ed 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 market-gardener''s house, built in the time of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilapidated 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 passer-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 shepherdess 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.