After a few moments’ further reflection, he asked him:  “Have you any money on you?” “No.”  “None whatever?” “None.”  “Not even a sou?” “Not even a sou!” “How do you live then?” “On what people give me.”  “Then you beg?” And Randel answered resolutely:  “Yes, when I can.”

Then the gendarme said:  “I have caught you on the highroad in the act of vagabondage and begging, without any resources or trade, and so I command you to come with me.”  The carpenter got up and said:  “Wherever you please.”  And placing himself between the two soldiers, even before he had received the order to do so, he added:  “Come, lock me up; that will at any rate put a roof over my head when it rains.”

And they set off towards the village, whose red tiles could be seen through the leafless trees a quarter of a league off.  Service was just going to begin when they went through the village.  The square was full of people, who immediately formed two hedges to see the criminal, who was being followed by a crowd of excited children, pass.  Male and female peasants looked at the prisoner between the two gendarmes, with hatred in their eyes, and a longing to throw stones at him, to tear his skin with their nails, to trample him under their feet.  They asked each other whether he had committed murder or robbery.  The butcher, who was an ex-Spahl, declared that he was a deserter.  The tobacconist thought that he recognized him as the man who had that very morning passed a bad half franc piece off on him, and the ironmonger declared that he was the murderer of widow Malet, whom the police had been looking for, for six months.

In the hall of the municipal council, into which his custodians took him, Randel saw the mayor again, sitting on the magisterial bench, with the schoolmaster by his side.  “Ah! ah!” the magistrate exclaimed, “so here you are again, my fine fellow.  I told you I should have you locked up.  Well, brigadier, what is he charged with?”

“He is a vagabond without house or home, Monsieur le Maire, without any resources or money, so he says, who was arrested in the act of begging, but he is provided with good testimonials, and his papers are all in order.”

“Show me his papers,” the mayor said.  He took them, read them, reread, returned them, and then said:  “Search him;” so they searched him, but found nothing, and the Mayor seemed perplexed, and asked the workman: 

“What were you doing on the road this morning?” “I was looking for work.”  “Work?...  On the highroad?” “How do you expect me to find any, if I hid in the woods?”

They looked at each other, with the hatred of two wild beasts which belong to different, hostile species, and the magistrate continued:  “I am going to have you set at liberty but do not be brought up before me again.”  To which the carpenter replied:  “I would rather you locked me up; I have had enough running about the country.”  But the magistrate replied severely:  “Be silent.”  And then he said to the two gendarmes:  “You will conduct this man two hundred yards from the village, and let him continue his journey.”