The voice that had called him to the barricade at dusk sounded to Marius like the voice of fate. He wanted to die, and here was his chance. He had been knocking at the door of the grave, and someone in the dark had handed him the key. He pushed apart the railings he had slipped through so many times, left the garden, and said: let us go!
He happened to have the two pistols Javert had given him. He crossed the bridge of the Invalides and passed through the Champs-Élysées and the Rue de Rivoli. There the shops were open, women were doing their marketing, and people were eating ices in the cafés. Along the Rue Saint-Honoré the lit windows grew fewer and the crowd grew thicker. Where the crowd ended, the army began. Marius slipped through the crowd and the bivouacs, kept clear of the patrols, and made for the market district.
Beyond that point it was as dark and silent as a cellar. There were no passers-by, no soldiers, no lights. Someone ran past him. As he climbed over an abandoned barricade, he found the two white horses of the omnibus Bossuet had unharnessed that morning, standing still after a whole day of wandering. A stray bullet from somewhere pierced the brass basin hanging over a barber’s door above his head. After that he met nothing at all.