earing her response:--
"What a pity that I am so unhappy and so poor, and that I can
do nothing for 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 had vanished.
"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! 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:--