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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 revery 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.
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