received them. "To whom can they go?"
thought Courfeyrac. "Whence can this come to me?" Thenardier asked
himself.

Moreover, Marius was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through a
trap-door once more. He no longer saw anything before him; his life
was again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for a
moment beheld very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl whom
he loved, the old man who seemed to be her father, those unknown beings,
who were his only interest and his only hope in this world; and, at the
very moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them, a
gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty and
truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. No
conjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name that he thought
he knew. It certainly was not Ursule. And the Lark was a nickname. And
what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding from
the police? The white-haired workman whom Marius had encountered in the
vicinity of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable
that that workingman and M. Leblanc were one and the same person. So he
disguised himself? That man had his heroic and his equivocal sides. Why
had he not called for help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not,
the father of the young girl? Was he, in short, the man whom Thenardier
thought that he recognized? Thenardier might have been mistaken. These
formed so many insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detracted
nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg.
Heart-rending distress; Marius bore a passion in his heart, and night
over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not
stir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had lost the
instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame which
burns us lights us also a little, and casts some useful gleams without.
But Marius no longer even heard these mute counsels of passion. He never
said to himself: "What if I were to go to such a place? What if I were
to try such and such a thing?" The girl whom he could no longer call
Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what direction
he should seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words;
absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog. To see her once again;
he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it.

To crown all, his poverty had returned. He fe