





Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon
whose track he had set Javert; but Javert had no sooner quitted the
building, bearing off his prisoners in three hackney-coaches, than
Marius also glided out of the house. It was only nine o’clock in the
evening. Marius betook himself to Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac was no longer
the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter, he had gone to live
in the Rue de la Verrerie “for political reasons”; this quarter was one
where, at that epoch, insurrection liked to install itself. Marius said
to Courfeyrac: “I have come to sleep with you.” Courfeyrac dragged a
mattress off his bed, which was furnished with two, spread it out on
the floor, and said: “There.”


At seven o’clock on the following morning, Marius returned to the
hovel, paid the quarter’s rent which he owed to Ma’am Bougon, had his
books, his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a
hand-cart and went off without leaving his address, so that when Javert
returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning
Marius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Ma’am
Bougon, who answered: “Moved away!”


Ma’am Bougon was convinced that Marius was to some extent an accomplice
of the robbers who had been seized the night before. “Who would ever
have said it?” she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, “a young
man like that, who had the air of a girl!”


Marius had two reasons for this prompt change of residence. The first
was, that he now had a horror of that house, where he had beheld, so
close at hand, and in its most repulsive and most ferocious
development, a social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible
than the wicked rich man, the wicked poor man. The second was, that he
did not wish to figure in the lawsuit which would insue in all
probability, and be brought in to testify against Thénardier.

Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was
afraid, and had fled, or perhaps, had not even returned home at the
time of the ambush; he made some efforts to find him, however, but
without success.

A month passed, then another. Marius was still with Courfeyrac. He had
learned from a young licentiate in law, an habitual frequenter of the
courts, that Thénardier was in close confinement. Every Monday, Marius
had five francs handed in to the clerk’s office of La Force for
Thénardier.

As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from
Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowed
money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyrac
who lent and to Thénardier who received them. “To whom can they go?”
thought Courfeyrac. “Whence can this come to me?” Thénardier asked
himself.

Moreover, Marius was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through a
trap-door once more. He no longer saw anything before him; his life was
again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for a
moment beheld very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl
whom he loved, the old man who seemed to be her father, those unknown
beings, who were his only interest and his only hope in this world;
and, at the very moment when he thought himself on the point of
grasping them, a gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of
certainty and truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of
collisions. No conjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name
that he thought he knew. It certainly was not Ursule. And the Lark was
a nickname. And what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in
hiding from the police? The white-haired workman whom Marius had
encountered in the vicinity of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It
now seemed probable that that workingman and M. Leblanc were one and
the same person. So he disguised himself? That man had his heroic and
his equivocal sides. Why had he not called for help? Why had he fled?
Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Was he, in short,
the man whom Thénardier thought that he recognized? Thénardier might
have been mistaken. These formed so many insoluble problems. All this,
it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl
of the Luxembourg. Heart-rending distress; Marius bore a passion in his
heart, and night over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and
he could not stir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had
lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame
which burns us lights us also a little, and casts some useful gleams
without. But Marius no longer even heard these mute counsels of
passion. He never said to himself: “What if I were to go to such a
place? What if I were to try such and such a thing?” The girl whom he
could no longer call Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned
Marius in what direction he should seek her. His whole life was now
summed up in two words; absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable
fog. To see her once again; he still aspired to this, but he no longer
expected it.

To crown all, his poverty had returned. He felt that icy breath close
to him, on his heels. In the midst of his torments, and long before
this, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than
discontinued work; it is a habit which vanishes. A habit which is easy
to get rid of, and difficult to take up again.

A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet
doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are
sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor
which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps
here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas.
But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain-worker who
allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie! He thinks
that he can re-ascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that, after
all, it is the same thing. Error!

Thought is the toil of the intelligence, reverie its voluptuousness. To
replace thought with reverie is to confound a poison with a food.

