ed to come here."

In the meantime, M. Mabeuf had searched his memory.

"Ah! yes--" he exclaimed. "I know what you mean. Wait! Monsieur
Marius--the Baron Marius Pontmercy, parbleu! He lives,--or rather, he no
longer lives,--ah well, I don't know."

As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he
continued:--

"Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes in
the direction of the Glaciere, 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 one
there; the girl had disappeared.

He was decidedly terrified.

"Really," he thought, "if my garden had not been watered, I should think
that she was a spirit."

An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell
asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird
which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by
little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he said
to himself in a bewildered way:--

"In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudiere narrates of the
goblins. Could it have been a goblin?"

CHAPTER IV--AN APPARITION TO MARIUS

Some days after this visit of a "spirit" to Farmer Mabeuf, one
morning,--it was on a Monday, the day when Marius borrowed the
hundred-sou piece from Courfeyrac for Thenardier--Marius had put this
coin in his pocket, and before carrying it to the clerk's office, he
had gone "to take a little stroll," in the hope that this would make him
work on his return. It was always thus, however. As soon as he rose, he
seated himself before a book and a sheet of paper in order to scribble
some translation; his task at that epoch consisted in turning into
French a celebrated quarrel between Germans, the Gans and Savigny
controversy; he took Savigny, he took Gans, read four lines, tried to
write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper, and rose
from his chair, saying: "I shall go out. That will put me in spirits."

And off he went to the Lark's meadow.

There he beheld more than ever the star, and less than ever Savigny and
Gans.

He returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed;
there was no means of re-knotting a single one of the threads which
were broken in his brain; then he said to himself: "I will not go out
to-morrow. It prevents my working." And he went out every day.

He lived