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Updated: May 1, 2025
"There's room enough if we make two rings!" So once again they moved round the tree, singing Christmas carols. Every time there was a pause somebody struck up a new carol, that had to be sung through. The doors opposite were open too, the old rag-picker sat at the head of his table singing on his own account.
His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance, something between that of a retired professor of rhetoric and a rag-picker.
"As well to be a rag-picker!" exclaimed his friend. What an abominable situation! And no way out of it. Not even the hope of it! He lifted up both hands; then his head slowly fell back, and he sank on the floor in a swoon. The clerks rushed forward; they took off his cravat; they sent for a physician.
He made her acquaintance next morning, and found out she was, as his friend had said, a shop-girl. What did he care; if she had been a rag-picker, it would have been all one to this young madman. In a fortnight he proposed; in a month they were married, and the third step on the road to ruin was taken.
Even the old rag-picker let himself be carried away with the rest; it was too alluring, the idea of giving way to a little intoxication, even if the everyday world was to come after it. Pelle stood among them all, strong and hearty, listening to all their questions with a confident smile. He knew all that was to be theirs even if it couldn't come just at once.
The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another. The fatherland does not exist.... What fatherland can the international banker and the rag-picker have in common?
Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a pike and triumphantly carried away.
Painfully I considered, and at last remembered and then I thought moodily that the starved and miserable rag-picker was more of a man than I. He had taken his revenge at once; while I, like a fool, had let occasion slip. Yes, but not forever!
"The blind shall see, the lame shall walk, the leper shall be clean, the deaf shall hear, and the dead shall arise, and the Word shall be preached to the poor," said the rag-picker, correcting Pelle. "You are distorting the Scriptures, Pelle." "But I don't believe He meant only individual cripples no, He meant all of us in our misery, and all the temptations that lie in wait for us.
Even the old rag-picker let himself be carried away with the rest; it was too alluring, the idea of giving way to a little intoxication, even if the everyday world was to come after it. Pelle stood among them all, strong and hearty, listening to all their questions with a confident smile. He knew all that was to be theirs even if it couldn't come just at once.
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