Taking the Bastile (6 page)

‘Ah 1 you see you are cutting your own throat; for now you call her Catherine, right out. Yes, she drives you away from her, hypocrite, when people are looking at you.’

‘Hoi ho!’ said Pitou to himself, illuminated by this idea. ‘Well, that is true. I had never thought of that.’

‘Ah, there again 1’ said the old maid, taking advantage of the ingenuous exclamation of her nephew, to prove his connivance with La Billote; ‘but, let me manage it. I will soon put all this to rights again. Monsieur Fortier is her confessor. I will beg him to have you shut up in prison, and order you to live on bread and water for a fortnight : as to Mademoiselle Catherine, if she requires a convent to moderate her passion for you, well 1 she shall have a taste of it. We will send her to St Remy.’

The old maid uttered these last words with such authority, and with such conviction of her power, that they made Pitou tremble.

‘My good aunt,’ cried he, clasping his hands, ‘you are mistaken, I swear to you, if you believe that Mademoiselle Billot has anything to do with the misfortune that has befallen me. I again tell you that the Abbe Fortier did not send me away because I was impure; but he has dismissed me because I make too many barbarisms, mingled with solecisms, which every now and then escape me, and which deprive me, as he says, of all chance of obtaining the purse for the seminary.’

‘All chance, say you? Then you will not have that

38 TAKING THE BASTILLE

purse : then you will not be an abb* : then I shall not be your housekeeper?’

‘Ah, good Heaven, no I dear aunt.’

‘And what is to become of you, then?’ cried the old maid, in a savage tone.

‘I know not,’ cried Pitou piteously, raising his eyes to heaven. ‘Whatever it may please Providence to order,’ he added.

‘Ah I Providence, you say I I see how it is,’ exclaimed Mademoiselle Angelique. Some one has been exciting his brain. Some one has been talking to him of these new ideas, and this is the reason why he will not go into the church.’

‘Aunt, aunt, yon are mistaken. It is the church that will not admit me.’

‘Why, decidedly, this child is a perfect serpent. He even dares to reply.’

‘No, aunt; I answer, and that is all.’

‘Oh 1 he is lost 1’ exclaimed Mademoiselle Angelique, with all the signs of most profound discouragement, and falling into her favourite armchair.

The danger was imminent; Aunt Angelique formed an extreme resolve. She rose as if some secret spring had forced her to her feet, and ran off to the Abbe Fortier, to ask him for an explanation, and above all to make a last effort to get him to change his determination. Pitou followed his aunt with his eyes till she had reached the door; and when she had disappeared, he went to the threshold and watched her walking with extraordinary rapidity towards the Rue de Soissons. He was surprised at the quickness of her movements; but he had no longer any doubt as to the intentions of Mademoiselle Angelique, but was convinced that she was going to his professor’s house. He could, therefore, calculate on at least a quarter of an hour’s tranquillity. Pitou thought of making a good use of this quarter of an hour which Providence had granted to him. He snatched up the remainder of his aunt’s dinner to feed his lizards, caught two or three flies for his ants and frogs; then, opening successively a hutch and a cupboard, he set about feeding himself, for with solitude his appetite had returned to him. Having arranged all these matters, he returned to watch at the door, that he might not be surprised by the return of his second mother.

INFLUENCE OF A BARBARISM 39

While he was watching, a handsome young girl passed at the end of the Pieux, going along a narrow lane which led from the end of the Rue de Soissons to that of the Rue de 1’Ormet. She was seated on a pillion on the back of a horse loaded with two panniers, the one full of fowls, the other of pigeons. It was Catherine, On perceiving Pitou standing at the door, she stopped. Pitou, according to custom, blushed, then remained with his mouth wide open, looking at, that is to say, admiring, for Mademoiselle Billot waa in his eyes the most heavenly sample of human beauty. The young girl darted a glance into the street, saluted Pitou with a little graceful nod, and continued on her way. Pitou replied to it, trembling with satisfaction.

