2.M.8.1. MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A
MAN IN A CAP
SUMMER passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither
M. Leblanc nor the young girl had again 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 found nothing.
He was no longer Marius, the enthusiastic dreamer, the
firm, resolute, ardent man, the bold defier 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, counsels,
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," etc., etc. Courfeyrac, 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 Chaumiere."
Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius
had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by
Courfeyrac,
Bossuet, and Grantaire, 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 Grantaire in an 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 Invalides, a man dressed like a
workingman 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
M. Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile, so far
as the cap permitted a view of it, the mien identical, only more
depressed. But why these workingman'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."