The sergeant stepped forward, asking:
“What are you doing here?”
“Resting,” the man calmly replied.
“Where have you come from?”
“If I had to tell you all the places I’ve been through, it would take me a good hour.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Ville-Avaray.”
“And where might that be?”
“In the Manche.”
“Is that your home place?”
“Yes, that’s my home place.”
“Why did you leave it?”
“To look for work.”
The sergeant turned to his constable and exclaimed, in the furious tone of a man driven to exasperation by a perpetual recurrence of the same lie:
“The swine all say that. But I know their little games.”
Then he continued:
“Have you any papers?”
“Yes.”
“Give me them.”
Raudel took his papers from his pocket, his certificates, poor, dirty, worn-out papers falling to pieces, and offered them to the official.
The latter spelt them out, humming and hawing, and, eventually declaring them to be in order, gave them back with the irritated air of a man who has been tricked by a fellow more cunning than himself.
After a few moments of reflection, he resumed his inquiries:
“Have you any money about you?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Not as much as a sou?”
“Not as much as a sou.”
“Then what are you living on?”
“On what I’m given.”
“You’re begging, then?”
“Yes, when I can,” replied Raudel firmly.
But the policeman declared:
“I have taken you in the act of vagrancy and begging, being without lodging or visible means of support, on the road, and I command you to follow me.”
The carpenter rose.
“Anywhere you like,” he said, and, placing himself between the two officials before even getting the order to do so, he added:
“Go on, shut me up. It’ll give me a roof overhead when it rains.”
And they set off towards the village, whose roofs peered through the leaf-stripped trees, a quarter of a league distant.
It was the hour of Mass as they went through the town. The square was full of people, and two ranks promptly formed up to see the malefactor go by, followed by a troop of excited children. Peasants, men and women, stared at the prisoner between the two policemen, with a sudden gleam of hate in their eyes; they wanted to throw stones at him, scratch his skin with their nails, and trample him underfoot. They wondered if he were a thief, or a murderer. The butcher, a veteran Spahi, declared: “He’s a deserter.” The tobacconist fancied he recognised him as the man who had given him a bad fifty-centime piece that very morning, and the ironmonger was sure he knew him for the undiscoverable murderer of the widow Malet for whom the police had been searching for six months.
In the municipal council room, whither the policemen led him, Raudel found the mayor, sitting at the council table and flanked by the schoolmaster.
“Ah ha!” exclaimed the magistrate, “here you are again, my fine fellow. I told you I’d have you locked up. Well, sergeant, what is it?”
“A tramp, your Worship,” replied the sergeant, “without lodging or visible means of support, according to his own statement, arrested in the act of begging and vagrancy, possessing good certificates and papers in good order.”
“Show me the papers,” said the mayor. He took them, read them, reread them, gave them back, and ordered: “Search him.” Raudel was searched; nothing was found.
The mayor seemed perplexed.
“What were you doing, this morning, on the road?” he asked the workman.
“I was looking for work.”
“For work? … On the high road?”
“How do you expect me to find any if I hid in the woods?”
They stared at one another with the hatred of beasts that belong to two antagonistic species. The magistrate replied: “I am going to set you at liberty, but don’t let me catch you again!”
“I’d rather you kept me,” answered the carpenter; “I’ve had quite enough of running about the roads.”
“Silence!” said the mayor, with a severe look.
Then he gave orders to the policemen:
“You will conduct this man two hundred metres from the village, and you will allow him to go on his way.”
“At least have them give me something to eat,” said the workman.
The mayor was furious:
“Feed you? That would be the last straw. Ha! Ha! Ha! That’s a bit too thick!”
But Raudel continued firmly:
“If you let me go on dying of hunger, you’ll force me to crime, and that’ll be the worse for you great fat fellows.”
The mayor had risen, and repeated his order.
“Take him away quick; I shall end by losing my temper.”
The two policemen took the carpenter’s arms and led him off. He offered no resistance, went back through the village, and found himself back on the high road; the men took him two hundred metres from the kilometre stone, and there the sergeant declared:
“Now be off with you, and don’t let me see you in these parts again, or you’ll hear from me.”
And Raudel set off without an answer, and without knowing where he was going. He walked straight on for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, so dazed that he could not think at all.
But suddenly, as he was passing a small house whose window was half open, the savoury smell of stew took him by the throat and brought him up short before this dwelling.
And suddenly, hunger, savage, devouring, maddening hunger, caught him up and almost flung him like a wild creature against the walls of the house.
“God, they must give me something this time,” he said aloud in a plaintive voice, and hammered on the door with his stick. No one answered. He knocked, more loudly, shouting: “Hi! Hi! You folk in there! Hi! Open the door!”
Nothing stirred; going to the window, he pushed it with his hand, and the imprisoned air of the kitchen, warm air full of the savour of hot soup, cooked meat and cabbages, escaped into the cold outer air.
With a bound the carpenter was in the room. Two places were laid on the table. The owners, doubtless away at Mass, had left their dinner on the fire, good Sunday stew, with thick
