metempsychoses, as I have learned them by his hints, allusions and confessions, I should show him by turns working a rope ferry, where the stupid and indolent cattle, whose business it is to draw men, were drawn by him; then letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a village theatre; road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle, a bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an infant school, where he distributed his own ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons at the end of a stick; after this, big drum in the New Year’s festivals, and ready at a moment’s opportunity to throw down the drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels.  After fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life, he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck, driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air; sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man’s barn, and perhaps—­oh bliss!—­honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond.  Vagabond!  That truly was his profession now.  He forgot the charms of a fixed abode.  He came to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence.  He laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.

[Illustration:  Share my cup.]

[Illustration:  Breaking stones.]

One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have quite forgotten him, he walked—­on an empty stomach, as the doctors say—­past the lofty walls of a chateau.  A card was placed at the gate calling for additional hands at a job of digging.  Each workman, it was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning.  This article tempted him.  At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face, told him the notice had been posted there six months:  workmen were no longer wanted.  “Wait, though,” said the servant, and in another minute gave the applicant a horse!—­a real, live horse in blood and bones, but in bones especially.  “There,” said the domestic, “set a beggar on horseback and see him ride to the devil!” And, laughing with that unalloyed enjoyment which one’s own wit alone produces, he retired behind his wicket.

[Illustration:  Sickness and courtship.]

The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup was a wretched glandered beast—­not old, but shunned on account of the contagious nature of his disease.  Having received the order to take him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.

Joliet did not kill the steed:  he cured it.  He tended it, he drenched it, he saved it.  By what remedy?  I cannot tell.  I have never been a farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer.  Many a bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads.  The sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living cyclopaedia.