Chapter 212 Ten state carriage pricing: two francs per hour

All the details of all this had passed through Marius's eyes, but in fact he saw nothing.His eyes were fixed entirely on the young girl, and his heart, from the moment she first stepped into the poor house, had, so to speak, seized and engulfed him entirely.All the time she was there he had lived that life of admiration which brought sensual perception to a complete standstill and brought the whole soul to focus on one point.He was looking up, not to the girl, but to that radiance with its satin cloak and velvet cap.Sirius would not dazzle him so much in this room. When the girl unwrapped the package and showed the clothes and blankets, she kindly asked about her mother's condition, and the younger sister's injury with pity. He watched her every movement and eavesdropped on her voice at all times.He already knew her eyes, her forehead, her face, her figure, the way she walked, but he didn't know her voice yet.Once in the Luxembourg Gardens, he seemed to catch the sound of a few words she said, but he didn't fully hear them.He would rather lose ten years of life to listen to her voice, to leave a little bit of this music in his soul.But all was lost in Jondrette's obnoxious stream of nonsense and his trumpet-like cry.This aroused real anger in Marius' ecstatic heart.His eyes were fixed on her.What he couldn't imagine was that among the group of scruffy bastards in this ugly devil's lair, it would really be that goddess-like person.He seemed to see a hummingbird among the toads.

When she went out, his only thought was to follow her closely and never leave her until he found her place, at least not to lose her again after such a chance encounter.He jumped down from the chest of drawers and took up his hat.As he touched the latch with his hand and was about to go out, another consideration stopped him.The aisle is very long, the stairs are steep, and Jondrette talks too much. Mr. Bai must have not gotten into the car. If he is in the aisle, or on the stairs, or at the gate, he turns around and sees him He would be surprised that Lu Si was in this house, and would think of ways to avoid him, which would mess things up again.what to do?Wait a minute?But the car may have left while waiting.For a moment Marius lost his mind.Finally, resolving to take the risk, he left his room.

There was no one in the aisle, so he rushed to the stairs.There was no one on the stairs either.He hurried down to the main road, just in time to see a carriage turning into the Rue Petite Bankers, and heading back to Paris. Marius pursued in that direction.When he got to the corner of the main road, he saw the carriage rushing down the Rue Mouffard again. The carriage had gone too far and could not catch up. What should we do?follow?It's useless, besides, others will definitely see someone running after him from the car, and his father will recognize that it is him who is chasing him.Just at this moment, with unexpected chance, Marius saw an empty cab passing by on the road.There was only one way, to hop into this wagon and drive that one.This method is practical and not dangerous.

Marius motioned the driver to stop, and cried: "According to the clock!" Marius had no tie at the time, and was wearing his old overalls with a few buttons missing, and his shirt was torn at a fold on the breast. The coachman stopped, and with one eye closed, he stretched out his left hand to Marius, rubbing his thumb and forefinger lightly against him. "What?" said Marius. "Pay first," said the coachman. Only then did Marius remember that he had only sixteen sous with him. "How much?" he asked. "Forty sous." "I'll pay later."

The coachman answered only by blowing on his lips the tune of "La Paris," and lashed his horse. Marius could only stare blankly at the carriage going forward.For want of twenty-four sous he had lost his joy, his happiness, his love!He is in the dark again!He had seen her, and now he was blind again!He remembered with great anguish, and, I should say, regretted deeply, that he should not have given the poor girl five francs that morning.If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, reborn, out of the bewildering darkness, out of the solitude, the melancholy, the life of a bachelor, and he had tied the black thread of his fate to the thread that floated before his eyes. The beautiful golden thread that was touched for a while, but broke again.He came home dejectedly.

He should have thought that Mr. Bai had agreed to come back in the evening, and this time he had to be prepared to follow up, but he was staring at that time, and hardly heard this. Just as he was about to climb the stairs, he suddenly saw Jondrette, wrapped in a "philanthropist" coat, on the other side of the road, under the less-traveled wall along the Rue de Coppelins, with a man of that sort. Suspicious-looking people, who might be called "door thieves," were talking, people of suspicious countenance, ambiguous language, and menacing air, who often slept during the day, leading to the suspicion that they worked in the dark.

The two men stood under the whirling snow, huddled together, talking, and did not move. The police in the city would have noticed it, but Marius was not very vigilant. But, although he was thinking of the sad things in his heart, he couldn't help saying to himself that the doorman who was talking to Jondrette looked a lot like a certain Bonjou, Spring, Bignaille, because Courfeyrac had once pointed out this man to him once before, saying that he was a rather dangerous fellow who haunted this part of the country at night.We have already seen the name of this man in the previous book.This Bonjour, also called Spring or Bignaille, later committed several crimes and became a notorious villain.At this time, he was just a little famous villain.To this day he is a historical figure among thieves and murderers.He founded a school in the last years of the previous dynasty.In the Lion's Groove in Raffles Prison, when it was getting dark in the evening, it was the subject of whispered conversations in small groups.The prison has a dung ditch, which leads outside through the wall, and above the wall is the road for patrols, from which the thirty prisoners in the unprecedented great escape in 1843 came from. The man who escaped from the ditch is also above the stone slabs of this ditch, and people can see his name: Bangzhuo, which was boldly engraved on the wall when he tried to escape from prison.In 1832, the police had begun to pay attention to him, but at that time he had not officially opened.