Attraction and Extinction — Les Misérables

During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passers-by in the Marais noticed an old man neatly clad in black, who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall, from the Rue de l'Homme Armé. He walked at a slow pace, head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye fixed on a point that seemed a star to him: the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The nearer he approached, the more his eye lighted up. A joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora. He smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible, as though, while wishing to arrive, he feared the moment of being close at hand.

He reached the corner. Then he halted, trembled, and thrust his head with melancholy timidity round the last house. There was in that look something which resembled the dazzling light of the impossible, and the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. A tear gathered and trickled down his cheek. The old man tasted its bitter flavour. He remained several minutes as though made of stone, then returned by the same road, and as he retreated his glance died out.

Little by little he ceased to go as far as the corner. He halted half way, then looked from a distance and shook his head as though refusing himself something. Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He stopped at the Rue Pavée, then the Rue des Trois-Pavillons, then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether. Every day he undertook the same trip and no longer completed it. His countenance expressed one idea: What is the use. His tears were exhausted. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm, but he never opened it. The good women of the quarter said he is an innocent. The children followed him and laughed.