Page 1462 - les-miserables

Paris, where Ruysdeel would be tempted to sit down.
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 mar-
ket-gardener’s house, built in the time of Louis XIII., with
its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilap-
idated 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 pass-
er-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 shep-
herdess 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 Ur-
sule in the depths of Marius’ melancholy.—‘Stop,’ said he
with a sort of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mys-

1462 Les Miserables