 Chapter 1 and 2 of Book 6 of Les Miserables, Volume 3 by Victor Hugo. Chapter 1 The Sobriquet, Motive Formation of Family Names. Marius was at this epoch a handsome young man of medium stature with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow, well-opened and passionate nostrils, an air of calmness and sincerity, and with something indescribably proud, thoughtful, and innocent over his whole countenance. His profile, all of whose lines were rounded, without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic sweetness which has made its way into the French physiognomy by way of Alsace and Lorraine, and that complete absence of angles which rendered the sycombraries so easily recognizable among the Romans, and which distinguishes the Leonine from the Aqualine race. He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed in nearly equal parts of depth and ingenuousness, a grave situation being given he had all that is required to be stupid, one more turn of the key and he might be sublime. His manners were reserved, cold, polished, not very genial. As his mouth was charming, his lips the reddest, and his teeth the whitest in the world, his smile corrected the severity of his face as a whole. At certain moments that pure brow and that voluptuous smile presented a singular contrast. His eyes were small, but his glance was large. At the period of his most abject misery he had observed that young girls turned round when he passed by, and he fled or hid with death in his soul. He thought that they were staring at him because of his old clothes, and that they were laughing at him. The fact is that they stared at him because of his grace, and that they dreamed of him. This mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passes by had made him shy. He chose none of them for the excellent reason that he fled from all of them. He lived thus indefinitely, stupidly, as Corfey Rock said. Corfey Rock also said to him, Do not aspire to be venerable. They called each other, Thou, it is the tendency of youthful friendships to slip into this mode of address. Let me give you a piece of advice, my dear fellow. Don't read so many books, and look a little more at the lasses. The jades have some good points about them, O Marius. By dint of fleeing and blushing you will become brutalized. On other occasions Corfey Rock encountered him and said, Good morning, M. Labé. When Corfey Rock had addressed to him some remark of this nature, Marius avoided women, both young and old, more than ever for a week to come, and he avoided Corfey Rock to boot. Nevertheless, there existed in all the immensity of creation two women whom Marius did not flee and to whom he paid no attention whatever. In truth he would have been very much amazed if he had been informed that they were women. One was the bearded old woman who swept out his chamber and caused Corfey Rock to say, seeing that his servant woman wears his beard, Marius does not wear his own beard. The other was the sort of little girl whom he saw very often and whom he never looked at. For more than a year Marius had noticed in one of the walks of the Luxembourg, the one which skirts the parapet of the pepignere, a man and a very young girl who were almost always seated side by side on the same bench at the most solitary end of the alley on the rue de l'ouest side. Every time that that chance which meddles with the strolls of persons whose gaze is turned inwards led Marius to that walk, and it was nearly every day, he found this couple there. The man appeared to be about sixty years of age. He seemed sad and serious. His whole person presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military men who have retired from the service. If he had worn a decoration Marius would have said he is an ex-officer. He had a kindly but unapproachable air, and he never let his glance linger on the eyes of any one. He wore blue trousers, a blue frock coat and a broad brimmed hat which always appeared to be new, a black cravat, a Quaker shirt that is to say it was dazzlingly white, but of course linen. A grisette who passed near him one day said, Here's a very tidy widower. His hair was very white. The first time that the young girl who accompanied him came and seated herself on the bench which they seemed to have adopted, she was a sort of child thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost homely, awkward, insignificant, and with a possible promise of handsome eyes. Only they were always raised with a sort of displeasing assurance. Her dress was both aged and childish, like the dress of the scholars in a convent. It consisted of a badly cut gown of black marino. They had the air of being father and daughter. Marius scanned this old man, who was not yet aged, and this little girl, who was not yet a person, for a few days and thereafter paid no attention to them. They on their side did not appear even to see him. They conversed together with a peaceful and indifferent air. The girl chattered incessantly and merrily. The old man talked but little, and at times he fixed on her eyes overflowing with an ineffable paternity. Marius had acquired the mechanical habit of strolling in that walk. He invariably found them there. This is the way things went. Marius liked to arrive by the end of the alley which was frivised from their bench. He walked the whole length of the alley past in front of them, then returned to the extremity whence he had come and began again. This he did five or six times in the course of his promenade, and the promenade was taken five or six times a week, without its having occurred to him or to these people to exchange a greeting. That personage and that young girl, although they appeared and perhaps because they appeared, to shun all glances, had naturally caused some attention on the part of the five or six students who strolled along the papine air from time to time. The studious after their lectures, the others after their game of billiards. Kourfe-Rak, who was among the last, had observed them several times but finding the girl homely he had speedily and carefully kept out of the way. He had fled, discharging at them a sobriquet, like a Parthian dart, impressed solely with the child's gown and the old man's hair. He had dubbed the daughter Mademoiselle La Noire and the father Monsieur Leblanc, so that as no one knew them under any other title, this nickname became a law in the default of any other name. The students said, ah, Monsieur Leblanc is on his bench, and Marius, like the rest, had found it convenient to call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc. We shall follow their example, and we shall say Monsieur Leblanc in order to facilitate this tale. So Marius saw them nearly every day at the same hour during the first year. He found the man to his taste, but the girl insipid. CHAPTER II LUCS FACTA EST During the second year precisely at the point in this history which the reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of the Luxembourg was interrupted, without Marius himself being quite aware why, and nearly six months elapsed during which he did not set foot in the alley. One day at last he returned thither once more. It was a serene summer morning, and Marius was in joyous mode, as one is when the weather is fine. It seemed to him that he had in his heart all the songs of the birds that he was listening to, and all the bits of blue sky of which he caught glimpses through the leaves of the trees. He went straight to his alley, and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that well-known couple, only when he approached it certainly was the same man, but it seemed to him that it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman, at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child, a pure and fugitive moment which can be expressed only by these two words, fifteen years. She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush and agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, wence smiles darted like sunbeams and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Gougeon would have attributed to a Venus. And in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome, it was pretty, neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek, it was the Parisian nose, that is to say spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure, which drives painters to despair and charms poets. When Marius passed near her he could not see her eyes which were constantly lowered, he saw only her long chestnut lashes permeated with shadow and modesty. This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping eyes. For a moment Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him for the second time near the bench, and he had examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young maiden, that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday, today one finds them disquieting to the feelings. The child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty, her April had arrived. One sometimes sees people who poor and mean seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent all of a sudden. That is the result of having pocketed an income. A note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income. And then she was no longer the schoolgirl with her felt-hat, her merino gown, her scholar's shoes and red hands. Taste had come to her with beauty. She was a well-dressed person, clad with the sort of rich and simple elegance and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crepe. