off, and there
was no means of overtaking it; what! run after it? Impossible; and
besides, the people in the carriage would assuredly notice an individual
running at full speed in pursuit of a fiacre, and the father would
recognize him. At that moment, wonderful and unprecedented good luck,
Marius perceived an empty cab passing along the boulevard. There was but
one thing to be done, to jump into this cab and follow the fiacre. That
was sure, efficacious, and free from danger.

Marius made the driver a sign to halt, and called to him:--

"By the hour?"

Marius wore no cravat, he had on his working-coat, which was destitute
of buttons, his shirt was torn along one of the plaits on the bosom.

The driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand to Marius, rubbing
his forefinger gently with his thumb.

"What is it?" said Marius.

"Pay in advance," said the coachman.

Marius recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him.

"How much?" he demanded.

"Forty sous."

"I will pay on my return."

The driver's only reply was to whistle the air of La Palisse and to whip
up his horse.

Marius stared at the retreating cabriolet with a bewildered air. For the
lack of four and twenty sous, he was losing his joy, his happiness,
his love! He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected
bitterly, and it must be confessed, with profound regret, on the five
francs which he had bestowed, that very morning, on that miserable girl.
If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have
been born again, he would have emerged from the limbo and darkness, he
would have made his escape from isolation and spleen, from his widowed
state; he might have re-knotted the black thread of his destiny to that
beautiful golden thread, which had just floated before his eyes and
had broken at the same instant, once more! He returned to his hovel in
despair.

He might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised to return in
the evening, and that all he had to do was to set about the matter more
skilfully, so that he might follow him on that occasion; but, in his
contemplation, it is doubtful whether he had heard this.

As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the
other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall skirting the Rue De
la Barriere-des-Gobelins, Jondrette, wrapped in the "philanthropist's"
great-coat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of disquieting
aspe