BOOK SECOND
　　　　　　Eponine




I. THE FIELD OF THE LARK



Marius had seen the unexpected denouement of the ambuscade upon the track of which he had put Javert;
but hardly had Javert left the old ruin, carrying away his prisoners in three coaches, when Marius also slipped
out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Marius went to Courfeyrac's. Courfeyrae was no
longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter; he had gone to live in the Rue de la Verrerie
"for political reasons;" this quarter was one of those in which the insurrection was fond of installing itself
in those days. Marius said to Courfeyrac: "I have come to sleep with you." Courfeyrac drew a mattress
from his bed, where there were two, laid it on the floor, and said: "There you are."

The next day, by seven o'clock in the morning, Marius went back to the tenement, paid his rent, and what
was due to Ma'am Bougon, had his books, bed, table, bureau, and his two chairs loaded upon a hand-cart, and
went off without leaving his address, so that when Javert came back in the forenoon to question Marius a-
bout the events of the evening, he found only Ma'am Bougon, who answered him, "moved!"


Ma'am Bougon was convinced that Marius was somehow an complice of the robbers seized the night before. "Who
would have thought so?" she exclaimed among the portresses of the quarter. "a young man who had so much
the appearance of a girl!"

Marius had two reasons for his prompt removal. The first was that he now had a horror of that house, where
he had seen. so near at hand, and in all its most repulsive and most ferocious development, a social deform-
ity perhaps still more hideous than the rich man: the evil poor. The second was, that he did not wish to
figure in the trial which would probably follow, and be brought forward to testify against Thenardier.

Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had not retained, had been frightened and had escaped,
or, perhaps, hid In; even returned home at the time of the ambuscade: still he made some effort to find him,
but he did not succeed.

A month rolled away, then another. Marius was still with Coufeyrac. He knew from a young attorney, an hab-
itual attendant in the ante-rooms of the court, that Thenardier was in solitary confinement. Every Monday
Marius sent to the clerk of La Force five francs for Thenardier.

Marius, having now no money, borrowed the five francs of Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that
he had borrowed money. This periodical five francs was a double enigma, to Courfeyrac who furnished them,
and to Thenardier who received them. "To whom can it go?" thought Courfcyrac. "Where can it come from?'
Thenardier asked himself.


Marius, moreover, was in sore affliction. Everything had relapsed into darkness. He no longer saw anything
before him; his life was again plunged into that mystery in which he had been blindly groping. He had for a
moment seen close at hand in that obscurity, the young girl whom he loved, the old man who seemed her fa-
ther, these unknown beings who were his only interest and his only hope in this world; and at the moment
he had thought to hold them fast, a breath had swept all those shadows away. Not a spark of certainty or
truth had escaped even from that most fearful shock. No conjecture was possible. He knew not even the name
which he had thought he knew. Certainly it was no longer Ursula. And the Lark was a nickname. And what should
he think of the old man? Was he really hiding from the police? The white-bearded working-man who Marius had
met in the neighbourhood of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now became probable that that working-man
and M. Leblanc were the same man. He disguised himself then? This man had heroic sides and equivocal sides.
Why had he not called for help? why had he escaped? was he, yes or no, the father of the young girl? Final-
ly, was he really the man whom Thenardier thought he recognised? Could Thenardier have been mistaken? So
many problems without issue. All this, it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young
girl of the Luxembourg. Bitter wretchedness; Marius had a passion in his heart, and night over his eyes.
He was pushed. he was drawn, and he could not stir. All had vanished, except love. Even of love, he had
lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame which consumes us, illumines us
also a little. and sheds some useful light without. Those vague promptings of passion, Marius no longer
even heard. Never did he say to himself: Suppose I go there? Suppose I try this? She whom-he could no
longer call Ursula was evidently somewhere; nothing indicated to Marius the direction in which he must
seek for her. His whole life was now resumed in two words: an absolute uncertainty in an impenetrable
mist. To see her again, Her; he aspired to this continually; he hoped for it no longer.

