approached a cannon in his life,
even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was a
cure, perfectly white hair, no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, a
trembling in every limb, a Picard accent, an infantile laugh, the air of
an old sheep, and he was easily frightened. Add to this, that he had no
other friendship, no other acquaintance among the living, than an old
bookseller of the Porte-Saint-Jacques, named Royal. His dream was to
naturalize indigo in France.

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

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

His brother the cure died about 1830, and almost immediately, as when
the night is drawing on, the whole horizon grew dark for M. Mabeuf. A
notary's failure deprived him of the sum of ten thousand francs, which
was all that he possessed in his brother's right and his own. The
Revolution of July brought a crisis to publishing. In a period of
embarrassment, the first thing which does not sell is a Flora. The Flora
of the Environs of Cauteretz stopped short. Weeks passed by without a
single purchaser. Sometimes M. Mabeuf started at the sound of the bell.
"Monsieur," said Mother Plutarque sadly, "it is the water-carrier."
In short, one day, M. Mabeuf quitted the Rue Mesieres, abdicated the
functions of warden, gave up Saint-Sulpice, sold not