Page:Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and other profitable tales, 1915.djvu/214

 200 means of subsistence. Vagrancy, according to the code, is the condition of vagrants, of vagabonds, persons without any fixed dwelling or means of subsistence, who exercise no specific trade or profession. They are great criminals."

"It is curious," said Monsieur Bergeret, "that the state of vagrancy, punishable by six months' imprisonment and ten years' police supervision, is precisely the same as that in which the good St. Francis placed his companions at St. Mary of the Angels and the daughters of St. Clare. If St. Francis of Assisi and St. Anthony of Padua came to preach in Paris to-day they would run great risk of being clapped into the prison van and carried off to the police court. Not that I mean to denounce to the authorities the mendicant monks who now swarm among us. They possess means of livelihood; they exercise all manner of trades."

"They are respectable because they are rich," said Jean Marteau. "It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg. Had I been discovered beneath my tree I should have been thrown into prison and that would have been justice. Possessing nothing, I was assumed to be the enemy of property; and it is just to defend property against its enemies. The august task of the judge is to assure to every