To crown all, want returned. He felt close upon him, behind him, that icy breath. During all these torments,
and now for a long time, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labour;
it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, sometimes high,
of the brain at work and produces in the mind a soft and fresh vapour which corrects the too angular contours
of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals where and there, binds them together, and blunts the sharp cor-
ners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns. Woe to the brain worker who allows himself to fall
entirely from thought into reverie! He thinks that he shall rise again easily, and he says dot, after all,
it is the same thing. An error!

Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound
poison with nourishment.

Marius, we remember, had begun in this way. Passion supervened, and had at last precipitated him into bottom-
less and aimless chimeras. One no longer goes out of the house except to walk and dream. Sluggish birth. A
tumultuous and stagnant gulf. And, as work diminishes, necessities increase. This is the law. Man, in the
dreamy state, is naturally prodigal and luxurious; the relaxed mind cannot lead a severe life. There is, in
this way of living, some good mingled with the evil, for if the softening be fatal, the generosity is whole-
some and good. But the poor man who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost. His resources dry
up, his necessities mount up.

Fatal slope, down which the firmest and the noblest are drawn, as well as the weakest and the most vicious,
and which leads to one of these two pits, suicide or crime.

By continually going out for reverie, there comes a day when you go to throw yourself into the water.

The excess of reverie produces men like Escousse and Lebras.

Marius was descending this slope with slow steps, his eyes fixed upon her whom he saw no more. What we have
here written seems strange, and still it is true. The memory of an absent being grows bright in the darkness of
the heart; the more it has disappeared the more radiant it is; the despairing and gloomy soul sees that light in
its horizon; star of the interior night. She, this was all the thought of Marius. He dreamed of nothing else; he
felt confusedly that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat and that his new coat was becoming an old
coat, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that his boots were wearing out, that is to
say that his life was wearing out, and he said to himself, "If I could only see her again before I die!"

A single sweet idea remained to him, that she had loved him, that her eyes had told him so, that she did not
know his name but that she knew his soul, and that, perhaps, where she was, whatever that mysterious place
might be, she loved him still. Who knows but she was dreaming of him as he was dreaming of her? Sometimes in
the inexplicable hours, such as every heart has which loves, having reasons for sorrow only, yet feeling nev-
ertheless a vague thrill of joy, he said to himself: It is her thoughts which come to me! Then he added, my
thoughts reach her also, perhaps!

This illusion, at which he shook his head the moment afterwards, succeeded notwithstanding in casting some
ray into his soul, which occasionally resembled hope. From time to time, especially at that evening hour
which saddens dreamers most of all, he dropped upon a quire of paper, which he devoted to that purpose,
the purest, the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries with which love filled his brain. He called
that "writing to her."

We must not suppose that his reason was disordered. Quite the contrary. He had lost the capability of work,
and of moving firmly towards a definite end, but he was more clear-sighted and correct than ever. Marius
saw, in a calm and real light, although a singular one, what was going on under his eyes, even the most in-
different facts of men; he said the right word about everything with a sort of honest languor and candid
disinterestedness. His judgment, almost detached from hope, soared and floated aloft.

In this situation of mind nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, and he saw at every moment the bottom
of life, humanity, and destiny. Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love
and of grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the hearts of men by this double light,
has seen nothing, and knows nothing of the truth.

The soul which loves and which suffers is in the sublime state.

The days passed, however, one after another, and there was nothing new. It seemed to him, merely, that
the dreary space which remained for him to run through was contracting with every instant. He thought that
he already saw distinctly the brink of the bottomless precipice.

"What!" he repeated to himself, "shall I never see her again before!"

If you go up the Rue Saint Jacques, leave the barriere at your side, and follow the old interior boulevard
to the left for some distance, you come to the Rue de In Sante, then La Glaciere, and, a little before
reaching the small stream of the Gobelins, you find a sort of field, which is, in the long and monotonous
circuit of the boulevards of Paris, the only spot where Ruysdacl would be tempted to sit down.

