CHAPTER VI

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 Odeon, 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 Frederick 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 Cafe 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.