Marius had begun in that way, as the reader will remember. Passion had
supervened and had finished the work of precipitating him into chimæras
without object or bottom. One no longer emerges from one’s self except
for the purpose of going off to dream. Idle production. Tumultuous and
stagnant gulf. And, in proportion as labor diminishes, needs increase.
This is a law. Man, in a state of reverie, is generally prodigal and
slack; the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds.

There is, in that mode of life, good mingled with evil, for if
enervation is baleful, generosity is good and healthful. But the poor
man who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost.
Resources are exhausted, needs crop up.

Fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as
the most feeble and most vicious are drawn, and which ends in one of
two holds, suicide or crime.

By dint of going outdoors to think, the day comes when one goes out to
throw one’s self in the water.

Excess of reverie breeds men like Escousse and Lebras.

Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes
fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written
seems strange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being
kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the
more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its
horizon; the star of the inner night. She—that was Marius’ whole
thought. He meditated of nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that
his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, and that his new coat was
growing old, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing
out, that his boots were giving out, and he said to himself: “If I
could but see her once again before I die!”


One sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, that her
glance had told him so, that she did not know his name, but that she
did know his soul, and that, wherever she was, however mysterious the
place, she still loved him perhaps. Who knows whether she were not
thinking of him as he was thinking of her? Sometimes, in those
inexplicable hours such as are experienced by every heart that loves,
though he had no reasons for anything but sadness and yet felt an
obscure quiver of joy, he said to himself: “It is her thoughts that are
coming to me!” Then he added: “Perhaps my thoughts reach her also.”


This illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, was
sufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which at times resembled
hope, into his soul. From time to time, especially at that evening hour
which is the most depressing to even the dreamy, he allowed the purest,
the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries which filled his
brain, to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called
this “writing to her.”


It must not be supposed that his reason was deranged. Quite the
contrary. He had lost the faculty of working and of moving firmly
towards any fixed goal, but he was endowed with more clear-sightedness
and rectitude than ever. Marius surveyed by a calm and real, although
peculiar light, what passed before his eyes, even the most indifferent
deeds and men; he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sort
of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which
was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and soared
on high.

In this state of mind nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, and
every moment he was discovering the foundation of life, of humanity,
and of destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God
has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not
viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double
light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true.

The soul which loves and suffers is in a state of sublimity.

However, day followed day, and nothing new presented itself. It merely
seemed to him, that the sombre space which still remained to be
traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant. He thought
that he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss.

“What!” he repeated to himself, “shall I not see her again before
then!”


When you have ascended the Rue Saint-Jacques, left the barrier on one
side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reach
the Rue de la Santé, then the Glacière, and, a little while before
arriving at the little river of the Gobelins, you come to a sort of
field which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of the
boulevards of Paris, where Ruysdael would be tempted to sit down.

There is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a green
meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines, from which flutter rags
drying in the wind, and an old market-gardener’s house, built in the
time of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer
windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar-trees,
women, voices, laughter; on the horizon the Panthéon, the pole of the
Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Grâce, black, squat, fantastic, amusing,
magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests of the
towers of Notre Dame.

As the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cart
or wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour.

It chanced that Marius’ solitary strolls led him to this plot of
ground, near the water. That day, there was a rarity on the boulevard,
a passer-by. Marius, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of
the place, asked this passer-by:—“What is the name of this spot?”


The person replied: “It is the Lark’s meadow.”


And he added: “It was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry.”


But after the word “Lark” Marius heard nothing more. These sudden
congealments in the state of reverie, which a single word suffices to
evoke, do occur. The entire thought is abruptly condensed around an
idea, and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else.

The Lark was the appellation which had replaced Ursule in the depths of
Marius’ melancholy.—“Stop,” said he with a sort of unreasoning stupor
peculiar to these mysterious asides, “this is her meadow. I shall know
where she lives now.”


It was absurd, but irresistible.

And every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.






Javert’s triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been
so.

