"A young man who used to come here."
"Ah, yes!" he exclaimed, "I know whom you mean. Wait a minute! Monsieur Marius, Baron Marius Pontmercy, pardieu! lives, or rather he does not live—well, I do not know."
While speaking, he had stooped to straighten a rhododendron branch, and continued,—
"Ah yes, I remember now. He passes very frequently along the boulevard, and goes in the direction of the Lark's field in the Rue Croulebarbe. Look for him there, he will not be difficult to find."
When M. Mabœuf raised his head again, he was alone, and the girl had disappeared. He was decidedly a little frightened.
"Really," he thought, "if my garden were not watered, I should fancy that it was a ghost."
An hour after, when he was in bed, this idea returned to him, and while falling asleep, he said to himself confusedly at the disturbed moment when thought gradually assumes the form of dream in order to pass through sleep, like the fabulous bird which metamorphoses itself into a fish to cross the sea,—
"Really now, this affair greatly resembles what La Rubaudière records about the goblins. Could it have been a ghost?"