That indescribable something from which grace springs is there, a green meadow crossed by tight drawn
ropes, on which rags are drying in the wind, an old market-garden farmhouse built in the time of Louis
XIII., with its large roof grotesquely pierced with dormer windows, broken palisade fences, a small pond
between the poplars, women, laughter, voices; in the horizon the Pantheon, the tree of the Deaf-mutes,
the Val de Grace, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, magnificent, and in the background the severe square
summits of the towers of Notre Dame.

As the place is worth seeing, nobody goes there. Hardly a cart or a waggon once in a quarter of an hour.

It happened one day that Marius' solitary walks conducted bins to this spot near this pond. That day
there was a rarity on the boulevard, a passer. Marius, vaguely struck with the almost sylvan charm of
the spot, asked this traveller: "What is the name of this place?"

The traveller answered: "It is the Field of the Lark."

And he ailed: "It was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry."

But after that word, "the Lark," Marius had heard nothing more. There are suck sudden congelations in
the dreamy state, which a word is sufficient to produce. The whole mind condenses abruptly about one
idea, and ceases to he capable of any other perception.

The Lark was the appellation which, in the depths of Marius' melancholy, had replaced Ursula. "Yes,"
said he in the kind of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mysterious asides, "this is her field. I
shall learn here where she lives."

This was absurd, but irresistible.

And he came every day to this Field of the Lark.



II. EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS



Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau tenement had seemed complete but it was not so.

In the first place, and this was his principal regret, Jarerl not made the prisoner prisoner. The vic-
tim who slips away Is more suspicious than the assassin and it was probable that this personage, so
precious a capture to the bandits, would be a not less valuable prize to the authorities.

And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.

He must await another occasion to lay his hand upon "that devilish dandy." Montparnasse, in fact, hav-
ing met Eponine, who was standing sentry under the trees of the boulevard, had led her away, liking ra-
ther to be Nemorin with the daughter than to be Schinderhannen with the father. Well for him that
he did so. He was free. As to Eponine, Javert "nabbed" her: trifling consolation. Eponine. had rejoined
Azelma at Les Madelonnettes.

Finally, on the trip from the Gorbeau tenement to La Forte are of the principal prisoners, Claquesous,
had been lost: Nobody knew how it was done, the officers and sergeants "didn't understand it, he had
changed into vapour, he had glided out of the handcuffs, he fr had slipped through the cracks of the
carriage, the fiacre was leaky, and had fled; nothing could be said, save that on reaching the prison
there was no Claquesous. There were either fairies or police in the matter. Had Claquesous melted away
into the darkness like a snowflake in the water? Was there some secret connivance of the officers?
Did this man belong to the double enigma of disorder and of order? Was he concentric with infraction
and with repression? Had this sphinx forepaws in crime and hindpaws in authority? Javert in no wise
accepted these combinations, and his hair rose on end in view of such an exposure; but his squad con-
tained other inspectors be-sides himself, more deeply initiated, perhaps, than himself, although his
subordinates, in the secrets of the prefecture, and Claquesous was so great a scoundrel that he might
be a very good officer. To be on such intimate juggling relations with darkness is excellent for brig-
andage and admirable for the police. There are such two-edged rascals. However it might be, Claque-
sous was lost, and was not found again. Javert appeared more irritated than astonished at it.

As to Marius, "that dolt of a lawyer," who was "probably frightened," and whose name Javert had forgot-
ten, Javert cared little for him. Besides he was a lawyer, they are always found again. But was he a
lawyer merely?

The trial commenced.

The police judge thought it desirable not to put one of the men of the Patron-Mmette band into solitary
confinement, hoping for some blabbing. This was Billion, the long-haired man of the Rue du Pet it Banquier.
He was left an the Charlemagne court, and the watchmen kept their eyes upon him.

