“Of a certainty, and is double-damned thereby. For know that these austere moralists have found their opportunity to indulge a hobby—not to avenge a people. What do we want with abstinence who have practised it all our lives? What do we want with interminable phrases on the sublimity of duty?”
“But, thou wilt not understand that political economy——”
“Bah! I know it for the economy of words—that delicious terminer les débats of the jury that rolls another lying mouth into the basket and makes a body the less to feed. But I tell thee, with every fall of the axe I feel myself shifting a place nearer the rich joints at the top of the feast.”
“Liberty——”
“That I desire is the free indulgence of my appetites. Now would not Roland and Vergniaud and their crew shave me nicely for that sentiment? Therefore I love to hunt them down.”
A vieux chat jeune souris. How indeed could these old grimalkins, grown toothless under tyranny, digest this tough problem of virtue for its own sake? Their food must be minced for them.
I never saw their faces; but I guessed them, by a certain croaking in their speech, to be worn with years and suffering. Presently, to my disgust, they had out their pipes and a flask of cognac and sat themselves down against the edge of the corn for a mild carouse. I waited on and on, listening to their snuffling talk, till I grew sick with the monotony of it and the cramp of my position. They were, I gathered, informers employed by Tallien in his search for those escaped Deputies who were believed to be in hiding in the neighbourhood.
At last I could stand it no longer. Move I must, for all the risk it entailed. I set to work, very cautiously, a foot at a time, wriggling on my belly through the corn. They took no notice, each being voluble to assert his opinions against the other. Presently, making towards the wood, I found the field to dip downwards to its skirt, so that I was enabled to raise myself to a crouching position and increase my pace. The relief was immense; I was running as the tree-trunks came near and opened out to me.
Now, I was so weary that I thought I must sleep awhile before I proceeded. I was pushing through the last few yards of the stalks when a guttural snarl arrested me. Immediately, right in my path, a head was protruded from the corn, and a bristled snout, slavering in the moonlight, was lifted at me. I stood a moment transfixed—a long moment, it appeared to me. The ridiculous fancy occurred to me that the yellow eyes glaring into mine would go on dilating till presently I should find myself embedded in their midst, like a prawn in aspic. Then, with a feeling of indescribable politeness in my heart, I turned aside to make a détour into the wood, stepping on tiptoe as if I were leaving a sick-room. Once amongst the trees, I penetrated the darkness rapidly to the depth of a hundred yards, not venturing to look behind me, and, indeed, only before in search of some reasonable branch or fork where I might rest in safety. Wolves! I had not taken these into my calculations in the glowing solstice of summer, and it gave me something a shock to think what I had possibly escaped during my unguarded nights in the forest.
At length I found the place I sought—a little natural chair of branches high enough to be out of the reach of wild beasts, yet the ascent thereto easy. I climbed to it, notched myself in securely, and, my hunger somewhat comforted by the water I had drunk, fell almost immediately into a delicious stupor.