, although he made no attempt to see her. “She
could not, however,” he thought, “help feeling esteem and consideration
for me, if she only knew that I am the veritable author of the
dissertation on Marcos Obrégon de la Ronde, which M. François de
Neufchâteau put, as though it were his own, at the head of his edition
of _Gil Blas_.” He went beyond the bench as far as the extremity of the
walk, which was very near, then turned on his heel and passed once more
in front of the lovely girl. This time, he was very pale. Moreover, all
his emotions were disagreeable. As he went further from the bench and
the young girl, and while his back was turned to her, he fancied that
she was gazing after him, and that made him stumble.

He did not attempt to approach the bench again; he halted near the
middle of the walk, and there, a thing which he never did, he sat down,
and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths of his spirit,
that after all, it was hard that persons whose white bonnet and black
gown he admired should be absolutely insensible to his splendid
trousers and his new coat.

At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were
on the point of again beginning his march towards that bench which was
surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there, motionless.
For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself that that
gentleman who sat there every day with his daughter, had, on his side,
noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular.

For the first time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence in
designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts, by the
sobriquet of M. Leblanc.

He stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures
in the sand, with the cane which he held in his hand.

Then he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench, to M.
Leblanc and his daughter, and went home.

That day he forgot to dine. At eight o’clock in the evening he
perceived this fact, and as it was too late to go down to the Rue
Saint-Jacques, he said: “Never mind!” and ate a bit of bread.

He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up
with great care.






On the following day, Ma’am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old
portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma’am
Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have found
out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,—Ma’am Bougon
observed, with stupefaction, that M. Marius was going out again in his
new coat.

He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than
his bench midway of the alley. He seated himself there, as on the
preceding day, surveying from a distance, and clearly making out, the
white bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light. He did
not stir from it, and only went home when the gates of the Luxembourg
closed. He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded
that they had quitted the garden by the gate on the Rue de l’Ouest.
Later on, several weeks afterwards, when he came to think it over, he
could never recall where he had dined that evening.

On the following day, which was the third, Ma’am Bougon was
thunderstruck. Marius went out in his new coat. “Three days in
succession!” she exclaimed.

She tried to follow him, but Marius walked briskly, and with immense
strides; it was a hippopotamus undertaking the pursuit of a chamois.
She lost sight of him in two minutes, and returned breathless,
three-quarters choked with asthma, and furious. “If there is any
sense,” she growled, “in putting on one’s best clothes every day, and
making people run like this!”


Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg.

The young girl was there with M. Leblanc. Marius approached as near as
he could, pretending to be busy reading a book, but he halted afar off,
then returned and seated himself on his bench, where he spent four
hours in watching the house-sparrows who were skipping about the walk,
and who produced on him the impression that they were making sport of
him.

A fortnight passed thus. Marius went to the Luxembourg no longer for
the sake of strolling there, but to seat himself always in the same
spot, and that without knowing why. Once arrived there, he did not
stir. He put on his new coat every morning, for the purpose of not
showing himself, and he began all over again on the morrow.

She was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching a
criticism, that could be made, was, that the contradiction between her
gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry, gave a
rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet
countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming.






On one of the last days of the second week, Marius was seated on his
bench, as usual, holding in his hand an open book, of which he had not
turned a page for the last two hours. All at once he started. An event
was taking place at the other extremity of the walk. Leblanc and his
daughter had just left their seat, and the daughter had taken her
father’s arm, and both were advancing slowly, towards the middle of the
alley where Marius was. Marius closed his book, then opened it again,
then forced himself to read; he trembled; the aureole was coming
straight towards him. “Ah! good Heavens!” thought he, “I shall not have
time to strike an attitude.” Still the white-haired man and the girl
advanced. It seemed to him that this lasted for a century, and that it
was but a second. “What are they coming in this direction for?” he
asked himself. “What! She will pass here? Her feet will tread this
sand, this walk, two paces from me?” He was utterly upset, he would
have liked to be very handsome, he would have liked to own the cross.
He heard the soft and measured sound of their approaching footsteps. He
imagined that M. Leblanc was darting angry glances at him. “Is that
gentleman going to address me?” he thought to himself. He dropped his
head; when he raised it again, they were very near him. The young girl
passed, and as she passed, she glanced at him. She gazed steadily at
him, with a pensive sweetness which thrilled Marius from head to foot.
It seemed to him that she was reproaching him for having allowed so
long a time to elapse without coming as far as her, and that she was
saying to him: “I am coming myself.” Marius was dazzled by those eyes
fraught with rays and abysses.

