Taking the Bastile (2 page)

THE HERO OF THE HISTORY xi

an army would, at the commencement of a battle, have drawn his sword from the scabbard.

‘But what is to become of me?’ cried the poor youth, letting his anna fall listlessly by his side. ‘What will become of me if I lose the hope of being admitted into the seminary?’

‘Become whatever yon can. It is, by Heaven 1 the same to me.’

The good abbe was so angry that he almost swore.

‘But you do not know then, that my aunt believes I am already an abbe?’

‘Well, then, she will know that yon are not fit to be made eve a sacristan 1 I tell you to depart limine lingua.’

Well, then,’ cried Pitou, as a man who makes up his mind to a painful resolution, but who in fact does make it; ‘will you allow me to take my desk?’ said he to the abbe, hoping that during the time he would be performing this operation the abbe’s heart would become impressed with more merciful feelings.

‘Most assuredly,’ said the latter; ‘your desk, with all that it contains.’

Pitou sorrowfully reascended the staircase, for the schoolroom was on the first floor. On returning to the room in which, assembled around a large table, and pretending to be hard at work, were seated some fourteen boys and carefully raising the flap of his desk to ascertain whether all the animals and insects which belonged to him were safely stowed in it, and lifting it so gently that it proved the great care he took of his favourites, he walked with slow and measured steps along the corridor. At the top of the stairs was the Abb* Fortier, with outstretched arm pointing to the staircase with the end of his cat-o’- nine-tails. It was necessary to pass beneath this terrible instrument of j ustice. Ange Pitou made himself as humble and as small as he possibly could, but this did not prevent him from receiving, as he passed by, a last thwack from the instrument to which Abb6 Fortier owed his best pupils, and the employment of which, although more frequent and more prolonged on the back of Ange Pitou, had produced the sorrowful results just witnessed.

12 TAKING THE BASTILLE

Louis ANGE PITOU was, at the period when this history commences, seventeen and a half years old. He was a tall, slender youth, with yellow hair, red cheeks, and blue eyes. The bloom of youth, fresh and innocent, was expanded over his wide mouth, the thick lips of which discovered, when extended by a hearty laugh, two perfectly complete rows of formidable teeth particularly formidable to those of whose dinner he was about to partake. At the end of his long bony arms were solidly attached hands as large as beetles, legs rather inclined to be bowed, knees as big as a child’s head, which regularly made their way through his tight black breeches, and immense feet, which, notwithstanding, were at their ease in calf -skin shoes reddened by constant use; such, with a sort of cassock, a garment something between a frock-coat and a blouse, is an exact and impartial description of the ex-disciple of the Abb6 Fortier.

We must now sketch his moral character.

Ange Pitou had been left an orphan when only twelve years old, the time at which he had the misfortune to lose his mother, whose only child he was. Since the death of his father, which event had occurred before he had attained the years of recollection, Ange Pitou, had been allowed to do whatever he thought fit, which had greatly developed his physical education, but had altogether retarded the advancement of his moral faculties. Born in a charming village called Haramont, situated at the distance of a league from the town, and in the centre of a wood, his first walks had been to explore the depths of his native forest, and the first application of his intelligence was that of making war upon the animals by which it was inhabited. The result of this application was, that at ten years old Pitou was a very distinguished poacher, and a bird-catcher of the first order; and that almost without any labour, and above all, without receiving lessons from any one, but by the sole power of that instinct givn by nature to man when born in the midst of woods And therefore every run of hare or rabbit withii tkc cade of three leagues was known to him,

AN AUNT NOT ALWAYS A MOTHER 13

and not a marshy pool, where birds were wont to drink, had escaped his investigation. From these different exercises it resulted that in some of them Pitou had attained the most extraordinary skill.

