Page 1194 - les-miserables

CHAPTER II

LUX FACTA EST

During the second year, precisely at the point in this his-
tory which the reader has now reached, it chanced that this
habit of the Luxembourg was interrupted, without Mari-
us himself being quite aware why, and nearly six months
elapsed, during which he did not set foot in the alley. One
day, at last, he returned thither once more; it was a serene
summer morning, and Marius was in joyous mood, as one
is when the weather is fine. It seemed to him that he had
in his heart all the songs of the birds that he was listening
to, and all the bits of blue sky of which he caught glimpses
through the leaves of the trees.
He went straight to ‘his alley,’ and when he reached the
end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that well-
known couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was
the same man; but it seemed to him that it was no longer the
same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and
beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines
of a woman at the precise moment when they are still com-
bined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure
and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these

1194 Les Miserables