Chapter 190 Volume Six Stars Reflect

Marius was now a handsome young man of medium height, with black and thick hair, a high and intelligent forehead, open nostrils, full of enthusiasm, a sincere and steady bearing, and an indescribably haughty, thoughtful, and innocent appearance in his whole appearance. demeanor.The lines of his profile are all round, but not for this reason lose their strength, and he has that Germanic delicacy which has been transmitted to the French national appearance through Alsace and Lorraine. The utterly blind figure which is so easily recognizable among the Romans and which distinguishes the Leonids from the Eagles.He was now in a period of life in which the deep and the innocent were almost equally divided in thought.In the midst of great difficulty and adversity, he can be completely overwhelmed, turn the key, and he can become extraordinary again.His manner was modest, cold, refined, not very cheerful.As his mouth was attractive, with the reddest lips and whitest teeth in the world, a slight smile could correct the austerity of his whole appearance.Sometimes it was a strange contrast, the high forehead and the sensual smile.His eye sockets are small, but his gaze is far-reaching.

When he was the poorest, he found that young girls often turned their heads to look at him when they saw him passing by. He quickly avoided or hid, feeling very depressed.He thought they were looking at him because of his shabby clothes and were laughing at him, but in fact they were looking at him for his charm, they were dreaming. He kept the misunderstandings with these beautiful passing women in his heart, which made him a withdrawn person.Of them he chose not one, for the excellent reason that he ran away from any of them.He lived aimlessly like this, but Courfeyrac said he was living foolishly.

Courfeyrac also said to him: "You shouldn't have the idea of ​​being a Taoist teacher (they have already used "you" to match each other, which is the inevitable trend of young people's friendship development). My brother, let me give you a piece of advice, don't be old. Get in your books like this, and look at those broken pots. Coquettish women have some advantages, oh, Marius! You will become a fool if you are always so sly and so tender." At other times Courfeyrac met him and said to him: "Good day, Mr. Abbe." After Courfeyrac had said something of the sort to him, Marius avoided the sight of women, young or old, more than ever for a week, especially with Courfeyrac. Rack meet.

In the whole vast universe there are two women whom Marius neither evades nor guards against.To be honest, he would have been surprised if he had been told that they were two women.One is the old woman who cleaned the house for him, because she had a beard on her mouth. Courfeyrac once said: "Marius saw that his maid had grown a beard, so he didn't have to grow it himself." One was a little girl whom he saw often but never looked at. For more than a year Marius had noticed that on a lonely path in the Luxembourg Gardens, along the stone railing of the nursery, a man and a very young girl were almost always sitting side by side close to each other. On a bench on the side of West Street with the fewest tourists, I never change places.Whenever chance, the chance of those walks of those who only look inward, led Marius to this path, that is to say, almost every day, he was sure to meet the same man in the same place. Old and young.The man was about sixty years old, his expression was depressed and serious, and his whole person showed the strong and tired image of a veteran.If he had had a ribbon, Marius would have said: "This is a retired officer." His air was kind but intimidating, and his eyes never rested on anyone else's.He wore a pair of blue trousers, a blue riding jacket, a wide-brimmed hat that seemed to be forever new, a black tie, and a Quaker shirt, that is to say, a drab shirt that was too white to dazzle. .One day, a pretty woman walked by him and said, "What a clean old bachelor." His hair was snow white.

That young girl, when she first accompanied him to sit on this special bench for them, she was a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl, so thin that she was almost ugly, with a clumsy look and no redeeming features, only a pair of eyes maybe It can also be beautiful.But when she raised her eyes to look at people, she always had an air of not knowing how to avoid suspicion, which was not very flattering.She was dressed in the manner of a convent boarder, part old woman, part child, in an ill-fitting black tweed dress.It looks like they are father and daughter. Marius studied the old man who could not be called an old man and the little girl who was not yet grown up for two or three days, and then paid no attention to them.For their part, neither of them seemed to see him at all.They talked quietly, paying no attention to others.The girl kept talking and laughing.The old man didn't speak much, and turned his eyes from time to time, looking at her with an indescribable paternal love.

Marius had acquired the mechanical habit of taking a walk on this path.He was sure to meet them every time. That's what happened: Marius liked best to go all the way to the end of the path, opposite their bench.He walked from one end to the other on the path, passed in front of them, turned back to the original place, and then walked back.Every time he took a walk, he had to go back and forth like this five or six times, and this kind of walk was five or six times a week, but the two people never said hello to him.The man and the young girl, although they seemed to avoid the eyes of others, and perhaps because they wanted to avoid the eyes of others, naturally attracted the attention of half a dozen university students who used to walk along the nursery, some Some are hard-working students who come to take a walk after class, and others come for a walk after playing enough marbles.Courfeyrac belonged to the latter, and had observed them carefully for some time, but felt that the girl was ugly, so he quickly and cautiously avoided it.He shot a moniker as he fled like a Paltese shoots his horse arrow back.Because the little girl's dress and the old man's hair left a deep impression on him, he called the girl "Black Girl" and the old man "Mr. White". No one knew their names, they had no real names, nicknames It was also established.The students used to say: "Ah! Mr. Beaux is on his bench!" Like them, Marius found it convenient to call the unknown gentleman Mr. Beaux.

We imitate them, and for the convenience of narration, we will also call him Mr. Bai. Thus, during the first year, Marius always saw them at the same hour almost every day.He didn't have a bad impression of the man, but he didn't feel very attractive to the girl.