es dug up and
lying on the ground before his eyes; if he had found any he would have
gathered some dead wood, made a fire in the ditch and have had a capital
supper off the warm, round vegetables with which he would first of all
have warmed his cold hands. But it was too late in the year, and he
would have to gnaw a raw beetroot which he might pick up in a field as
he had done the day before.

For the last two days he had talked to himself as he quickened his steps
under the influence of his thoughts. He had never thought much hitherto,
as he had given all his mind, all his simple faculties to his mechanical
work. But now fatigue and this desperate search for work which he could
not get, refusals and rebuffs, nights spent in the open air lying on the
grass, long fasting, the contempt which he knew people with a settled
abode felt for a vagabond, and that question which he was continually
asked, "Why do you not remain at home?" distress at not being able to
use his strong arms which he felt so full of vigor, the recollection of
the relations he had left at home and who also had not a penny, filled
him by degrees with rage, which had been accumulating every day, every
hour, every minute, and which now escaped his lips in spite of himself
in short, growling sentences.

As he stumbled over the stones which tripped his bare feet, he grumbled:
"How wretched! how miserable! A set of hogs--to let a man die of
hunger--a carpenter--a set of hogs--not two sous--not two sous--and now
it is raining--a set of hogs!"

He was indignant at the injustice of fate, and cast the blame on men, on
all men, because nature, that great, blind mother, is unjust, cruel and
perfidious, and he repeated through his clenched teeth:

"A set of hogs" as he looked at the thin gray smoke which rose from the
roofs, for it was the dinner hour. And, without considering that there
is another injustice which is human, and which is called robbery and
violence, he felt inclined to go into one of those houses to murder the
inhabitants and to sit down to table in their stead.

He said to himself: "I have no right to live now, as they are letting me
die of hunger, and yet I only ask for work--a set of hogs!" And the pain
in his limbs, the gnawing in his heart rose to his head like terrible
intoxication, and gave rise to this simple thought in his brain: "I have
the right to live because I breathe and because the air is the common
property of everybody. So nobo