CHAPTER II

TREASURE TROVE


Marius had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention
to any one there.

At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants
in the house, except himself and those Jondrettes whose rent he had
once paid, without, moreover, ever having spoken to either father,
mother, or daughters. The other lodgers had moved away or had died,
or had been turned out in default of payment.

One day during that winter, the sun had shown itself a little
in the afternoon, but it was the 2d of February, that ancient
Candlemas day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six weeks'
cold spell, inspired Mathieu Laensberg with these two lines,
which have with justice remained classic:--


Qu'il luise ou qu'il luiserne,
L'ours rentre dans en sa caverne.[26]


[26] Whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns
to his cave.


Marius had just emerged from his: night was falling. It was the hour
for his dinner; for he had been obliged to take to dining again,
alas! oh, infirmities of ideal passions!

He had just crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon was sweeping
at the moment, as she uttered this memorable monologue:--

"What is there that is cheap now? Everything is dear.

There is nothing in the world that is cheap except trouble;
you can get that for nothing, the trouble of the world!"

Marius slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier, in order
to reach the Rue Saint-Jacques. He was walking along with drooping head.

All at once, he felt some one elbow him in the dusk; he wheeled round,
and saw two young girls clad in rags, the one tall and slim, the other
a little shorter, who were passing rapidly, all out of breath,
in terror, and with the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming
to meet him, had not seen him, and had jostled him as they passed.
Through the twilight, Marius could distinguish their livid faces,
their wild heads, their dishevelled hair, their hideous bonnets,
their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet. They were talking as
they ran. The taller said in a very low voice:--

"The bobbies have come. They came near nabbing me at the half-circle."
The other answered: "I saw them. I bolted, bolted, bolted!"

Through this repulsive slang, Marius understood that gendarmes
or the police had come near apprehending these two children,
and that the latter had escaped.

They plunged among the trees of the boulevard behind him,
and there created, for a few minutes, in the gloom, a sort
of vague white spot, then disappeared.

Marius had halted for a moment.

He was about to pursue his way, when his eye lighted on a little
grayish package lying on the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked
it up. It was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers.

"Good," he said to himself, "those unhappy girls dropped it."

He retraced his steps, he called, he did not find them; he reflected
that they must already be far away, put the package in his pocket,
and went off to dine.

On the way, he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouffetard, a child's coffin,
covered with a black cloth resting on three chairs, and illuminated
by a candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind.

"Poor mothers!" he thought. "There is one thing sadder than to see
one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life."

Then those shadows which had varied his melancholy vanished
from his thoughts, and he fell back once more into his habitual
preoccupations. He fell to thinking once more of his six months
of love and happiness in the open air and the broad daylight,
beneath the beautiful trees of Luxembourg.

"How gloomy my life has become!" he said to himself. "Young girls
are always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now
they are ghouls."