This little scene lasted just long enough to prevent him from perceiving his aunt when she returned from the Abbe Fortier, who suddenly seized his hand, turning pale with anger. Ange being thus startlingly awakened from his sweet dream by that electrical shock which the touch of Mademoiselle Angelique always communicated to him, turned round, and seeing that the enraged looks of his aunt were fixed upon his hand, cast his own eyes down upon it, and saw with horror that it was holding the half of a large round of bread upon which he had apparently spread a too generous layer of butter, with a corresponding slice of cheese, and which the sudden appearance of Mademoiselle Catherine had made him entirely forget. Mademoiselle Angelique uttered a cry of terror, and Pitou a groan of alarm; Angelique raised her bony hand, Pitou bobbed down his head; Angelique seized a broom handle which unluckily was but too near her, Pitou let fall his slice of bread and butter, and took to his heels without further explanation. These two hearts had understood each other, and had felt that henceforth there could be no communion between them. Mademoiselle Angelique went into her house and double-locked the door. Pitou, whom the grating noise alarmed as a continuation of the storm, ran on still faster. From this scene resulted an effect which Mademoiselle Angelique was very far from foreseeing, and which certainly Pitou in no way expected.

40 TAKING THE BASTILLE

PITOU ran as if all the demons of the infernal regions were at his heels, and in a few seconds he was outside the town. On turning round the corner of the cemetery, he very nearly ran his head against the hind part of a horse.

‘Why, good Lord !’ cried a sweet voice well known to Pitou, ‘where are you running to at this rate, Monsieur Ange? You have very nearly made Cadet run away with me.’

‘Ah, Mademoiselle Catherine !’ cried Pitou, replying rather to his own thoughts than to the question of the young girl. ‘Ah, Mademoiselle Catherine, what a misfortune 1 great God, what a misfortune 1’

‘Oh, you quite terrify me 1’ said the young girl, palling up her horse in the middle of the road. ‘What, then, has happened. Monsieur Ange?’

‘What has happened I’ said Pitou; and then, lowering his voice as if about to reveal some mysterious iniquity, ‘why, I am not to be an abb6, mademoiselle.’

But instead of receiving the fatal intelligence with all those signs of commiseration which Pitou had expected, Mademoiselle Billot gave way to a long burst of laughter.

‘You are not to be an abbe?’ asked Catherine.

‘No,’ replied Pitou, in perfect consternation; ‘it appears that it is impossible.’

‘Well, then, you can be a soldier,’ said Catherine. ‘You should not be in despair for such a trifle. Good Lord I I at first thought that you had come to announce to me the death of your aunt.’

‘Qhl’ said Pitou feelingly, ‘it is precisely the same thing to me as if she were dead indeed, since she has driven me out of her house.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Catherine, laughing; ‘you have not now the satisfaction of weeping for her.’

And Catherine began to laugh more heartily than before, which scandalised poor Pitou more than ever.

‘But did you not hear that she has turned me out oi doors?’ rejoined the student, in despair.

‘Well, so much the better,’ she replied.

A. PHILOSOPHICAL FARMER 41

‘You we very happy in being able to laugh in that manner, Mademoiselle Billot; and it proves that you have a most agreeable disposition, since the sorrows ot others makes so little impression upon you.’

‘And who has told you that, should a real misfortune happen to you, I would not pity you, Monsieur Ange?’

‘You would pity me if a real misfortune should befall me 1 But do you not, then, know that I have no other resource?’

‘So much the better again !’ cried Catherine.

‘But one must eat 1’ said he; ‘one cannot live without eating 1 and I, above all, for I am always hungry.’

‘You do not wish to work, then, Monsieur Pitou?’

‘Work, and at what? Monsieur Fortier and my Aunt Angelique have told me more than a hundred times that I was nt for nothing. Ah 1 if they had only apprenticed me to a carpenter or a blacksmith, instead of wanting to make an abbe of me I Decidedly now, Mademoiselle Catherine,’ said Pitou, with a gesture of despair, ‘decidedly there is a curse upon me.’

‘Alas !’ said the young girl compassionately, for she knew, as did all the neighbourhood, Pitou’s lamentable story. ‘There is some truth in what you have just now said, my dear Monsieur Ange; but why do you not do one thing?’

‘What is it?’ cried Pitou, eagerly clinging to the proposal which Mademoiselle Billot was about to make, as a drowning man clings to a willow branch. ‘What is it; tell me?’

‘You had a protector; at least, I think I have heard so.’

‘Doctor Gilbert.’

‘You were the schoolfellow of his son, since he was educated, as you have been, by the Abbe Fortier.’

‘I believe I was indeed, and I have more than once saved him from being thrashed.’

‘Well, then, why do you not write to his father? He will not abandon you.’