In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Javert
had not taken the prisoner prisoner. The assassinated man who flees is
more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this
personage, who had been so precious a capture for the ruffians, would
be no less fine a prize for the authorities.

And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.

Another opportunity of laying hands on that “devil’s dandy” must be
waited for. Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered Éponine as she stood
on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her off,
preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter rather than Schinderhannes
with the father. It was well that he did so. He was free. As for
Éponine, Javert had caused her to be seized; a mediocre consolation.
Éponine had joined Azelma at Les Madelonettes.

And finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force, one of the
principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost. It was not known how
this had been effected, the police agents and the sergeants “could not
understand it at all.” He had converted himself into vapor, he had
slipped through the handcuffs, he had trickled through the crevices of
the carriage, the fiacre was cracked, and he had fled; all that they
were able to say was, that on arriving at the prison, there was no
Claquesous. Either the fairies or the police had had a hand in it. Had
Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snow-flake in water? Had
there been unavowed connivance of the police agents? Did this man
belong to the double enigma of order and disorder? Was he concentric
with infraction and repression? Had this sphinx his fore paws in crime
and his hind paws in authority? Javert did not accept such
comminations, and would have bristled up against such compromises; but
his squad included other inspectors besides himself, who were more
initiated than he, perhaps, although they were his subordinates in the
secrets of the Prefecture, and Claquesous had been such a villain that
he might make a very good agent. It is an excellent thing for
ruffianism and an admirable thing for the police to be on such intimate
juggling terms with the night. These double-edged rascals do exist.
However that may be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found
again. Javert appeared to be more irritated than amazed at this.

As for Marius, “that booby of a lawyer,” who had probably become
frightened, and whose name Javert had forgotten, Javert attached very
little importance to him. Moreover, a lawyer can be hunted up at any
time. But was he a lawyer after all?

The investigation had begun.

The magistrate had thought it advisable not to put one of these men of
the band of Patron Minette in close confinement, in the hope that he
would chatter. This man was Brujon, the long-haired man of the Rue du
Petit-Banquier. He had been let loose in the Charlemagne courtyard, and
the eyes of the watchers were fixed on him.

This name of Brujon is one of the souvenirs of La Force. In that
hideous courtyard, called the court of the Bâtiment-Neuf (New
Building), which the administration called the court Saint-Bernard, and
which the robbers called the Fosse-aux-Lions (The Lion’s Ditch), on
that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which rose on the left to a
level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron which led to the
ancient chapel of the ducal residence of La Force, then turned in a
dormitory for ruffians, there could still be seen, twelve years ago, a
sort of fortress roughly carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath
it this signature:—

BRUJON, 1811.

The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.

The latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the Gorbeau
house, was a very cunning and very adroit young spark, with a
bewildered and plaintive air. It was in consequence of this plaintive
air that the magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in
the Charlemagne yard than in close confinement.

Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands
of justice. They do not let themselves be put out by such a trifle as
that. To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning on
another crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and
who toil, nonetheless, on a new work in their studios.

Brujon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen
standing by the hour together in front of the sutler’s window in the
Charlemagne yard, staring like an idiot at the sordid list of prices
which began with: _garlic_, 62 _centimes_, and ended with: _cigar_, 5
_centimes_. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth,
saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and
twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant.

All at once, towards the end of February, 1832, it was discovered that
Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had three different commissions
executed by the errand-men of the establishment, not under his own
name, but in the name of three of his comrades; and they had cost him
in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted the attention
of the prison corporal.

