“When an official, who ought to see that the poor have justice done them, uses them ill and cheats them of their due, how can we expect the poor starving wretches to bear their troubles meekly and to respect the rights of property?  It makes me shudder to think that some understrapper whose business it is to dust papers in a government office, has pocketed Gondrin’s promised thousand francs of pension.  And yet there are folk who, never having measured the excess of the people’s sufferings, accuse the people of excess in the day of their vengeance!  When a government has done more harm than good to individuals, its further existence depends on the merest accident, the masses square the account after their fashion by upsetting it.  A statesman ought always to imagine Justice with the poor at her feet, for justice was only invented for the poor.”

When they had come within the compass of the township, Benassis saw two people walking along the road in front of them, and turned to his companion, who had been absorbed for some time in thought.

“You have seen a veteran soldier resigned to his life of wretchedness, and now you are about to see an old agricultural laborer who is submitting to the same lot.  The man there ahead of us has dug and sown and toiled for others all his life.”

Genestas looked and saw an old laborer making his way along the road, in company with an aged woman.  He seemed to be afflicted with some form of sciatica, and limped painfully along.  His feet were encased in a wretched pair of sabots, and a sort of wallet hung over his shoulder.  Several tools lay in the bottom of the bag; their handles, blackened with long use and the sweat of toil, rattled audibly together; while the other end of the wallet behind his shoulder held bread, some walnuts, and a few fresh onions.  His legs seemed to be warped, as it were, his back was bent by continual toil; he stooped so much as he walked that he leaned on a long stick to steady himself.  His snow-white hair escaped from under a battered hat, grown rusty by exposure to all sorts of weather, and mended here and there with visible stitches of white thread.  His clothes, made of a kind of rough canvas, were a mass of patches of contrasting colors.  This piece of humanity in ruins lacked none of the characteristics that appeal to our hearts when we see ruins of other kinds.

His wife held herself somewhat more erect.  Her clothing was likewise a mass of rags, and the cap that she wore was of the coarsest materials.  On her back she carried a rough earthen jar by means of a thong passed through the handles of the great pitcher, which was round in shape and flattened at the sides.  They both looked up when they heard the horses approaching, saw that it was Benassis, and stopped.