"It is not possible to live this way," he protested. "People will not buy sabots nor bucket-yokes."
"They need food before sabots," remarked the old man.
"But I too must have food. Are we never to have good bread again? Three years ago we had good bread."
"This barley, half eaten away, produces more bran than flour," said the old man, trembling with weakness. "To make bread of it, my woman is obliged to work it over several times, and each time there seems so little left that she weeps. We must soon die."
"Yet there is always a fight for it at the wickets, when it is distributed," said the third man.
"And one must fight to keep his share. I go to the wickets with my big knife out," the sabot-maker added fiercely.
"And when one eats it, it gives him inflammation and pains," continued the old man. "I have seen many years of famine, but never so little bread, and that so hard and stinking."
"As for me I have found a secret," gravely said the third man, whose hollow countenance displayed an unnatural pallor. "Over in the Seigneur's park, above the little spring of water, there is a ledge of rock. Below that ledge there lies plenty of white clay. That clay is good to eat. You are hungry no more when you have taken breakfast of that."
"My God! is our parish reduced to eating earth?" exclaimed the oldest of the men. "What is to become of France? Heaven is against us."
"I came here before my children woke, because it pierces my heart to listen to their crying," the sabot-maker said dejectedly.