Les Misérables, page 241
CHAPTER III--APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF
Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encounteredFather Mabeuf by chance.
While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may becalled the cellar stairs, and which lead to places without light, wherethe happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Mabeuf was descending on hisside.
The _Flora of Cauteretz_ no longer sold at all. The experiments onindigo had not been successful in the little garden of Austerlitz, whichhad a bad exposure. M. Mabeuf could cultivate there only a fewplants which love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not becomediscouraged. He had obtained a corner in the Jardin des Plantes, with agood exposure, to make his trials with indigo "at his own expense."For this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the _Flora_. He hadreduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left one of these for his oldservant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. Andoften his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with hisinfantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors.Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hourwhen M. Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man andthe young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. Theydid not speak, and only exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. Aheart-breaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery loosesbonds! Two men who have been friends become two chance passers-by.
Royol the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books,his garden, or his indigo: these were the three forms which happiness,pleasure, and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for hisliving. He said to himself: "When I shall have made my balls of blueing,I shall be rich, I will withdraw my copperplates from the pawn-shop, Iwill put my _Flora_ in vogue again with trickery, plenty of money andadvertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know well where, acopy of Pierre de Médine's _Art de Naviguer_, with wood-cuts, edition of1655." In the meantime, he toiled all day over his plot of indigo, andat night he returned home to water his garden, and to read his books. Atthat epoch, M. Mabeuf was nearly eighty years of age.
One evening he had a singular apparition.
He had returned home while it was still broad daylight. MotherPlutarque, whose health was declining, was ill and in bed. He had dinedon a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that hehad found on the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturnedstone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden.
Near this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchard-gardens, a sortof large chest, of beams and planks, much dilapidated, a rabbit-hutch onthe ground floor, a fruit-closet on the first. There was nothing in thehutch, but there were a few apples in the fruit-closet,--the remains ofthe winter's provision.
M. Mabeuf had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid ofhis glasses, two books of which he was passionately fond and in which,a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidityrendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certaindegree. The first of these books was the famous treatise of PresidentDelancre, _De l'Inconstance des Démons_; the other was a quarto by Mutorde la Rubaudière, _Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de laBièvre_. This last-mentioned old volume interested him all the more,because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins informer times. The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and toblacken all below. As he read, over the top of the book which he heldin his hand, Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others amagnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days ofheat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed; the stalks werebending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling; all this needed water,the rhododendron was particularly sad. Father Mabeuf was one of thosepersons for whom plants have souls. The old man had toiled all day overhis indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose, laidhis books on the bench, and walked, all bent over and with totteringfootsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he could noteven draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round and cast aglance of anguish toward heaven which was becoming studded with stars.
The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of manbeneath an indescribably mournful and eternal joy. The night promised tobe as arid as the day had been.
"Stars everywhere!" thought the old man; "not the tiniest cloud! Not adrop of water!"
And his head, which had been upraised for a moment, fell back upon hisbreast.
He raised it again, and once more looked at the sky, murmuring:--
"A tear of dew! A little pity!"
He tried again to unhook the chain of the well, and could not.
At that moment, he heard a voice saying:--
"Father Mabeuf, would you like to have me water your garden for you?"
At the same time, a noise as of a wild animal passing became audiblein the hedge, and he beheld emerging from the shrubbery a sort of tall,slender girl, who drew herself up in front of him and stared boldly athim. She had less the air of a human being than of a form which had justblossomed forth from the twilight.
Before Father Mabeuf, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we havesaid, quick to take alarm, was able to reply by a single syllable, thisbeing, whose movements had a sort of odd abruptness in the darkness, hadunhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled thewatering-pot, and the goodman beheld this apparition, which had barefeet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower-bedsdistributing life around her. The sound of the watering-pot on theleaves filled Father Mabeuf's soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him thatthe rhododendron was happy now.
The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. Shewatered the whole garden.
There was something about her, as she thus ran about among paths, whereher outline appeared perfectly black, waving her angular arms, and withher fichu all in rags, that resembled a bat.
When she had finished, Father Mabeuf approached her with tears in hiseyes, and laid his hand on her brow.
"God will bless you," said he, "you are an angel since you take care ofthe flowers."
"No," she replied. "I am the devil, but that's all the same to me."
The old man exclaimed, without either waiting for or hearing herresponse:--
"What a pity that I am so unhappy and so poor, and that I can do nothingfor you!"
"You can do something," said she.
"What?"
"Tell me where M. Marius lives."
The old man did not understand. "What Monsieur Marius?"
He raised his glassy eyes and seemed to be seeking something that hadvanished.
"A young man who used to come here."
In the meantime, M. Mabeuf had searched his memory.
"Ah! yes--" he exclaimed. "I know what you mean. Wait! MonsieurMarius--the Baron Marius Pontmercy, parbleu! He lives,--or rather, he nolonger lives,--ah well, I don't know."
As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and hecontinued:--
"Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes inthe direction of the Glacière, Rue Croulebarbe. The meadow of the Lark.Go there. It is not hard to meet him."
When M. Mabeuf straightened himself up, there was no longer any onethere; the girl had disappeared.
He was decidedly terrified.
"Really," he thought, "if my garden had not been watered, I should thinkthat she was a spirit."
An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fellasleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous birdwhich changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little bylittle assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he saidto himself in a bewildered way:--
"In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudière narrates of thegoblins. Could it have been a goblin?"
