But at one time a man might have been seen there working alone, quite alone.  Even a space was left about him, as if an invisible circle were drawn, within which no person would venture.  If a word were flung at him across this imaginary cordon, it was nothing but a taunt or a curse, and it was invariably spoken by a man.  No woman so much as glanced at him.  He toiled on doggedly, and in silence, with a weary-looking face, until his task was ended, and the waggon driven off by the owner, who had employed him at a lower rate than his comrades.  Then he would throw his blue blouse over his shoulders, and tramp away with heavy tread along the faintly marked trail leading across the beach to Mont St. Michel.

Neither was there any voice to greet him as he gained the gateway, where the men of the Mont congregated, as they always congregate about the entrance to a walled town.  Rather, the scornful silence which had surrounded him at his work was here deepened into a personal hatred.  Within the gate the women, who were chattering over their nets of cockles, shrank away from him, or broke into a contemptuous laugh.  Along the narrow street the children fled at the sight of him, and hid behind their mothers, from whose protection they could shout after him.  If the cure met him, he would turn aside into the first house rather than come in contact with him.  He was under a ban which no one dared to defy.

The only voice that spoke to him was the fretful, querulous voice of an old, bedridden woman as he lifted the latch and opened the door of a poor house upon the ramparts, which had no entrance into the street; and where he lived alone with his mother, cut off from all accidental intercourse with his neighbours.

“Michel!  Michel! how late thou art!” she exclaimed; “if thou hadst been a good son thou wouldst have returned before the hour it is.”

“I returned as soon as my work was finished,” he answered, in a patient voice; “I have not lost a minute by the way.”

“Bah! because no one will ask thee to turn in with them anywhere!” she continued.  “If thou wert like everybody else thou wouldst have many a friend to pass thy time with.  It is hard for me, thy mother, to have brought thee into the world that all the world should despise and hate thee, as they do this day.  Monsieur le Cure says there is no hope for thee if thou art so obstinate; thou must go to hell, though I named thee after our great archangel St. Michel, and brought thee up as a good Christian. Quel malheur! How hard it is for me to lie in bed all day, and think of my son in the flames of hell!”

Very quietly, as if he had heard such complainings hundreds of times before, did Michel set about kindling a few sticks upon the open hearth.  This was so common a welcome home that he scarcely heard it, and had ceased to heed it.  The room, as the flickering light fell upon it, was one of the cheerless and comfortless chambers to be seen in any peasant’s house:  a pile of wood in one corner, a single table with a chair or two, a shelf with a few pieces of brown crockery, and the bed on which the paralytic woman was lying, her hands crossed over her breast, and her bright black eyes glistening in the gloom.  Michel brought her the soup he had made, and fed her carefully and tenderly, before thinking of satisfying his own hunger.