4

COMMENCEMENT OF A SERIOUS ILLNESS

THE NEXT DAY, at the usual hour, Marius took from his closet his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots; he dressed himself in this panoply complete, put on his gloves, prodigious prodigality, and went to the Luxembourg Gardens.

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

“I have just met Marius’ new hat and coat, with Marius inside. Probably he was going to an examination. He looked stupid enough.”

On reaching the Luxembourg Gardens, Marius took a turn round the fountain and looked at the swans; then he remained for a long time in contemplation before a statue, the head of which was black with moss, and which was minus a hip. Near the fountain was a big-bellied bourgeois of forty, holding a little boy of five by the hand, to whom he was saying: “Beware of extremes, my son. Keep thyself equally distant from despotism and from anarchy.” Marius listened to this good bourgeois. Then he took another turn around the fountain. Finally, he went towards “his walk;” slowly, and as if with regret. One would have said that he was at once compelled to go and prevented from going. He was unconscious of all this, and thought he was doing as he did every day.

When he entered the walk he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the other end “on their bench.” He buttoned his coat, stretched it down that there might be no wrinkles, noticed with some complaisance the lustre of his trousers, and marched upon the bench. There was something of attack in this march, and certainly a desire of conquest. I say, then, he marched upon the bench, as I would say: Hannibal marched upon Rome.

Beyond this there was nothing which was not mechanical in all his movements, and he had in no wise interrupted the customary preoccupations of his mind and his labour. He was thinking at that moment that the Manual du Baccalauréat was a stupid book, and that it must have been compiled by rare old fools, to give an analysis, as of masterpieces of the human mind, of three tragedies of Racine and only one of Molière’s comedies. He had a sharp whistling sound in his ear. While approaching the bench, he was smoothing the wrinkles out of his coat, and his eyes were fixed on the young girl. It seemed to him as though she filled the whole extremity of the walk with a pale, bluish light.^cw

As he drew nearer, his step became slower and slower. At some distance from the bench, long before he had reached the end of the walk, he stopped, and he did not know himself how it happened, but he turned back. He did not even say to himself that he would not go to the end. It was doubtful if the young girl could see him so far off, and notice his fine appearance in his new suit. However, he held himself very straight, so that he might look well, in case anybody who was behind should happen to notice him.

He reached the opposite end and then returned, and this time he approached a little nearer to the bench. He even came to within about three trees of it, but there he felt an indescribable lack of power to go further, and he hesitated. He thought he had seen the young girl’s face bent towards him. Still he made a great and manly effort, conquered his hesitation, and continued his advance. In a few seconds, he was passing before the bench, erect and firm, blushing to his ears, without daring to cast a look to the right or the left, and with his hand in his coat like a statesman. At the moment he passed under the guns of the fortress, he felt a frightful palpitation of the heart. She wore, as on the previous day, her damask dress and her crape hat. He heard the sound of an ineffable voice, which might be “her voice.” She was talking quietly. She was very pretty. He felt it, though he made no effort to see her. “She could not, however,” thought he, “but have some esteem and consideration for me, if she knew that I was the real author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronda, which Monsieur François de Neufchâteau has put, as his own, at the beginning of his edition of Gil Blas!”^cx

He passed the bench, went to the end of the walk, which was quite near, then turned and passed again before the beautiful girl. This time he was very pale. Indeed, he was experiencing nothing that was not very disagreeable. He walked away from the bench and from the young girl, and although his back was turned, he imagined that she was looking at him, and that made him stumble.

He made no effort to approach the bench again, he stopped midway along the walk, and sat down there—a thing which he never did—casting many side glances, and thinking, in the most indistinct depths of his mind, that after all it must be difficult for persons whose white hat and black dress he admired, to be absolutely insensitive to his glossy trousers and his new coat.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as if to recommence his walk towards this bench, which was encircled by a halo. He, however, stood silent and motionless. For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself, that this gentleman, who sat there every day with his daughter, had undoubtedly noticed him, and probably thought his assiduity very strange. For the first time, also, he felt a certain irreverence in designating this unknown man, even in the silence of his thought, by the nickname of M. Leblanc.

He remained thus for some minutes with his head down tracing designs on the ground with a little stick which he had in his hand.

Then he turned abruptly away from the bench, away from Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter, and went home.

That day he forgot to go to dinner. At eight o‘clock in the evening he discovered it, and as it was too late to go down to the Rue Saint Jacques, “No matter,” said he, and he ate a piece of bread.

He did not retire until he had carefully brushed and folded his coat.