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 he 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. Leblanc.
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.
CHAPTER V—DIVERS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA’AM BOUGON
On the following day, Ma’am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma’am Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have found out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,—Ma’am Bougon observed, with stupefaction, that M. Marius was going out again in his new coat.
He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than his bench midway of the alley.
He seated himself there, as on the preceding day, surveying from a distance, and clearly making out, the white bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light.
He did not stir from it, and only went home when the gates of the Luxembourg closed.
He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they had quitted the garden by the gate on the Rue de l’Ouest.
Later on, several weeks afterwards, when he came to think it over, he could never recall where he had dined that evening.
On the following day, which was the third, Ma’am Bougon was thunderstruck. Marius went out in his new coat.
“Three days in succession!” she exclaimed.
She tried to follow him, but Marius walked briskly, and with immense strides; it was a hippopotamus undertaking the pursuit of a chamois.
She lost sight of him in two minutes, and returned breathless, three-quarters choked with asthma, and furious.
“If there is any sense,” she growled, “in putting on one’s best clothes every day, and making people run like this!”
Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg.
The young girl was there with M. Leblanc.
Marius approached as near as he could, pretending to be busy reading a book, but he halted afar off, then returned and seated himself on his bench, where he spent four hours in watching the house-sparrows who were skipping about the walk, and who produced on him the impression that they were making sport of him.
A fortnight passed thus.
Marius went to the Luxembourg no longer for the sake of strolling there, but to seat himself always in the same spot, and that without knowing why.
Once arrived there, he did not stir.
He put on his new coat every morning, for the purpose of not showing himself, and he began all over again on the morrow.
She was decidedly a marvellous beauty.
The only remark approaching a criticism, that could be made, was, that the contradiction between her gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry, gave a rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming.
CHAPTER VI—TAKEN PRISONER