The rain was falling, fine, fast, and freezing. He stopped, and muttered: “Oh, misery me … another month on the road before I get home. …” For he was returning homewards now, realising that it would be easier for him to find something to do—if he were willing to take any work that came to hand—in his native town, where he was known, than out on the high road where all men were suspicious of him.
Since carpentry was in a bad way, he would become a day labourer, a hodman, a navvy, or a stone-breaker. And if he only made twenty sous a day, it would still be enough to live on.
He knotted round his neck the remains of his last handkerchief, so as to prevent the cold water from trickling on to his back and chest. But soon he felt that it was already coming through the thin fabric of his clothes, and he threw an agonised glance around him, the gaze of a lost creature that knows not where to hide its body or rest its head, and has no refuge in the world.
Night came, covering the fields with darkness. In the distance, in a meadow, he saw a dark blotch on the ground, a cow. He strode over the ditch at the roadside and turned towards the animal, with no very clear idea of what he was doing.
As he drew near, the animal raised her big head, and he thought: “If only I had a can, I could drink a little milk.”
He stared at the cow, and the cow stared at him; then, suddenly, he gave her a great kick in the side, and said: “Get up!”
The animal rose slowly, and her heavy udder hung down; then the man lay flat on his back, between the animal’s legs, and had a long drink, pressing with both hands the warm, swollen teat smelling of the cowshed. He drank all the milk left in this living spring.
But the icy rain fell faster, and the whole plain was naked, offering him no glimpse of shelter. He was cold, and he gazed at a light that shone through the trees, from the window of a house.
The cow had lain down again, heavily. He sat down beside her, stroking her head, grateful for the food she had given him. The animal’s thick, rank breath, issuing from her nostrils like two jets of steam in the evening air, blew across the workman’s face. “Well, you’re not cold in there,” he said.
Next he ran his hands over the cow’s breast and legs, trying to warm them there. Then the idea came to him to lie down and spend the night huddled against this big warm belly. He sought a comfortable position, and laid his forehead against the heavy udder he had just emptied. Then, quite worn out with fatigue, he promptly went to sleep.
But several times he awoke, with back or chest frozen, according to which of the two was pressed against the animal’s side; then he would turn over to warm and dry that part of his body which had been exposed to the night air, and fell back at once into the same heavy slumber.
A cock crowing roused him to his legs. Dawn was coming; it was no longer raining; the sky was clear.
The cow was resting her muzzle on the ground; he bent down, supporting himself on his hands, to kiss the broad nose of moist flesh. “Goodbye, my beauty,” he said, “… till next time. … You’re a nice beast. … Goodbye.”
Then he put on his shoes and went on his way.
For two hours he walked straight on, always along the same road; then such utter weariness fell on him that he sat down on the grass.
It was broad daylight; the church bells were ringing, and men in blue smocks, and women in white bonnets, walking or driving in dogcarts, began to pass along the roads, on their way to neighbouring villages to celebrate Sunday with friends or relations.
A fat peasant came in sight, driving some twenty restless, bleating sheep, kept in order by a quick-footed dog.
Raudel rose and greeted him. “You haven’t a job for a workman dying of hunger?” he said.
“I’ve no work for men I meet on the roads,” replied the fellow, with an ugly glance at the vagabond.
And the carpenter sat down again by the roadside.
He waited for a long time, watching the country folk go by, searching for a good, kind, compassionate face that he might make another request.
He chose a superior-looking person in a frock-coat, with a gold chain across his stomach.
“I’ve been looking for work for two months,” he said; “I can’t find any; and I’ve not a sou left in my pocket.”
The prosperous fellow replied: “You ought to have read the notice posted up at the boundaries of this district: ‘Begging is forbidden in the territory of this commune.’ I’m the mayor, I tell you, and if you don’t clear off pretty quick, I’ll have you taken up.”
Raudel’s anger was getting the better of him.
“Have me taken up if you like,” he murmured; “I’d rather you did; at least I shouldn’t die of hunger.”
And he sat down again at the roadside.
A quarter of an hour later two policemen came in sight on the road. They were walking slowly, side by side, in full view, gleaming in the sun, with their shiny leather hats, their yellow facings, and their metal buttons, as though to frighten malefactors and put them to flight from a very long way off.
The carpenter realised that they were coming for him, but he did not move, seized with an abrupt sullen desire to defy them, to get them to arrest him, and have his revenge later on.
They came on without appearing to have seen him, walking in their military fashion, with a clumsy and rolling gait, like geese. Then suddenly, as they
