"Yes."
"They are searching for you."
Then glancing towards the farm, he added—
"They have a demi-battalion over there."
"Of republicans?"
"Of Parisians."
"Well," said the Marquis, "let us go on."
And he made a step in the direction of the farm. The man seized him by the arm.
"Don't go there!"
"Where would you have me go?"
"With me."
The Marquis looked at the beggar.
"Listen to me, Marquis: My home is not a fine one, but it is safe—a hut lower than a cellar, seaweed for a floor, and for a ceiling a roof of branches and of grass. Come. They would shoot you at the farm, and at my house you will have a chance to sleep; you must be weary. To-morrow the Blues start out again, and you can go where you choose."
The Marquis studied the man.
"On which side are you, then?" asked the Marquis. "Are you a royalist, or a republican?"
"I am a beggar."
"Neither royalist nor republican?"
"I believe not."
"Are you for or against the king?"
"I have no time for that sort of thing."
"What do you think of what is transpiring?"
"I think that I have not enough to live on."
"Yet you come to my aid."
"I knew that you were outlawed. What is this law, then, that one can be outside of it? I do not understand. Am I inside the law, or outside of it? I have no idea. Does dying of hunger mean being inside the law?"
"How long have you been dying of hunger?"
"All my life."
"And you propose to save me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I said to myself, 'There is a man who is poorer than I, for he has not even the right to breathe.'"
"True. And so you mean to save me?"
"Certainly. Now we are brothers, my lord—beggars both; I for bread, and you for life."
"But do you know there is a price set on my head?"
"Yes."
"How did you know it?"
"I have read the notice."
"Then you can read?"
"Yes, and write also. Did you think I was like the beasts of the field?"
"But since you can read, and have seen the notice, you must know that he who delivers me up will receive sixty thousand francs."
"I know it."
"Not in assignats."
"Yes, I know—in gold."
"You realize that sixty thousand francs is a fortune?"
"Yes."
"And that the man who arrests me will make his fortune?"
"Yes; and what then?"
"His fortune!"
"That is exactly what I thought. When I saw you, I said to myself, 'To think that whoever arrests this man will earn sixty thousand francs, and make his fortune! Let us make haste to hide him.'"
The Marquis followed the beggar.
They entered a thicket. There was the beggar's den, a sort of chamber in which a large and ancient oak had allowed the man to take up his abode; it was hollowed out under its roots, and covered with its branches—dark, low, hidden, actually invisible—and in it there was room for two.
"I foresaw that I might have a guest," said the beggar.
This kind of subterranean lodging, less rare in Brittany than one might imagine, is called a carnichot. The same name is also given to hiding-places built in thick walls. The place was furnished with a few jugs, a bed of straw or sea-weed, washed and dried, a coarse kersey blanket, and a few tallow dips, together with a flint and steel, and twigs of furze to be used as matches.
They stooped, crawling for a moment, and penetrated into a chamber divided by the thick roots of the tree into fantastic compartments, and seated themselves on the heap of dry sea-weed that served as a bed. The space between the two roots through which they had entered, and which served as a door, admitted a certain amount of light. Night had fallen; but the human eye adapts itself to the change of light, and even in the darkness it sometimes seems as if the daylight lingered still. The reflection of a moonbeam illumined the entrance. In the corner was a jug of water, a loaf of buckwheat bread, and some chestnuts.
"Let us sup," said the beggar.
They divided the chestnuts; the Marquis gave his bit of hard-tack; they ate of the same black loaf, and drank in turn out of the same jug of water, meanwhile conversing.
The Marquis questioned the man.
"So it is all one to you, whatever happens?"
"Pretty much. It is for you who are lords to look out for that sort of business."
"But then, what is going on now, for instance—"
"It is all going on over my head."
The beggar added—
"Besides, there are things happening still higher; the sun rises, the moon waxes and wanes. That is the kind of thing that interests me."
He took a swallow from the jug and said—
"Good fresh water!"
Then he continued—
"How do you like this water, my lord?"
"What is your name?" asked the Marquis.
"My name is Tellmarch, but they call me the Caimand."
"I understand. Caimand is a local word."
"Which means beggar. I am also called Le Vieux."
He went on—
"I have been called Le Vieux for forty years."
"Forty years! But you must have been young then!"
"I was never young. You are young still, Marquis. You have the legs of a man of twenty; you can climb the great dune, while I can hardly walk. A quarter of a mile tires me out. Yet we are of the same age; but the rich have an advantage over us—they eat every day. Eating keeps up one's strength."
After a silence the beggar went on:—
"Wealth and poverty—there's the mischief; it seems to me that that is the cause of all these catastrophes. The poor want to be rich, and the rich do not want to become poor. I think that is at the bottom of it all, but I do not trouble myself about such matters; let come what may, I am neither for the creditor nor for the debtor. I know that there is a debt, and somebody is paying it; that is all. I would rather they had not killed the king, and yet I hardly know why. And then one says to me, 'Think how they used to hang people for nothing at all! Think of it! For a miserable shot fired at one of the king's deer, I once saw a man hung: he had a wife and seven children.' There is something to be said on both sides."
He was silent again, then resumed:—
"Of course you understand. I do not pretend to know just how