Les Misérables
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had unhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled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?”
CHAPTER IV—AN APPARITION TO MARIUS
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.”