‘Why, I would certainly do so, did I know what had become of him; but your father perhaps knows this, Mademoiselle Billot, since Doctor Gilbert is his landlord.’

‘I know that he sends part of the produce of the farm to him in America, and pays the remainder to a notary at Paris.’

‘ Ah !’ said Pitou, sighing, ‘in America; that is very far.’

43 TAKING THE BASTILLE

‘ You would go to America ? You ? ‘ cried the young girl, almost terrified at Pitou’s resolution.

‘Who, I, Mademoiselle Catherine I Never, never I If I knew where to go, and how to procure food. I should be very happy in France.’

‘Very happy,’ repeated Mademoiselle Billot.

Pitou cast down his eyes. The young girl remained silent. Thi* silence lasted some time. Pitou was plunged in meditations which would have greatly surprised the Abbe Fortier, with all his logic. During this time Cadet had again moved on, though at a walk, and Pitou walked at Cadet’s side, with one hand leaning on one of the pannier*. As to Mademoiselle Catherine, who had also become full of thought, she allowed her reins to fall npon her courser’s neck, without fearing that he would run away with her. Pitou stopped mechanically when the horse stopped. They had arrived at the farm.

‘Well, now, is it you, Pitou?’ cried a broad-shouldered man, standing somewhat proudly by the side of a pond, to which he had led his horse to drink.

‘Eh, good Lord 1 Yes, Monsieur Billot, it is myself.’

‘Another misfortune has befallen this poor Pitou,’ said the young girl, jumping off her horse, without feeling at all uneasy as to whether her petticoat hitched or not, to show the colour of her garters; ‘his aunt has turned him out of doors.’

‘And what has he done to the old bigot ?’ said the farmer.

‘It appears that I am not strong enough in Greek.’

He was boasting, the puppy. He ought to have said in Latin.

‘Not strong enough in Greek I’ exclaimed the broad-shouldered man. ‘And why should you wish to be strong in Greek?’

‘To construe Theocritus and read the Iliad.’

‘And of what use would it be to you to construe Theocritus and read the Iliad?’

‘It would be of use in making me an abbe.’

‘Bah 1’ ejaculated Monsieur Billot, ‘and do I know Greek? do I know Latin? do I know even French? do I know how to read ? do I know how to write ? That does not hinder me from sowing, from reaping, and getting my harvest into the granary.’

‘Yes, but you, Monsieur Billot, you arc not a^ abb6; you are a cultivator of the earth, agncola, as Virgil says.’

A PHILOSOPHICAL FARMER 43

‘Well, and do yon then believe that a cultivator is not equal to a black-cap; ay, then, you shabby chorister, you, is he not so, particularly when this cultivator has sixty acres of good land in the sunshine, and a thousand louis in the shade?’

‘I have always been told that to be an abbe was the best thing in the world. It is true,’ added Pitou, smiling with his most agreeable smile, ‘that I did not always listen to what was told me.’

‘And I give you joy, my boy. It appears to me that there is stuff in you to make something better than an abbe, and that it is a lucky thing for you not to take to that trade, particularly as times now go. Do you see now, as a farmer, I know something of the weather, and the weather just now is bad for abbes. Yes, we shall have a storm,’ rejoined the farmer, ‘and not long first, believe me. You are honest, you are learned ‘

Pitou bowed, much honoured at being called learned, for the first time in his life.

‘You can therefore gain a livelihood without that.’

Mademoiselle Billot, while taking the fowls and pigeons out of the pannier*, was listening with much interest to the dialogue between Pitou and her father.

‘Gain a livelihood,’ rejoined Pitou; ‘that appears a difficult matter to me.’

‘What can you do?’

‘Do I why I can lay lime-twigs, and set wires for rabbits. I can imitate, and tolerably well, the notes of birds, can I not, Mademoiselle Catherine?’

‘Oh, that is true enough 1’ she replied. ‘He can whistle like a blackbird.’

‘Yes, but all this is not a trade, a profession,’ observed Father Billot. ‘Tell me, are you lazy?’

‘I do not know. I have never done anything but Latin and Greek, and I must admit that I did not take to them very readily.’

‘So much, the better,’ cried Billot; ‘that proves you are not so stupid as I thought you.’

Pitou opened his eyes to an almost terrific width: it was the first time he had ever heard such an order of things advocated, and which was completely subversive of all the theories which up to that time he had been taught.