deas. His task finished, he returns to
ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his feet set
in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes
in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful,
attentive, serious, content with little, kindly; and he thanks God for
having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich
man lacks: work, which makes him free; and thought, which makes him
dignified.

This is what had happened with Marius. To tell the truth, he inclined a
little too much to the side of contemplation. From the day when he had
succeeded in earning his living with some approach to certainty, he had
stopped, thinking it good to be poor, and retrenching time from his work
to give to thought; that is to say, he sometimes passed entire days
in meditation, absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute
voluptuousness of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus propounded
the problem of his life: to toil as little as possible at material
labor, in order to toil as much as possible at the labor which is
impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to
cast the rest to the infinite. As he believed that he lacked nothing, he
did not perceive that contemplation, thus understood, ends by becoming
one of the forms of idleness; that he was contenting himself with
conquering the first necessities of life, and that he was resting from
his labors too soon.

It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature, this
could only be a transitory state, and that, at the first shock against
the inevitable complications of destiny, Marius would awaken.

In the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever Father
Gillenormand thought about the matter, he was not practising, he was
not even pettifogging. Meditation had turned him aside from pleading. To
haunt attorneys, to follow the court, to hunt up cases--what a bore! Why
should he do it? He saw no reason for changing the manner of gaining his
livelihood! The obscure and ill-paid publishing establishment had come
to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too much
labor, as we have explained, and which sufficed for his wants.

One of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I think, offered
to take him into his own house, to lodge him well, to furnish him with
regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred francs a year. To be
well lodged