course, you are acquainted with that street?"

"What street?"

"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."

"I have no idea of the name of that street," replied M. Fauchelevent, in
the most natural manner in the world.

The response which bore upon the name of the street and not upon the
street itself, appeared to Marius to be more conclusive than it really
was.

"Decidedly," thought he, "I have been dreaming. I have been subject to
a hallucination. It was some one who resembled him. M. Fauchelevent was
not there."'

CHAPTER VIII--TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND

Marius' enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his mind
other pre-occupations.

While the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting the date fixed
upon, he caused difficult and scrupulous retrospective researches to be
made.

He owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his father's
account, he owed it on his own.

There was Thenardier; there was the unknown man who had brought him,
Marius, back to M. Gillenormand.

Marius endeavored to find these two men, not intending to marry, to
be happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were these debts of
gratitude not discharged, they would leave a shadow on his life, which
promised so brightly for the future.

It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind
him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to obtain
a quittance from the past.

That Thenardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact that he
had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thenardier was a ruffian in the eyes of all
the world except Marius.

And Marius, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field of Waterloo,
was not aware of the peculiar detail, that his father, so far as
Thenardier was concerned was in the strange position of being indebted
to the latter for his life, without being indebted to him for any
gratitude.

None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded in discovering
any trace of Thenardier. Obliteration appeared to be complete in
that quarter. Madame Thenardier had died in prison pending the trial.
Thenardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two remaining of that
lamentable group, had plunged back into the gloom. The gulf of the
social unknown had silently closed above those beings. On the surface
there was not visible so much as that quiver, that trembling, those
obscure concentric circles which announce that something has fallen in,
and that the p