"The next day, the day after, every day, he had to begin again. M. Mabeuf went out with a book and came back with a little money. As the secondhand bookstall keepers saw that he was forced to sell, they bought from him for twenty sous what he had paid twenty francs for. Sometimes to the same booksellers. Volume by volume, the whole library disappeared. At times he would say, "But I am eighty years old," as if he had some lingering hope of reaching the end of his days before reaching the end of his books."