This name, Brujon, is one of the traditions of La Force. In the hideous court called the Batiment Neuf,
which the administration named Court Saint Bernard, and which the robbers named La Fosse aux Lions,
upon that wall covered with filth and with mould, which rises on the left to the height of the roofs, near an
old rusty iron door which leads into the former chapel of the ducal hotel of La Force, now become a dorm-
itory for brigands, a dozen years ago there could still be seen a sort of bastille coarsely cut in the stone
with a nail, and below it this signature:

BRUJON, 1811.

The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.

This last, of whom only a glimpse was caught in the Gorbeau ambuscade, was a sprightly young fellow, very
cunning and very adroit, with a flurried and plaintive appearance. It was on account of this flurried air
that the judge had selected him. thinking that he would be of more use in the Charlemagne court than in a
solitary cell.

Robbers do not cease operations because they are in the hands of justice. They are not disconcerted so eas-
ily. Being in prison for one crime does not prevent the commencement of another crime. They are artists who
have a picture in the parlour, and who labour none the less for that on a new work in their studio.

Brujon seemed stupefied by the prison. He was sometimes seen whole hours in the Oharlemagne court, stand-
ing near the sutler's window. and staring like an idiot at that dirty list of prices of supplies which began
with: garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with: cigars, cinq centimes. Or instead, he would pass his time in trem-
bling and making his teeth chatter, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring if one of the twenty-eight
beds in the fever ward was not vacant.

Suddenly, about the second fortnight in February 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that sleepy fellow,
had sent out, through the agents of the house, not in his own name,. but in the name of three of his com-
rades, three different commissions, which had cost him in all fifty sous, a tremendous expense which at-
tracted the attention of the prison brigadier.

He inquired into it, and by consulting the price list of commissions hung up in the convicts waiting-room,
he found that the fifty sous were made up thus: three commissions; one to the Pantheon, ten sous; one to
the Val de Grace, fifteen sous; and one to the Barriere de Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This was the dearest
of the whole list. Now the Pantheon, the Val de Grace, and the Barriers de Grenelle happened to be the res-
idences of three of the most dreaded prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers alias Bizarro, Glorieux, a liber-
ated convict, and Barre Carosse, upon whom this incident fixed the eyes of the police. They thought the div-
ined that these men were affiliated with Patron Minette, two of whose chiefs, Bake and Gueulemer, were
secured. It was supposed that Brujon's sages sent, not addressed to any houses, but to persons who are
waiting for them in the street, must have been notices of some pro' jected crime. There were still other
indications; they arrested chit three prowlers, and thought they had foiled Brujon 's machination whatever
it was.

About a week after these measures were taken, one night, a watchman, who was watching the dormitory in
the lower part of the New Building, at the instant of putting his chestnut into the chestnut box--this is
the means employed to make sure that the watchmen do their duty with exactness; every hour a chestnut must
fall into every box nailed on the doors of the dormitories--a watchman then saw through the peep-hole of
the dormitory, Brujon sitting up in his bed and writing something by the light of the reflector. The war-
den entered, Brujon was put into the dungeon for a month, but they could not find what he had written.
The police knew nothing more.

It is certain, however, that the next day "a postillion" was thrown from the Charlemagne court into the
Fosse aux Lions, over the five-story building which separates the two courts.

Prisoners call a ball of bread artistically kneaded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the
roof of a prison, from one court to the other, a postillion. Etymology: over England; from one county to
the other; into Ireland. This ball falls in the court. He who picks it up opens it, and finds a letter in
it addressed to some prisoner in the court. If it be a convict who finds it. he hands the letter to its
destination; if it be a warden, or one of those secretly bribed prisoners who are called sheep in the pri-
sons and foxes in the galleys, the letter is carried to the office and delivered to the police.

This time the postillion reached its address, although he for whom the message was destined was then
in solitary. Its recipient was none other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron Minute.

The postillion contained a paper rolled up, on which there were only these two lines:

"Babet, there is an affair on hand in the Rue Plumet. A grating in a garden."

