?

"What do you say, Saboureux?"

The farmer presented the typical appearance of those peasants whom we
sometimes find in the eastern provinces and who, with their stern,
clean-shaven faces, like the faces on ancient medals, remind us of our
Roman ancestors rather than of the Gauls or Francs. He had marched to
battle in 1870 with the others, perishing with hunger and wretchedness,
risking his skin. And, on his return, he had found his shanty reduced to
ashes. Some passing Uhlans.... Since that time, he had laboured hard to
repair the harm done.

"And you want it all over again?" he said. "More Uhlans burning and
sacking?... Oh, no, I've had enough of that game! You just let me be as
I am!"

He was filled with the small land-owner's hatred against all those,
Frenchmen or others, who were likely to tread with a sacrilegious foot
on the sown earth, where the harvest is so slow in coming. He crossed
his arms, with a serious air.

"And you, Poussiere, what would you say if we went to war?" asked
Morestal, calling to the old tramp, who was sitting on the parapet of
the terrace, breaking a crust.

The man was lean and wizened, twisted like a vine-shoot, with long,
dust-coloured hair and a melancholy, impassive face that seemed carved
out of old oak. He put in an appearance at Saint-Elophe once every three
or four months. He knocked at the doors of the houses and then went off
again.

"What country do you belong to, to begin with?"

He grunted:

"Don't know much about it ... it's so long ago...."

"Which do you like best? France, eh? The roads on this side?"

The old chap swung his legs without answering, perhaps without
understanding. Saboureux grinned:

"He doesn't look at the roads, not he! He doesn't as much as know if he
belongs to the country on the right or on the left! His country lies
where the grub lies ... eh, Poussiere?"

Thereupon, seized with sudden ill-humour, Morestal lost his temper and
let fly at the lukewarm, at the indifferent--working-men, townsmen or
farmers--who think only of their comfort, without caring whether the
country is humiliated or victorious. But what else could one expect,
with the detestable ideas spread by some of the newspapers and carried
to the furthermost ends of the country in the books and pamphlets hawked
about by travelling agents?

"Yes," he cried, "the new ideas: those are the evil that is destroying
us. The school-masters are poisoning the minds of the young. Th