He looked at the sides of the road with the image of potatoes dug up and lying on the ground before his eyes; if he had found any, he would have gathered some dead wood, made a fire in the ditch, and have had a capital supper off the warm, round vegetables, which he would first of all have held burning hot, in his cold hands.  But it was too late in the year, and he would have to gnaw a raw beetroot, as he had done the day before, which he picked up in a field.

For the last two days he had spoken aloud as he quickened his steps, under the influence of his thoughts.  He had never thought, hitherto, as he had given all his mind, all his simple faculties, to his industrial requirements.  But now, fatigue, and this desperate search for work which he could not get, refusals and rebuffs, nights spent in the open-air, lying on the grass, long fasting, the contempt which he knew people with a settled abode felt for a vagabond, and that question which he was continually asked:  “Why do you not remain at home?” Now, distress at not being able to use his strong arms which he felt so full of vigor, the recollection of his relations who had remained at home and who also had not a half-penny, filled him by degrees with rage, which had been accumulating every day, every hour, every minute, and which now escaped his lips in spite of himself in short growling sentences.

As he stumbled over the stones which rolled beneath his bare feet, he grumbled, “How wretched! how miserable!...  A set of hogs ... to let a man die of hunger ... a carpenter ... a set of hogs ... not two pence ... not two pence ... and now it is raining ... a set of hogs!...”

He was indignant at the injustice of fate, and cast the blame on men, on all men, because nature, that great, blind mother, is unjust, cruel and perfidious, and he repeated through his clenched teeth:  “A set of hogs,” as he looked at the thin gray smoke which rose from the roofs, for it was the dinner hour.  And without thinking about that other injustice, which is human, and which is called robbery and violence, he felt inclined to go into one of those houses to murder the inhabitants, and to sit down to table, in their stead.

He said to himself:  “I have a right to live, now ... as they are letting me die of hunger ... and yet I only ask for work ... a set of hogs!” And the pain in his limbs, the gnawing in his heart rose to his head like terrible intoxication, and gave rise to this simple thought in his brain:  “I have the right to live because I breathe, and because the air is the common property of everybody, and so nobody has a right to leave me without bread!”

A fine, thick, icy cold rain was coming down and he stopped and murmured:  “How miserable!... another month of walking before I get home....”  He was indeed returning home then; for he saw that he should more easily find work in his native town where he was known,—­and he did not mind what he did,—­than on the high roads, where everybody suspected him.  As the carpentering business was not going well he would turn day-laborer, be a mason’s hodman, ditcher, break stones on the road.  If he only earned tenpence a day, that would at any rate find him something to eat.