About: Dak reads Les Misérables and recaps it here, so that she may better retain the information. Things not to expect: deep literary analysis. Things to expect: Spoilers. All the spoilers
Marius: Book 6; Crazy in Love
Guess what? Now that we’ve spent five entire chapters learning everything we could ever possibly want to know about Marius and his Pontmercy ways right down to his toast eating habits, it is time to describe what he actually looks like! This might have come in handy before the mental picture already distilled in our brains, but oh well.
Our boy, Marius, has grown into a fine handsome looking fellow with jet black hair, a refined but not too chiseled jawline and passionate nostrils. Great. Now I’m imagining he looks like a young Judd Nelson. Thanks, book!
Marius is still having problems in the area of human interactions. He dares not even glance at a woman, because he think’s they’re all just having a good laugh at him when they look his way because of his old worn out poor people clothes. This isn’t really the case though, he’s just a certified hottie. Let me just take a moment to profess my love for book Marius and his introverted, socially awkward ways.
Well, being an observant BFF, Courfeyrac notices the way he acts about women (directly in opposition to the way Courfeyrac is by the by. Let’s just say he gets around.) He tries to hook Marius up, pokes fun at the kid for his lady troubles, and sometimes calls him Abbé. You know, because clergymen are supposed to be celibate and have no impure thoughts, I’m assuming is the joke here. Of course, Marius takes Courfeyrac’s words to heart instead of laughing it off as he probably should. Whenever this happens it makes him shrink even further into himself, avoiding women even more than usual and also Courfeyrac. Especially Courfeyrac.
There are only two girls in the entirety of Paris that Marius isn’t terrified of. One of them is the old bearded landlady/housekeeper who sweeps his floor. This gives Courfeyrac opportunity to poke more fun by saying she wears a beard so Marius doesn’t have to. The other is a girl of around thirteen or fourteen or so that he stumbled upon in a remote corner of the Luxembourg Gardens when he first started his garden strolling. She was there every day sitting on a bench with a man presumed to be her father.
Marius might have thought the father was a former military man by the way he carried himself. This man was around sixty, white hair, always wore a new hat and had a kind expression, but not one that would invite people to talk to them. As for the girl, she was small and homely and wore the uniform of a person who lives at a convent. Gee, I wonder who these mysterious people could be. Let us stroke our chins and ponder.
Marius always observed them on his walks even though they paid him no attention. The girl always was the one talking; the dad not so much. Marius began an unconscious routine of passing by this bench on his walks at least six times a walk, five or six times a week. Of course, he never spoke to them. Perhaps because these two seemed to be trying to avoid attention. Marius isn’t the only one strolling around Luxembourg though. The father and daughter, by sitting there all the time, had attracted the attentions of a couple roving packs of students, Courfeyrac included.
Courfeyrac didn’t think much of the girl, but to give her the nickname of Mlle. Lanoir and the dad M. Leblanc. (Miss Black and Mr. White on account of her dress and his hair.) This nickname stuck. Marius developed a liking for M. Leblanc, but he doesn’t think much about the girl.
After two years of the same routine, every day walks at the Luxembourg passing by the father and daughter team, Marius stops going there. There’s no reason for this. He just takes a break and doesn’t return for six entire months. When he does, this homely girl has grown up into a beautiful young lady. Brown hair with golden highlights, blushing skin, blue eyes. Marius can’t believe it’s the same girl. He wouldn’t if she wasn’t sitting there with M. Leblanc as usual.
They regard each other with complete indifference, and Marius resumes his laps around the gardens because that is his habit.
One fateful day they actually managed to make eye contact on one of these walks of his, and that’s it. It’s all over from there. He goes home that night and realizes just how worn down and unpresentable his clothes are. Really? Just now? I thought his raggedy old duds were already an ongoing contributor to his crippling insecurity. The next morning Marius puts on his good suit. He runs into Courfeyrac on his way to the Luxembourg and has the good sense to avoid him. He’s spotted anyway, and gets made fun of again behind his back. Courfeyrac thinks Marius’s new look is “Idiotic” and he must be going to some really important exam dressed like that. Why are these two friends again? They are totally an odd couple. Hah! I’d imagine that Marius would be closest in temperament to Jean Prouvaire. They could totally just hang out quietly and avoid looking at women together.
Anyway, this new wardrobe is the start of…I don’t even know what Marius is trying to accomplish here. Well, I do, but he’s going about it the most awkward and creepy way possible. He approaches the bench in slow motion on that first day, but can’t bring himself to walk past it. He walks halfway there then retreats, then tries it again over and over, fretting about how he looks in his fancy suit even though he’s too far away to be noticed, until he’s finally able to will himself into passing by the bench.
Instead of going around and around six times like he usually does, this great feat of strutting past this girl in his Sunday best has apparently taken it out of him. On the way back he just sits down in the middle of the path and starts scratching at the ground with a stick he has somehow acquired. At first I was confused as to whether or not he just plopped his ass down right in the gravel. Since he’s already worked himself into a fine bundle of nerves over this girl, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he just collapsed. But that would be totally unbecoming of a gentleman! He’s actually seated himself on a different bench. I still have no idea where Marius got a stick though. If it came from one of the garden trees, he should be careful. He could probably get arrested for that.
