Kabanata Kabanata 202 · MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN I

A CAP

Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc nor the

young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth,

Marius had but one thought,—to gaze once more on that sweet and

adorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere; he found

nothing. He was no longer Marius, the enthusiastic dreamer, the firm,

resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain which erected

future on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with

projects, with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost dog. He fell

into a black melancholy. All was over. Work disgusted him, walking

tired him. Vast nature, formerly so filled with forms, lights, voices,

counsels, perspectives, horizons, teachings, now lay empty before him.

It seemed to him that everything had disappeared.

He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer

took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him

in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: “What is the use?”

He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. “Why did I follow her? I was

so happy at the mere sight of her! She looked at me; was not that

immense? She had the air of loving me. Was not that everything? I

wished to have, what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd.

It is my own fault,” etc., etc. Courfeyrac, to whom he confided

nothing,—it was his nature,—but who made some little guess at

everything,—that was his nature,—had begun by congratulating him on

being in love, though he was amazed at it; then, seeing Marius fall

into this melancholy state, he ended by saying to him: “I see that you

have been simply an animal. Here, come to the Chaumière.”

Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed

himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and

Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps, find her

there. Of course he did not see the one he sought.—“But this is the

place, all the same, where all lost women are found,” grumbled

Grantaire in an aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned

home on foot, alone, through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and

troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry wagons filled

with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed

close to him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent

of the walnut-trees, along the road, in order to refresh his head.

He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly

given up to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain like the

wolf in the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love.

On another occasion, he had an encounter which produced on him a

singular effect. He met, in the narrow streets in the vicinity of the

Boulevard des Invalides, a man dressed like a workingman and wearing a

cap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of very white

hair. Marius was struck with the beauty of this white hair, and

scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in

painful meditation. Strange to say, he thought that he recognized M.

Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile, so far as the cap

permitted a view of it, the mien identical, only more depressed. But

why these workingman’s clothes? What was the meaning of this? What

signified that disguise? Marius was greatly astonished. When he

recovered himself, his first impulse was to follow the man; who knows

whether he did not hold at last the clue which he was seeking? In any

case, he must see the man near at hand, and clear up the mystery. But

the idea occurred to him too late, the man was no longer there. He had

turned into some little side street, and Marius could not find him.

This encounter occupied his mind for three days and then was effaced.

“After all,” he said to himself, “it was probably only a resemblance.”