Peyrol, busy about one thing and another, listened without appearing to pay much attention to the story of the Revolution, as if to the tale of an intelligent islander on the other side of the world talking of bloody rites and amazing hopes of some religion unknown to the rest of mankind. But there was something biting in the speech of that cripple which confused his thoughts a little. Sarcasm was a mystery which he could not understand. On one occasion he remarked to his friend the cripple as they sat together on the foredeck munching the bread and figs of their midday meal: “There must have been something in it. But it doesn’t seem to have done much for you people here.” “To be sure,” retorted the scrap of man vivaciously, “it hasn’t straightened my back or given me a pair of legs like yours.” Peyrol, whose trousers were rolled up above the knee because he had been washing the hold, looked at his calves complacently. “You could hardly have expected that,” he remarked with simplicity. “Ah, but you don’t know what people with properly made bodies expected or pretended to,” said the cripple. “Everything was going to be changed. Everybody was going to tie up his dog with a string of sausages for the sake of principles.” His long face, which, in repose, had an expression of suffering peculiar to cripples, was lighted up by an enormous grin. “They must feel jolly well sold by this time,” he added. “And of course that vexes them, but I am not vexed. I was never vexed with my father and mother. While the poor things were alive I never went hungry--not very hungry. They couldn’t have been very proud of me.” He paused and seemed to contemplate himself mentally. “I don’t know what I would have done in their place. Something very different. But then, don’t you see, I know what it means to be like I am. Of course they couldn’t know, and I don’t suppose the poor people had very much sense. A priest from Almanarre--Almanarre is a sort of village up there where there is a church....” Peyrol interrupted him by remarking that he knew all about Almanarre. This, on his part, was a simple delusion because in reality he knew much less of Almanarre than of Zanzibar or any pirate village from there up to Cape Guardafui. And the cripple contemplated him with his brown eyes, which had an upward cast naturally. “You know ...! For me,” he went on, in a tone of quiet decision, “you are a man fallen from the sky. Well, a priest from Almanarre came to bury them. A fine man with a stern face. The finest man I have seen from that time till you dropped on us here. There was a story of a girl having fallen in love with him some years before. I was old enough then to have heard something of it, but that’s neither here nor there. Moreover, many people wouldn’t believe the tale.”