6

TAKEN PRISONER

ON ONE OF the last days of the second week, Marius was as usual sitting on his bench, holding in his hand an open book of which he had not turned a page for two hours. Suddenly he trembled. A great event was commencing at the end of the walk. Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter had left their bench, the daughter had taken the arm of the father, and they were coming slowly towards the middle of the walk where Marius was. Marius closed his book, then he opened it, then he made an attempt to read. He trembled. The halo was coming straight towards him. “O dear!” thought he, “I shall not have time to take an attitude.” However, the man with the white hair and the young girl were advancing. It seemed to him that it would last a century, and that it was only a second. “What are they coming by here for?” he asked himself. “What! is she going to pass this place! Are her feet to press this ground in this walk, but a step from me?” He was overwhelmed, he would gladly have been very handsome, he would gladly have worn the cross of the Legion of Honour. He heard the gentle and measured sound of their steps approaching. He imagined that Monsieur Leblanc was hurling angry looks upon him. “Is he going to speak to me?” thought he. He bowed his head; when he raised it they were quite near him. The young girl passed, and in passing she looked at him. She looked at him steadily, with a sweet and thoughtful look which made Marius tremble from head to foot. It seemed to him that she reproached him for having been so long without coming to her, and that she said: “It is I who come.” Marius was bewildered by these eyes full of flashing light and fathomless abysses.

He felt as though his brain were on fire. She had come to him, what happiness! And then, how she had looked at him! She seemed more beautiful than she had ever seemed before. Beautiful with a beauty which combined all of the woman with all of the angel, a beauty which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as though he was swimming in the deep blue sky. At the same time he was horribly disconcerted, because he had a little dust on his boots.

He felt sure that she had seen his boots in this condition.

He followed her with his eyes till she disappeared, then he began to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens like a madman. It is probable that at times he laughed, alone as he was, and spoke aloud. He was so strange and dreamy when near the children’s nurses that every one thought he was in love with her.

He went out of the gardens to find her again in some street.

He met Courfeyrac under the arches of the Odeon, and said: “Come and dine with me.” They went to Rousseau’s and spent six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave six sous to the waiter. At dessert he said to Courfeyrac: “Have you read the paper? What a fine speech Audry de Puyraveau has made!”

He was desperately in love.

After dinner he said to Courfeyrac, “Come to the theatre with me.” They went to the Porte Saint Martin to see Frederick in L‘Auberge des Adrets. Marius was hugely amused.^cy

At the same time he became still more strange and incomprehensible. On leaving the theatre, he refused to look at the garter of a little milliner who was crossing a gutter, and when Courfeyrac said: “I would not object to putting that woman in my collection,” it almost horrified him.

Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast next morning at the Café Voltaire. Marius went and ate still more than the day before. He was very thoughtful, and yet very gay. One would have said that he seized upon all possible occasions to burst out laughing. To every country-fellow who was introduced to him he gave a tender embrace. A circle of students gathered round the table, and there was talk of the flummery paid for by the government, which was retailed at the Sorbonne; then the conversation fell upon the faults and gaps in the dictionaries and prosodies of Quicherat. Marius interrupted the discussion by exclaiming: “However, it is a very pleasant thing to have the Cross.”^cz

“He is a comical fellow!” said Courfeyrac, aside to Jean Prouvaire.

“No,” replied Jean Prouvaire, “he is serious.”

He was serious, indeed. Marius was in this first vehement and fascinating period which the grand passion commences.

One glance had done all that.

When the mine is loaded, and the match is ready, nothing is simpler. A glance is a spark.

It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown.