Allured by the sweetness of air and sun, M. Bergeret sat down by the side of the road, on one of the blocks which had been quarried out of the mountain years ago, and which were now covered with a coating of black moss. Through the delicate tracery of the branches overhead he noticed the lilac hue of the sky, streaked here and there with smoke trails. Thus to plunge in lonely reverie filled his soul with peaceful sadness. In attacking Agrippa’s galleys which blocked their way, he reflected, Antony and Cleopatra had but one object, and that was to clear a passage. It was this precise feat that Cleopatra, who raised the blockade of her sixty ships, succeeded in accomplishing. Seated in the cutting, M. Bergeret enjoyed the harmless elation of settling the fate of the world on the far-famed waves of Acarnania. Then, as he happened to throw a glance three paces in front of him, he caught sight of an old man who was sitting on a heap of dead leaves on the other side of the road and leaning against the grey wall. It was scarcely possible to distinguish between this wild figure and its surroundings, for his face, his beard and his rags were exactly the colour of the stones and the leaves. He was slowly scraping a piece of wood with an old knife-blade ground thin on the millstone of the years. “Good-day to you, sir,” said the old fellow. “The sun is pretty. And I’ll tell you what’s more—it isn’t going to rain.” M. Bergeret recognised the man: it was Pied d’Alouette, the tramp whom M. Roquincourt, the magistrate, had wrongly implicated in the murder that took place in Queen Marguerite’s house and whom he had imprisoned for six months in the vague hope that unforeseen charges would be laid at his door. This he did, either because he thought that the longer the imprisonment continued the more justifiable it would seem, or merely through spite against a simpleton who had misled the officers of the law. M. Bergeret, who always had a fellow-feeling for the oppressed, answered Pied d’Alouette in a kindly style that reflected the old fellow’s good-will. “Good-day, friend,” said he. “I see that you know all the pleasant nooks. This hillside is warm and well sheltered.” There was a moment’s silence, and then Pied d’Alouette answered: “I know better spots than this. But they are far away from here. One mustn’t be afraid of a walk. Feet are all right. Shoes aren’t. I can’t wear good shoes because they’re strange to my feet. I only rip them up, when they give me sound ones.” And raising his foot from the cushion of dead leaves, he pointed to his big toe sticking out, wrapped in wads of linen, through the slits in the leather of his boot. Relapsing into silence once more, he began to polish the piece of hard wood. M. Bergeret soon returned to his own thoughts. _Pallentem morte futura._ Agrippa’s galleys could not bar the way to Antony’s purple-sailed trireme. This time, at least, the dove escaped the vulture. But hereupon Pied d’Alouette began again: