“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 considering that there is another 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 no 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.  So nobody has the right to leave me without bread!”

A fine, thick, icy cold rain was coming down, and he stopped and murmured:  “Oh, misery!  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 highroads, where everybody suspected him.  As the carpentering business was not prosperous, he would turn day laborer, be a mason’s hodman, a ditcher, break stones on the road.  If he only earned a franc a day, that would at any rate buy him something to eat.

He tied the remains of his last pocket handkerchief round his neck to prevent the cold rain from running down his back and chest, but he soon found that it was penetrating the thin material of which his clothes were made, and he glanced about him with the agonized look of a man who does not know where to hide his body and to rest his head, and has no place of shelter in the whole world.

Night came on and wrapped the country in obscurity, and in the distance, in a meadow, he saw a dark spot on the grass; it was a cow, and so he got over the ditch by the roadside and went up to her without exactly knowing what he was doing.  When he got close to her she raised her great head to him, and he thought:  “If I only had a jug I could get a little milk.”  He looked at the cow and the cow looked at him and then, suddenly giving her a kick in the side, he said:  “Get up!”

The animal got up slowly, letting her heavy udders bang down.  Then the man lay down on his back between the animal’s legs and drank for a long time, squeezing her warm, swollen teats, which tasted of the cowstall, with both hands, and he drank as long as she gave any milk.  But the icy rain began to fall more heavily, and he saw no place of shelter on the whole of that bare plain.  He was cold, and he looked at a light which was shining among the trees in the window of a house.

The cow had lain down again heavily, and he sat down by her side and stroked her head, grateful for the nourishment she had given him.  The animal’s strong, thick breath, which came out of her nostrils like two jets of steam in the evening air, blew on the workman’s face, and he said:  “You are not cold inside there!” He put his hands on her chest and under her stomach to find some warmth there, and then the idea struck him that he might pass the night beside that large, warm animal.  So he found a comfortable place and laid his head on her side, and then, as he was worn out with fatigue, fell asleep immediately.