Page 1128 - les-miserables

him to the hall of the Friends of the A B C. He presented
him to the other comrades, saying this simple word which
Marius did not understand: ‘A pupil.’
Marius had fallen into a wasps’-nest of wits. However, al-
though he was silent and grave, he was, none the less, both
winged and armed.
Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to solilo-
quy, and to asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little
fluttered by this covey of young men around him. All these
various initiatives solicited his attention at once, and pulled
him about. The tumultuous movements of these minds at
liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl. Sometimes, in
his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had difficulty
in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of
literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fash-
ion. He caught glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did
not place them in proper perspective, he was not altogether
sure that it was not chaos that he grasped. On abandoning
his grandfather’s opinions for the opinions of his father, he
had supposed himself fixed; he now suspected, with uneasi-
ness, and without daring to avow it to himself, that he was
not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be dis-
placed anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his
brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting. He almost suf-
fered from it.
It seemed as though there were no ‘consecrated things’
for those young men. Marius heard singular propositions
on every sort of subject, which embarrassed his still timid
mind.

1128 Les Miserables