CHAPTER IV--M. MABEUF

  On the day when M. Mabeuf said to Marius: "Certainly I approve ofpolitical opinions," he expressed the real state of his mind. Allpolitical opinions were matters of indifference to him, and he approvedthem all, without distinction, provided they left him in peace, as theGreeks called the Furies "the beautiful, the good, the charming," theEumenides. M. Mabeuf's political opinion consisted in a passionate lovefor plants, and, above all, for books. Like all the rest of the world,he possessed the termination in _ist_, without which no one could existat that time, but he was neither a Royalist, a Bonapartist, a Chartist,an Orleanist, nor an Anarchist; he was a _bouquinist_, a collector ofold books. He did not understand how men could busy themselves withhating each other because of silly stuff like the charter, democracy,legitimacy, monarchy, the republic, etc., when there were in the worldall sorts of mosses, grasses, and shrubs which they might be looking at,and heaps of folios, and even of 32mos, which they might turn over. Hetook good care not to become useless; having books did not prevent hisreading, being a botanist did not prevent his being a gardener. Whenhe made Pontmercy's acquaintance, this sympathy had existed between thecolonel and himself--that what the colonel did for flowers, he did forfruits. M. Mabeuf had succeeded in producing seedling pears as savoryas the pears of St. Germain; it is from one of his combinations,apparently, that the October Mirabelle, now celebrated and no lessperfumed than the summer Mirabelle, owes its origin. He went to massrather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he loved thefaces of men, but hated their noise, he found them assembled and silentonly in church. Feeling that he must be something in the State, he hadchosen the career of warden. However, he had never succeeded in lovingany woman as much as a tulip bulb, nor any man as much as an Elzevir.He had long passed sixty, when, one day, some one asked him: "Have younever been married?" "I have forgotten," said he. When it sometimeshappened to him--and to whom does it not happen?--to say: "Oh! if I wereonly rich!" it was not when ogling a pretty girl, as was the case withFather Gillenormand, but when contemplating an old book. He lived alonewith an old housekeeper. He was somewhat gouty, and when he was asleep,his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism, lay crooked up in the foldsof his sheets. He had composed and published a _Flora of the Environsof Cauteretz_, with colored plates, a work which enjoyed a tolerablemeasure of esteem and which sold well. People rang his bell, in the RueMésières, two or three times a day, to ask for it. He drew as much astwo thousand francs a year from it; this constituted nearly the whole ofhis fortune. Although poor, he had had the talent to form for himself,by dint of patience, privations, and time, a precious collection of rarecopies of every sort. He never went out without a book under his arm,and he often returned with two. The sole decoration of the four roomson the ground floor, which composed his lodgings, consisted of framedherbariums, and engravings of the old masters. The sight of a sword ora gun chilled his blood. He had never approached a cannon in his life,even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was acuré, perfectly white hair, no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, atrembling in every limb, a Picard accent, an infantile laugh, the air ofan old sheep, and he was easily frightened. Add to this, that he had noother friendship, no other acquaintance among the living, than an oldbookseller of the Porte-Saint-Jacques, named Royal. His dream was tonaturalize indigo in France.

  His servant was also a sort of innocent. The poor good old woman was aspinster. Sultan, her cat, which might have mewed Allegri's miserere inthe Sixtine Chapel, had filled her heart and sufficed for the quantityof passion which existed in her. None of her dreams had ever proceededas far as man. She had never been able to get further than her cat. Likehim, she had a mustache. Her glory consisted in her caps, which werealways white. She passed her time, on Sundays, after mass, in countingover the linen in her chest, and in spreading out on her bed the dressesin the piece which she bought and never had made up. She knew how toread. M. Mabeuf had nicknamed her Mother Plutarque.

  M. Mabeuf had taken a fancy to Marius, because Marius, being young andgentle, warmed his age without startling his timidity. Youth combinedwith gentleness produces on old people the effect of the sun withoutwind. When Marius was saturated with military glory, with gunpowder,with marches and countermarches, and with all those prodigious battlesin which his father had given and received such tremendous blows of thesword, he went to see M. Mabeuf, and M. Mabeuf talked to him of his herofrom the point of view of flowers.

