"This is the way to go," because he knew and was sure; he was not to be
denied.

"Who was Virginie Poucette?" repeated the Young Doctor insistently, yet
ever so gently. "Was she such a prize among women? What did she do?"

A flood of feeling passed over Jean Jacques' face. He looked at his hat
and his knapsack lying in a chair, with a desire to seize them and fly
from the inquisitor; then a sense of fatalism came upon him. As though
he had received an order from within his soul, he said helplessly:

"Well, if it must be, it must."

Then he swept the knapsack and his hat from the chair to the floor, and
sat down.

"I will begin at the beginning," he said with his eyes fixed on those of
the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. "I will
start from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard
turning on the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier in my
pinafore. I don't know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant I should.
I obey conviction. While you are able to keep logic and conviction hand
in hand then everything is all right. I have found that out. Logic,
philosophy are the props of life, but still you must obey the impulse of
the soul--oh, absolutely! You must--"

He stopped short. "But it will seem strange to you," he added after a
moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, "to hear me
talk like this--a wayfarer--a vagabond you may think. But in other days
I was in places--"