Marius had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in reality, had seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed on the young girl. His heart had seized her and wholly enveloped her from her first step in that garret. He contemplated, not that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not have been any more dazzled. While she opened the package, questioned the sick mother kindly, and the little injured girl tenderly, he watched her every movement. He knew her eyes, her brow, her beauty, her walk. He did not know the sound of her voice. He would have given ten years of his life to hear it, in order that he might bear away a little of that music. But everything was drowned in the lamentable exclamations and trumpet bursts of Jondrette. This added a touch of genuine wrath to Marius's ecstasy. He could not believe that it really was that divine creature in the midst of those vile creatures in that monstrous lair. It seemed to him that he beheld a humming-bird in the midst of toads.
When she took her departure, he had but one thought: to follow her, to cling to her trace, not to lose her again after having so miraculously rediscovered her. He leaped down from the commode and seized his hat. As he laid his hand on the lock, a sudden reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was long, the staircase steep, Jondrette was talkative. If, on turning round, Leblanc were to catch sight of him in that house, he would take the alarm, and this time it would be final. At last he accepted the risk and quitted his room. There was no one in the corridor. There was no one on the staircase. He reached the boulevard in time to see a fiacre turning the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, on its way back to Paris. He rushed. On arriving at the angle he caught sight of the fiacre again, rapidly descending the Rue Mouffetard, already a long way off. Run after it? Impossible. The people in the carriage would notice a man running, and the father would recognise him. At that moment, wonderful good luck, Marius perceived an empty cab passing along the boulevard. There was but one thing to be done: jump in and follow. He made the driver a sign to halt. By the hour? Marius wore no cravat. His working-coat was destitute of buttons. His shirt was torn. The driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand, rubbing his forefinger gently with his thumb. Pay in advance, said the coachman. Marius recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him. How much? Forty sous. I will pay on my return. The driver's only reply was to whistle the air of La Palisse and to whip up his horse.
Marius stared at the retreating cabriolet with a bewildered air. For the lack of four and twenty sous, he was losing his joy, his happiness, his love. He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected bitterly, and with profound regret, on the five francs which he had bestowed that very morning on that miserable girl. If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have been born again, he would have re-knotted the black thread of his destiny to that beautiful golden thread which had just floated before his eyes and broken once more. He returned to his hovel in despair. He might have told himself that Leblanc had promised to return in the evening, and that he had only to follow more skilfully then, but in his contemplation it is doubtful whether he had heard this. As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall, Jondrette wrapped in the philanthropist's great-coat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of disquieting aspect dubbed prowlers of the barriers. The two men, standing motionless in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed a group that a policeman would surely have observed, but which Marius hardly noticed. Still he could not refrain from saying to himself that this prowler resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, whom Courfeyrac had once pointed out as a very dangerous nocturnal roamer. In 1832, the police already had their eye on him, but he had not as yet made a serious beginning.
