es 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 nobody has the right to leave me without
bread!"

A fine, thick, icy cold rain was coming down, and he stopped and
murmured: "Oh, misery! Another month of walking before I get home." He
was indeed returning home then, for he saw that he should more easily
find work in his native town, where he was known--and he did not
mind what he did--than on the highroads, where everybody suspected
him. As the carpentering business was not prosperous, he would turn day
laborer, be a mason's hodman, a ditcher, break stones on the road. If he
only earned a franc a day, that would at any rate buy him something to
eat.

He tied the remains of his last pocket handkerchief round his neck to
prevent the cold rain from running down his back and chest, but he soon
found that it was penetrating the thin material of which his clothes were
made, and he glanced about him with the agonized look of a man who does
not know where to hide his body and to rest his head, and has no place of
shelter in the whole world.

Night came on and wrapped the country in obscurity, and in the distance,
in a meadow, he saw a dark spot on the grass; it was a cow, and so he got
over the ditch by the roadside and went up to her without exactly knowing
what he was doing. When he got close to her she raised her great head to
him, and he thought: "