“I’ve no time; or rather, I’ve no strength.  At nights, when I come home I’m too tired—­I’m too tired, you understand, to be happy, you see.  Every morning I think I shall be, and I’m hoping up till noon; but at night I’m too knocked out, what with walking and rubbing for eleven hours; and on Sundays I’m done in altogether with the week.  There’s even times that I don’t even wash myself when I come in.  I just stay with my hands mucky; and on Sundays when I’m cleaned up, it’s a nasty one when they say to me, ‘You’re looking well.’”

And while I am listening to the tragicomical recital which he retails, like a soliloquy, without expecting replies from me—­luckily, for I should not know how to answer—­I can, in fact, recall those holidays when the face of Petrolus is embellished by the visible marks of water.

“Apart from that,” he goes on, withdrawing his chin into the gray string of his over-large collar; “apart from that, Charlotte, she’s very good.  She looks after me, and tidies the house, and it’s her that lights our lamp; and she hides the books carefully away from me so’s I can’t grease ’em, and my fingers make prints on ’em like criminals.  She’s good, but it doesn’t turn out well, same as I’ve told you, and when one’s unhappy everything’s favorable to being unhappy.”

He is silent for a while, and then adds by way of conclusion to all he has said, and to all that one can say, “My father, he caved in at fifty.  And I shall cave in at fifty, p’raps before.”

With his thumb he points through the twilight at that sort of indelible darkness which makes the multitude, “Them others, it’s not the same with them.  There’s those that want to change everything and keep going on that notion.  There’s those that drink and want to drink, and keep going that way.”

I hardly listen to him while he explains to me the grievances of the different groups of workmen, “The molders, monsieur, them, it’s a matter of the gangs——­”

Just now, while looking at the population of the factory, I was almost afraid; it seemed to me that these toilers were different sorts of beings from the detached and impecunious people who live around me.  When I look at this one I say to myself, “They are the same; they are all alike.”

In the distance, and together, they strike fear, and their combination is a menace; but near by they are only the same as this one.  One must not look at them in the distance.

Petrolus gets excited; he makes gestures; he punches in and punches out again with his fist, the hat which is stuck askew on his conical head, over the ears that are pointed like artichoke leaves.  He is in front of me, and each of his soles is pierced by a valve which draws in water from the saturated ground.

“The unions, monsieur——­” he cries to me in the wind, “why, it’s dangerous to point at them.  You haven’t the right to think any more—­that’s what they call liberty.  If you’re in them, you’ve got to be agin the parsons—­(I’m willing, but what’s that got to do with labor?)—­and there’s something more serious,” the lamp-man adds, in a suddenly changed voice, “you’ve got to be agin the army,—­the army!”