Inquiries were instituted, and on consulting the tariff of commissions
posted in the convict’s parlor, it was learned that the fifty sous
could be analyzed as follows: three commissions; one to the Panthéon,
ten sous; one to Val-de-Grâce, fifteen sous; and one to the Barrière de
Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This last was the dearest of the whole
tariff. Now, at the Panthéon, at the Val-de-Grâce, and at the Barrière
de Grenelle were situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable
prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers, alias Bizarro, Glorieux, an
ex-convict, and Barre-Carosse, upon whom the attention of the police
was directed by this incident. It was thought that these men were
members of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet and Gueulemer,
had been captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been
addressed, not to houses, but to people who were waiting for them in
the street, must have contained information with regard to some crime
that had been plotted. They were in possession of other indications;
they laid hand on the three prowlers, and supposed that they had
circumvented some one or other of Brujon’s machinations.

About a week after these measures had been taken, one night, as the
superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the lower
dormitory in the Bâtiment-Neuf, was about to drop his chestnut in the
box—this was the means adopted to make sure that the watchmen performed
their duties punctually; every hour a chestnut must be dropped into all
the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories—a watchman looked
through the peep-hole of the dormitory and beheld Brujon sitting on his
bed and writing something by the light of the hall-lamp. The guardian
entered, Brujon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were
not able to seize what he had written. The police learned nothing
further about it.

What is certain is, that on the following morning, a “postilion” was
flung from the Charlemagne yard into the Lions’ Ditch, over the
five-story building which separated the two court-yards.

What prisoners call a “postilion” is a pallet of bread artistically
moulded, which is sent _into Ireland_, that is to say, over the roofs
of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology: over England;
from one land to another; _into Ireland_. This little pellet falls in
the yard. The man who picks it up opens it and finds in it a note
addressed to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds
the treasure, he forwards the note to its destination; if it is a
keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold who are called _sheep_ in
prisons and _foxes_ in the galleys, the note is taken to the office and
handed over to the police.

On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the
person to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary
confinement. This person was no other than Babet, one of the four heads
of Patron Minette.

The postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these two lines
were written:—

“Babet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden.”


This is what Brujon had written the night before.

In spite of male and female searchers, Babet managed to pass the note
on from La Force to the Salpêtrière, to a “good friend” whom he had and
who was shut up there. This woman in turn transmitted the note to
another woman of her acquaintance, a certain Magnon, who was strongly
suspected by the police, though not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose
name the reader has already seen, had relations with the Thénardier,
which will be described in detail later on, and she could, by going to
see Éponine, serve as a bridge between the Salpêtrière and Les
Madelonettes.

It happened, that at precisely that moment, as proofs were wanting in
the investigation directed against Thénardier in the matter of his
daughters, Éponine and Azelma were released. When Éponine came out,
Magnon, who was watching the gate of the Madelonettes, handed her
Brujon’s note to Babet, charging her to look into the matter.

Éponine went to the Rue Plumet, recognized the gate and the garden,
observed the house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later, brought to
Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon
transmitted to Babet’s mistress in the Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the
shady symbolism of prisons, signifies: Nothing to be done.

So that in less than a week from that time, as Brujon and Babet met in
the circle of La Force, the one on his way to the examination, the
other on his way from it:—

“Well?” asked Brujon, “the Rue P.?”


“Biscuit,” replied Babet. Thus did the fœtus of crime engendered by
Brujon in La Force miscarry.

This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly
distinct from Brujon’s programme. The reader will see what they were.

Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite
another.






Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered
Father Mabeuf by chance.

While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be
called the cellar stairs, and which lead to places without light, where
the happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Mabeuf was descending on
his side.

The _Flora of Cauteretz_ no longer sold at all. The experiments on
indigo had not been successful in the little garden of Austerlitz,
which had a bad exposure. M. Mabeuf could cultivate there only a few
plants which love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not become
discouraged. He had obtained a corner in the Jardin des Plantes, with a
good exposure, to make his trials with indigo “at his own expense.” For
this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the _Flora_. He had
reduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left one of these for his old
servant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And
often his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his
infantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors.
Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour
when M. Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man
and the young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. They
did not speak, and only exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. A
heart-breaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery looses
bonds! Two men who have been friends become two chance passers-by.