This was the thing that Brujon had written in the night.

In spite of spies, both male and female. Babet found means to send the letter from La Force to La Salpe-
triere to "a friend" of his who was shut up there. This girl in her turn transmitted the letter to anoth-
er whom she knew, named Magnon, who was closely watched by the police, but not yet arrested. This Magnon,
whose name the reader has already seen, had some relations with the Thenardiers which will be related
hereafter, and could, by going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between La Salp6triOre and Les Madelon-
nettes.

It happened just at that very moment, the proofs in the prosecution of Thenardier failing in regard to
his daughters, that Eponine and Azelma were released.

When Eponine came out, flagman, who was watching for her at the door of Les Madelonnettes, handed her
Brujon's note to Babet, charging her to find out about the affair.

Eponine went to the Rue Plumet. reconnoitred the grating and the garden, looked at the house, spied,
watched, and, a few days after, carried to Magoon, who lived in the Rue Clocheperce, a bis-cuit, which
Magoon transmitted to!Sabot's mistress at La Sal-patriare. A biscuit, in the dark symbolism of the pri-
sons, signifies: nothing to do.

So that in less than a week after that, Babet and Brujon, meeting on the way from La Force, as one was
going "to examination." and the other was returning from it: "Well," asked Brujon, "the Rue P.?" "Bisc-
uit," answered Babet.

This was the end of that foetus of crime, engendered by Brujon in La Force.

This abortion, however, led to results entirely foreign to Brujon's programme. We shall see them.

Often, when thinking to knot one thread, we tie another.



III. AN APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF



MARIUS now visited nobody, but he sometimes happened to meet Father Mabeuf.

While Marius was slowly descending those dismal steps, which one might call cellar stairs, and which
lead into places without light where we hear the happy walking above us, M. Mabeuf also was descending.

The Flora of Cauteretz, had absolutely no sale more. The experiments upon indigo had not succeeded in
the little garden of Austerlitz, which was very much exposed. M. Mabeuf could only cultivate a few rare
plants which like moisture and shade. He was not discouraged, however. He had obtained a bit of ground
in the Jardin des Plantes, with a good exposure, to carry on, "at his own can." his experiments upon
indigo. For this he had put the plates of his Flora into pawn. He had reduced his breakfast to two
eggs, and he left one of them for his old servant, whose wages he had not pW for fifteen months. And
often his breakfast was his only meal. He laughed no more with his childlike laugh, he had become mor-
ose, and he now received no visits. Marius was right in not thinking to come. Sometimes, at the hour
when M. Mabeuf went to the Jar& des Plantes, the old man and the young man met on the Boulevard de
l'Hopital. They did not speak, but sadly nodded their heads. It is a bitter thing that there should
be a moment when misery unbinds! They had been two friends, they were two passers:

The bookseller, Royol, was dead. M. Mabeuf now knew only his books, his garden, and his indigo; those
were to him the three forms which happiness, pleasure, and hope had taken. This fed his life. He said
to himself: "When I have made my blue balls, I shalt be rich, I will take my plates out of pawn, I will
bring my Flora into vogue through charlatanism, by big payments and by announcements in the journals,
and I will buy, I well know where, a copy of Pierre de Medine's Art de Naviguer, with woodcuts, edition of
1559" In the meantime he worked all day on his indigo bed, and at night turned turned home to water
his garden, and read his books. M. Mabeuf was at this time very nearly eighty years old.

One night he saw a singular apparition.

He had come home while it was still broad day. Mother Plutarch' whose health was poor, was sick and
gone to bed. He had dined on a bone on which a little meat was left, and a bit of bread which be had
found on the kitchen table, and had sat down on a block of stone, which took the place of a scat in
his garden.

Near this seat there rose, in the fashion of the old orchard-gardens, a sort of hut, in a ruinous
condition, of joists and boards, a warren on the ground floor, a fruit-house above. There were no
rabbits in the warren, but there were a few apples in the fruit-house A remnant of the winter's store.

