“There you see the man who once fired a shot at me,” Benassis remarked to the commandant in a low voice.  “If at this moment I were to signify to him my desire to be rid of any one, he would kill them without scruple.—­Butifer!” he went on, addressing the poacher, “I fully believed you to be a man of your word; I pledged mine for you because I had your promise.  My promise to the procureur du roi at Grenoble was based upon your vow never to go poaching again, and to turn over a new leaf and become a steady, industrious worker.  You fired that shot just now, and here you are, on the Comte de Labranchoir’s estate!  Eh! you miscreant?  Suppose his keeper had happened to hear you?  It is a lucky thing for you that I shall take no formal cognizance of this offence; if I did, you would come up as an old offender, and of course you have no gun license!  I let you keep that gun of yours out of tenderness for your attachment to the weapon.”

“It is a beauty,” said the commandant, who recognized a duck gun from Sainte Etienne.

The smuggler raised his head and looked at Genestas by way of acknowledging the compliment.

“Butifer,” continued Benassis, “if your conscience does not reproach you, it ought to do so.  If you are going to begin your old tricks again, you will find yourself once more in a park enclosed by four stone walls, and no power on earth will save you from the hulks; you will be a marked man, and your character will be ruined.  Bring your gun to me to-night, I will take care of it for you.”

Butifer gripped the barrel of his weapon in a convulsive clutch.

“You are right, sir,” he said; “I have done wrong, I have broken bounds, I am a cur.  My gun ought to go to you, but when you take it away from me, you take all that I have in the world.  The last shot which my mother’s son will fire shall be through my own head. . . .  What would you have?  I did as you wanted me.  I kept quiet all winter; but the spring came, and the sap rose.  I am not used to day labor.  It is not in my nature to spend my life in fattening fowls; I cannot stoop about turning over the soil for vegetables, nor flourish a whip and drive a cart, nor scrub down a horse in a stable all my life, so I must die of starvation, I suppose?  I am only happy when I am up there,” he went on after a pause, pointing to the mountains.  “And I have been about among the hills for the past week; I got a sight of a chamois, and I have the chamois there,” he said, pointing to the top of the crag; “it is at your service!  Dear M. Benassis, leave me my gun.  Listen!  I will leave the Commune, foi de Butifer!  I will go to the Alps; the chamois-hunters will not say a word; on the contrary, they will receive me with open arms.  I shall come to grief at the bottom of some glacier; but, if I am to speak my mind, I would rather live for a couple of years among the heights, where there are no governments, nor excisemen, nor gamekeepers, nor procureurs du roi, than grovel in a marsh for a century.  You are the only one that I shall be sorry to leave behind; all the rest of them bore me!  When you are in the right, at any rate you don’t worry one’s life out——­”