The landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space. There was nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze was lost, and a silence which engulfed his voice.
An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him a sort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little arms with incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing someone.
He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time to time he halted and shouted into that solitude, with a voice which was the most formidable and the most disconsolate that it was possible to hear, “Little Gervais! Little Gervais!”
Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed and would have taken good care not to show himself. But the child was no doubt already far away.
He encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said:—
“ Monsieur le Curé , have you seen a child pass?”
“No,” said the priest.
“One named Little Gervais?”
“I have seen no one.”
He drew two five-franc pieces from his moneybag and handed them to the priest.
“ Monsieur le Curé , this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Curé , he was a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?”
“I have not seen him.”