Thanks to his long arms and his prominent knees, which enabled him to climb the largest standard trees, he would ascend to their very summits, to take the highest nests, with an agility and a certainty which attracted the admiration of his companions, and which, in a latitude nearer to the Equator, would have excited the esteem even of monkeys. In that sport, so attractive even to grown people, in which the bird-catcher inveigles the birds to light upon a tree set with limed twigs, by imitating the cry of tiie jay or the owlet, Pitou’s companions either made use of a natural owlet or a natural jay, or with some particular plant formed a pipe, by aid of which they manalled to imitate the cry of either the one or the other of these birds. But Pitou disdained all such preparations, despised such petty subterfuges. It was upon his own resources that he relied, it was with his own natural means that he drew them into the snare. His own lips modulated the shrieking and discordant cries, which brought around him not only other birds, but birds of the same species, who allowed themselves to be enticed by this cry, so admirably did he imitate it. As to the sport in the marshy pools, it was to Pitou the easiest thing in the world, and he would certainly have despised it as a pursuit of art had it been less productive as an object of profit. But, notwithstanding the contempt with which he regarded this sport, there was not one of the most expert in the art who could have vied with Pitou in covenng with fern a pool that was too extensive to be completely laid that is the technical term; none of them knew so well as he how to give the proper inclination to his limed twigs, so that the most cunning birds could not drink either over or under them; and, finally, none of them had that steadiness of hand and that clear-sightedness which must ensure the due mixture, though in scientifically unequal quantities, of the rosin, oil, and glue, in order that the glue should not become either too lluid or too brittle.

In his own native village, Haramont, among his country neighbours, IMtou enjoyed such distinguished consideration that his poor mother could not ior a moment

x TAKING THE BASTILLE

entertain the idea that he was pursuing a wrong path; but when the good woman fell side, when she felt that death was approaching, she began to entertain doubts, and looked around her for some one who would be the stay and the support of the future orphan. She then remembered that ten years before, a young man had knocked at her door in the middle of the night, bringing with him a newly-born child, to take charge of which, he had not only given her a tolerably good round sum, but had deposited a still larger sum for the benefit of the child with a notary at Villers-Cotterdts. All that she had then known of this mysterious young man was that his name was Gilbert; but about three years previous to her falling ill he had reappeared. He was then a man about twenty-seven years of age, somewhat stifi in his demeanour, dog-matical in his conversation, and cold in his manner; but this first layer of ice melted at once when his child was brought to him, on finding that he was hale, hearty, and smiling, and brought up in the way In which he had directed that is to say, as a child of nature. He then pressed the hand of the good woman and merely said to her : ‘In the hour of need count on me. 1

Then he had taken the child, had inquired the way to trmenonville, and with his son performed the pilgrimage to the tomb of Rousseau, alter which he returned to Villers-Cotterets. Then, seduced, no doubt, by the wholesome air he breathed there, by the favourable manner in which the notary had spoken of the school under the charge of the Abb* Fortier, he had left little Gilbert with the worthy man, whose philosophic appearance had struck him at first sight; for at that period philosophy held such great sway that it had insinuated itself even among churchmen. After this he had set out again for Paris, leaving his address with the Abbe Fortier. Pitou’s mother was aware of all these circumstances. When at the point of death, those words, ‘In the hour of need count on me,’ returned to her recollection. She sent for the curate of the parish, and the same day the letter was taken to the Abbe Fortier, who immediately added Gilbert’s address, and took it to the post-office.

It was high time, for the poor woman died two days afterwards. Piton was too young to feel the full extent of the loss he had suffered. He wept for his mother, not from comprehending the eternal separation of the grave.

AN AUNT NOT ALWAYS A MOTTIEH 15

but because he saw his mother cold, pale, disfigured. Then the poor lad felt Instinctively that the guardian angel of their hearth had flown from it; that the house, deprived of hia mother, had become deserted and unin-habitable. Not only could he not comprehend what was to be hia future fate, but even how he was to exist the following day. Therefore, after following his mother’s coffin to the churchyard, when the earth, thrown into the grave, resounded upon its lid, when the modest mound that covered it had been rounded ofi, he sat down upon it, and replied to every observation that was made to htm aa to his leaving it, by shaking his head and saying that he hid never left his mother, and that he would remain where she remained. He stayed during the whole of that day and night, seated upon his mother’s grave. It was there that the worthy Doctor Gilbert but have we already informed the reader that the future protector of Pitou was a physician? found him, when, feeling the full extent of the duty imposed upon him by the promise he had made, he had hastened to fulfil it, and this within forty-eight hours after the letter had been despatched.

Ange was very young when he had first seen the doctor, but it is well known that the impressions received in youth are so strong that they leave eternal reminiscences. Every time that Ange had heard hia mother pronounce the name of Gilbert, it had been with a feeling that approached to adoration.