Royol the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books, his
garden, or his indigo: these were the three forms which happiness,
pleasure, and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for his
living. He said to himself: “When I shall have made my balls of
blueing, I shall be rich, I will withdraw my copperplates from the
pawn-shop, I will put my _Flora_ in vogue again with trickery, plenty
of money and advertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know
well where, a copy of Pierre de Médine’s _Art de Naviguer_, with
wood-cuts, edition of 1655.” In the meantime, he toiled all day over
his plot of indigo, and at night he returned home to water his garden,
and to read his books. At that epoch, M. Mabeuf was nearly eighty years
of age.

One evening he had a singular apparition.

He had returned home while it was still broad daylight. Mother
Plutarque, whose health was declining, was ill and in bed. He had dined
on a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that he
had found on the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturned
stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden.

Near this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchard-gardens, a
sort of large chest, of beams and planks, much dilapidated, a
rabbit-hutch on the ground floor, a fruit-closet on the first. There
was nothing in the hutch, but there were a few apples in the
fruit-closet,—the remains of the winter’s provision.

M. Mabeuf had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid of
his glasses, two books of which he was passionately fond and in which,
a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidity
rendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certain
degree. The first of these books was the famous treatise of President
Delancre, _De l’Inconstance des Démons_; the other was a quarto by
Mutor de la Rubaudière, _Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de
la Bièvre_. This last-mentioned old volume interested him all the more,
because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in
former times. The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to
blacken all below. As he read, over the top of the book which he held
in his hand, Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others a
magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days
of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed; the stalks
were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling; all this needed
water, the rhododendron was particularly sad. Father Mabeuf was one of
those persons for whom plants have souls. The old man had toiled all
day over his indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose,
laid his books on the bench, and walked, all bent over and with
tottering footsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he
could not even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round
and cast a glance of anguish toward heaven which was becoming studded
with stars.

The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man
beneath an indescribably mournful and eternal joy. The night promised
to be as arid as the day had been.

“Stars everywhere!” thought the old man; “not the tiniest cloud! Not a
drop of water!”


And his head, which had been upraised for a moment, fell back upon his
breast.

He raised it again, and once more looked at the sky, murmuring:—

“A tear of dew! A little pity!”


He tried again to unhook the chain of the well, and could not.

At that moment, he heard a voice saying:—

“Father Mabeuf, would you like to have me water your garden for you?”


At the same time, a noise as of a wild animal passing became audible in
the hedge, and he beheld emerging from the shrubbery a sort of tall,
slender girl, who drew herself up in front of him and stared boldly at
him. She had less the air of a human being than of a form which had
just blossomed forth from the twilight.

Before Father Mabeuf, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we have
said, quick to take alarm, was able to reply by a single syllable, this
being, whose movements had a sort of odd abruptness in the darkness,
had unhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled
the watering-pot, and the goodman beheld this apparition, which had
bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower-beds
distributing life around her. The sound of the watering-pot on the
leaves filled Father Mabeuf’s soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him that
the rhododendron was happy now.

The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She
watered the whole garden.

There was something about her, as she thus ran about among paths, where
her outline appeared perfectly black, waving her angular arms, and with
her fichu all in rags, that resembled a bat.

When she had finished, Father Mabeuf approached her with tears in his
eyes, and laid his hand on her brow.

“God will bless you,” said he, “you are an angel since you take care of
the flowers.”


“No,” she replied. “I am the devil, but that’s all the same to me.”


The old man exclaimed, without either waiting for or hearing her
response:—

“What a pity that I am so unhappy and so poor, and that I can do
nothing for you!”


“You can do something,” said she.

“What?”


“Tell me where M. Marius lives.”


The old man did not understand. “What Monsieur Marius?”


He raised his glassy eyes and seemed to be seeking something that had
vanished.

“A young man who used to come here.”


In the meantime, M. Mabeuf had searched his memory.

