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.
BOOK SECOND.--EPONINE
CHAPTER II
EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS
Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been so.
In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Javert had not taken the prisoner prisoner.
The assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this personage, who had been so precious a capture for the ruffians, would be no less fine a prize for the authorities.
And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.
Another opportunity of laying hands on that "devil's dandy" must be waited for.
Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered Eponine as she stood on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her off, preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter rather than Schinderhannes with the father.
It was well that he did so. He was free.
As for Eponine, Javert had caused her to be seized; a mediocre consolation.
Eponine had joined Azelma at Les Madelonettes.
And finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost.
It was not known how this had been effected, the police agents and the sergeants "could not understand it at all."
He had converted himself into vapor, he had slipped through the handcuffs, he had trickled through the crevices of the carriage, the fiacre was cracked, and he had fled; all that they were able to say was, that on arriving at the prison, there was no Claquesous.