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’Hôpital. 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. 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