there to climb ropes with loads upon my back. Building is
going on everywhere here, and the masons need helpers. Three francs a
day! I never earned so much. Let me be forgotten, and that is all I
ask."

He followed his courageous resolution; he was faithful to it, and after
three months he was another man. The master for whom he worked called
him his best workman. After a long day upon the scaffolding, in the hot
sun and the dust, constantly bending and raising his back to take the
hod from the man at his feet and pass it to the man over his head, he
went for his soup to the cook-shop, tired out, his legs aching, his
hands burning, his eyelids stuck with plaster, but content with himself,
and carrying his well-earned money in a knot in his handkerchief. He
went out now without fear, since he could not be recognized in his white
mask, and since he had noticed that the suspicious glances of the
policeman were seldom turned on the tired workman. He was quiet and
sober. He slept the sound sleep of fatigue. He was free!

At last--oh, supreme recompense!--he had a friend!

He was a fellow-workman like himself, named Savinien, a little peasant
with red lips who had come to Paris with his stick over his shoulder and
a bundle on the end of it, fleeing from the wine-shops and going to mass
every Sunday. Jean Francois loved him for his piety, for his candor,
for his honesty, for all that he himself had lost, and so long ago. It
was a passion, profound and unrestrained, which transformed him by
fatherly cares and attentions. Savinien, himself of a weak and
egotistical nature, let things take their course, satisfied only in
finding a companion who shared his horror of the wine-shop. The two
friends lived together in a fairly comfortable lodging, but their
resources were very limited. They were obliged to take into their room a
third companion, an old Auvergnat, gloomy and rapacious, who found it
possible out of his meagre salary to save something with which to buy a
place in his own country. Jean Francois and Savinien were always
together. On holidays they together took long walks in the environs of
Paris, and dined under an arbor in one of those small country inns where
there are a great many mushrooms in the sauces and innocent rebusses on
the napkins. There Jean Francois learned from his friend all that lore
of which they who are born in the city are ignorant: learned the names
of the trees, the flowers, and the plants; the var