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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.
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