Bab Bab 191 · EFFECT OF THE SPRING

One day, the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and

shade, the sky was as pure as though the angels had washed it that

morning, the sparrows were giving vent to little twitters in the depths

of the chestnut-trees. Marius had thrown open his whole soul to nature,

he was not thinking of anything, he simply lived and breathed, he

passed near the bench, the young girl raised her eyes to him, the two

glances met.

What was there in the young girl’s glance on this occasion? Marius

could not have told. There was nothing and there was everything. It was

a strange flash.

She dropped her eyes, and he pursued his way.

What he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a

child; it was a mysterious gulf which had half opened, then abruptly

closed again.

There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to

him who chances to be there!

That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like

the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and

strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that

unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from

adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the

present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of

undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance, and which waits.

It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in

which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a

virgin looking like a woman.

It is rare that a profound reverie does not spring from that glance,

where it falls. All purities and all candors meet in that celestial and

fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of

coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming,

in the depths of the soul, of that sombre flower, impregnated with

perfume and with poison, which is called love.

That evening, on his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over

his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so

slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in

the Luxembourg with his “every-day clothes,” that is to say, with a hat

battered near the band, coarse carter’s boots, black trousers which

showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the

elbows.