Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Let Loose

A late, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The
stream, like a sullied looking-glass in a gloomy place, reflected
the clouds heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there,
as if they were half curious, and half afraid, to see their
darkening pictures in the water. The flat expanse of country about
Chalons lay a long heavy streak, occasionally made a little ragged
by a row of poplar trees against the wrathful sunset. On the banks
of the river Saone it was wet, depressing, solitary; and the night
deepened fast.

One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible
figure in the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and
avoided. With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough,
unbarked stick cut out of some wood in his hand; miry, footsore,
his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrimmed;
the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and the clothes he wore,
sodden with wet; limping along in pain and difficulty; he looked as
if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the wail of the wind
and the shuddering of the grass were directed against him, as if
the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at him, as if the
fitful autumn night were disturbed by him.

He glanced here, and he glanced there, sullenly but shrinkingly;
and sometimes stopped and turned about, and looked all round him.
Then he limped on again, toiling and muttering.

'To the devil with this plain that has no end! To the devil with
these stones that cut like knives! To the devil with this dismal
darkness, wrapping itself about one with a chill! I hate you!'

And he would have visited his hatred upon it all with the scowl he
threw about him, if he could. He trudged a little further; and
looking into the distance before him, stopped again.
'I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You, imbeciles, where the lights are
yonder, eating and drinking, and warming yourselves at fires! I
wish I had the sacking of your town; I would repay you, my
children!'

But the teeth he set at the town, and the hand he shook at the
town, brought the town no nearer; and the man was yet hungrier, and
thirstier, and wearier, when his feet were on its jagged pavement,
and he stood looking about him.

There was the hotel with its gateway, and its savoury smell of
cooking; there was the cafe with its bright windows, and its
rattling of dominoes; there was the dyer's with its strips of red
cloth on the doorposts; there was the silversmith's with its
earrings, and its offerings for altars; there was the tobacco
dealer's with its lively group of soldier customers coming out pipe
in mouth; there were the bad odours of the town, and the rain and