2.M.6.4. BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY
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 Courfeyrac, and
pretended
not to see him. Courfeyrac, on his return home, said
to his friends: —
"I have just met Marius' new hat and new coat, with
Marius inside them. He was going to pass an examination,
no doubt. He looked utterly stupid."
On arriving at the Luxembourg, Marius made the 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 mould, 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 M. 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 complaisance,
the lustrous gleams of his trousers, and marched on the bench.
This march savored 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 labors. At that moment, he was thinking that the
Manuel du Baccalaureat 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 Moliere being analyzed
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
any one 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 a 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 cannon of the
place, — he felt his heart beat wildly. As on the preceding
day,
she wore her damask gown and her crape 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. Francois de Neufchateau
put, as though it were his own, at the head of his
edition of
Gil 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 again beginning his march towards
that bench which was surrounded by an aureole. But be 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 M. le Blanc.
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 M. 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.