Books had always held great appeal to Monsieur Gabriel Mabeuf and he could happily spend hours reading. His brother would tease, and his mother would laugh at him for it. His father would harrumph loudly into his newspaper, but the sparkle in his brown eyes took away its sting. Gabriel always had a book under his arm, or on his lap, or on the table by him. He could not imagine life any other way.

Books let Gabriel, who lived a life as sheltered as any convent girl, explore the wilds of India or Africa, dine with a queen, or win the love of a virtuous young maiden. The only adventures he ever wanted to have were found between two covers. The only knowledge he gained from the world were written across a page.

Books gave Gabriel shelter, a home, a sanctuary. When his mother's laughs turned into coughs that stained her handkerchiefs, Gabriel smiled weakly, and hid in the thick pages of Plato. When the National Guardsmen had barged into the house during a rare family dinner, dragging his royalist father out the door, there was no place safer than between the bound pages of his Dante's Divine Comedy. When his brother, God rest his soul, died of scarlet fever, La Marguerites de la Marguerite offered more solace than any priest. When his friends, one by one, left the world, Moliere offered a welcome respite from worries. When his dear friend Colonel Baron Pontmercy was sneered at and spat upon as a Bonapartist, Gabriel could murmur something inaudibly and prop a volume of Elizer in front of him. Whenthe Coloneldied, without a glimpse of his beloved and estranged son, Gabriel walked home and immersed himself in the legends of Buddha.

Books protected Gabriel from want and weighty issues. When he was hungry and could no longer afford bread, he could feed his soul with poetry. When he visited the graveyard and placed his flowers on the tombstones, he could immerse himself in a story and find familiar friends to cheer him. When politics, a topic that had always frightened him, were discussed, he could look at people over the top of his book in bemusement, and they would laugh and change the subject. When injustice occurred (as it always did, despite the government), he could hide behind legends of King Arthur and his Knights, and wish that the world was a better place. Books were Gabriel's passion, aside from botany. He could happily spend his days reading or gardening, though he loved reading most of all. But one by one, his books were sold. One by one, Gabriel lost his children, his friends, his relief… his life. When the students rebelled, and the shouting procession passed him by, he followed. There was no book under his arm, or around him, and though surrounded by a crowd of shouting students and workers, he felt utterly alone.

Books were not present at the barricade. There was no friendly Bible, with the gilt edges winking a promise at him, no legends and fables to make him smile and restore his childhood. No poetry to feed his soul and calm his worries. There was just a strange emptiness between his arm and his side, and noise around him. He sat, unable to make sense of the noise. The noise was confusing. He hid from it in a corner of a building (it held to interest for him, for it was not a bookshop) with his fists clenched on his knees and his head bowed forward. If he stared at the cracked floorboards long enough, he could see lines of smudged words on pages much yellowed with age.

Books were his only thoughts. A loud, startlingly loud volley shook the building, scattering dust over the illegible pages, and Gabriel went to the doorway, after looking around him to find his book. There wasn't one. There was only a blond man with the face of an avenging angel, waving a red flag, shouting "Does no one volunteer?" Gabriel looked at the flag, and then at the barricade, squinting, as he was nearsighted from reading in fading light. It looked like a picture out of a book on the French Revolution, and Gabriel's fear of politics rose like mist before his eyes. There was no book to drive away the mist, and it clung to him until he remembered that there were no more books, and there never would be more.

Books were not there to see Gabriel's death. It was not the death he had wished for; he would have liked to be quietly ensconced in bed, an open book on his chest, when the Angel of Death swept him into an icy embrace. There were no books, just what felt like a scene from one. He stood on the barricade and held aloft the flag. It felt odd, and that empty space between his arm and his side made him disoriented. The fear of politics enveloped him like a coat, and he knew, with utmost certainty, that his brief foray into revolution would result in his demise. But what was life without his books? He raised the flag into the air and shouted, "Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity, Equality-- and Death!" There were inaudible shouts, dimmed by the haze of fear that surrounded him, from the National Guard. Gabriel waved the flag once more, trying to distract himself from the emptiness around him where books should have been, and cried, "Long live the Republic!" A volley of shots crashed into the barricade.

Books were in Gabriel's thoughts to the last. The bullets ripped through him, and he tottered unsteadily. He tried to stand, remembering the stories he read in his childhood, and the hero's ability to withstand themost violentforces of nature. The flag was heavy in his hands, and pain exploded through him. He dropped the flag-- it was not a book, it held no interest for him-- and he collapsed onto his back. The space between his arm and side seemed as gaping a wound as any the bullets had created. He vaguely thought, 'Perhaps someone will write this into a book-- that would be marvelous.' An inky blackness surrounded him, as if he had fallen into a printed letter on a page of a book, and stared at the fading blue of the sky, remembering the soft, angel- wing whisper created when he turned the thin, gilt-edged pages of his Bible.

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