Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him:
"Shun excess, my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy."
Marius listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the circuit of the basin once more.
At last he directed his course towards "his alley," slowly, and as if with regret. One would have said that he was both forced to go there and withheld from doing so.
He did not perceive it himself, and thought that he was doing as he always did.
On turning into the walk, he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the other end, "on their bench."
He buttoned his coat up to the very top, pulled it down on his body so that there might be no wrinkles, examined, with a certain complaisance, the lustrous gleams of his trousers, and marched on the bench.
This march savored of an attack, and certainly of a desire for conquest.
So I say that he marched on the bench, as I should say:
"Hannibal marched on Rome."
However, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had interrupted none of the habitual preoccupations of his mind and labors.①思①兔①在①線①閱①讀①