Therefore, aa soon as he saw the doctor appear at the grated gate of the cemetery, he rose up and went to meet him, for he understood that to the person who had thus come on being called for by his mother, he could not say no, as he had done to others. An elegant cabriolet was standing at the gate; Gilbert made the poor child get into tt, and drove his young protegfe to the town and alighted with him at the best inn, which at that time was called The Dauphin. He was scarcely installed there when he sent for a tailor, who, having been forewarned, brought with him a quantity of ready-made clothes. He, with due precaution, selected for Piton garments which were too long for him by two or three inches, a superfluity which, from the rate at which our hero was growing, promised not to be of long duration. After this, he walked with. him towards that quarter of the town wnich we have designated as the pious quarter.

16 TAKING THE BASTILLE

The nearer Pitou approached this quarter, the slower did his steps become, lor it was evident that he was about to be conducted to the house of his Aunt Angelique; and, notwithstanding that he had but seldom seen his godmother, he had retained a very formidable remembrance of his respectable relative. And in fact there was nothing about Aunt Angelique that could be in any way attractive to a child accustomed to all the tender care of maternal solicitude. Aunt Angelique was at that time an eld maid between fifty-five and fifty-eight years of age, stultified by the most minute practices of religious bigotry, and in whom an ill-understood piety had inverted every charitable merciful, and humane feeling, to cultivate in their stead a natural dose of avaricious intelligence, which was increased day by day from her constant intercourse with the bigoted old gossips of the town. She did not precisely live on charity; but besides the sale of the thread she spun upon her wheel, and the letting out of chairs in the church, which office had been granted to her by the chapter, she from time to time received from pious souls, who allowed themselves to be deceived by her pretensions to religion, small sums, which from their original copper she converted into silver, and then from silver into golden louis, which disappeared not only without any person seeing them disappear, but without any one ever suspecting their existence, and which were buried, one by one, in the cushion of the armchair upon which she sat to work; and when once in this hiding-place, they rejoined by degrees a certain number of their fellow-coins, which had been gathered one by one, and like them destined thenceforth to be sequestered from circulation, until the unknown day of the death of the old maid should place them in the hands of her heir.

It was, then, towards the abode of this venerable relation that Doctor Gilbert was advancing, leading the great Pitou by the hand. Mademoiselle Rose Angelique Pitou, at the moment when her door opened to give ingress to her nephew and the doctor, was in a perfect transport of joyous humour. While they were singing mass for the dead over the dead body of her sister-in-law in the church at Haramont, there was a wedding and several baptisms in the church of Villers-Cotterfits, so that her chair-letting txad in a single day amounted to six livres. Mademoiselle Ajigelique had therefore converted her pence into a silver

AN AUNT NOT ALWAYS A MOTHER 17

crown, which, in its turn, added to three others which had been put by at different periods, had given her a golden louis. It was at the moment, and after having opened her door, which had been closed during the important operation, and Aunt Angelique had taken a last walk round her armchair to assure herself that no external demonstration could reveal the existence of the treasure concealed within, that the doctor and Pitou entered.

The scene might have been particularly affecting; but in the eyes of a man who was so perspicacious an observer as Doctor Gilbert, it was merely grotesque. On perceiving her nephew, the old bigot uttered a few words about her poor dear sister, whom she had loved so much; and then she appeared to wipe away a tear. On his side the doctor, who wished to examine the deepest recesses of the old maid’s heart before coming to any determination with respect to her, took upon himself to utter a sort of sermon on the duties of aunts towards their nephews. But by degrees, as the sermon was progressing and the unctuous words fell from the doctor’s lips, the arid eyes of the old maid drank up the imperceptible tear which had moistened them; all her features resumed the dry ness of parchment, with which they appeared to be covered; she raised her left hand to the height of her pointed chin, and with the right hand she began to calculate on her skinny fingers the quantity ol pence which her letting of chairs produced to her per annum. So that chance having so directed it that her calculation had terminated at the same time with the doctor’s sermon, she could reply at the very moment, that whatever might have been the love she entertained for her poor sister, and the degree of interest she might feel for her dear nephew, the mediocrity of her receipts did not permit her, notwithstanding her double title of aunt and godmother, to incur any increased expense. The doctor, however, was prepared for this refusal. It did not, therefore, in any way surprise him.