“Ah! yes—” he exclaimed. “I know what you mean. Wait! Monsieur
Marius—the Baron Marius Pontmercy, parbleu! He lives,—or rather, he no
longer lives,—ah well, I don’t know.”


As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he
continued:—

“Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes
in the direction of the Glacière, Rue Croulebarbe. The meadow of the
Lark. Go there. It is not hard to meet him.”


When M. Mabeuf straightened himself up, there was no longer any one
there; the girl had disappeared.

He was decidedly terrified.

“Really,” he thought, “if my garden had not been watered, I should
think that she was a spirit.”


An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell
asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird
which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by
little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he
said to himself in a bewildered way:—

“In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudière narrates of the
goblins. Could it have been a goblin?”







Some days after this visit of a “spirit” to Farmer Mabeuf, one
morning,—it was on a Monday, the day when Marius borrowed the
hundred-sou piece from Courfeyrac for Thénardier—Marius had put this
coin in his pocket, and before carrying it to the clerk’s office, he
had gone “to take a little stroll,” in the hope that this would make
him work on his return. It was always thus, however. As soon as he
rose, he seated himself before a book and a sheet of paper in order to
scribble some translation; his task at that epoch consisted in turning
into French a celebrated quarrel between Germans, the Gans and Savigny
controversy; he took Savigny, he took Gans, read four lines, tried to
write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper, and rose
from his chair, saying: “I shall go out. That will put me in spirits.”


And off he went to the Lark’s meadow.

There he beheld more than ever the star, and less than ever Savigny and
Gans.

He returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed;
there was no means of re-knotting a single one of the threads which
were broken in his brain; then he said to himself: “I will not go out
to-morrow. It prevents my working.” And he went out every day.

He lived in the Lark’s meadow more than in Courfeyrac’s lodgings. That
was his real address: Boulevard de la Santé, at the seventh tree from
the Rue Croulebarbe.

That morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on
the parapet of the River des Gobelins. A cheerful sunlight penetrated
the freshly unfolded and luminous leaves.

He was dreaming of “Her.” And his meditation turning to a reproach,
fell back upon himself; he reflected dolefully on his idleness, his
paralysis of soul, which was gaining on him, and of that night which
was growing more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he
no longer even saw the sun.

Nevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas
which was not even a monologue, so feeble had action become in him, and
he had no longer the force to care to despair, athwart this melancholy
absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him,
beneath him, on both banks of the river, the laundresses of the
Gobelins beating their linen, and above his head, the birds chattering
and singing in the elm-trees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty,
the careless happiness of the leisure which has wings; on the other,
the sound of toil. What caused him to meditate deeply, and almost
reflect, were two cheerful sounds.

All at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar
voice saying:—

“Come! Here he is!”


He raised his eyes, and recognized that wretched child who had come to
him one morning, the elder of the Thénardier daughters, Éponine; he
knew her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier,
two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take. She had
accomplished a double progress, towards the light and towards distress.
She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so
resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older
now, the holes were larger, the tatters more sordid. It was the same
harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free,
wild, and vacillating glance. She had besides, more than formerly, in
her face that indescribably terrified and lamentable something which
sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness.

She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through
having gone mad from the contagion of Hamlet’s madness, but because she
had slept in the loft of some stable.

And in spite of it all, she was beautiful. What a star art thou, O
youth!

In the meantime, she had halted in front of Marius with a trace of joy
in her livid countenance, and something which resembled a smile.

She stood for several moments as though incapable of speech.

“So I have met you at last!” she said at length. “Father Mabeuf was
right, it was on this boulevard! How I have hunted for you! If you only
knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight! They let me
out! seeing that there was nothing against me, and that, moreover, I
had not reached years of discretion. I lack two months of it. Oh! how I
have hunted for you! These six weeks! So you don’t live down there any
more?”


“No,” said Marius.