M. Mabeuf had begun to look through, reading by the way, with the help of his spectacles, two books
which enchanted him, and in which he was even absorbed, a more serious thing at his age. His natural
timidity fitted him, to a certain extent, to accept superstitions. The first of these books was the
famous treatise of President Delancre, On the inconstancy of Demons, the other was the quarto of
Mutor de la Rubaudiere, On the devils of Vauvert and the goblins of La Bieve. This last book inter-
ested him the more, since his garden was one of the spots formerly haunted by goblins. Twilight was
beginning to whiten all above and to blacken all below. As Ito read, Father Mabeuf was looking over
the book which he held in his hand, at his plants, and among others at a magnificent rhododendron
which was one of his consolations; there had been four days of drought, wind, and sun, without a
drop of rain; the stalks bent over, the buds hung down, the leaves were falling, they all needed to
be watered; the rhododendron especially was a sad sight. Father liabeuf was one of those to whom
plants have souls. The old man had worked all day on his indigo bed, he was exhausted with fatigue,
he got up nevertheless, put his books upon the bench, and walked, bent over and with tottering steps,
to the well, but when In had grasped the main, he could not even draw it far enough to unhook it.
Then he turned and looked with a look of anguish towards the sky which was filling with stars.

The evening had that serenity which buries the sorrows of man under a strangely dreary yet eternal
joy. The night promised to be as dry as the day had been.

"Stars everywhere:" thought the old man; "not the smallest cloud!not a drop of water."

And his held, which had been raised for a moment, fell back upon his breast.

He raised it again and looked at the sky, murmuring:

"A drop of dew! a little pity!"

He endeavoured once more to unhook the well-chain, but he could not.

At this moment he heard a voice which said

"Father Mabeuf, would you like to have me water your garden?"

At the same time he heard a sound like that of a passing deer in the hedge, and he saw springing
out of the shrubbery a sort of tall, slender girl. who come and stood before him, looking boldly
at him.

She had less the appearance of a human being than of a form which had just been born of the twi-
light.

Before Father Mabeuf, who was easily startled, and who was, as we have said, subject to fear, could
answer a word, this being, whose motions seemed grotesquely abrupt in the obscurity, had unhooked
the chain, plunged in and drawn out the bucket, and filled the watering-pot, and the goodman saw
this apparition with bare feet and a ragged skirt running along the beds, distributing life about
her. The sound of the water upon the leaves filled Father Malted's soul with transport. It seemed
to him that now the rhododendron was happy

When the first bucket was emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She watered the whole
garden.

Moving thus along the walks, her outline appearing entirely black. shaking her torn shawl over her
long angular arms, she seemed something like a bat.

When she had ended, Father Mabeuf approached her with tears in his eyes, and laid his hand upon her
forehead.

"God will bless you," said he, "you are an angel, since you care for flowers."

"No," she answered, "I am the devil, but that is all the same to me."

The old man exclaimed, without waiting for and without hearing her answer:

"What a pity that I am so unfortunate and so poor, and that I cannot do anything for you!"

"You can do something," said she.

"What?'

"Tell me where M. Marius lives?'

The old man did not understand.

"What Monsieur Marius?"

He raised his glassy eye and appeared to be looking for something that had vanished.

"A young man who used to come here."

Meanwhile M. Mabeuf had fumbled in his memory.

"Ah yes,--" he exclaimed, "I know what you mean. Listen, now! Monsieur Marius--the Baron Marius
Pontmercy, yes! he lives--or rather he does not live there now--ah! well, I don't know.".

While he spoke, he had bent over to tie up a branch of the rhododendron, and he continued:

"Ah! I remember now. He passes up the boulevard very often, and goes toward ki Glacidre, Rue
Crouleharba The Field of the Lark. Go that way. Hc isn't lewd to find."

When M. Mabeuf rose up, there was nobody there; the gir haddisappeared.

He was decidedly a little frightened.

"Really," thought he, "if my garden was not watered, I should think it was a spirit."

