jaded, his legs failing him, his stomach empty, and
with despair in his heart, was walking barefoot on the grass by the side
of the road, for he was taking care of his last pair of shoes, as the
other pair had already ceased to exist for a long time. It was a
Saturday, toward the end of autumn. The heavy gray clouds were being
driven rapidly through the sky by the gusts of wind which whistled among
the trees, and one felt that it would rain soon. The country was deserted
at that hour on the eve of Sunday. Here and there in the fields there
rose up stacks of wheat straw, like huge yellow mushrooms, and the fields
looked bare, as they had already been sown for the next year.

Randel was hungry, with the hunger of some wild animal, such a hunger as
drives wolves to attack men. Worn out and weakened with fatigue, he took
longer strides, so as not to take so many steps, and with heavy head, the
blood throbbing in his temples, with red eyes and dry mouth, he grasped
his stick tightly in his hand, with a longing to strike the first
passerby who might be going home to supper.

He looked at the sides of the road, imagining he saw potatoes 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 ston