Les Misérables, page 239
CHAPTER I--THE LARK'S MEADOW
Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whosetrack he had set Javert; but Javert had no sooner quitted the building,bearing off his prisoners in three hackney-coaches, than Marius alsoglided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Mariusbetook himself to Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac was no longer the imperturbableinhabitant of the Latin Quarter, he had gone to live in the Rue de laVerrerie "for political reasons"; this quarter was one where, at thatepoch, insurrection liked to install itself. Marius said to Courfeyrac:"I have come to sleep with you." Courfeyrac dragged a mattress off hisbed, 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 Ma'am Bougon, had his books,his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on ahand-cart and went off without leaving his address, so that when Javertreturned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioningMarius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Ma'amBougon, who answered: "Moved away!"
Ma'am Bougon was convinced that Marius was to some extent an accompliceof the robbers who had been seized the night before. "Who would everhave said it?" she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, "a youngman like that, who had the air of a girl!"
Marius had two reasons for this prompt change of residence. The firstwas, that he now had a horror of that house, where he had beheld, soclose at hand, and in its most repulsive and most ferocious development,a social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible than the wickedrich man, the wicked poor man. The second was, that he did not wishto figure in the lawsuit which would insue in all probability, and bebrought in to testify against Thénardier.
Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, wasafraid, and had fled, or perhaps, had not even returned home at the timeof the ambush; he made some efforts to find him, however, but withoutsuccess.
A month passed, then another. Marius was still with Courfeyrac. He hadlearned from a young licentiate in law, an habitual frequenter of thecourts, that Thénardier was in close confinement. Every Monday,Marius had five francs handed in to the clerk's office of La Force forThénardier.
As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs fromCourfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowedmoney. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyracwho lent and to Thénardier who received them. "To whom can they go?"thought Courfeyrac. "Whence can this come to me?" Thénardier askedhimself.
Moreover, Marius was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through atrap-door once more. He no longer saw anything before him; his lifewas again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for amoment beheld very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl whomhe 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 thevery moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them, agust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty andtruth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. Noconjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name that he thoughthe knew. It certainly was not Ursule. And the Lark was a nickname. Andwhat was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding fromthe police? The white-haired workman whom Marius had encountered in thevicinity of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now seemed probablethat that workingman and M. Leblanc were one and the same person. So hedisguised himself? That man had his heroic and his equivocal sides. Whyhad 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 Thénardierthought that he recognized? Thénardier might have been mistaken. Theseformed so many insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detractednothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg.Heart-rending distress; Marius bore a passion in his heart, and nightover his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could notstir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had lost theinstincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame whichburns us lights us also a little, and casts some useful gleams without.But Marius no longer even heard these mute counsels of passion. He neversaid to himself: "What if I were to go to such a place? What if I wereto try such and such a thing?" The girl whom he could no longer callUrsule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what directionhe 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 tohim, on his heels. In the midst of his torments, and long beforethis, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous thandiscontinued work; it is a habit which vanishes. A habit which is easyto 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 labor, which are sometimessevere, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which correctsthe over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there,binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too muchdreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain-worker who allows himself tofall entirely from thought into revery! He thinks that he can re-ascendwith equal ease, and he tells himself that, after all, it is the samething. Error!
Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. Toreplace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food.
Marius had begun in that way, as the reader will remember. Passion hadsupervened and had finished the work of precipitating him into chimæraswithout object or bottom. One no longer emerges from one's self exceptfor the purpose of going off to dream. Idle production. Tumultuous andstagnant gulf. And, in proportion as labor diminishes, needs increase.This is a law. Man, in a state of revery, is generally prodigal andslack; the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds.
There is, in that mode of life, good mingled with evil, for ifenervation is baleful, generosity is good and healthful. But the poorman who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost. Resourcesare exhausted, needs crop up.
Fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well asthe most feeble and most vicious are drawn, and which ends in one of twoholds, suicide or crime.
By dint of going outdoors to think, the day comes when one goes out tothrow one's self in the water.
Excess of revery breeds men like Escousse and Lebras.
Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyesfixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written seemsstrange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being kindles inthe darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more itbeams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon;the star of the inner night. She--that was Marius' whole thought. Hemeditated of nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that his old coatwas becoming an impossible coat, and that his new coat was growing old,that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that hisboots were giving out, and he said to himself: "If I could but see heronce again before I die!"
One sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, that herglance had told him so, that she did not know his name, but that she didknow his soul, and that, wherever she was, however mysterious the place,she still loved him perhaps. Who knows whether she were not thinking ofhim as he was thinking of her? Sometimes, in those inexplicable hourssuch as are experienced by every heart that loves, though he had noreasons 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 headded: "Perhaps my thoughts reach her also."
This illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, wassufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which at times resembled hope,into his soul. From time to time, especially at that evening hour whichis the most depressing to even the dreamy, he allowed the purest, themost impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries which filled his brain,to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this"writing to her."
It must not be supposed that his reason was deranged. Quite thecontrary. He had lost the faculty of working and of moving firmlytowards any fixed goal, but he was endowed with more clear-sightednessand rectitude than ever. Marius surveyed by a calm and real, althoughpeculiar light, what passed before his eyes, even the most indifferentdeeds and men; he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sortof honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, whichwas almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and soaredon high.
In this state of mind nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, andevery moment he was discovering the foundation of life, of humanity, andof destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God hasgiven a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not viewedthe things of this world and the heart of man under this double lighthas 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. Itmerely seemed to him, that the sombre space which still remained to betraversed by him was growing shorter with every instant. He thought thathe 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 Saint-Jacques, left the barrier on oneside and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reachthe Rue de la Santé, then the Glacière, and, a little while beforearriving at the little river of the Gobelins, you come to a sort offield which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of theboulevards of Paris, where Ruysdael would be tempted to sit down.
There is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a greenmeadow traversed by tightly stretched lines, from which flutter ragsdrying in the wind, and an old market-gardener's house, built in thetime of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormerwindows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar-trees,women, voices, laughter; on the horizon the Panthéon, the pole ofthe Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Grâce, black, squat, fantastic, amusing,magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests of thetowers of Notre Dame.
As the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cartor wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour.
It chanced that Marius' solitary strolls led him to this plot ofground, near the water. That day, there was a rarity on the boulevard,a passer-by. Marius, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty ofthe 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 Ivry."
But after the word "Lark" Marius heard nothing more. These suddencongealments in the state of revery, which a single word suffices toevoke, do occur. The entire thought is abruptly condensed around anidea, and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else.
The Lark was the appellation which had replaced Ursule in the depths ofMarius' melancholy.--"Stop," said he with a sort of unreasoning stuporpeculiar to these mysterious asides, "this is her meadow. I shall knowwhere she lives now."
It was absurd, but irresistible.
And every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.
