With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism.  He had stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres.  “It is much better,” he says somewhere, “to be wicked than to be stupid.  Most of this world’s misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity.”  And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable.  Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature like M. de Lesdiguieres — a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his potentialities for evil.  He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of the King’s Lieutenant.

He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in which he stood, a single louis d’or and a few pieces of silver for all capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve him from the consequences of infringing it.

He had, in addition — but these things that were to be the real salvation of him he did not reckon — his gift of laughter, sadly repressed of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.

Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt that he could tramp no more.  He had skirted the little township of Guichen, and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a good seven miles behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.

He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when he came to a halt.  He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to the footpath that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps of gorse.  A stone’s throw away on his right the common was bordered by a thorn hedge.  Beyond this loomed a tall building which he knew to be an open barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch of meadowland.  That dark, silent shadow it may have been that had brought him to a standstill, suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness.  A moment he hesitated; then he struck across towards a spot where a gap in the hedge was closed by a five-barred gate.  He pushed the gate open, went through the gap, and stood now before the barn.  It was as big as a house, yet consisted of no more than a roof carried upon half a dozen tall, brick pillars.  But densely packed under that roof was a great stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so cold a night.  Stout timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with projecting ends to serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to pack or withdraw hay.  With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to kneel, for lack of room to stand upright.  Arrived there, he removed his coat and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings.  Next he cleared a trough for his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay he had removed.  Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and soundly asleep.