  His brother the curé died about 1830, and almost immediately, as whenthe night is drawing on, the whole horizon grew dark for M. Mabeuf. Anotary's failure deprived him of the sum of ten thousand francs, whichwas all that he possessed in his brother's right and his own. TheRevolution of July brought a crisis to publishing. In a period ofembarrassment, the first thing which does not sell is a _Flora. TheFlora of the Environs of Cauteretz_ stopped short. Weeks passed bywithout a single purchaser. Sometimes M. Mabeuf started at the soundof the bell. "Monsieur," said Mother Plutarque sadly, "it is thewater-carrier." In short, one day, M. Mabeuf quitted the Rue Mésières,abdicated the functions of warden, gave up Saint-Sulpice, sold not apart of his books, but of his prints,--that to which he was theleast attached,--and installed himself in a little house on the RueMontparnasse, where, however, he remained but one quarter for tworeasons: in the first place, the ground floor and the garden cost threehundred francs, and he dared not spend more than two hundred francs onhis rent; in the second, being near Faton's shooting-gallery, he couldhear the pistol-shots; which was intolerable to him.

  He carried off his _Flora_, his copper-plates, his herbariums, hisportfolios, and his books, and established himself near the Salpêtrière,in a sort of thatched cottage of the village of Austerlitz, where,for fifty crowns a year, he got three rooms and a garden enclosed by ahedge, and containing a well. He took advantage of this removal to selloff nearly all his furniture. On the day of his entrance into his newquarters, he was very gay, and drove the nails on which his engravingsand herbariums were to hang, with his own hands, dug in his garden therest of the day, and at night, perceiving that Mother Plutarque had amelancholy air, and was very thoughtful, he tapped her on the shoulderand said to her with a smile: "We have the indigo!"

  Only two visitors, the bookseller of the Porte-Saint-Jacques and Marius,were admitted to view the thatched cottage at Austerlitz, a brawlingname which was, to tell the truth, extremely disagreeable to him.

  However, as we have just pointed out, brains which are absorbed in somebit of wisdom, or folly, or, as it often happens, in both at once, arebut slowly accessible to the things of actual life. Their own destinyis a far-off thing to them. There results from such concentration apassivity, which, if it were the outcome of reasoning, would resemblephilosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away,and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it istrue, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, itseems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going onbetween our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we lookon at the game with indifference.

  It is thus that, athwart the cloud which formed about him, when all hishopes were extinguished one after the other, M. Mabeuf remained ratherpuerilely, but profoundly serene. His habits of mind had the regularswing of a pendulum. Once mounted on an illusion, he went for a verylong time, even after the illusion had disappeared. A clock does notstop short at the precise moment when the key is lost.

  M. Mabeuf had his innocent pleasures. These pleasures were inexpensiveand unexpected; the merest chance furnished them. One day, MotherPlutarque was reading a romance in one corner of the room. She wasreading aloud, finding that she understood better thus. To read aloud isto assure one's self of what one is reading. There are people who readvery loud, and who have the appearance of giving themselves their wordof honor as to what they are perusing.

  It was with this sort of energy that Mother Plutarque was reading theromance which she had in hand. M. Mabeuf heard her without listening toher.

  In the course of her reading, Mother Plutarque came to this phrase. Itwas a question of an officer of dragoons and a beauty:--

  "--The beauty pouted, and the dragoon--"

  Here she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses.

  "Bouddha and the Dragon," struck in M. Mabeuf in a low voice. "Yes, itis true that there was a dragon, which, from the depths of its cave,spouted flame through his maw and set the heavens on fire. Many starshad already been consumed by this monster, which, besides, had the clawsof a tiger. Bouddha went into its den and succeeded in converting thedragon. That is a good book that you are reading, Mother Plutarque.There is no more beautiful legend in existence."

  And M. Mabeuf fell into a delicious revery.