I have bowels of compassion. I said to myself hastily: ‘Here’s a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out. Attention. Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He’s not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!’ At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ink, cast his yellow eyes round the audience room, and repeated for the third time: ‘Marius Pontmercy!’ I replied: ‘Present!’ This is why you were not crossed off.”

“Monsieur!⁠—” said Marius.

“And why I was,” added Laigle de Meaux.

“I do not understand you,” said Marius.

Laigle resumed:⁠—

“Nothing is more simple. I was close to the desk to reply, and close to the door for the purpose of flight. The professor gazed at me with a certain intensity. All of a sudden, Blondeau, who must be the malicious nose alluded to by Boileau, skipped to the letter L. L is my letter. I am from Meaux, and my name is Lesgle.”

“L’Aigle!” interrupted Marius, “what fine name!”

“Monsieur, Blondeau came to this fine name, and called: ‘Laigle!’ I reply: ‘Present!’ Then Blondeau gazes at me, with the gentleness of a tiger, and says to me: ‘If you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle.’ A phrase which has a disobliging air for you, but which was lugubrious only for me. That said, he crossed me off.”

Marius exclaimed:⁠—

“I am mortified, sir⁠—”

“First of all,” interposed Laigle, “I demand permission to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of deeply felt eulogium. I will assume that he is dead. There will be no great change required in his gauntness, in his pallor, in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say: ‘Erudimini qui judicatis terram. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplinae, the bloodhound of the password, the angel of the roll-call, who was upright, square, exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God crossed him off as he crossed me off.’ ”

Marius resumed:⁠—

“I am very sorry⁠—”

“Young man,” said Laigle de Meaux, “let this serve you as a lesson. In future, be exact.”

“I really beg you a thousand pardons.”

“Do not expose your neighbor to the danger of having his name erased again.”

“I am extremely sorry⁠—”

Laigle burst out laughing.

“And I am delighted. I was on the brink of becoming a lawyer. This erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more stage. Here is my erasure all ready for me. It is to you that I am indebted for it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend to pay a solemn call of thanks upon you. Where do you live?”

“In this cab,” said Marius.

“A sign of opulence,” retorted Laigle calmly. “I congratulate you. You have there a rent of nine thousand francs per annum.”

At that moment, Courfeyrac emerged from the café.

Marius smiled sadly.

“I have paid this rent for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it; but there is a sort of history attached to it, and I don’t know where to go.”

“Come to my place, sir,” said Courfeyrac.

“I have the priority,” observed Laigle, “but I have no home.”

“Hold your tongue, Bossuet,” said Courfeyrac.

“Bossuet,” said Marius, “but I thought that your name was Laigle.”

“De Meaux,” replied Laigle; “by metaphor, Bossuet.”

Courfeyrac entered the cab.

“Coachman,” said he, “hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques.”

And that very evening, Marius found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques side by side with Courfeyrac.

III

Marius’ Astonishments

In a few days, Marius had become Courfeyrac’s friend. Youth is the season for prompt welding and the rapid healing of scars. Marius breathed freely in Courfeyrac’s society, a decidedly new thing for him. Courfeyrac put no questions to him. He did not even think of such a thing. At that age, faces disclose everything on the spot. Words are superfluous. There are young men of whom it can be said that their countenances chatter. One looks at them and one knows them.

One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly addressed this interrogation to him:⁠—

“By the way, have you any political opinions?”

“The idea!” said Marius, almost affronted by the question.

“What are you?”

“A democrat-Bonapartist.”

“The gray hue of a reassured rat,” said Courfeyrac.

On the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius at the Café Musain. Then he whispered in his ear, with a smile: “I must give you your entry to the revolution.” And he led 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, although he was silent and grave, he was, nonetheless, both winged and armed.

Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, 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 fashion. 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 uneasiness, and without