"How do you like this water, my lord?" "What is your name?" asked the Marquis. "My name is Tellmarch, but they call me the Caimand." "I understand. _Caimand_ is a local word." "Which means beggar. I am also called Le Vieux." He went on,-- "I have been called Le Vieux for forty years." "Forty years! But you must have been young then!" "I was never young. You are young still, Marquis. You have the legs of a man of twenty; you can climb the great dune, while I can hardly walk. A quarter of a mile tires me out. Yet we are of the same age; but the rich have an advantage over us,--they eat every day. Eating keeps up one's strength." After a silence the beggar went on:-- "Wealth and poverty,--there's the mischief; it seems to me that that is the cause of all these catastrophes. The poor want to be rich, and the rich do not want to become poor. I think that is at the bottom of it all, but I do not trouble myself about such matters; let come what may, I am neither for the creditor nor for the debtor. I know that there is a debt, and somebody is paying it; that is all. I would rather they had not killed the king, and yet I hardly know why. And then one says to me, 'Think how they used to hang people for nothing at all! Think of it! For a miserable shot fired at one of the king's deer, I once saw a man hung: he had a wife and seven children.' There is something to be said on both sides." He was silent again, then resumed:-- "Of course you understand. I do not pretend to know just how matters stand; men go to and fro, changes take place, while I live beneath the stars." Again Tellmarch became thoughtful, then went on:-- "I know something of bone-setting and medicine. I am familiar with herbs and the use of plants; the peasants see me preoccupied for no apparent reason, and so I pass for a wizard. Because I dream, they think that I am wise." "Do you belong to the neighborhood?" asked the Marquis. "I have never left it." "Do you know me?" "Certainly. The last time I saw you, you were passing through this part of the country on your way to England; that was two years ago. Just now I saw a man on the top of the dune,--a tall man. Tall men are not common hereabouts; Brittany is a country of short men. I looked more closely; I had read the notice, and I said to myself, 'See here!' And when you came down, the moon was up and I recognized you." "But I do not know you," "You have looked at me, but you never saw me." And Tellmarch the Caimand added,-- "I saw you. The passer-by and the beggar look with different eyes." "Have I ever met you before?"