"Biscuit," replied Babet. Thus did the foetus of crime engendered by
Brujon in La Force miscarry.

This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly
distinct from Brujon's programme. The reader will see what they were.

Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite
another.

CHAPTER III--APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF

Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered
Father Mabeuf by chance.

While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be
called the cellar stairs, and which lead to places without light, where
the happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Mabeuf was descending on his
side.

The Flora of Cauteretz no longer sold at all. The experiments on indigo
had not been successful in the little garden of Austerlitz, which had
a bad exposure. M. Mabeuf could cultivate there only a few plants which
love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not become discouraged. He
had obtained a corner in the Jardin des Plantes, with a good exposure,
to make his trials with indigo "at his own expense." For this purpose he
had pawned his copperplates of the Flora. He had reduced his breakfast
to two eggs, and he left one of these for his old servant, to whom he
had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And often his breakfast
was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his infantile smile, he had
grown morose and no longer received visitors. Marius did well not to
dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour when M. Mabeuf was on his
way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man and the young man passed
each other on the Boulevard de l'Hopital. They did not speak, and only
exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. A heart-breaking thing it is
that there comes a moment when misery looses bonds! Two men who have
been friends become two chance passers-by.

Royal 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 his
living. 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,
I will put my Flora in vogue again with trickery, plenty of money and
advertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know well where, a
copy of Pierre de Medine's Art de Naviguer, with wood-cuts, edition of
1655." In the meantime, he toiled al