CHAPTER III.
M. MAB?'UF.
Jean Valjean's purse was useless to M. Mabœuf, who in his venerablechildish austerity had not accepted the gift of the stars; he had notallowed that a star could coin itself into louis d'or, and he had notguessed that what fell from heaven came from Gavroche. Hence he carriedthe purse to the police commissary of the district, as a lost object,placed by the finder at the disposal of the claimants. The purse wasreally lost; we need hardly say that no one claimed it, and it didnot help M. Mabœuf. In other respects M. Mabœuf had continuedto descend: and the indigo experiments had succeeded no better at theJardin des Plantes than in his garden of Austerlitz. The previousyear he owed his housekeeper her wages; and now, as we have seen,he owed his landlord his rent. The Government pawn-brokers' officesold the copper-plates of his _Flora,_ at the expiration of thirteenmonths, and a coppersmith had made stewpans of them. When his plateshad disappeared, as he could no longer complete the unbound copies ofhis _Flora_, which he still possessed, he sold off plates and text toa second-hand bookseller as defective. Nothing was then left him ofthe labor of his whole life, and he began eating the money producedby these copies. When he saw that this poor resource was growingexhausted be gave up his garden, and did not attend to it; before,and long before, he had given up the two eggs and the slice of beefwhich he ate from time to time, and now dined on bread and potatoes.He had sold his last articles of furniture, then everything; he hadin duplicate, in linen, clothes, and coverlids, and then his herbalsand plates; but he still had his most precious books, among them beingseveral of great rarity, such as the "Les Quadrins Historiques de laBible," the edition of 1560; "La Concordance des Bibles," of Pierre deBesse; "Les Marguerites de la Marguerite," of Jean de la Haye, with adedication to the Queen of Navarre; the work on the "Duties and Dignityof an Ambassador," by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a "FlorilegiumRabbinicum," of 1644; a Tibullus, of 1567, with the splendid imprint"Venetiis, in ædibus Manutianis;" and lastly a Diogenes Laertius,printed at Lyons in 1644, in which were the famous various readingsof the Vatican manuscript 411, of the thirteenth century, and thoseof the two Venetian _codices_ 393 and 394, so usefully consulted byHenri Estienne, and all the passages in the Doric dialect, only tobe found in the celebrated twelfth century manuscript of the Napleslibrary. M. Mabœuf never lit a fire in his room, and went to bedwith the sun, in order not to burn a candle: it seemed as if he nolonger had neighbors, for they shunned him when he went out, andhe noticed it. The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, thewretchedness of a youth interests an old man, but the wretchedness ofan old man interests nobody, and it is the coldest of all distresses.Still M. Mabœuf had not entirely lost his childlike serenity; hiseye acquired some vivacity when it settled on his books, and he smiledwhen he regarded the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy. Hisglass case was the only furniture which he had retained beyond what wasindispensable. One day Mother Plutarch said to him,--
"I have no money to buy dinner with."
What she called dinner consisted of a loaf and four or five potatoes.
"Can't you get it on credit?" said M. Mabœuf.
"You know very well that it is refused me."
M. Mabœuf opened his bookcase, looked for a long time at all hisbooks in turn, as a father, obliged to decimate his children, wouldlook at them before selecting, then took one up quickly, put it underhis arm, and went out. He returned two hours after with nothing underhis arm, laid thirty sous on the table, and said,--
"You will get some dinner."
From this moment Mother Plutarch saw a dark veil, which was notraised again, settle upon the old gentleman's candid face. The nextday, the next after that, and every day, M. Mabœuf had to beginagain; he went out with a book and returned with a piece of silver. Asthe second-hand booksellers saw that he was compelled to sell, theybought for twenty sous books for which he had paid twenty francs, andfrequently to the same dealers. Volume by volume his whole librarypassed away, and he said at times, "And yet I am eighty years of age,"as if he had some lurking hope that he should reach the end of his daysere he reached the end of his books. His sorrow grew, but once he had ajoy: he went out with a Robert Estienne, which he sold for thirty-fivesous on the Quai Malaquais, and came home with an Aldus which he hadbought for forty sous in the Rue de Grès. "I owe five sous," he saidquite radiantly to Mother Plutarch, but that day he did not dine. Hebelonged to the Horticultural Society, and his poverty was known. ThePresident of the Society called on him, promised to speak about himto the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and did so. "What do yousay?" the minister exclaimed. "I should think so! an old savant! abotanist! an inoffensive man! we must do something for him." The nextday M. Mabœuf received an invitation to dine with the minister,and, trembling with joy, showed the letter to Mother Plutarch. "We aresaved!" he said. On the appointed day he went to the minister's, andnoticed that his ragged cravat, his long, square-cut coat, and shoesvarnished with white of egg, astounded the footman. No one spoke tohim, not even the minister, and at about ten in the evening, whilestill waiting for a word, he heard the minister's wife, a handsome ladyin a low-necked dress, whom he had not dared to approach, ask, "Whocan that old gentleman be?" He went home afoot at midnight through thepouring rain; he had sold an Elzevir to pay his hackney coach in going.
Every evening, before going to bed, he had fallen into the habit ofreading a few pages of his Diogenes Laertius; for he knew enough ofGreek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he possessed, andhad no other joy now left him. A few weeks passed away, and all at onceMother Plutarch fell ill. There is one thing even more sad than havingno money to buy bread at a baker's, and that is, not to have moneyto buy medicine at the chemist's. One night the doctor had ordered amost expensive potion, and then the disease grew worse, and a nursewas necessary. M. Mabœuf opened his bookcase, but there was nothingleft in it; the last volume had departed, and the only thing left himwas the Diogenes Laertius. He placed the unique copy under his arm andwent out,--it was June 4, 1832; he proceeded to Royol's successor atthe Porte St. Jacques, and returned with one hundred francs. He placedthe pile of five-franc pieces on the old servant's table? and enteredhis bedroom without uttering a syllable. At dawn of the next day heseated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and over the hedgehe might have been seen the whole morning, motionless, with droopinghead, and eyes vaguely fixed on the faded flower-beds. It rainedevery now and then, but the old man did not seem to notice it; butin the afternoon extraordinary noises broke out in Paris, resemblingmusket-shots, and the clamor of a multitude. Father Mabœuf raisedhis head, noticed a gardener passing, and said,--
"What is the matter?"
The gardener replied, with the spade on his back, and with the mostpeaceful accent,--
"It's the riots."
"What! Riots?"
"Yes; they are fighting."
"Why are they fighting?"
"The Lord alone knows," said the gardener.
"In what direction?"
"Over by the arsenal."
Father Mabœuf went into his house, took his hat, mechanically soughtfor a book to place under his arm, found none, said, "Ah, it is true!"and went out with a wandering look.
BOOK X.
THE FIFTH OF JUNE, 1832.