An hour later when he had gone to bed, this returned to him, and, as he was falling asleep, at
that troubled moment when thought, like that fabulous bird which changes itself into fish to pass
through the sea, gradually takes the form of dream to pass through sleep, he said to himself con-
fusedly:

"Indeed, this much resembles what RubaudiOre relates of the goblins. Could it be a goblin?"



IV. AN APPARITION TO MARIUS



A FEW days after this visit of a "spirit" to Father Mabeuf, one morning--it was Monday, the day on
which Marius borrowed the hundred-sous piece of Courfeyrac for Thenardier--Marius had put this hun-
dred-sous piece into his pocket, and before carrying it to the prison office, he had gone "to take
a little walk," hoping that it would enable hiin to work on his return, It was eternally so. As soon
as he rose in the morning, he sat down before a book and a sheet of paper to work upon some trans-
lation; the work he had on hand at that time was the translation into French of a celebrated quarrel
between two Germans, the controversy between Gans and Savigny he took Savigny, he took Gans, read
four lines, tried to write one of them, could not, saw a star between his paper and his eyes, and
rose from his chair, saying: "I will go out. That will put me in trim."

And he would go to the Field of the Lark.

There he saw the star more than ever, and Savigny and Gans less than ever.

He returned, tried to resume his work, and did not succeed; be found no means of tying a single one
of the broken threads in his brain; then he would say: "I will not go out tomorrow. It prevents my
working." Yet he went out every day.

He lived in the Field of the Lark rather than in Courfeyrae's room. This was his real address: Bou-
levard de la Santo, seventh tree from the Rue Croukbarbe.

That morning, he had left this seventh tree, and sat down on the bank of the brook of the Gobelins.
The bright sun was gleaming through the new and glossy leaves.

He was thinking of "Her!" And his dreaminess, becoming reproachful, fell back upon himself; he
thought sorrowfully of the idleness, the paralysis of the soul, which was growing up within him,
and of that night which was thickening before him hour by hour so rapidly that he had already
ceased to see the sun,

Meanwhile, through this painful evolution of indistinct ideas which were not even a soliloquy, so lunch
had action become en-{trilled within him, and he no longer had even strength todevelop his grief--
through this melancholy distraction, the sensations of the world without reached him. He heard
behind and below him, on both banks of the stream, the washerwomen of the Gobelins beating their
linen; and over his head, the birds chattering and singing in the elms. On the one hand the
sound of liberty, of happy unconcern, of winged leisure; on the other, the sound of labour. A
thing which made him muse profoundly, and almost reflect, these two joyous sounds.

All at once, in the midst of his ecstasy of exhaustion, he heard voice which was known to him,
say:

"Ah! there he is!"

He raised his eyes and recognised the unfortunate child who had come to his room one morning,
the elder of the Thenardier girls, Eponine; he now knew her name. Singular fact, she had become
more wretched and more beautiful, two steps which seemed impossible. She had accomplished a
double progress towards the light, and towards distress. Shc was barefooted and in. rags, as on the
day when she had so resolutely entered his room; only her rags were two months older; the
holes were larger, the tatters dirtier. It was the same rough voice, the same forehead tanned
and wrinkled by exposure; the same free, wild, and wandering gaze. She had, in addition to her
former expression, that mixture of fear and sorrow which the experience of a prison adds to
misery. ,..

She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia from having gone mad through
the contagion of Hamlet's madness. but because she had slept in some stable loft.

And with all this, she was beautiful. What a star thou art, O youth!

Meantime, she had stopped before Marius with an expression of pleasure upon her livid face,
and something which resembled smile.

She stood for a few seconds, as if she could not speak.

"I have found you then?" said she at last. "Father Mabrof was right; it was on this boulevard.
How I have looked for you! if you only knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight!
They have let me out! seeing that there was nothing against me and then I was not of the age
of discernment. It lacked two months. Oh! how I have looked for you! it is six weeks now. You
don't live down there any longer?"

