"I am not a carpenter," said he, smiling, "and I have no wish for your
work."

"Truly, you do not look as if you had pushed a plane very often. It
seems that in your business one does not spoil one's hands. You are a
workman about as much as I am pope."

This remark made the one to whom it was addressed feel in as bad a humor
as an author does when he finds a grammatical error in one of his books.

"So you work at the chateau, then," said he, finally, to change the
conversation.

"For six months I have worked in that shanty," replied the workman;
"I am the one who carved the new woodwork, and I will say it is well
done. Well, this great wild boar of a Bergenheim turned me out of the
house yesterday as if I had been one of his dogs."

"He doubtless had his reasons."

"I tell you, I will crush him--reasons! Damn it! They told him I talked
too often with his wife's maid and quarrelled with the servants, a pack
of idlers! Did he not forbid my putting my foot upon his land? I am
upon his land now; let him come and chase me off; let him come, he will
see how I shall receive him. Do you see this stick? I have just cut it
in his own woods to use it on himself!"

The young man no longer listened to the workman; his eyes were turned
toward the castle, whose slightest details he studied, as if he hoped