"And so it will be as long as I choose! The great difficulty is that the worthy gendarmes ride their horses along one bank of the Creuse, while I ply my legs along the other! They are very sick, poor fellows! being paid to take the air and make reports as to what they don't do. Don't pity them so deeply, Monsieur Cardonnet, the government pays them, and the government is rich enough for me to dodge the payment of a thousand francs--for it's the truth that I am sentenced to pay a thousand francs or go to prison! It surprises you, doesn't it, young man, that a poor devil who has always obliged his neighbor instead of injuring him should be hunted like an escaped convict? You haven't a bad heart yet, although you are rich, because you are young. Let me tell you what my crime was. For sending three bottles of wine from my vineyard to a friend who was sick, I was arrested by the excisemen for selling wine without paying the taxes on it; and as I could not lie and humiliate myself for the sake of compromising, as I told the truth, which is that I did not sell a drop of wine, and consequently could not be punished, I was sentenced to pay what they call the minimum fine, five hundred francs. The minimum, if you please! five hundred francs, my year's wages, for a gift of three bottles of wine! To say nothing of the fact that my poor comrade was sentenced too, and that was what made me angriest. And as I could not pay such an amount, they seized everything, ransacked everything, sold everything I had, even my carpentering tools. After that, where was the use of paying for a license to carry on a trade that wouldn't support me? I stopped doing it; and one day, when I was working as a journeyman away from home, there was another prosecution and a quarrel with the deputy, when I almost forgot myself and struck him. What was to become of me? There was no bread in my chest, so I took my gun and went out into the furze and killed a hare. Formerly, in this country, poaching had become a custom and a privilege. The nobles in the old days didn't keep such close watch, just after the Revolution; they even poached with us when they had a fancy to do so." "Witness Monsieur de Châteaubrun, who does it still," said Monsieur de Cardonnet, ironically. "As long as he doesn't trespass on your estates, what harm does that do you?" retorted the peasant in an irritated tone. "However, for shooting a hare and catching two rabbits in a trap I was taken again and sentenced to pay a fine, and to imprisonment. But I escaped from the claws of the gendarmes as they were taking me to the government _inn_, and since then I have lived as I choose, and haven't chosen to hold out my arm for the chain to be put on."