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 toward 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 they 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? What, she will pass here? Her feet will tread this sand, 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 Leblanc was darting angry glances at him. Is that gentleman going to address me? 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: 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 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 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: 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 asked whether Courfeyrac had read the paper, and what a fine discourse Audry de Puyraveau had delivered. He was desperately in love. After dinner he said he would treat Courfeyrac 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 milliner stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac, who said he should like to put that woman in his 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. A circle of students formed, and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then of the faults in Guicherat's dictionaries. Marius interrupted to exclaim that it is very agreeable, all the same, to have the cross. That is queer, whispered Courfeyrac to Jean Prouvaire. No, responded Prouvaire, that is serious. It was serious. 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, tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. All at once you feel yourself clutched. The wheels hold you fast. The glance has ensnared you. You are lost. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, 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.
Coming Up in Chapter 194
Isolation, detachment, and the life within himself had prepared Marius for this possession which is called passion. A full month elapsed, during which he went every day to the Luxembourg. He is on duty, said Courfeyrac.
