The proportions required between the tracked marten and the tracking dog were observed. The one trying to escape was thin and mean looking; the one trying to capture was a tall determined fellow, of rugged aspect, and a rough one to meet. The first, feeling himself the weaker, avoided the second, but did so in a deeply furious way; any one who could have observed him would have seen in his eyes the gloomy hostility of flight, and all the threat which there is in fear; the slope was deserted, there were no passers-by, not even a boatman or raftsman in the boats moored here and there. They could only be noticed easily from the opposite quay, and any one who had watched them at that distance would have seen that the man in front appeared a bristling, ragged, and shambling fellow, anxious and shivering under a torn blouse, while the other was a classic and official personage, wearing the frock-coat of authority buttoned up to the chin. The reader would probably recognize these two men, were he to see them more closely. What was the object of the last one? Probably he wished to clothe the other man more warmly. When a man dressed by the State pursues a man in rags, it is in order to make him also a man dressed by the State. The difference of color is the sole question; to be dressed in blue is glorious, to be dressed in red is disagreeable, for there is a purple of the lower classes. It was probably some disagreeable thing, and some purple of this sort, which the first man desired to avoid.