Les Misérables
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.
CHAPTER V—DIVERS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA’AM BOUGON
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.
CHAPTER VI—TAKEN PRISONER
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