"No," said Marius.

"Oh! I understand. On account of the affair. Such scares are disagreeable, You have moved. What!
why do you wear such as old hat as that? a young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you
know, Monsieur Marius? Father Mabeuf calls you Baron Marius, I forget what more. It's not true that
you are a baron? barons are old fellows, they go to the Luxembourgm front of the chateau where
there is the most sun, they read the Quotidienne for a sou. I went once for a letter to it baron's like
that. He was more than a hundred years old. But tell me, where do you live now?"

Marius did not answer.

"Ah!" she continued, "you have a hole in your shirt. I must mend it for you."

She resumed with an expression which gradually grew darker: "You don't seem to be glad to see me?"

Marius said nothing; she herself was silent for a moment, then exclaimed:

"But if I would. I could easily make you glad!"

"How?" inquired Marius. "What does that mean?"

"Ah! you used to speak more kindly to me!" replied she. "Well, what is it that you mean?"

She bit her lip; she seemed to hesitate, as if passing through a kind of interior struggle. At last,
she appeard to decide upon her course.

"So much the worse, it makes no difference. You look sad, I want you to be glad. But promise me
that you will laugh. I want to see you laugh and hear you say: Ah, well! that is good. Poor Monsieur
Marius!you know, you promised me that you would give me whatever I should ask--'

"Yes! but tell me!"

She looked into Marius' eyes and said:

"I have the address."

Marius turned pale. All his blood flowed back to his heart.

"What address?"

"The address you asked me for."

She added as if she were making an effort:

"The address--you know well enough!"

"Yes!" stammered Marius.

"Of the young lady!"

Having pronounced this word, she sighed deeply.

Marius sprang up from the bank on which he was sitting, and took her wildly by the hand.

"Oh! come! show me the way, tell me! ask me for whatever you will! Where is it?"

"Come with me," she answered. "I am not sure of the street and the number: it is away on the other
side from here, but I know the house very well. I will show you."

She withdrew her hand and added in a tone which would have pierced the heart of an observer, but
which did not even touch the intoxicated and transported Marius:

"Oh! how glad you are!"

A cloud passed over Marius' brow. He seized Eponine by the arm:

"Swear to me one thing!"

"Swear?" said she, "what does that mean? All! you want me to swear?"

And she laughed.

"Your father! promise rne, Eponine! swear to me that you will not give this address to your father

She turned towards him with an astounded appearance.

"Eponine! How do you know that my name is Eponine?"

"Promise what I ask you."

But she did not seem to understand.

"That is nice! you called me Eponine!"

Marius caught her by both arms at once.

"But answer me now, on heaven's name! pay attention to what I am saying, swear to me that you will not
give the address you know to your father!"

'My father?" said she. "Oh! yes, my father! Do not be concerned on his account. He is in solitary. Be-
sides, do I busy myself about my father!"

"But you don't promise me!" exclaimed Marius.

"Let me go then!" said she, bursting into a laugh, "how you shake me Yes! yes! I promise you that! I
swear to you that! What is it to me? I won't give the address to my father. There! will that do? is
that it?"

"Nor to anybody?" said Marius.

"Nor to anybody."

"Now," added Marius, "show me the way."

"Right away?"

"Right away."

"Come. Oh! how glad he is!" said she

After a few steps, she stopped.

"You follow too near me, Monsieur Marius. Let me go forward and follow me like that, without seeming
to. It won't do for a fineyoung man, like you, to be seen with a woman like me."

No tongue could tell all that there was in that word, woman, thus uttered by this child.

She went on a few steps, and stopped again; Marius rejoined her. She spoke to him aside and without
turning:

"By the way, you know you have promised me something?"

Marius fumbled in his pocket. He had nothing in the world but the five francs intended for Thenardier.
He took it, and put it into Eponine's hand.

She opened her fingers and let the piece fall on the ground, and, looking at him with a gloomy look:

"I don't want your money," said she.