"What good, fresh water!" Then he added, "How do you like this water, monseigneur?"
"What is your name?" said the marquis.
"My name is Tellmarch, and they call me the caimand."
"I know. Caimand is one of your provincial words."
"Which means beggar. They have named me besides, the old man." He continued: "For forty years I have been called the old man."
"Forty years! Why, you are young."
"I never was young. You are always young, monsieur le marquis. You have the legs of twenty, you climb up the great dune; as for me I can hardly walk at all; a quarter of a league tires me out. Still, we are of the same age; but the rich have an advantage over us, for they eat every day. Eating preserves one."
After a silence, the beggar continued: "Poverty and riches—it is a troublesome problem. That is the cause of calamities. At least, so it seems to me. The poor want to be rich, the rich do not want to be poor. I believe that is at the bottom of it. I don't mix myself up with it. Events are events. I am neither for the debtor nor for the creditor. I know that there is a debt and that it is being paid. That is all. I should have liked it better if they had not killed the king, but it would be difficult for me to tell why. In reply to that they tell me: But once they used to hang men to trees for nothing at all. I myself have seen a man with a wife and seven children hanged for shooting one of the king's deer. There are two sides to be considered."
He was silent again, then added,—
"You understand. I don't know exactly, people come and go, and things happen, but as for me, I am up among the stars."
Tellmarch stopped again to think, then continued,—
"I am a little of a bone-setter, a little of a doctor. I am familiar with herbs, and have some experience with plants; the peasants see me in a brown study and that makes me pass for a sorcerer. Because I dream, they think I know."
"You belong to this country?" asked the marquis.
"I have never been out of it."
"Do you know me?"
"Certainly. The last time I saw you was when you
