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.