menu_book Chapter 7

CHAPTER I. THE LARCH'S MEADOW 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 marius betook himself to corferac corferac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the latin quarter he had gone to live in the rue della verrerie for political reasons this quarter was one where at that epoch insurrection liked to install itself marius said to korfedak i have come to sleep with you korfedak dragged a mattress off his bed which was furnished with two spread it out on the floor and said there at seven o'clock on the following morning marius returned to the hovel paid the quarter's rent which he owed to mme 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

so that when javert returned in the course of the morning for the purpose of questioning marius as to the events of the preceding evening he found only mme bougon who answered moved away mme bourgogne was convinced that marius was to some extent an accomplice of the robbers who had been seized the night before who would ever have said it she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter a young man like that who had the air of a girl marius had two reasons for this prompt change of residence the first was that he now had a horror of that house where he had beheld so close at hand and in its most repulsive and most ferocious development a social deformity which is 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 which would ensue in all probability and be brought in to testify against thenardier javert thought that the young man whose name he had forgotten was afraid and had fled or perhaps had not even returned home at the time of the ambush he made some efforts to find him however but without success a month passed then another marius was still with courfeyrac he had learned from a young licentiate in law and habitual frequenter of the cause that thenardier was in close confinement

every monday marius had five francs handed in to the clerk's office of la force for thenardier as marius 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 thenardier who received them to whom can they go thought courfeyrac whence can this come to me thenardier asked himself moreover marius was heart-broken everything had plunged through a trap-door once more he no longer saw anything before him his life was again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly he had for a moment beheld very close at hand in that obscurity 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 and truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions no conjecture was possible he no longer knew even the name that he thought he knew it certainly was not

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 whom marius had encountered in the vicinity of the invalids recurred to his mind it now seemed probable that the workingman and monsieur leblanc were one and the same person so he disguised himself that man had his heroic and his equivocal sides why had he not called for help why had he fled was he or was he not the father of the young girl was he in short the man whom thenardier thought that he recognized thenardier might have been mistaken these form so many insoluble problems all this it is true detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the luxembourg heart-rending distress marius bore a passion in his heart and night over his eyes he was thrust onward he was drawn and he could not stir all had vanished save love of love itself he had lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations ordinarily this flame which burns us lights us also a little and casts some useful gleams without

but marius no longer even heard these mute counsels of passion he never said to himself what if i were to go to such a place what if i were to try such and such a thing 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 felt that icy breath close to him on his heels in the midst of his torments and long before this he had discontinued his work and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued work it is a habit which vanishes a habit which is easy to get rid of and difficult to take up again a certain amount of dreaming is good like a narcotic in discreet doses it lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labour which are sometimes severe and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapour which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought

fills in gaps here and there binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas but too much dreaming sinks and drowns woe to the brain-worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie he thinks that he can re-ascend with equal ease and he tells himself that after all it is the same thing error 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 as the reader will remember passion had supervened and had finished the work of precipitating him into shimmerers without object or bottom one no longer emerges from one's self except for the purpose of going off to dream idle production tumultuous and stagnant gulf and in proportion as labor diminishes needs increase this is a law man in a state of reverie is generally prodigal and slack the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds

there is in that mode of life good mingled with evil for if enervation is baleful generosity is good and healthful but the poor man who is generous and noble and who does not work is lost resources are exhausted needs crop up fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as the most feeble and most vicious are drawn and which ends in one of two holds suicide or crime by dint of going out-doors to think the day comes when one goes out to throw one's self in the water excess of reverie breeds men like ecousse and lebrat marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw what we have just written seems strange and yet it is true the memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart the more it has disappeared the more it beams the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon the star of the inner night she that was marius's whole thought

he meditated of nothing else he was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat 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 and that her glance had told him so that she did not know his name but that she did know his soul and that wherever she was however mysterious the place she still loved him perhaps who knows whether she were not thinking of him as he was thinking of her sometimes in those inexplicable hours such as are experienced by every heart that loves though he had no reasons for anything but sadness and yet felt an obscure quiver of joy he said to himself it is her thoughts that are coming to me then he added perhaps my thoughts reach her also this illusion at which he shook his head a moment later was sufficient nevertheless to throw beams which at times resembled hope into his soul

from time to time especially at that evening hour which is the most depressing to even the dreamy he allowed the purest the most impersonal the most ideal of the reveries which filled his brain to fall upon a note-book which contained nothing else he called this writing to her it must not be supposed that his reason was deranged quite the contrary he had lost the faculty of working and of moving firmly towards any fixed goal but he was endowed with more clear-sightedness and rectitude than ever marius surveyed by a calm and real although peculiar light what passed before his eyes even the most indifferent deeds and men he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sort of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness his judgment which was almost wholly disassociated from hope held itself aloof and soared on high in this state of mind nothing escaped him nothing deceived him and every moment he was discovering the foundation of life of humanity and of destiny

happy even in the midst of anguish is he to whom god has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness he who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true the soul which loves and suffers is in a state of sublimity however day followed day and nothing new presented itself it merely seemed to him that the sombre space which still remained to be traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant he thought that he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss what he repeated to himself shall i not see her again before then when you have ascended the rue st jacques left the barrier on one side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance you reach the rue de la sainte then the glaciers and a little while before arriving at the little river of the corbelons you come to a sort of field which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of the boulevards of paris where rue d'iel would be tempted to sit down

there is something indescribable there which exhales grace a green meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines from which flutter rags drying in the wind and an old market gardener's house built in the time of louis the thirteenth with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows dilapidated palisades a little water amid poplar trees women voices laughter on the horizon the pantheon the pole of the deaf-mutes the val de grasse black squat fantastic amusing magnificent and in the background the severe square crests of the towers of notre dame as the place is worth looking at no one goes thither hardly one cart or wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour it chanced that marius's solitary strolls led him to this plot of ground near the water that day there was a rarity on the boulevard a passer-by marius vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of the place asked this passer-by what is the name of this spot the person replied it is the lark's meadow and he added it was here that ulbach killed the shepherdess of ivri

but after the word lark marius heard nothing more these sudden congealments in the state of reverie which a single word suffices to evoke do occur the entire thought is abruptly condensed around an idea and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else the lark was the appellation which had replaced ursul in the depths of marius's melancholy stop said he with a sort of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mysterious asides 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 chapter one