I have inherited a field which brings me in fifty
francs a year. It is the only land I have ever stirred with these hands,
and half its wretched rent has gone to pay the tithe of labour I owe the
seignior. I trust to die without ever doing duty as a beast of burden
for others. And yet, should they remove you from your office, or rob you
of your income, if you have a field that needs ploughing, only send me
word, and you will see that these arms have not grown altogether stiff
in their idleness."
It was in vain that the pastor opposed this resolve. Patience departed,
carrying with him as his only belonging the coat he had on his back,
and an abridgment of the teachings of Epictetus. For this book he had a
great affection, and, thanks to much study of it, could read as many
as three of its pages a day without unduly tiring himself. The rustic
anchorite went into the desert to live. At first he built himself a hut
of branches in a wood. Then, as wolves attacked him, he took refuge in
one of the lower halls of Gazeau Tower, which he furnished luxuriously
with a bed of moss, and some stumps of trees; wild roots, wild fruit,
and goat's milk constituted a daily fare very little inferior to what
he had had in the village. This is no exaggeration. You have to see the
peasants in certain parts of Varenne to form an idea of the frugal diet
on which a man can live and keep in good health.
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