?"

"You have not given me anything."

He who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant and almost
odious.

"Ah! it's you, you scamp?" said he; "you shall have nothing."

He whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.

He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good.
The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the
month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then,
it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy, and in addition,
there were many ascents.

He took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours for
five leagues.

At Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he came to
and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood beside
the manger while the horse was eating; he thought of sad and confusing
things.

The inn-keeper's wife came to the stable.

"Does not Monsieur wish to breakfast?"

"Come, that is true; I even have a good appetite."

He followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him to the
public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.

"Make haste!" said he; "I must start again; I am in a hurry."

A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he
looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.

"That is what ailed me," he thought; "I had not breakfasted."

His breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful, and then
slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.

A carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:--

"Why is their bread so bitter here?"

The carter was a German and did not understand him.

He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.

An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course
towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.

What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the
morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields
pass by, and the way in which the landscape, broken at every turn of the
road, vanished; this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes
suffices to the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more
melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the
first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every
instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make
comparisons between the shifting horizon and our h