cent out watches in fobs. Gold and silver possess an odor for them.
There exist ingenuous bourgeois, of whom it might be said, that they
have a "stealable" air. These men patiently pursue these bourgeois. They
experience the quivers of a spider at the passage of a stranger or of a
man from the country.

These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches a glimpse
of them, towards midnight, on a deserted boulevard. They do not seem
to be men but forms composed of living mists; one would say that they
habitually constitute one mass with the shadows, that they are in
no wise distinct from them, that they possess no other soul than the
darkness, and that it is only momentarily and for the purpose of living
for a few minutes a monstrous life, that they have separated from the
night.

What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light. Light in
floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up society from
below.

BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN

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

Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc nor the
young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth,
Marius had but one thought,--to gaze once more on that sweet and
adorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere; he found
nothing. He was no longer Marius, the enthusiastic dreamer, the firm,
resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain which erected
future on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with projects,
with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost dog. He fell into a
black 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 seemed
to him that everything had disappeared.

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

He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. "Why did I follow her? I
was so happy at the mere sight of her! She looked at me; was not that
immense? She had the air of loving me. Was not that everything? I wished
to have, what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd. It is
my own fault," etc., etc. Courfeyrac, to whom he confided nothing,--it
was his nature