He felt his brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how
she had looked at him! She appeared to him more beautiful than he had
ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty which was wholly feminine
and angelic, with a complete beauty which would have made Petrarch sing
and Dante kneel. It seemed to him that he was floating free in the
azure heavens. At the same time, he was horribly vexed because there
was dust on his boots.

He thought he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too.

He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he started up
and walked about the Luxembourg garden like a madman. It is possible
that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so
dreamy when he came near the children’s nurses, that each one of them
thought him in love with her.

He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street.

He encountered Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Odéon, and said to
him: “Come and dine with me.” They went off to Rousseau’s and spent six
francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At
dessert, he said to Courfeyrac. “Have you read the paper? What a fine
discourse Audry de Puyraveau delivered!”


He was desperately in love.

After dinner, he said to Courfeyrac: “I will treat you to the play.”
They went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin to see Frédérick in _l’Auberge des
Adrets_. Marius was enormously amused.

At the same time, he had a redoubled attack of shyness. On emerging
from the theatre, he refused to look at the garter of a modiste who was
stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac, who said: “I should like to
put that woman in my collection,” almost horrified him.

Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast at the Café Voltaire on the
following morning. Marius went thither, and ate even more than on the
preceding evening. He was very thoughtful and very merry. One would
have said that he was taking advantage of every occasion to laugh
uproariously. He tenderly embraced some man or other from the
provinces, who was presented to him. A circle of students formed round
the table, and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State which
was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then the conversation
fell upon the faults and omissions in Guicherat’s dictionaries and
grammars. Marius interrupted the discussion to exclaim: “But it is very
agreeable, all the same to have the cross!”


“That’s queer!” whispered Courfeyrac to Jean Prouvaire.

“No,” responded Prouvaire, “that’s serious.”


It was serious; in fact, Marius had reached that first violent and
charming hour with which grand passions begin.

A glance had wrought all this.

When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is
more simple. A glance is a spark.

It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His fate was entering
the unknown.

The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are
tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every
day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything.
A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and
come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all
is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has
caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought
which was fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you.
You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious
forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human
succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from
agony to agony, from torture to torture, you, your mind, your fortune,
your future, your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power
of a wicked creature, or of a noble heart, you will not escape from
this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame, or
transfigured by passion.






Isolation, detachment, from everything, pride, independence, the taste
of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within
himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards
all creation, had prepared Marius for this possession which is called
passion. His worship of his father had gradually become a religion,
and, like all religions, it had retreated to the depths of his soul.
Something was required in the foreground. Love came.

A full month elapsed, during which Marius went every day to the
Luxembourg. When the hour arrived, nothing could hold him back.—“He is
on duty,” said Courfeyrac. Marius lived in a state of delight. It is
certain that the young girl did look at him.

He had finally grown bold, and approached the bench. Still, he did not
pass in front of it any more, in obedience to the instinct of timidity
and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers. He considered it
better not to attract “the attention of the father.” He combined his
stations behind the trees and the pedestals of the statues with a
profound diplomacy, so that he might be seen as much as possible by the
young girl and as little as possible by the old gentleman. Sometimes,
he remained motionless by the half-hour together in the shade of a
Leonidas or a Spartacus, holding in his hand a book, above which his
eyes, gently raised, sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side,
turned her charming profile towards him with a vague smile. While
conversing in the most natural and tranquil manner in the world with
the white-haired man, she bent upon Marius all the reveries of a
virginal and passionate eye. Ancient and time-honored manœuvre which
Eve understood from the very first day of the world, and which every
woman understands from the very first day of her life! her mouth
replied to one, and her glance replied to another.

