Chapter 267 Mr. Sanma Shirao

Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf.The venerable Monsieur Mabeuf, who has always been well-behaved and childish, will never accept the gift from the stars, and he will never agree that the stars can cast Louis d'Or by themselves.He would never have thought that the things that fell from the sky came from Gavroche.He took the wallet as a lost property and handed it over to the district police post for the owner to claim.The purse was truly a lost property.Needless to say, no one claimed it, and it did not help M. Mabeuf at all. During this period, M. Mabeuf continued to go downhill.

Experimental work with indigo was unsuccessful neither in the botanic garden nor in his garden at Austerlitz.He had failed to pay his housekeeper the previous year, and now he was several quarters behind in rent.After thirteen months, the pawn shop sold all the copper plates of his set of "Illustrations of Plants", and several coppersmiths used them to make some pans.He originally had several volumes of "Illustrations of Plants" that were not in complete sets, but now that the copper plates are gone, he cannot reprint them, so he even sold the illustrations and loose pages as incomplete waste paper to a second-hand book dealer at a low price.His life's work has now disappeared.He lived on selling those few stock books.When he saw that his meager resources were drying up, he left his garden to fall and neglected its care.In the past, he occasionally ate two eggs and a piece of beef, but for a long time he gave up even this.He only ate a piece of bread and a few potatoes.He also sold the last few pieces of wood, and afterward all superfluous bedding, clothes, blankets, etc., as well as herbaria and woodcut plates; Versions such as the Quatrains of the Bible in History published in 1560, the Chronicle of the Bible by Pierre de Besse, and The Beautiful Marguerite by Jean de Lahe. ", with an inscription dedicated to Queen Navarre, "The Duty and Dignity of an Envoy" by the nobleman Verrière-Hertmann, a "Rapinian Poetry" of 1644, a This copy of Dibble, dated 1567, bears the remarkable inscription: "Venice, at the Manusian House," and a copy of Diogenes Laertius, printed in Lyon, 1644. In this edition there are the well-known variants of the Vatican Codex 411 of the thirteenth century, and of the two Venetian Codexes 393 and 394, all of which were written by Henry Estienne reviewed and achieved great success, and contains all the chapters in the Doric dialect, which are only found in the famous manuscripts of the twelfth century in the library of Naples.M. Mabeuf never had a fire in his bedroom, and in order not to light a candle, he went to bed before dark.It was as if he had no neighbors, and when he went out, they avoided them in time, and he noticed it too.The poverty of a child excites the sympathy of a mother, the poverty of a young man a girl, the poverty of an old man none.It is the cruelest of all poverty.But Father Mabeuf did not lose all his boyish serenity.His eyes were always bright when he looked at his books, and he was always smiling when he looked at that one by Diogenes Laertius.One of his glass bookcases was the only one he kept that wasn't among those must-have pieces of furniture.

One day Mother Plutarch said to him: "I don't have anything for dinner." What she meant by supper was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes. "What about credit?" said M. Mabeuf. "You know people won't pay on credit anymore." Mr. Mabeuf opened his bookcase, like a father who, before being forced to hand over his son to have his head beheaded, did not know which one to choose. After making up his mind, he grabbed another copy, tucked it under his arm, and went out.Returning two hours later, with nothing under his arm, he put thirty sous on the table and said:

"You take it and make something to eat." From then on, Mama Plutarch saw a dark veil fall over the face of the honest old man, and she no longer raised it. The next day, the third day, every day, it had to be repeated.Mr. Mabeuf went out with a book and returned with a silver coin.Seeing that he was bound to sell books, the second-hand book dealers offered twenty sous for what he had bought for twenty francs.Sometimes the bookseller he bought from was the same person who sold him the book that day.One after another, the entire collection disappeared."But I'm over eighty," he said to himself sometimes, as if to say that he didn't know what hope there was until his books were sold out.His sorrow continued to intensify.But once he was very happy.He went to Marague with a book printed by Robert Estienne, sold it for thirty-five sous, and bought an Alder in Gray Street for forty sous. "I still owe five sous," he told Mama Plutarch cheerfully.He didn't eat anything that day.

He is a member of the Horticultural Society.People in the society know that he is poor.The chairman went to see him and told him that he would tell the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce about him, and he did so. "Oh, what happened!" The minister said with emotion, "Of course! An old scientist! A botanist! A good old man who has no quarrel with others! We should find a way for him!" The next day, Ma Bai Mr. Fu received an invitation card, inviting him to dinner at the minister's house.Trembling with joy, he showed the post to Mama Plutarch. "We're saved!" he said.On the appointed date, he went to the minister's house.He found his tie that looked like a rag, his old-fashioned checked coat that was too baggy, and his shoes polished with egg white, which surprised the porter.No one talked to him, not even the ministers.It was almost ten o'clock in the evening, and he was still waiting for a word, when suddenly he heard the minister's wife, a beautiful woman with a bare chest and back, who made him afraid to approach, asking: "Who is that old gentleman?" He walked home , It was midnight when I got home, and it was raining heavily.He had sold a copy of El Xavier to pay for the carriage to the dinner.

It had become his habit to read a few pages of his Diogenes Laertius every night before going to bed.He had a considerable study of Greek and could therefore taste the peculiarities of this collection.Now he has no other enjoyment.A few more weeks passed like this.Suddenly one day, Plutarch's mother fell ill.There is nothing worse than not having money to buy bread at the baker's, than not having money to buy medicine at the chemist's.One evening the doctor prescribed a rather expensive medicine.And the condition has become serious, so someone has to take care of her.M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase, which was completely empty.The last book is gone.All that remains is the Diogenes Laertius.

He went out with the single copy under his arm, and it was on June 4, 1832, that he went to the Porte Saint-Jacques to look for the heir to the Royeul bookstore, and returned with a hundred francs.He put the stack of five-franc pieces on the old woman's bedside table, and went back to his room without a word. The next day, at dawn, he sat in the garden on the fallen stone tablet, and from the fence he could be seen sitting there all morning, motionless, gazing blindly at the withered Flower bed.Sometimes when it rains, the old man doesn't seem to notice it at all.In the afternoon, there were some unusual sounds all over Paris, like gunfire and the noise of the crowd.

Father Ma Baifu raised his head.Seeing a gardener pass by, he asked: "what is this?" The gardener, carrying a shovel, replied in a very ordinary tone: "There was a riot." "What! Riot?" "Yes. There is a fight." "Why are you fighting?" "Ah! God knows!" said the Gardener. "Which side is it?" Mabeuf asked again. "On the side of the arsenal." Mr. Ma Baifu went into the room, picked up his hat, and mechanically looked for a book to put under his arm, but he couldn't find it, so he said, "Ah! Yes!" and walked out in panic.