hing new presented itself. It
merely seemed to him, that the sombre space which still remained to be
traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant. He thought that
he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss.

"What!" he repeated to himself, "shall I not see her again before then!"

When you have ascended the Rue Saint-Jacques, left the barrier on one
side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reach
the Rue de la Sante, then the Glaciere, and, a little while before
arriving at the little river of the Gobelins, you come to a sort of
field which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of the
boulevards of Paris, where Ruysdeel would be tempted to sit down.

There is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a green
meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines, from which flutter rags
drying in the wind, and an old market-gardener's house, built in the
time of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer
windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar-trees,
women, voices, laughter; on the horizon the Pantheon, the pole of
the Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Grace, black, squat, fantastic, amusing,
magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests of the
towers of Notre Dame.

As the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cart
or wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour.

It chanced that Marius' solitary strolls led him to this plot of
ground, near the water. That day, there was a rarity on the boulevard,
a passer-by. Marius, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of
the place, asked this passer-by:--"What is the name of this spot?"

The person replied: "It is the Lark's meadow."

And he added: "It was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry."

But after the word "Lark" Marius heard nothing more. These sudden
congealments in the state of revery, which a single word suffices to
evoke, do occur. The entire thought is abruptly condensed around an
idea, and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else.

The Lark was the appellation which had replaced Ursule in the depths of
Marius' melancholy.--"Stop," said he with a sort of unreasoning stupor
peculiar to these mysterious asides, "this is her meadow. I shall know
where she lives now."

It was absurd, but irresistible.

And every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.

CHAPTER II--EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN TH