in the Lark's meadow more than in Courfeyrac's lodgings. That
was his real address: Boulevard de la Sante, at the seventh tree from
the Rue Croulebarbe.

That morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on
the parapet of the River des Gobelins. A cheerful sunlight penetrated
the freshly unfolded and luminous leaves.

He was dreaming of "Her." And his meditation turning to a reproach, fell
back upon himself; he reflected dolefully on his idleness, his paralysis
of soul, which was gaining on him, and of that night which was growing
more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he no longer
even saw the sun.

Nevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas which
was not even a monologue, so feeble had action become in him, and he
had no longer the force to care to despair, athwart this melancholy
absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him,
beneath him, on both banks of the river, the laundresses of the Gobelins
beating their linen, and above his head, the birds chattering and
singing in the elm-trees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty, the
careless happiness of the leisure which has wings; on the other, the
sound of toil. What caused him to meditate deeply, and almost reflect,
were two cheerful sounds.

All at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar
voice saying:--

"Come! Here he is!"

He raised his eyes, and recognized that wretched child who had come to
him one morning, the elder of the Thenardier daughters, Eponine; he knew
her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier,
two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take. She had
accomplished a double progress, towards the light and towards distress.
She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely
entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older now, the holes
were larger, the tatters more sordid. It was the same harsh voice,
the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and
vacillating glance. She had besides, more than formerly, in her face
that indescribably terrified and lamentable something which sojourn in a
prison adds to wretchedness.

She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through
having gone mad from the contagion of Hamlet's madness, but because she
had slept in the loft of some stable.

And in spite of it all, she was beautiful. What a star art tho