CHAPTER I--MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN INA CAP

  Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc nor theyoung girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth,Marius had but one thought,--to gaze once more on that sweet andadorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere; he foundnothing. He was no longer Marius, the enthusiastic dreamer, the firm,resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain which erectedfuture on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with projects,with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost dog. He fell into ablack 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 seemedto him that everything had disappeared.

  He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longertook pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to himin a whisper, he replied in his darkness: "What is the use?"

  He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. "Why did I follow her? Iwas so happy at the mere sight of her! She looked at me; was not thatimmense? She had the air of loving me. Was not that everything? I wishedto have, what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd. It ismy own fault," etc., etc. Courfeyrac, to whom he confided nothing,--itwas his nature,--but who made some little guess at everything,--that washis nature,--had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though hewas 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 Chaumière."

  Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowedhimself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, andGrantaire, 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 anaside. 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 singingcreatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close tohim, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of thewalnut-trees, along the road, in order to refresh his head.

  He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly givenup to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain like the wolf inthe trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love.

  On another occasion, he had an encounter which produced on him asingular effect. He met, in the narrow streets in the vicinity of theBoulevard des Invalides, a man dressed like a workingman and wearing acap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of verywhite hair. Marius was struck with the beauty of this white hair, andscrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed inpainful meditation. Strange to say, he thought that he recognized M.Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile, so far as the cappermitted a view of it, the mien identical, only more depressed. But whythese workingman's clothes? What was the meaning of this? What signifiedthat disguise? Marius was greatly astonished. When he recovered himself,his first impulse was to follow the man; who knows whether he did nothold at last the clue which he was seeking? In any case, he must see theman near at hand, and clear up the mystery. But the idea occurred to himtoo late, the man was no longer there. He had turned into some littleside street, and Marius could not find him. This encounter occupiedhis mind for three days and then was effaced. "After all," he said tohimself, "it was probably only a resemblance."