“You see—excuse me, I don’t want to run away at all.”
Jacques was amazed. If Trumence refused his cooperation he could not go out, or, at least, he would have to wait.
“Are you in earnest, Trumence?” he asked.
“Certainly I am, my dear sir. Here, you see, I am not so badly off: I have a good bed, I have two meals a day, I have nothing to do, and I pick up now and then, from one man or another, a few cents to buy me a pinch of tobacco or a glass of wine.”
“But your liberty?”
“Well, I shall get that too. I have committed no crime. I may have gotten over a wall into an orchard; but people are not hanged for that. I have consulted M. Magloire, and he told me precisely how I stand. They will try me in a police-court, and they will give me three or four months. Well, that is not so very bad. But, if I run away, they put the gendarmes on my track; they bring me back here; and then I know how they will treat me. Besides, to break jail is a grave offence.”
How could he overcome such wise conclusions and such excellent reasons? Jacques was very much troubled.
“Why should the gendarmes take you again?” he asked.
“Because they are gendarmes, my dear sir. And then, that is not all. If it were spring, I should say at once, ‘I am your man.’ But we have autumn now; we are going to have bad weather; work will be scarce.”
Although an incurable idler, Trumence had always a good deal to say about work.