applicable to a first offence."

I made an appropriate murmur. He hung his head and folded his arms.

"When they let me out of prison," he began, gently, "I made tracks, of
course, for my old workshop. My patron had a particular liking for me
before; but when he saw me he turned green with fright and showed me the
door with a shaking hand."

While he stood in the street, uneasy and disconcerted, he was accosted
by a middle-aged man who introduced himself as an engineer's fitter,
too. "I know who you are," he said. "I have attended your trial. You are
a good comrade and your ideas are sound. But the devil of it is that you
won't be able to get work anywhere now. These bourgeois'll conspire to
starve you. That's their way. Expect no mercy from the rich."

To be spoken to so kindly in the street had comforted him very much. His
seemed to be the sort of nature needing support and sympathy. The idea
of not being able to find work had knocked him over completely. If his
patron, who knew him so well for a quiet, orderly, competent workman,
would have nothing to do with him now--then surely nobody else would.
That was clear. The police, keeping their eye on him, would hasten to
warn every employer inclined to give him a chance. He felt suddenly very
helpless, alarmed and idle; and he followed the middle-aged man to the
estaminet round the corner where he met some other good companions. They
assured him that he would not be allowed to starve, work or no work.
They had drinks all round to the discomfiture of all employers of labour
and to the destruction of society.

He sat biting his lower lip.

"That is, monsieur, how I became a compagnon," he said. The hand he
passed over his forehead was trembling. "All the same, there's something
wrong in a world where a man can get lost for a glass more or less."

He never looked up, though I could see he was getting excited under his
dejection. He slapped the bench with his open palm.

"No!" he cried. "It was an impossible existence! Watched by the police,
watched by the comrades, I did not belong to myself any more! Why, I
could not even go to draw a few francs from my savings-bank without a
comrade hanging about the door to see that I didn't bolt! And most of
them were neither more nor less than housebreakers. The intelligent, I
mean. They robbed the rich; they were only getting back their own, they
said. When I had had some drink I believed them. There were also the
fools and t