Rengade turned towards the officer, who had failed to find among the soldiers the requisite men for an execution.

“This villain put my eye out,” he said, pointing to Silvere.  “Hand him over to me.  It’s as good as done for you.”

The officer did not reply in words, but withdrew with an air of indifference, making a vague gesture.  The gendarme understood that the man was surrendered to him.

“Come, get up!” he resumed, as he shook him.

Silvere, like all the other prisoners, had a companion attached to him.  He was fastened by the arm to a peasant of Poujols named Mourgue, a man about fifty, who had been brutified by the scorching sun and the hard labour of tilling the ground.  Crooked-backed already, his hands hardened, his face coarse and heavy, he blinked his eyes in a stupid manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject to the lash.  He had set out armed with a pitchfork, because his fellow villagers had done so; but he could not have explained what had thus set him adrift on the high roads.  Since he had been made a prisoner he understood it still less.  He had some vague idea that he was being conveyed home.  His amazement at finding himself bound, the sight of all the people staring at him, stupefied him still more.  As he only spoke and understood the dialect of the region, he could not imagine what the gendarme wanted.  He raised his coarse, heavy face towards him with an effort; then, fancying he was being asked the name of his village, he said in his hoarse voice: 

“I come from Poujols.”

A burst of laughter ran through the crowd, and some voices cried:  “Release the peasant.”

“Bah!” Rengade replied; “the more of this vermin that’s crushed the better.  As they’re together, they can both go.”

There was a murmur.

But the gendarme turned his terrible blood-stained face upon the onlookers, and they slunk off.  One cleanly little citizen went away declaring that if he remained any longer it would spoil his appetite for dinner.  However some boys who recognised Silvere, began to speak of “the red girl.”  Thereupon the little citizen retraced his steps, in order to see the lover of the female standard-bearer, that depraved creature who had been mentioned in the “Gazette.”

Silvere, for his part, neither saw nor heard anything; Rengade had to seize him by the collar.  Thereupon he got up, forcing Mourgue to rise also.

“Come,” said the gendarme.  “It won’t take long.”

Silvere then recognised the one-eyed man.  He smiled.  He must have understood.  But he turned his head away.  The sight of the one-eyed man, of his moustaches which congealed blood stiffened as with sinister rime, caused him profound grief.  He would have liked to die in perfect peace.  So he avoided the gaze of Rengade’s one eye, which glared from beneath the white bandage.  And of his own accord he proceeded to the end of the Aire Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane hidden by the timber stacks.  Mourgue followed him thither.