“Ah! I understand. Because of that affair. Those take-downs are
disagreeable. You cleared out. Come now! Why do you wear old hats like
this! A young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you know,
Monsieur Marius, Father Mabeuf calls you Baron Marius, I don’t know
what. It isn’t true that you are a baron? Barons are old fellows, they
go to the Luxembourg, in front of the château, where there is the most
sun, and they read the _Quotidienne_ for a sou. I once carried a letter
to a baron of that sort. He was over a hundred years old. Say, where do
you live now?”


Marius made no reply.

“Ah!” she went on, “you have a hole in your shirt. I must sew it up for
you.”


She resumed with an expression which gradually clouded over:—

“You don’t seem glad to see me.”


Marius held his peace; she remained silent for a moment, then
exclaimed:—

“But if I choose, nevertheless, I could force you to look glad!”


“What?” demanded Marius. “What do you mean?”


“Ah! you used to call me _thou_,” she retorted.

“Well, then, what dost thou mean?”


She bit her lips; she seemed to hesitate, as though a prey to some sort
of inward conflict. At last she appeared to come to a decision.

“So much the worse, I don’t care. You have a melancholy air, I want you
to be pleased. Only promise me that you will smile. I want to see you
smile and hear you say: ‘Ah, well, that’s good.’ Poor Mr. Marius! you
know? You promised me that you would give me anything I like—”


“Yes! Only speak!”


She looked Marius full in the eye, and said:—

“I have the address.”


Marius turned pale. All the blood flowed back to his heart.

“What address?”


“The address that you asked me to get!”


She added, as though with an effort:—

“The address—you know very well!”


“Yes!” stammered Marius.

“Of that young lady.”


This word uttered, she sighed deeply.

Marius sprang from the parapet on which he had been sitting and seized
her hand distractedly.

“Oh! Well! lead me thither! Tell me! Ask of me anything you wish! Where
is it?”


“Come with me,” she responded. “I don’t know the street or number very
well; it is in quite the other direction from here, but I know the
house well, I will take you to it.”


She withdrew her hand and went on, in a tone which could have rent the
heart of an observer, but which did not even graze Marius in his
intoxicated and ecstatic state:—

“Oh! how glad you are!”


A cloud swept across Marius’ brow. He seized Éponine by the arm:—

“Swear one thing to me!”


“Swear!” said she, “what does that mean? Come! You want me to swear?”


And she laughed.

“Your father! promise me, Éponine! Swear to me that you will not give
this address to your father!”


She turned to him with a stupefied air.

“Éponine! How do you know that my name is Éponine?”


“Promise what I tell you!”


But she did not seem to hear him.

“That’s nice! You have called me Éponine!”


Marius grasped both her arms at once.

“But answer me, in the name of Heaven! pay attention to what I am
saying to you, swear to me that you will not tell your father this
address that you know!”


“My father!” said she. “Ah yes, my father! Be at ease. He’s in close
confinement. Besides, what do I care for my father!”


“But you do not promise me!” exclaimed Marius.

“Let go of me!” she said, bursting into a laugh, “how you do shake me!
Yes! Yes! I promise that! I swear that to you! What is that to me? I
will not tell my father the address. There! Is that right? Is that it?”


“Nor to any one?” said Marius.

“Nor to any one.”


“Now,” resumed Marius, “take me there.”


“Immediately?”


“Immediately.”


“Come along. Ah! how pleased he is!” said she.

After a few steps she halted.

“You are following me too closely, Monsieur Marius. Let me go on ahead,
and follow me so, without seeming to do it. A nice young man like you
must not be seen with a woman like me.”


No tongue can express all that lay in that word, _woman_, thus
pronounced by that child.

She proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more; Marius joined
her. She addressed him sideways, and without turning towards him:—

“By the way, you know that you promised me something?”


Marius fumbled in his pocket. All that he owned in the world was the
five francs intended for Thénardier the father. He took them and laid
them in Éponine’s hand.

She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground, and gazed
at him with a gloomy air.

“I don’t want your money,” said she.