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved Chinese eye-free handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume. As for the man, he was the same as usual. The second time that Marius approached her, the young girl raised her eyelids, her eyes were of a deep celestial blue, but in that veiled azure there was as yet nothing but the glance of a child. She looked at Marius indifferently as she would have stared at the brat running beneath the sycamores, or the marble vase which cast a shadow on the bench, and Marius on his side continued his promenade and thought about something else. He passed near the bench where the young girl sat five or six times, but without even turning his eyes in her direction. In the following days he returned as was his won't to the Luxembourg. As usual he found there the father and daughter, but he paid no further attention to them. He thought no more about the girl, now that she was beautiful, than he had when she was homely. He passed very near the bench where she sat, because such was his habit. CHAPTER III EFFECT OF THE SPRING One day the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and shade, the sky was as pure as though the angels had washed it that morning. The sparrows were giving vent to little twitters in the depths of the chestnut trees. Marius had thrown open his whole soul to nature. He was not thinking of anything, he simply lived and breathed. He passed near the bench. The young girl raised her eyes to him. The two glances met. What was there in the young girl's glance on this occasion Marius could not have told. There was nothing, and there was everything. It was a strange flash. She dropped her eyes, and he pursued his way. What he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a child. It was a mysterious gulf which had half opened, then abruptly closed again. There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner, woe to him who chances to be there. That first gaze of a soul which does not as yet know itself is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows and which is composed of all the innocence of the present and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance and which waits. It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets, unknown to herself, and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman. It is rare that a profound reverie does not spring from that glance where it falls. All purities and all candours meet in that celestial and fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming in the depths of the soul of that somber flower impregnated with perfume and with poison, which is called love. That evening on his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over his garments and perceived for the first time that he had been so slovenly in decorous and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the Luxembourg with his everyday clothes, that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse Carter's boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the elbows. CHAPTER IV BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALODY On the following day, at the accustomed hour, Marius drew from his wardrobe his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots. He clothed himself in this complete panoply, put on his gloves, a tremendous luxury, and set off for the Luxembourg. On the way thither he encountered Curaferac and pretended not to see him. Curaferac, on his return home, said to his friends, I have just met Marius's new hat and new coat with Marius inside them. He was going to pass an examination, though doubt he looked utterly stupid. On arriving at the Luxembourg, Marius made a tour of the fountain basin and stared at the swans. Then he remained for a long time in contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with mold and one of whose hips was missing. Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age with a prominent stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him, Shun, excess my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy. Marius listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the circuit of the basin once more. At last he directed his course towards his alley, slowly and as if with regret. One would have said that he was both forced to go there and withheld from doing so. He did not perceive it himself and thought that he was doing as he always did. On turning into the walk he saw Monsieur Leblanc and the young girl at the other end on their bench. He buttoned his coat up to the very top, pulled it down on his body so that there might be no wrinkles, examined with a certain complacence the lustrous gleams of his trousers, and marched on the bench. This march savoured of an attack and certainly of a desire for conquest, so I say that he marched on the bench, as I should say Hannibal marched on Rome. However, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had interrupted none of the habitual preoccupations of his mind and labours. At that moment he was thinking that the manuel du baccalaurier was a stupid book and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots to allow of three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Molliere being analysed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a piercing whistling going on in his ears. As he approached the bench he held fast to the folds in his coat and fixed his eyes on the young girl. It seemed to him that she filled the entire extremity of the alley with a vague blue light. In proportion as he drew near his pace slackened more and more. On arriving at some little distance from the bench and long before he had reached the end of the walk he halted and could not explain to himself why he retraced his steps. He did not even say to himself that he would not go as far as the end. It was only with difficulty that the young girl could have perceived him in the distance and noted his fine appearance in his new clothes. Nevertheless he held himself very erect in case anyone should be looking at him from behind. He attained the opposite end, then came back and this time he approached a little nearer to the bench. He even got to within three intervals of trees, but there he felt an indescribable impossibility of proceeding further and he hesitated. He thought he saw the young girl's face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, subdued his hesitation, and walked straight ahead. A few seconds later he rushed in front of the bench, erect and firm, reddening to the very ears without daring to cast the glance either to the right or to the left with his hand thrust into his coat like a statesman. At the moment when he passed under the canon of the place he felt his heart beat wildly. As on the preceding day she wore her damask gown and her crepe bonnet. He heard an ineffable voice which must have been her voice. She was talking tranquilly, she was very pretty. He felt it although he made no attempt to see her. She could not, however, he thought, help feeling esteem and consideration for me if she only knew that I am the veritable author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronde, which M. François de Neufchateau put as though it were his own at the head of his edition of Gilles Blas. He went beyond the bench as far as the extremity of the walk, which was very near, then turned on his heel and passed once more in front of the lovely girl. This time he was very pale. Moreover, all his emotions were disagreeable, as he went further from the bench and the young girl, and while his back was turned to her, he fancied that she was gazing after him, and that made him stumble. He did not attempt to approach the bench again. He halted near the middle of the walk, and there, a thing which he never did, he sat down, and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths of his spirit, that after all, it was hard that persons whose white bonnet and black gown he admired should be absolutely insensible to his splendid trousers and his new coat. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour he rose, as though he were on the point of a gain beginning his march towards that bench which was surrounded by an Oreo. But he remained standing there, motionless. For the first time in fifteen months he said to himself that that gentleman who sat there every day with his daughter had on his side noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular. For the first time also he was conscious of some irreverence in designating that stranger even in his secret thoughts by the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc. He stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures in the sand with the cane which he held in his hand. Then he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench, to Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter, and went home. That day he forgot to dine. At eight o'clock in the evening he perceived this fact, and as it was too late to go down to the rue Saint-Jacques he said never mind and ate a bit of bread. He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up with great care. CHAPTER V. DIVERSE CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MAM BUGON On the following day MAM BUGON, as Kurfe-Rack styled the old portrait's principal tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbo-hovel, MAM BUGON, whose name was, in reality, MADAM BUGON, as we have found out, but this iconoclast Kurfe-Rack respected nothing, MAM BUGON observed with stupefaction that Monsieur Marius was going out again in his new coat. He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than his bench midway of the alley. He seated himself there, as on the preceding day, surveying from a distance and clearly making out the white bonnet, the black dress, and above all that blue light. He did not stir from it and only went home when the gates of the Luxembourg closed. He did not see Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they had quitted the garden by the gate on the rue de l'Ouest. Later on several weeks afterwards, when he came to think it over, he could never recall where he had dined that evening. On the following day which was the third, MAM BUGON was thunderstruck. Marius went out in his new coat. Three days in succession she exclaimed. He tried to follow him, but Marius walked briskly and with immense strides. It was a hippopotamus undertaking the pursuit of a chamois. She lost sight of him in two minutes and returned breathless, three-quarters choked with asthma and furious. If there is any sense, she growled, in putting on one's best clothes every day and making people run like this. Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg. The young girl was there with Monsieur Leblanc. Marius approached as near as he could, pretending to be busy reading a book, but he halted a far off, then returned and seated himself on his bench, where he spent four hours in watching the house sparrows who were skipping about the walk and who produced on him the impression that they were making sport of him. A fortnight passed thus. Marius went to the Luxembourg no longer for the sake of strolling there, but to seat himself always in the same spot, and that without knowing why. Once arrived there he did not stir. He put on his new coat every morning for the purpose of not showing himself, and he began all over again on the morrow. She was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching a criticism that could be made was that the contradiction between her gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry, gave a rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming. CHAPTER VI TAKEN PRISONER 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. Le Blanc and his daughter had just left their seat, and the daughter had taken her father's arm, and both were advancing slowly towards the middle of the alley where Marius was. Marius closed his book, then opened it again, then forced himself to read. He trembled. The Oriole was coming straight towards him. Ah, good heavens thought he! I shall not have time to strike an attitude. Still the white-haired man and the girl 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, he asked himself? What, she will pass here? Her feet will tread this sand, this walk, two paces for 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 Monsieur Le Blanc was darting angry glances at him. Is that gentleman going to address me, he thought to himself? 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 to him, 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 which was 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 garden 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 Kurfe-Rak under the arcades of the Odeon and said to him, Come and dine with me. He went off to Rousseau's and spent six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At dessert he said to Kurfe-Rak, Have you read the paper? What a fine discourse Audrey de Pouiravot delivered. He was desperately in love. After dinner he said to Kurfe-Rak, I will treat you to the play. They went to the Porte Saint-Martin to see Frédéric in L'Oberge des Adrées. 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 modiste who was stepping across a gutter, and Kurfe-Rak who said, I should like to put that woman in my collection almost horrified him. Kurfe-Rak 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 who was presented to him. A circle of students formed round the table and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the state which was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne. Then the conversation fell upon the false and omissions in Guichérat's dictionaries and grammars. Marius interrupted the discussion to exclaim, but it is very agreeable all the same to have the cross. That's queer, whispered Kurfe-Rak to Jean Prouvert. No, responded Prouvert, that's serious. It was serious. In fact 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 which are tranquil in appearance, yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched. All is over. The wheels hold you fast. The glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which was fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain. No more human succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, from torture to torture. You, your mind, your fortune, your future, your soul. 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. End of book six, chapters five and six. Chapter seven, eight and nine of book six of Les Miserables, volume three by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bruce Peary. Les Miserables, volume three by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book six, The Conjunction of Two Stars. Chapter seven, Adventures of the Letter You. Delivered over to conjectures. Isolation, detachment from everything, pride, independence, the taste of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards all creation, had prepared Marius for this possession which is called passion. His worship of his father had gradually become a religion and like all religions it had retreated to the depths of his soul. Something was required in the foreground. Love came. A full month elapsed during which Marius went every day to the Luxembourg. When the hour arrived, nothing could hold him back. He is on duty, said Kourfeirac. Marius lived in a state of delight. It is certain that the young girl did look at him. He had finally grown bold and approached the bench. Still he did not pass in front of it anymore in obedience to the instinct of timidity and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers. He considered it better not to attract the attention of the father. He combined his stations behind the trees and the pedestals of the statues with a profound diplomacy so that he might be seen as much as possible by the young girl and as little as possible by the old gentleman. Sometimes he remained motionless by the half hour together in the shade of a Leonidus or a Spartacus holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes gently raised, sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her charming profile towards him with a vague smile. While conversing in the most natural and tranquil manner in the world with the white-haired man, she bent upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye. Ancient and time-honored maneuver which Eve understood from the very first day of the world and which every woman understands from the very first day of her life. Her mouth replied to one and her glance replied to another. It must be supposed that Monsieur Leblanc finally noticed something for often when Marius arrived he rose and began to walk about. He had abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench by the gladiator near the other end of the walk as though with the object of seeing whether Marius would pursue them thither. Marius did not understand and committed this error. The father began to grow inexact and no longer brought his daughter every day. Sometimes he came alone. Then Marius did not stay. Another blunder. Marius paid no heed to these symptoms from the phase of timidity he had passed by a natural and fatal progress to the phase of blindness. His love increased, he dreamed of it every night. And then an unexpected bliss had happened to him, oil on the fire, or redoubling of the shadows over his eyes. One evening at dusk he had found on the bench which Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter had just quitted, a handkerchief, a very simple handkerchief without embroidery but white and fine and which seemed to him to exhale ineffable perfume. He seized it with rapture. This handkerchief was marked with the letters U F. Marius knew nothing about this beautiful child, neither her family name, her Christian name, nor her abode. These two letters were the first thing of her that he had gained possession of, adorable initials upon which he immediately began to construct his scaffolding. U was evidently the Christian name. Ursul, he thought, what a delicious name. He kissed the handkerchief, drank it in, placed it on his heart, on his flesh during the day and at night laid it beneath his lips that he might fall asleep on it. I feel that her whole soul lies within it, he exclaimed. This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman who had simply let it fall from his pocket. In the days which followed the finding of this treasure he only displayed himself at the Luxembourg in the act of kissing the handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood nothing of all this and signified it to him by imperceptible signs. Oh, modesty, said Marius. Chapter eight, the veterans themselves can be happy. Since we have pronounced the word modesty and since we conceal nothing, we ought to say that once nevertheless in spite of his ecstasies his Ursul caused him very serious grief. It was on one of the days when she persuaded Monsieur Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll along the walk. A brisk May breeze was blowing which swayed the crests of the plantain trees. The father and daughter arm in arm had just passed Marius's bench. Marius had risen to his feet behind them and was following them with his eyes as was fitting in the desperate situation of his soul. All at once a gust of wind, more merry than the rest and probably charged with performing the affairs of springtime, swept down from the nursery, flying itself on the alley enveloped the young girl in a delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil's nymphs and the fawns of theocratus and lifted her dress. The robe more sacred than that of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite shape appeared. Marius saw it. He was exasperated and furious. The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress with a divinely troubled motion, but he was nonetheless angry for all that. He was alone in the alley, it is true, but there might have been someone there and what if there had been someone there? Can anyone comprehend such a thing? What she had just done is horrible. Alas, the poor child had done nothing. There had been but one culprit, the wind. But Marius, in whom quivered the Bartolo who exists in Cherubin, was determined to be vexed and was jealous of his own shadow. It is thus, in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of the flesh awakens in the human heart and takes possession of it, even without any right. Moreover, setting aside even that jealousy, the sight of that charming leg had contained nothing agreeable for him. The white stocking of the first woman he chanced to meet would have afforded him more pleasure. When his ur-soul, after having reached the end of the walk, retraced her steps with Monsieur Leblanc and passed in front of the bench on which Marius had seated himself once more, Marius darted a sullen and ferocious glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight straightening up with a backward movement accompanied by a raising of the eyelids which signifies, well, what is the matter? This was their first quarrel. Marius had hardly made this scene at her with his eyes when someone crossed the walk. It was a veteran, very much bent, extremely wrinkled, and pale in a uniform of the Louis XV pattern, bearing on his breast the little oval plaque of red cloth with the crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint Louis, and adorned in addition with a coat sleeve which had no arm in it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Marius thought he perceived that this man had an extremely well-satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink, as though some chance had created an understanding between them and as though they had shared some piece of good luck together. What did that relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had passed between that wooden leg and the other? Marius reached a paroxysm of jealousy. Perhaps he was there, he said to himself. Perhaps he saw, and he felt a desire to exterminate the veteran. With the aid of time all points grow dull. Marius's wrath against Ursule, just and legitimate, as it was, passed off. He finally pardoned her, but this caused him a great effort. He sulked for three days. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this, his passion augmented and grew to madness. Chapter 9 Eclipse The reader has just seen how Marius discovered, or thought that he discovered, that she was named Ursule. Appetite grows with loving. To know that her name was Ursule was a great deal. It was very little. In three or four weeks Marius had devoured this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she lived. He had committed his first blunder by falling into the ambush of the bench by the gladiator. He had committed a second by not remaining at the Luxembourg when Monsieur Leblanc came with her alone. He now committed a third and an immense one. He followed Ursule. She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot in a new three-story house of modest appearance. From that moment forth Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg, the happiness of following her home. His hunger was increasing. He knew her first name at least, a charming name, a genuine woman's name. He knew where she lived. He wanted to know who she was. One evening after he had followed them to their dwelling and had seen them disappear through the carriage-gate, he entered in their train and said boldly to the porter, Is that the gentleman who lives on the first floor who has just come in? No, replied the porter, he is the gentleman on the third floor. Another step gained. This success emboldened Marius. On the front he asked, Parble, said the porter, the house is only built on the street. And what is that gentleman's business began Marius again? He is a gentleman of property, sir, a very kind man who does good to the unfortunate, though not rich himself. What is his name? Resumed Marius. The porter raised his head and said, are you a police spy, sir? Marius went off quite abashed, but delighted, he was getting on. Good, thought he, I know that her name is Ursule, that she is the daughter of a gentleman who lives on his income, and that she lives there on the third floor in the Rue de l'Ouest. On the following day, Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter made only a very brief stay in the Luxembourg. They went away while it was still broad daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l'Ouest, as he had taken up the habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage entrance, Monsieur Leblanc made his daughter pass in first, then paused before crossing the threshold, and stared intently at Marius. On the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Marius waited for them all day in vain. At nightfall he went to the Rue de l'Ouest and saw a light in the windows of the third story. He walked about beneath the windows until the light was extinguished. The next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Marius waited all day then went and did sentinel duty under their windows. This carried him on to 10 o'clock in the evening, his dinner took care of itself. Fever nourishes the sick man and love the lover. He spent a week in this manner. Monsieur Leblanc no longer appeared at the Luxembourg. Marius indulged in melancholy conjectures. He dared not watch the Port Cocher during the day. He contented himself with going at night to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times he saw shadows flit across them and his heart began to beat. On the eighth day when he arrived under the windows there was no light in them. Hello, he said. The lamp is not lighted yet, but it is dark. Can they have gone out? He waited until 10 o'clock, until midnight, until one in the morning, not a light appeared in the windows of the third story and no one entered the house. He went away in a very gloomy frame of mind. On the morrow, for he only existed from morrow to morrow, there was, so to speak, no today for him. On the morrow he found no one at the Luxembourg he had expected this. At dusk he went to the house. No light in the windows, the shades were drawn. The third floor was totally dark. Marius wrapped at the Port Cocher, entered and said to the porter, the gentleman on the third floor? Has moved away, replied the porter. Marius reeled and said feebly, how long ago? Yesterday. Where is he living now? I don't know anything about it. So he has not left his new address? No. And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius. Come, so it's you, he said, but you are decidedly a spy then. End of book six, chapter seven, eight and nine. Chapter one, two of book seven of L'Émiserable, volume three by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Caliostro, L'Émiserable, volume three by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Habcourt, book seven, Patron Minette. Chapter one, minds and mindless. Human societies all have what is called, in theatrical parlance, a third lower floor. Social soil is everywhere under mine. Sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed one upon the other. There are superior minds and inferior minds. There is a top and the bottom in this obscure subsoil, which sometimes give way beneath civilization and which are in difference and heedlessness, trample and enfruit. The encyclopedia in the last century was a mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, the sombre hatches of primitive Christianity only awaited an opportunity to bring about an explosion and the diseases and to inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a shadow that is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins by being nice. The catacombs in which the first mass was set were not alone the seller of Rome. They were the faults of the world. Beneath the social construction that complicated the marvel of the structure, there are excavations of all sorts. There is the religious mind, the philosophical mind, the economic mind, the revolutionary mind. Such and such a pickaxe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers, such another with wrath. People hail and answer each other from one catacomb to another. The utopius travel about underground in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinus by the hair, but nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies towards the gall and the vast simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends and mounts again in these obscurities and which immense and known swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Societies hardly even suspects this ticking which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as many difference of the Iranian stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The future. The deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilets. The work is good, up to a degree which the social philosophies are able to recognize. Beyond that degree, it is doubtful and mixed. Lower down, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations are no longer penetrable by the spirit of civilization. The limit breathable by man has been passed. A beginning of monsters is possible. The descending scale is a strange one and each one of the rungs of this ladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy can find foothold and where one encounters one of these workmen. Sometimes divine, sometimes mishappen. Below John Huss, there is Luther. Below Luther, there is Descartes. Below Descartes, there is Voltaire. Below Voltaire, there is Condorcet. Below Condorcet, there is Robespierre. Below Robespierre, there is Murrah. Below Murrah, there is Bobuff. And so it goes on. Lower down, confusedly, at the limit which separates the indistinct from the invisible, one perceives other gloomy men who perhaps do not exist as yet. The men of yesterday are specters. Days of tomorrow are forms. The eye of the spirit distinguishes them, but obscurely. The embryonic work of the future is one of the visions of philosophy. The world in limbo and the state of features. What an unheard of specter. Sensimum, oren, fourier, are there also. In lateral galleries, sure, although divine and invisible chain and noether themselves, binds together all these subterranean pioneers who almost always think themselves isolated and who are not so, their works vary greatly. And the light of some contrast with the blaze of others. The first are paradisiacal. The last are tragic. Nevertheless, whatever may be the contrasts, all these toilets, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest to the most foolish, possess one likeness. And this is it, disinterestedness. Mara forgets himself like Jesus. They throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute. The first has a whole heavens in his eyes. The last, enigmatical, though he may be, has still bleak his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite. Then array the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign, the starry eye. The shadowy eye is the other side. With it, evil commences, reflect and tremble in the presence of anyone who has no glance at all. The social order has its black miners. There is a point where depth is tent amount to burial and where light becomes extinct. Below all these minds, which we have just mentioned, below all these calories, below this whole immense subterranean venous system of progress and utopia. Much further on in the earth, much lower than Mara, lower than Babuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection with the upper levels, there lies the last mine, a formidable spot. This is what we have designated as the le troisième dessous. It is the grave of shadows. It is the cellar of the blind, in theory. This communicates with the abyss. Chapter 2, the lowest depth. There, disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined. Each one is for himself. The eye in the eyes, herles, seeks, fumbles, ignores. The social urlina is in this gulf. The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress. They are ignorant both of the idea and of the word. They take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible reverberation. They have two mothers, both stepmothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity, and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious. That is to say, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger, from suffering these spectres past the crime, fatal affiliation, busy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complained stifled by the absolute. That is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty, that is the point of departure. To be Satan, that is the point reached. From that fold, the lacenaire emerges. We have just seen, in book 4, one of the compartments of the upper mind, of the great political revolutionary and philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled, but error is worthy of veneration there. So thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name, progress. The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon this point, and there will exist until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all, the foe of all. It is hatred without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers, its daggers have never cut a pen, its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the ink stand. Never have the fingers of night, which contract beneath the stifling ceiling, turn the leaves of a book, nor enfolded a newspaper. Babav is a speculator to Karthus. Maran is an aristocrat to Shindehanus. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything, of everything, including the upper superior minds, which it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order, it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness and it desires chaos. Its fault is formed of ignorance. All the others, those above it, have but one object to suppress it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern ignorance and you destroy the lair crime. Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness. Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference here below, at least in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with a human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes the position of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil. End of book 7, chapter 1 and 2, recording by Kali Ostra. Chapter 3 and 4 of book 7 of Les Miserables Vol. 3 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Les Miserables Vol. 3 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 7th. Chapter 3 A quartet of Ruffians, Clarke-sous, Golemaire, Bhabé and Montparnasse, governed the third lower floor of Paris from 1830 to 1835. Golemaire was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had the sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet high, his pectoral muscles were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern, his torso that of a colossus, his head that of a bird. One thought one beheld the Farnese Hercules clad in duck trousers and a cotton velvet waistcoat. Golemaire, built after this sculptural fashion, might have subdued monsters. He had found it more expeditious to be one. A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age, but with crow's feet, harsh short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard like that of a wild boar, the reader can see the man before him. His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have none of it. He was a great idle force. He was an assassin through coolness. He was thought to be a creole. He had probably some what to do with Marshal Brun having been a porter at Avignon in 1815. After this stage he had turned Ruffian. The diaphoniety of Bhabé contrasted with the grossness of Golemaire. Bhabé was thin and learned. He was transparent but impenetrable. Daylight was visible through his bones but nothing through his eyes. He declared that he was a chemist. He had been a jack of all trades. He had played in vaudeville at Saint-Miel. He was a man of purpose, a fine talker who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His occupation consisted in selling in the open air plaster busts and portraits of the head of the state. In addition to this he extracted teeth. He had exhibited phenomena at fairs and he had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster, Bhabé Dental Artist, member of the Academies, makes physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes stumps abandoned by his brother practitioner's price, one tooth, one franc, fifty centime, two teeth, two francs, three teeth, two francs, fifty. Take advantage of this opportunity. This take advantage of this opportunity meant have as many teeth extracted as possible. He had been married and had had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them as one loses his handkerchief. Bhabé read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he belonged. One day, at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the mesager that a woman had just given birth to a child who was doing well and had a calf's muscle and he exclaimed, There's a fortune, my wife has not the wit to present me with a child like that. Later on, he had abandoned everything in order to undertake Paris. This was his expression. Who was Clacasou? He was Knight. He waited until the sky was daubed with black before he showed himself. At nightfall he emerged from the hole wither he returned before daylight. Where was this hole? No one knew. He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness and with his back turned to them. Was his name Clacasou? Certainly not. If a candle was brought he put on a mask. He was a ventriloquist. Bhabé said, Clacasou is a nocturne for two voices. Clacasou was vague, terrible and aroma. No one was sure whether he had a name Clacasou being a sobriquet. None was sure that he had a voice as his stomach spoke more frequently than his voice. No one was sure that he had a face as he was never seen without his mask. He disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air when he appeared it was as though he sprang from the earth. A legubrious being was Montparnasse. Montparnasse was a child less than twenty years of age with a handsome face, lips like cherries, charming black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes. He had all vices and aspired to all crimes. The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket and a pickpocket turned garota. He was gentile, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side in order to make room for a tuft of hair after the style of 1829. He lived by robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a fashion plate in misery and given to the commission of murders. The cause of all this youth's crimes was the desire to be well-dressed. The first grisette who had said to him, You are handsome! had cast the stain of darkness into his heart and had made a cane of this able. Finding that he was handsome, he desired to be elegant. Now the height of elegance is idleness. Idleness in a poor man means crime. Few prowlers were so dreaded as Montparnasse. At 18 he had already numerous corpses in his past. More than one passer-by lay with outstretched arms in the presence of this wretch with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole. Such was this dandy of the sepulchre. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Composition of the Troop These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police and striving to escape Vidox in discreet glances under diver's forms, tree, flame, fountain, lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each other. Stripping off their personalities as one removes his false nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the point of consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves to such a point that Coco Latour himself took them for a whole throng. These four men were not four men. They were a sort of mysterious robber with four heads operating on a grand scale on Paris. They were that monstrous polyp of evil which inhabits the crypt of society. Thanks to their ramifications and to the network underlying their relations, Babet, Golemaire, Clacassou and Montparnasse were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the Department of the Seine. The inventors of ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to have their ideas executed. They furnished the canvas to the four rascals and the latter undertook the preparation of the scenery. They laboured at the stage setting. They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned and suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the shoulder and which were sufficiently lucrative. When a crime was in quest of arms, they underlet their accomplices. They kept a troop of actors of the shadows at the disposition of all underground tragedies. They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour when they woke up, on the plains which adjoined the Salpettrières. There they held their conferences. They had twelve black hours before them. They regulated their employment accordingly. Patreminette such was the name which was bestowed in the subterranean circulation on the association of these four men. In the fantastic ancient popular parlance which is vanishing day by day, Patreminette signifies the morning, the same as entre chien et loup between dog and wolf, signifies the evening. This appellation, Patreminette, was probably derived from the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians. These four men were known under this title. When the Président of the Assaisis visited La Cenère in his prison and questioned him concerning a misdeed which La Cenère denied, who did it, demanded the Président. La Cenère made this response enigmatic so far as the magistrate was concerned but clear to the police. Perhaps it was Patreminette. A peace can sometimes be divine on the enunciation of the personages. In the same manner, a band can almost be judged from the list of ruffians composing it. Here are the appellations to which the principal members of Patreminette answered for the names have survived in special memoirs. Brugeon. There was a Brugeon dynasty we cannot refrain from interpolating this word. Boulatruel, the roadmender already introduced. La Veuve. Finistère. Hormère Augue. A Negro. Mardissoir. Tuesday evening. Dépêche. Make haste. Fontleroi. Eilius Boucutière. The flower girl. Glorieux. A discharged convict. Barracaros. Stop carriage. Called Monsieur Dupont. Les planades du Sud. Poussacrive. Carmagnolet. Croidenier. Called Pizarro. Mange dentelle. Les cites. Les pieds en l'air. Fit in the air. Demi liard. Deux milliards. Et cetera, et cetera. We pass over some and not the worst of them. These names have faces attached. They do not express merely beings but species. Each one of these names corresponds to a variety of those misshapen fungi from the underside of civilization. Those beings who were not very lavish with their countenances were not among the men who one sees passing along the streets. Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed they went off by day to sleep. Sometimes in the lime kilns. Sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmartre or Montrouge. Sometimes in the sewers. They ran to earth. What became of these men? They still exist. They have always existed. Horus speaks of them. Ambu Bayaram Collegia. Pharmacopoly. Mendiki. Mimai. And so long as society remains what it is they will remain what they are. Beneath the obscure roof of their cavern they are continually born again from the social ooze. They return spectres but always identical. Only they no longer bear the same names and they are no longer in the same skins. The individuals extirpated the tribe subsists. They always have the same faculties from the vagrant to the tramp the race is maintained in its purity. They divine purses in pockets. They sent out watches in fobs. Gold and silver possess an odour for them. There exist ingenuous bourgeois of whom it might be said that they have a stealable heir. These men patiently pursue these bourgeois. They experience the quivers of a spider at the passage of a stranger or of a man from the country. These men are terrible when one encounters them or catches a glimpse of them towards midnight on a deserted boulevard. They do not seem to be men but forms composed of living mists. One would say that they habitually constitute one mass with the shadows that they are in no wise distinct from them that they possess no other soul than the darkness and that it is only momentarily and for the purpose of living for a few minutes a monstrous life that they have separated from the night. What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light. Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up society from below. End of Chapter 4 CHAPTER I Marius, while seeking a girl in a bonnet, encounters a man in a cap. Summer passed, then the autumn. Winter came. Neither Monsieur Leblanc nor the young girl had to gain set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth Marius had but one thought to gaze once more on that sweet and adorable face. He sought constantly. He sought everywhere. He was no longer Marius the enthusiastic dreamer, the firm, resolute, ardent man, the bold defyre of fate, the brain which erected future on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with projects, with pride, with ideas and wishes. He was a lost dog. He fell into a black melancholy. All was over. Work disgusted him. Walking tired him. Vast nature formerly so filled with forms, lights, voices, councils, perspectives, horizons, teachings, now lay empty before him. It seemed to him that everything had disappeared. He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise, but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness, what is the use? He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. Why did I follow her? I was so happy at the mere sight of her. She looked at me was not that immense. She had the air of loving me, was not that everything. I wished to have what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd. It is my own fault, et cetera, et cetera. Kurfe Iraq, to whom he confided nothing, it was his nature, but who made some little guess at everything, that was his nature, had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though he was amazed at it. Then, seeing Marius fall into this melancholy state, he ended by saying to him, I see that you have been simply an animal. Here, come to the chômiere. Once having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at Skô by Kurfe Iraq, Basouay and Grantair, hoping, what a dream, that he might perhaps find her there. Of course, he did not see the one he sought. But this is the place all the same where all lost women are found, grumbled Grantair in and aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, alone through the night. Weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the walnut trees along the road in order to refresh his head. He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly given up to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain, like the wolf in the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love. On another occasion he had an encounter which produced on him a singular effect. He met, in the narrow streets in the vicinity of the Boulevard des Envelides, a man dressed like a working man and wearing a cap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of very white hair. Marius was struck with the beauty of this white hair and scrutinized the man who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in painful meditation. Strange to say, he thought that he recognized Monsieur Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile so far as the cap permitted a view of it, the mean, identical, only more depressed. But why these working man's clothes? What was the meaning of this? What signified that disguise? Marius was greatly astonished when he recovered himself his first impulse was to follow the man, who knows whether he did not hold at last the clue which he was seeking. In any case he must see the man near at hand and clear up the mystery, but the idea occurred to him too late, the man was no longer there. He had turned into some little side street and Marius could not find him. This encounter occupied his mind for three days and then was effaced. After all, he said to himself, it was probably only a resemblance. Marius had not left the Gorbo House. He paid no attention to anyone there. At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants in the house except himself and those genrets whose rent he had once paid without moreover ever having spoken to either father, mother or daughters. The other lodgers had moved away or had died or had been turned out in default of payment. One day during that winter the sun had shown itself a little in the afternoon, but it was the second of February that ancient candle-math day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six-weeks cold spell, inspired Mathieu Lensburg with these two lines that have with justice remained classic. Qu'il lui suis ou qu'il lui serne, lui se rentre dans un sac à verre. Footnote, whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns to his cave. End of footnote. Marius had just emerged from his. Night was falling. It was the hour for his dinner, for he had been obliged to take to dining again, for no infirmities of ideal passions. He had just crossed his threshold where Mambougon was sweeping at the moment as she uttered this memorable monologue. What is there that is cheap now? Everything is dear. There is nothing in the world that is cheap except trouble. You can get that for nothing, the trouble of the world. Marius slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier in order to reach the rue Saint-Jacques. He was walking along with drooping head. All at once he felt someone elbow him in the dusk. He wheeled round and saw two young girls clad in rags, the one tall and slim, the other a little shorter, who were passing rapidly all out of breath in terror and with the appearance of fleeing. They had been coming to meet him, had not seen him, and had jostled him as they passed. Through the twilight Marius could distinguish their faces, their wild heads, their dishevelled hair, their hideous bonnets, their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet. They were talking as they ran, the taller said in a very low voice, the bobbies have come, they came near nabbing me at the half-circle. The other answered, I saw them, I bolted, bolted, bolted. Through this repulsive slang Marius understood that gendarmes or the police had come near apprehending these two children and that the latter had escaped. They plunged among the trees of the boulevard behind him and there created for a few minutes in the gloom a sort of vague white spot then disappeared. Marius had halted for a moment. He was about to pursue his way when his eye lighted on a little grayish package lying on the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked it up. It was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers. Good, he said to himself, those unhappy girls dropped it. He retraced his steps, he called, he did not find them. He reflected that they must already be far away, put the package in his pocket and went off to dine. On the way he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouftar a child's coffin covered with a black cloth resting on three chairs and illuminated by a candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind. Poor mothers, he thought, there is one thing sadder than to see one's children die, it is to see them leading an evil life. Then those shadows, which had varied his melancholy, vanished from his thoughts and he fell back once more into his habitual preoccupations. He fell to thinking once more of his six months of love and happiness in the open air and the broad daylight beneath the beautiful trees of Luxembourg. You knew me, my life has become, he said to himself. Young girls are always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now they are ghouls. End of book 8, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 of book 8 of Les Miserables, volume 3 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bruce Peary. Les Miserables, volume 3 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 8. The Wicked Poor Man. Chapter 3. Quadrafrans. That evening as he was undressing preparatory to going to bed his hand came in contact in the pocket of his coat with the packet which he had picked up on the boulevard. He had forgotten it. He thought that it would be well to open it and that this package might possibly contain the address of the young girls if it really belonged to them and in any case the information necessary to a restitution to the person who had lost it. He opened the envelope. It was not sealed