l glances, had, naturally, caused some
attention on the part of the five or six students who strolled along
the Pepiniere from time to time; the studious after their lectures,
the others after their game of billiards. Courfeyrac, who was among the
last, had observed them several times, but, finding the girl homely, he
had speedily and carefully kept out of the way. He had fled, discharging
at them a sobriquet, like a Parthian dart. Impressed solely with
the child's gown and the old man's hair, he had dubbed the daughter
Mademoiselle Lanoire, and the father, Monsieur Leblanc, so that as no
one knew them under any other title, this nickname became a law in the
default of any other name. The students said: "Ah! Monsieur Leblanc is
on his bench." And Marius, like the rest, had found it convenient to
call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc.

We shall follow their example, and we shall say M. Leblanc, in order to
facilitate this tale.

So Marius saw them nearly every day, at the same hour, during the first
year. He found the man to his taste, but the girl insipid.

CHAPTER II--LUX FACTA EST

During the second year, precisely at the point in this history which the
reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of the Luxembourg was
interrupted, without Marius himself being quite aware why, and nearly
six months elapsed, during which he did not set foot in the alley. One
day, at last, he returned thither once more; it was a serene summer
morning, and Marius was in joyous mood, as one is when the weather is
fine. It seemed to him that he had in his heart all the songs of the
birds that he was listening to, and all the bits of blue sky of which he
caught glimpses through the leaves of the trees.

He went straight to "his alley," and when he reached the end of it he
perceived, still on the same bench, that well-known couple. Only, when
he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that
it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall
and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a
woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the
most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which
can be expressed only by these two words,--"fifteen years." She had
wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed
made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush,
an agitated whiteness, an