m thought
him in love with her.

He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street.

He encountered Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Odeon, and said to
him: "Come and dine with me." They went off to Rousseau's and spent
six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At
dessert, he said to Courfeyrac. "Have you read the paper? What a fine
discourse Audry de Puyraveau delivered!"

He was desperately in love.

After dinner, he said to Courfeyrac: "I will treat you to the play."
They went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin to see Frederick in l'Auberge des
Adrets. Marius was enormously amused.

At the same time, he had a redoubled attack of shyness. On emerging
from the theatre, he refused to look at the garter of a modiste who was
stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac, who said: "I should like to
put that woman in my collection," almost horrified him.

Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast at the Cafe Voltaire on the
following morning. Marius went thither, and ate even more than on the
preceding evening. He was very thoughtful and very merry. One would
have said that he was taking advantage of every occasion to laugh
uproariously. He tenderly embraced some man or other from the provinces,
who was presented to him. A circle of students formed round the table,
and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State which was uttered
from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then the conversation fell upon the
faults and omissions in Guicherat's dictionaries and grammars. Marius
interrupted the discussion to exclaim: "But it is very agreeable, all
the same to have the cross!"

"That's queer!" whispered Courfeyrac to Jean Prouvaire.

"No," responded Prouvaire, "that's serious."

It was serious; in fact, Marius had reached that first violent and
charming hour with which grand passions begin.

A glance had wrought all this.

When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is
more simple. A glance is a spark.

It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His fate was entering
the unknown.

The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are
tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every
day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A
moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come,
dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is
over. The wheels hold you fast, the