"He will some day be the man to trample the whole world under foot, and laugh as he does it. He will be more powerful than Titus himself."
Landolin resolved to dissemble and play the hypocrite; to act as if he mistook people's malice for good will, and to retaliate secretly. But his pride was incompatible with success in hypocrisy. He was annoyed at his own lack of courage, he very candidly called it cowardice, but still that did not help him to regain the old fearlessness--the old pride. Yes, he had become over-sensitive.
His walk had now brought him to the forest, with its overhanging branches. In other times how little he had cared for the noxious insects of the woods. He had not grown up with gloved hands, but now he shuddered at the caterpillars that hung in the air by their slender threads, as though they were waiting to drop down upon him. These caterpillars can be shaken off, but the world's malicious thoughts, that like caterpillars hang everywhere by invisible threads, cannot.
Landolin was sitting on an old tree-stump, when the game-keeper approached, and addressed him in a friendly manner, expressing his sorrow that Landolin had had to undergo so much trouble. Landolin complained that in the short time, he had grown twenty years older, and suffered with a constant palpitation of the heart.
Suddenly he paused, for he became aware that he was begging for sympathy. And from whom? But the game-keeper responded,
"I know myself how a man feels the half hour that the jury are out, and he is waiting for the verdict of life or death."
"Have you forgotten my shooting the poacher? He had his piece leveled at me from behind a tree. Crack--crack. It is self-defense! There you lie," said the game-keeper, with a crafty smile.
Landolin went home fortified. "It was self-defense. The court has acknowledged that it was, and it was so. I must learn to keep that in mind. I must."
The summer night was mild and clear. A Saturday evening in harvest-time has a peculiar quiet, a premonition of the full day of rest after the six days' unceasing work.
At all the farm-houses, far and wide, the people sat on the out-door benches and talked of the harvest; of how much was already stored away, and of how much was still standing in the fields. Then they talked of their neighbors far and near, and of course of Landolin also. They spoke pityingly of his misfortune, but with a certain quiet self-congratulation that they themselves were free and happy. It was almost like breathing, upon the mountain, air purified and freshened by a thunder-storm in the valley.