Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whose track he had set Javert; but Javert had no sooner quitted the building, bearing off his prisoners in three hackney-coaches, than Marius also glided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. He betook himself to Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter; he had gone to live in the Rue de la Verrerie for political reasons, a quarter where insurrection liked to install itself. Marius said: I have come to sleep with you. Courfeyrac dragged a mattress off his bed, which was furnished with two, spread it out on the floor, and said: There. At seven the next morning Marius returned to the hovel, paid the quarter's rent to Ma'am Bougon, had his books, his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a hand-cart, and went off without leaving his address. When Javert returned in the course of the morning to question him, he found only Ma'am Bougon, who answered: Moved away. She was convinced that Marius was to some extent an accomplice of the robbers. Who would ever have said it? A young man like that, who had the air of a girl. Marius had two reasons. The first was that he now had a horror of that house, where he had beheld, so close at hand, a social deformity perhaps even more terrible than the wicked rich man: the wicked poor man. The second was that he did not wish to figure in the lawsuit and be brought in to testify against Thénardier. Javert thought the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was afraid, and had fled. He made some efforts to find him, without success.
A month passed, then another. Marius was still with Courfeyrac. He had learned that Thénardier was in close confinement. Every Monday, Marius had five francs handed in to the clerk's office of La Force for Thénardier. As he had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowed money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyrac who lent and to Thénardier who received them. To whom can they go? thought Courfeyrac. Whence can this come to me? Thénardier asked himself. Moreover, Marius was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through a trap-door once more. He had for a moment beheld very close at hand the young girl whom he loved, the old man who seemed to be her father, those unknown beings who were his only interest and his only hope in this world; and, at the very moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them, a gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. He no longer knew even the name that he thought he knew. It certainly was not Ursule. And the Lark was a nickname. And what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding from the police? The white-haired workman near the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable that that workingman and Leblanc were one and the same person. Why had he not called for help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Thénardier might have been mistaken. All this detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg. Marius bore a passion in his heart, and night over his eyes. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations. He never said to himself: What if I were to go to such a place? The girl whom he could no longer call Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what direction he should seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog. To see her once again; he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it.
To crown all, his poverty had returned. He had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued work; it is a habit which vanishes. A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Thought is the toil of the intelligence, reverie its voluptuousness. To replace thought with reverie is to confound a poison with a food. Marius had begun in that way. Passion had finished the work of precipitating him into chimæras without object or bottom. The poor man who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost. Fatal declivity down which the most honest are drawn, and which ends in one of two holds, suicide or crime. Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the star of the inner night. She, that was Marius' whole thought. He was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, and that his new coat was growing old, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that his boots were giving out, and he said to himself: If I could but see her once again before I die. One sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, that her glance had told him so, that she did not know his name, but that she did know his soul. Sometimes he felt an obscure quiver of joy and said: It is her thoughts that are coming to me. Then: Perhaps my thoughts reach her also. This illusion was sufficient to throw beams, which at times resembled hope, into his soul. At the evening hour he allowed the purest of the reveries which filled his brain to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this writing to her. Day followed day, and nothing new presented itself. He thought that he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss. Shall I not see her again before then. His solitary strolls led him, near the water, to a sort of field, the only spot on the long boulevard where Ruysdael would be tempted to sit down: a green meadow, rags drying on lines, an old market-gardener's house, the Panthéon and the towers of Notre Dame on the horizon. That day there was a rarity, a passer-by. Marius asked the name of this spot. The person replied: It is the Lark's meadow. And he added that it was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry. But after the word Lark Marius heard nothing more. Stop, said he, this is her meadow. I shall know where she lives now. It was absurd, but irresistible. And every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.