It must be supposed, that M. Leblanc finally noticed something, for
often, when Marius arrived, he rose and began to walk about. He had
abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench by the
Gladiator, near the other end of the walk, as though with the object of
seeing whether Marius would pursue them thither. Marius did not
understand, and committed this error. “The father” began to grow
inexact, and no longer brought “his daughter” every day. Sometimes, he
came alone. Then Marius did not stay. Another blunder.

Marius paid no heed to these symptoms. From the phase of timidity, he
had passed, by a natural and fatal progress, to the phase of blindness.
His love increased. He dreamed of it every night. And then, an
unexpected bliss had happened to him, oil on the fire, a redoubling of
the shadows over his eyes. One evening, at dusk, he had found, on the
bench which “M. Leblanc and his daughter” had just quitted, a
handkerchief, a very simple handkerchief, without embroidery, but
white, and fine, and which seemed to him to exhale ineffable perfume.
He seized it with rapture. This handkerchief was marked with the
letters U. F. Marius knew nothing about this beautiful child,—neither
her family name, her Christian name nor her abode; these two letters
were the first thing of her that he had gained possession of, adorable
initials, upon which he immediately began to construct his scaffolding.
U was evidently the Christian name. “Ursule!” he thought, “what a
delicious name!” He kissed the handkerchief, drank it in, placed it on
his heart, on his flesh, during the day, and at night, laid it beneath
his lips that he might fall asleep on it.

“I feel that her whole soul lies within it!” he exclaimed.

This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it
fall from his pocket.

In the days which followed the finding of this treasure, he only
displayed himself at the Luxembourg in the act of kissing the
handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood
nothing of all this, and signified it to him by imperceptible signs.

“O modesty!” said Marius.






Since we have pronounced the word modesty, and since we conceal
nothing, we ought to say that once, nevertheless, in spite of his
ecstasies, “his Ursule” caused him very serious grief. It was on one of
the days when she persuaded M. Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll
along the walk. A brisk May breeze was blowing, which swayed the crests
of the plaintain-trees. The father and daughter, arm in arm, had just
passed Marius’ bench. Marius had risen to his feet behind them, and was
following them with his eyes, as was fitting in the desperate situation
of his soul.

All at once, a gust of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably
charged with performing the affairs of Springtime, swept down from the
nursery, flung itself on the alley, enveloped the young girl in a
delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil’s nymphs, and the fawns of
Theocritus, and lifted her dress, the robe more sacred than that of
Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite shape
appeared. Marius saw it. He was exasperated and furious.

The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely
troubled motion, but he was nonetheless angry for all that. He was
alone in the alley, it is true. But there might have been some one
there. And what if there had been some one there! Can any one
comprehend such a thing? What she had just done is horrible!—Alas, the
poor child had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind;
but Marius, in whom quivered the Bartholo who exists in Cherubin, was
determined to be vexed, and was jealous of his own shadow. It is thus,
in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of the flesh awakens in
the human heart, and takes possession of it, even without any right.
Moreover, setting aside even that jealousy, the sight of that charming
leg had contained nothing agreeable for him; the white stocking of the
first woman he chanced to meet would have afforded him more pleasure.

When “his Ursule,” after having reached the end of the walk, retraced
her steps with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench on which
Marius had seated himself once more, Marius darted a sullen and
ferocious glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight
straightening up with a backward movement, accompanied by a raising of
the eyelids, which signifies: “Well, what is the matter?”


This was “their first quarrel.”


Marius had hardly made this scene at her with his eyes, when some one
crossed the walk. It was a veteran, very much bent, extremely wrinkled,
and pale, in a uniform of the Louis XV. pattern, bearing on his breast
the little oval plaque of red cloth, with the crossed swords, the
soldier’s cross of Saint-Louis, and adorned, in addition, with a
coat-sleeve, which had no arm within it, with a silver chin and a
wooden leg. Marius thought he perceived that this man had an extremely
well satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he
hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very
merry wink, as though some chance had created an understanding between
them, and as though they had shared some piece of good luck together.
What did that relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had passed
between that wooden leg and the other? Marius reached a paroxysm of
jealousy.—“Perhaps he was there!” he said to himself; “perhaps he
saw!”—And he felt a desire to exterminate the veteran.

