As a tramp being hustled away from a café protests, at each jerk the waiter gives him, that he is a human being, probably a _free_ human being—yes, probably _free_; so Kreisler complained to his fate that he was a living man, that he required _time_—that above all it was _time_ he needed—to settle his affairs and withdraw from life. But his fate was a harsh Prussian gendarme. He whined and blustered to no effect. He was superstitious as well in the usual way about this decease. In his spiritless and brooding tramp he questioned if it were not he that had died and not Soltyk, and if it were not his ghost that was now wandering off nowhere in particular. One franc and a great many coppers remained to him. As he jumped from field to road and road to field again, in his flight, they rose and fell in a little leaden wave in his pocket, breaking dully on his thigh. This little wave rose and fell many times, till he began to wait for it, and its monotonous grace. It was like a sigh. It heaved and clashed down in a foiled way. He spent the money that evening on a meal in a village. The night was dry and was passed in an empty barge. Next day, at four in the afternoon, he arrived at Meaux. Here he exchanged his entire wardrobe for a very shabby workman’s outfit, gaining seven francs and fifty centimes on the exchange. He caught the early train for Rheims, travelling thirty-five kilometres of his journey at a sou a kilometre, got a meal near the station, and took another ticket to Verdun. Believing himself nearer the frontier than he actually was, he set out on foot. At the next large town, Pontlieux, he had too hearty a meal. He had exhausted his stock of money long before the frontier was reached. For two days he had eaten hardly anything; and tramped on in a dogged and careless spirit. The _nearness_ of the German frontier began to rise like a wall in front of him. This question had to be answered: Did he want to cross it after all? His answer was to mount the steps of the local _gendarmerie_. His Prussian severity of countenance, now that he was dressed in every point like a vagabond, without hat and his hair disordered, five days’ beard on his chin—this sternness of the German warrior gave him the appearance of a scowling ruffian. The _agent_ on duty, who barred his passage brutally before the door of the inner office, scowling too, classed him as a depraved cut-throat vagabond, and considered his voluntary entrance into the police-station as an act not only highly suspicious and unaccountable in itself, but of the last insolence. “Qu’est-ce qu’il te faut?” “Foir le Commissaire,” returned Kreisler. “Tu ne peux pas le voir. Il n’y est pas.” A few more laconic sentences followed, the _agent_ reiterating sulkily that the magistrate was not there. But he was eyeing Kreisler doubtfully and turning something over in his mind.