, his face coarse and heavy, he blinked his eyes in a stupid
manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject
to the lash. He had set out armed with a pitchfork, because his fellow
villagers had done so; but he could not have explained what had thus
set him adrift on the high roads. Since he had been made a prisoner
he understood it still less. He had some vague idea that he was being
conveyed home. His amazement at finding himself bound, the sight of all
the people staring at him, stupefied him still more. As he only spoke
and understood the dialect of the region, he could not imagine what the
gendarme wanted. He raised his coarse, heavy face towards him with an
effort; then, fancying he was being asked the name of his village, he
said in his hoarse voice:

"I come from Poujols."

A burst of laughter ran through the crowd, and some voices cried:
"Release the peasant."

"Bah!" Rengade replied; "the more of this vermin that's crushed the
better. As they're together, they can both go."

There was a murmur.

But the gendarme turned his terrible blood-stained face upon the
onlookers, and they slunk off. One cleanly little citizen went away
declaring that if he remained any longer it would spoil his appetite for
dinner. However some boys who recognised Silvere, began to speak of "the
red girl." Thereupon the little citizen retraced his steps, in order to
see the lover of the female standard-bearer, that depraved creature who
had been mentioned in the "Gazette."

Silvere, for his part, neither saw nor heard anything; Rengade had to
seize him by the collar. Thereupon he got up, forcing Mourgue to rise
also.

"Come," said the gendarme. "It won't take long."

Silvere then recognised the one-eyed man. He smiled. He must have
understood. But he turned his head away. The sight of the one-eyed man,
of his moustaches which congealed blood stiffened as with sinister rime,
caused him profound grief. He would have liked to die in perfect peace.
So he avoided the gaze of Rengade's one eye, which glared from beneath
the white bandage. And of his own accord he proceeded to the end of
the Aire Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane hidden by the timber stacks.
Mourgue followed him thither.

The Aire stretched out, with an aspect of desolation under the sallow
sky. A murky light fell here and there from the copper-coloured clouds.
Never had a sadder and more lingering twilight cast its melancholy over
this bare ex