and contained four letters, also unsealed. They bore addresses. All four exhaled a horrible odor of tobacco. The first was addressed to Madame Madame La Marquis de Groucheray the place opposite the Chamber of Deputies number blank. Marius said to himself that he should probably find in it the information which he sought and that moreover the letter being open it was probable that it could be read without impropriety. It was conceived as follows. Madame La Marquis. The virtue of clemency and piety at which most closely unites society. Turn your Christian spirit and cast a look of compassion on this unfortunate Spanish victim of loyalty and attachment to the sacred cause of legitimacy who has given with his blood consecrated his fortune everything to defend that cause and today finds himself in the greatest misery. He doubts not that your honorable person will grant succor to preserve an existence extremely painful for a military man of education and honour full of wounds, counts in advance on the humanity which animates you and on the interest which Madame La Marquis bears to a nation so unfortunate. Their prayer will not be in vain and their gratitude will preserve theirs charming souvenir. My respectful sentiments with which I have the honour to be Madame Don Alvarez, Spanish captain of cavalry, a royalist who has take refuge in France who finds himself on travels for his country and the resources are lacking him to continue his travels. No address was joined to the signature. Marius hoped to find the address in the second letter whose superscription read Madame La Contesse de Montvernier Rue Cassette No. 9 This is what Marius read in it. Madame La Contesse it is an unhappy mother of a family of six children, the last of which is only eight months old. I, sick since my last confinement abandoned by my husband five months ago, having no resources in the world the most frightful indigence. In the hope of Madame La Contesse she has the honour to be Madame with profound respect, Mistress Baliza. Marius turned to the third letter which was a petition like the proceeding he read Monsieur Papeur Jaut, elector, wholesale stocking merchant Rue Saint-Denis on the corner of the Rue Aufer. I permit myself to address you this letter to beg you to grant me the precious favour of your sympathies and to interest yourself in a man of letters who has just sent a drama to the Théâtre Français. The subject is historical and the action takes place in Auvergne in the time of the Empire. The style I think is natural, laconic, and has some merit. There are couplets to be sung in four places. The comic, the serious, the unexpected are mingled in a variety of characters and a tinge of romanticism lightly spread through all the intrigue which proceeds mysteriously and ends after striking alterations in the midst of many beautiful strokes of brilliant scenes. My principal object is to satisfy the desire which progressively animates the man of our century, that capricious and bizarre weather vein which changes at almost every new wind. In spite of these qualities I have reason to fear that jealousy, the egotism of privileged authors may obtain my exclusion from the theatre, for I am not ignorant of the mortifications with which newcomers are treated. Monsieur Pabrejeu, your just reputation as an enlightened protector of men of letters emboldens me to send you my words and to explain our indigent situation to you, lacking bread and fire in this winter season, when I say to you that I beg you to accept the dedication of my drama which I desire to make to you and of all those that I shall make, is to prove to you how great is my ambition to have the honour of sheltering myself under your protection and of adorning my writings with your name. If you deign to honour me with the most modest offering making a piece of verse to pay you my tribute of gratitude, which I shall endeavour to render this piece as perfect as possible will be sent to you before it is inserted at the beginning of the drama and delivered on the stage. To Monsieur and Madame Pabrejeu my most respectful compliments Jean-Fleau, man of letters. P.S. even if it is only Fortissu excuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting that sad motives connected with the toilet do not permit me, alas, to go out. Finally, Mary has opened the fourth letter. The address ran to the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques du Opa. It contained the following lines. Benevolent man, if you deign to accompany my daughter you will behold a miserable calamity and I will show you my certificates. At the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved with a sentiment of obvious benevolence for true philosophers always feel lively emotions. Admit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most cruel need and that it is very painful for the sake of obtaining a little relief to get oneself attested by the authorities as though one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while waiting to have our misery relieved. Destinies are very fatal for several and too prodigal or too protecting for others. I await your presence or your offering if you deign to make one and I beseech you to accept the respectful sentiments with which I have the honour to be, truly magnanimous man, your very humble and very obedient servant, p. Fabontu, dramatic artist. After perusing these four letters, Mary has did not find himself much further advanced than before. In the first place not one of the signers gave his address. Then they seem to have come from four different individuals, Don Alvarez, Mr. Belyzar, the poet Jean Flo and the dramatic artist Fabontu, but the singular thing about these letters was that all four were written by the same hand. What conclusion was to be drawn from this except that they all came from the same person. Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable, the course and yellow paper was the same in all four, the odour of tobacco was the same and although an attempt had been made to vary the style, the same orthographical faults were reproduced with the greatest tranquility and the man of letters Jean Flo was no more exempt from them than the Spanish captain. It was a waste of trouble to try to solve this petty mystery. Had it not been a chance find it would have borne the air of a mystification. Marius was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well and to lend himself to a game which the pavement of the street seemed desirous of playing with him. It seemed to him that he was playing the part of the blind man in blind man's buff between the four letters and that they were making sport of him. Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the young girls whom Marius had met on the boulevard. After all, they were evidently papers of no value. Marius replaced them in their envelope, flung the hole into a corner, and went to bed. About seven o'clock in the morning he had just risen and breakfasted and was trying to settle down to work when there came a soft knock at his door. As he owned nothing he never locked his door unless occasionally, though very rarely, he was engaged in some pressing work. Even when absent he left his key in the lock. He will be robbed, said Mambougon, of what, said Marius? The truth is, however, that he had one day been robbed of an old pair of boots to the great triumph of Mambougon. There came a second knock as gentle as the first. Come in, said Marius. The door opened. What do you want, Mambougon? Asked Marius without raising his eyes for books and manuscripts on his table. A voice which did not belong to Mambougon, replied, Excuse me, sir. It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old man roughened with brandy and liquor. Marius turned round hastily and beheld a young girl. End of book 8, chapter 3 Chapter 4 of book 8 of Les Miserables, volume 3 by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by May Lowe Les Miserables, volume 3 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book 8 The Wicked Poor Man Chapter 4 A Rose in Misery A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer window of the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely opposite the door and illuminated the figure with a waned light. She was a frail, emaciated, slender creature. There was nothing but a chemise and a petticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness. Her girdle was a string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise, a blonde and lymphatic pallor, earth-coloured collarbones, red hands, a half-open and degraded mouth, missing teeth, dull, bold, base eyes. She had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth and the look of a corrupt old woman, fifty years mingled with fifteen. One of those beings which are both feeble and horrible and which cause those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep. Marius had risen for staring in a sort of stupa at this being who was almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse streams. The most heartbreaking thing of all was that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter's day. That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he remembered having seen it somewhere. What do you wish, Madame Waselle? he asked. The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict, here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius. She called Marius by his name. He could not doubt that he was the person whom she wanted, but who was this girl? How did she know his name? Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She entered resolutely, staring with a sort of assurance that made the heart bleed at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holes in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and her thin knees. She was shivering. She held a letter in her hand which she presented to Marius. Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer which sealed it was still moist. The message could not have come from a distance. He read, My amiable neighbour, young man, I have learned of your goodness to me that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days. Four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not deceived in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous heart will melt at this statement, but the desire will subjugate you to be propitious to me by daining to lavish on me a slight favour. I am with a distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity, Jean-Drette. P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius. This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure which had occupied Marius's thoughts ever since the preceding evening, was like a candle in a cellar. This letter was suddenly illuminated. This letter came from the same place as the other four. There was the same writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, the same odour of tobacco. There were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a single signer, the Spanish captain Don Alvarez, the unhappy mistress Balazard, the old comedian Fabanto were all four named Jean-Drette if indeed Jean-Drette himself were named Jean-Drette. Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time and he had had, as we have said, but very rare occasion to see to even catch a glimpse of his extremely mean neighbours. His mind was elsewhere and where the mind is there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more than once to pass the Jean-Drette's in the corridor or on the stairs, but they were mere forms to him. He paid so little heed to them that on the preceding evening he had jostled the Jean-Drette girls on the boulevard without recognising them for it had evidently been they and it was with great difficulty that the one who had just entered his room had awakened in him in spite of disgust and pity a vague recollection of having met her elsewhere. Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbour Jean-Drette in his distress exercised the industry of speculating on the charity of benevolent persons that he procured addresses and that he wrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy and compassionate. Letters which his daughters delivered at their risk and peril for this father had come to such a pass that he risked his daughters. He was playing a game with fate for them as the stake. Marius understood that probably judging from their flight on the evening before from their breathless condition from their terror and from the words of slang which he had overheard these unfortunate creatures were playing some inexplicably sad profession and that the result of the whole was in the midst of human society as it is now constituted two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women a species of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery. Sad creatures without name or sex or age to whom neither good nor evil were any longer possible and who on emerging from childhood have already nothing in this world neither liberty nor virtue nor responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday and are faded today like those flowers let fall in the streets which are soiled with every sort of mire while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her the young girl was wondering back and forth in the garret with the audacity of a spectre she kicked about without troubling herself as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise which was untied and torn fell almost to her waist she moved the chairs about she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode she handled Marius's clothes she rummaged about to see what was there in the corners. Hello! said she you have a mirror and she hummed scraps of vaudeville as though she had been alone frolics and refrains which her horse and guttural voice rendered lugubrious an indescribable constraint weariness and humiliation were perceptible beneath this hardy-hood a frontery is a disgrace nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room and, so to speak flit with the movements of a bird which is frightened by the daylight or which has broken its wing one felt that under other conditions of education and destiny the gay and over-free man of this young girl might have turned out sweet and charming never even among animals does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey only to be seen among men Marius reflected and allowed her to have her way she approached the table ah! said she books a flash pierced her glassy eye she resumed and her accent expressed the happiness which she felt in boasting of something to which no human creature is insensible I know how to read I do she eagerly seized a book which lay open on the table of her agency General Baudouin received orders to take the Chateau which stands in the middle of the plain of Waterloo with five battalions of his brigade she paused ah! Waterloo! I know about that it was a battle long ago my father was there my father has served in the armies we are fine Bonapartists in our house that we are Waterloo was against the English caught up a pen and exclaimed and I know how to write too she dipped her pen in the ink and turning to Marius do you want to see? look here I'm going to write a word to show you and before he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper which lay in the middle of the table the bobbies are here then throwing down the pen there are no faults of orthography you can look we have received an education my sister and I now we were not made here she paused fixed her dull eyes on Marius and burst out laughing saying with an intonation which contained every form of anguish stifled by every form of cynicism bah! and she began to hum these words to a gay heir I am hungry father I have no food I am cold mother I have no clothes I have no clothes she had hardly finished this Mr Marius I do I have a little brother who is a friend of the artists and who gives me tickets sometimes but I don't like the benches in the galleries one is..." There are rough people there sometimes and people who smell bad who smell bad. Then she scrutinized Marius, assumed a singular air, and said, Do you know, Mr. Marius, that you were a very handsome fellow? And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and made her smile and him blush. She stepped up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. You pay no heed to me, but I know you, Mr. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named Father Marble, who lives in the direction of Alstelitz, sometimes when I've been strolling in that quarter. It is very becoming to you to have your hair tumbled thus. She tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes are missing. Marius had retreated gently. Madam Oisele said he, with his cool gravity, I have here a package which belongs to you, I think. Permit me to return it to you." And he held out the envelope containing the four letters. She clapped her hands and exclaimed, We have been looking everywhere for that. Then she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope, saying as she did so, Dior did Dior, how my sister and I have hunted. And it was you who found it. On the boulevard was it not? It must have been on the boulevard. You see, we let it fall when we were running. It was that brat of a sister of mine who was so stupid. When we got home we could not find it anywhere, as we did not wish to be beaten, as that is useless, as that is entirely useless, as it is absolutely useless. We said that we had carried the letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us, Nix. So here they are, those poor letters. And how did you find out that they belonged to me? Ah, yes, the writing. So it was you that we jostled as we passed last night. We couldn't see. I said to my sister, is it a gentleman? My sister said to me, I think it is a gentleman. In the meanwhile, she had unfolded the petition addressed to the benevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques de Haute-Pas. There, said she, this is for that old fellow who goes to Mass. By the way, this is his hour. I'll go and carry it to him. Perhaps he will give us something to breakfast on. Then she began to laugh again, and added, Do you know what it will mean if we get breakfast today? It will mean that we shall have had our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of today, and all that at once, and this morning. Come, parbleur, if you are not satisfied, dogs, burst. This reminded Marius of the wretched girls' errand to himself. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and found nothing there. The young girl went on and seemed to have no consciousness of Marius's presence. I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again. Last winter, before we came here, we lived under the arches of the bridges. We huddled together to keep from freezing. My little sister cried. How melancholy the water is. When I thought of drowning myself, I said to myself, No, it's too cold. I go out alone whenever I choose. I sometimes sleep in the ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see the trees like forks. I see houses. All black and as big as Notre Dame. I fancy that the white walls of the river, I say to myself, Why, there's water there. The stars are like the lamps in the illuminations. One would say that they smoked and that the wind blew them out. I am bewildered as though horses were breathing in my ears. Although it is night, I hear hand organs and spinning machines, and I don't know what all. I think people are flinging stones at me. I flee without knowing wither. Everything whirls and whirls. You feel very queer when you have had no food. And then she stared at him with a bewildered air. By dint of searching and ransacking his pockets, Marius had finally collected five francs and 16 sous. This was all he owned in the world for the moment. At all events he thought, there is my dinner for today and tomorrow we will see. He kept the 16 sous and handed the five francs to the young girl. She seized the coin. Good, said she, the sun is shining. And as though the sun had possessed the property of melting the avalanches of slang in her brain, she went on. Five francs, the shyner, a monarch in this hole. Ain't this fine? You're a jolly thief. I'm your humble servant. Bravo for the good fellows. Two days wine and meat and stew will have a royal feast and a good fill. She pulled her chemise up on her shoulders, made a low bow to Marius, then a familiar sign with her hand, and went towards the door, saying, good morning, sir, it's all right. I'll go and find my old man. As she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode, which was mouldering there amid the dust. She flung herself upon it and bit into it muttering. That's good, it's hard, it breaks my teeth. Then she departed. End of book eight, chapter four.