2.M.8.2. TREASURE TROVE
MARIUS had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention
to any one there.
At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other
inhabitants
in the house, except himself and those Jondrettes 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 2d of February, that ancient
Candlemas day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six
weeks' cold spell, inspired Mathieu Laensberg with these two
lines, which have with justice remained classic: —
Qu'il luise ou qu'il luiserne,
L'ours rentre dans en sa caverne.
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, alas! oh, infirmities of ideal passions!
He had just crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon
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 some one 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 livid 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 Mouffetard, 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.
"How
gloomy 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."