This is his new routine. Every day he gets dressed up in his best suit, heads out to the garden, Courfeyrac provides witty commentary, and Marius sits on his own bench rather than doing laps around Mlle. Lanoir and M. Leblanc. Sometimes he has a book that he pretends to read whilst worrying about whether or not she’s noticing him. This is probably how things would have continued until they died of old age if not for the day the father and daughter rose from their bench and walked in Marius’s direction.
As they pass by, the girl makes deliberate eye contact with him. Marius is already besotted, so this is just putting him over the moon and making him even more of a basket case. He has still never uttered a word to these people, but that doesn’t seem to matter. She definitely noticed him. He rants and raves around the Luxembourg for a minute and then follows them but loses them out on the street. He frets about whether or not she noticed his dusty old boots. Marius is fully in love with her now.
Later, Marius stumbles into Courfeyrac, because Courfeyrac is everywhere. This time Marius doesn’t even attempt to avoid his friend and the inevitable jokes at his expense. Instead he invites Courfeyrac out on a man-date to dinner and the theatre. That is how great of a mood he’s in. Well, this girl from the garden has Marius in quite a state. He doesn’t even look at a hat girl’s garter as she passes by them on their way out of the theatre, and he’s even offended at Courfeyrac making comments about adding her to his “collection”. I actually wouldn’t be all that surprised if there are already a bunch of little Courfeyracs running around Paris come to think of it.
They meet a few friends at the usual place for lunch the next day, and Marius is particularly jolly. I’m assuming this gaiety is wildly out of character for a usual somber Marius. Courfeyrac thinks Marius is being totally hilarious. Jean Prouvaire, on the other hand, being the sensitive soul that he is, is the one that realizes the gravity of the situation. Jehan knows Marius’s twitterpation is serious business.
Serious business it is too, because Marius is about to go full stalker mode on this girl. I’m not even joking. He feels like he might be attracting too much attention sitting on his bench or walking around them in a circle, so he’s taken to hiding behind statues and bushes and things. Now that he’s got it bad for the girl, he doesn’t want to attract the father’s attentions. I’m not sure why he thinks this is a better tactic, since he’s been orbiting them for almost every day for nearly three years already, and they didn’t seem to mind.
Stealth is not something Marius is very good at though, because it absolutely doesn’t go unnoticed by M. Leblanc that this once innocuous student is being a total creeper now. Leblanc hatches his own plot to move around and take up residence on a new bench just to see if Marius really is following them around or if this is all just a massive coincidence.
Marius isn’t savvy enough to catch on and falls for the trap. Now M. Leblanc knows for sure that some stranger is following them. Marius remains completely oblivious.
One day he has the good fortune to find a handkerchief left behind on the bench with the initials U.F. on it. Should we even pretend we don’t already know that this stands for “Ultimus Fauchelevent” aka Jean Valjean? The hankie belongs to the old man.
Marius assumes it belongs to the girl and immediately jumps to the conclusion that her name must be Ursula, because that is the only girl’s name he can think of that begins with “U” I guess. He carries it with him everywhere, kisses it, sleeps with it, smells the perfume on it. Please stop, Marius. I’m begging you! Also, never ever tell Courfeyrac about this. You’ll never live it down.
He makes sure the girl sees him kiss the handkerchief and place it over his heart every day they “meet”, which totally confounds her of course, because it’s not hers and she doesn’t know what this crazy man is doing. Marius just thinks she’s being modest about the token of affection she’d left for him.
One day a strong gust of wind blows the girl’s skirt up enough to glimpse a little bit of skin. This drives Marius absolutely wild with jealousy even though there isn’t even anybody around to see it. He’s jealous of his shadow. He’s jealous of an old veteran who winks conspiratorially at Marius as he passes by several minutes after it happens. This vet hadn’t been there to observe the gust of wind. He’s just Captain Winks-a-lot, I guess. Marius gives the girl angry eyes afterward because she let this happen. She gives him WTF is wrong with this dude eyes, because WTF is wrong with this dude? This is their first argument.
And the last and final thread in Marius’s unraveling is when he decides it would be a good idea to follow this “Ursula” home. He’s not content just knowing where she lives now either. He’s bold enough to question the doorman. He learns that M. Leblanc is an old retired man who lives with his daughter. He doesn’t get much further than that because the doorman is suspicious.
M. Leblanc and his daughter only visit the Luxembourg once after that. They don’t show up again, and Marius is beside himself. He goes to their house and their light isn’t on. After a few more days of waiting for them he finally asks the doorman what happened. The couple has moved! Marius is devastated. This is what happens when you try to woo people by being a creepy stalker, Marius. Seriously, dude. You really might want to reconsider your strategy for meeting girls!