With the aid of time, all points grow dull. Marius’ wrath against
“Ursule,” just and legitimate as it was, passed off. He finally
pardoned her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three
days.

Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this, his
passion augmented and grew to madness.






The reader has just seen how Marius discovered, or thought that he
discovered, that _She_ was named Ursule.

Appetite grows with loving. To know that her name was Ursule was a
great deal; it was very little. In three or four weeks, Marius had
devoured this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she
lived.

He had committed his first blunder, by falling into the ambush of the
bench by the Gladiator. He had committed a second, by not remaining at
the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc came thither alone. He now committed a
third, and an immense one. He followed “Ursule.”


She lived in the Rue de l’Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot, in a
new, three-story house, of modest appearance.

From that moment forth, Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at
the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home.

His hunger was increasing. He knew her first name, at least, a charming
name, a genuine woman’s name; he knew where she lived; he wanted to
know who she was.

One evening, after he had followed them to their dwelling, and had seen
them disappear through the carriage gate, he entered in their train and
said boldly to the porter:—

“Is that the gentleman who lives on the first floor, who has just come
in?”


“No,” replied the porter. “He is the gentleman on the third floor.”


Another step gained. This success emboldened Marius.

“On the front?” he asked.

“Parbleu!” said the porter, “the house is only built on the street.”


“And what is that gentleman’s business?” began Marius again.

“He is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does good to
the unfortunate, though not rich himself.”


“What is his name?” resumed Marius.

The porter raised his head and said:—

“Are you a police spy, sir?”


Marius went off quite abashed, but delighted. He was getting on.

“Good,” thought he, “I know that her name is Ursule, that she is the
daughter of a gentleman who lives on his income, and that she lives
there, on the third floor, in the Rue de l’Ouest.”


On the following day, M. Leblanc and his daughter made only a very
brief stay in the Luxembourg; they went away while it was still broad
daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l’Ouest, as he had taken
up the habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage entrance M. Leblanc
made his daughter pass in first, then paused, before crossing the
threshold, and stared intently at Marius.

On the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Marius waited for
them all day in vain.

At nightfall, he went to the Rue de l’Ouest, and saw a light in the
windows of the third story.

He walked about beneath the windows until the light was extinguished.

The next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Marius waited all day, then
went and did sentinel duty under their windows. This carried him on to
ten o’clock in the evening.

His dinner took care of itself. Fever nourishes the sick man, and love
the lover.

He spent a week in this manner. M. Leblanc no longer appeared at the
Luxembourg.

Marius indulged in melancholy conjectures; he dared not watch the
porte-cochère during the day; he contented himself with going at night
to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times he saw shadows flit
across them, and his heart began to beat.

On the eighth day, when he arrived under the windows, there was no
light in them.

“Hello!” he said, “the lamp is not lighted yet. But it is dark. Can
they have gone out?” He waited until ten o’clock. Until midnight. Until
one in the morning. Not a light appeared in the windows of the third
story, and no one entered the house.

He went away in a very gloomy frame of mind.

On the morrow,—for he only existed from morrow to morrow, there was, so
to speak, no to-day for him,—on the morrow, he found no one at the
Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk, he went to the house.

No light in the windows; the shades were drawn; the third floor was
totally dark.

Marius rapped at the porte-cochère, entered, and said to the porter:—

“The gentleman on the third floor?”


“Has moved away,” replied the porter.

Marius reeled and said feebly:—

“How long ago?”


“Yesterday.”


“Where is he living now?”


“I don’t know anything about it.”


“So he has not left his new address?”


“No.”


And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius.

“Come! So it’s you!” said he; “but you are decidedly a spy then?”





