Chapter I—the Lark’s Meadow

Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whose track he had set Javert; but Javert had no sooner quitted the building, bearing off his prisoners in three hackney-coaches, than Marius also glided out of the house. It was only nine o’clock in the evening. Marius betook himself to Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter, he had gone to live in the Rue de la Verrerie “for political reasons”; this quarter was one where, at that epoch, insurrection liked to install itself. Marius said to Courfeyrac: “I have come to sleep with you.” Courfeyrac dragged a mattress off his bed, which was furnished with two, spread it out on the floor, and said: “There.”

At seven o’clock on the following morning, Marius returned to the hovel, paid the quarter’s rent which he owed to Ma’am Bougon, had his books, his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a hand-cart and went off without leaving his address, so that when Javert returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning Marius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Ma’am Bougon, who answered: “Moved away!”

Ma’am Bougon was convinced that Marius was to some extent an accomplice of the robbers who had been seized the night before. “Who would ever have said it?” she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, “a young man like that, who had the air of a girl!”