บทที่ บทที่ 194 · TAKEN PRISONER

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.