With one arm hanging down, the other maintaining the equilibrium of the trunk upon his head, his ears still ringing with the furious vituperations of the Abbé Fortier, he slowly directed his steps towards Pleux, in a state of meditation which was nothing more than stupor carried to the highest possible degree.
At last an idea presented itself to his imagination, and four words, which composed his whole thought, escaped his lips:—
"O Lord! my aunt!"
And indeed what would Mademoiselle Angélique Pitou say to this complete overthrow of all her hopes?
However, Ange Pitou knew nothing of the projects of the old maid, excepting as a faithful dog surmises the intentions of his master, that is to say, by an inspection of his physiognomy. Instinct is a most valuable guide,—it seldom deceives; while reason, on the contrary, may be led astray by the imagination.
The result of these reflections on the part of Ange Pitou, and which had given birth to the doleful exclama- tion we have given above, was the apprehension of the violent outbreak of discontent to which the old maid would give way on receiving the fatal news. Now, he knew from sad experience the result of discontent in Mademoiselle Angélique. Only upon this occasion the cause of discontent arising from an incalculably important event, the result would attain a degree altogether incalculable.
It was under these terrific impressions that Pitou entered Pleux. He had taken a quarter of an hour to traverse the distance between the great gate at the Abbé Fortier's and the entrance to this street, and yet it was scarcely three hundred yards.
At that moment the church clock struck one; he then perceived that his final conversation with the Abbé Fortier and the slowness with which he had walked had delayed him in all sixty minutes, and that consequently he was half an hour later than the time at which no more dinner was to be had in Aunt Angélique's abode.
We have already said that such was the salutary restraint which Aunt Angélique had added to his being kept in school, and on the wild ramblings of her nephew; it was thus that in the course of a year she managed to economize some sixty dinners at the expense of her poor nephew's stomach.
But this time, that which rendered more uneasy the retarded schoolboy was not the loss of his aunt's meagre dinner, although his breakfast had been meagre enough, for his heart was too full to allow him to perceive the emptiness of his stomach.
There is a frightful torment, well known to a student, however perverse he may be, and this is the illegitimate hiding in some retired corner, after being expelled from college; it is the definitive and compelled holiday which he is constrained to take advantage of, while his fellowstudents pass by him with their books and writings under their arm, proceeding to their daily task. That college, formerly so hated, then assumes a most desirable form; the scholar occupies his mind with the great affairs of themes and exercises, to which he before so little directed his attention, and which are being proceeded with in his absence. There is a great similarity between a pupil so expelled by his professor and a man who has been excommunicated for his impiety, and who no longer has a right to enter the church, although burning with desire to hear a mass.
And this was why, the nearer he approached his aunt's house, his residence in that house appeared the more frightful to poor Pitou. And this was why, for the first time in his life, his imagination pictured to him the school as a terrestrial paradise, from which the Abbé Fortier, as the exterminating angel, had driven him forth, with his cat-o'-nine-tails wielded as a flaming sword.
But yet, slowly as he walked, and although he halted at every ten steps,—halts which became still longer as he approached nearer,—he could not avoid at last reaching the threshold of that most formidable house. Pitou then crossed the threshold with shuffling feet, and mechanically rubbing his hand on the seam of his nether garment.
"Ah, Aunt Angélique, I am really very sick," said he, in order to stop her raillery or her reproaches, and perhaps also to induce her to pity him, poor boy.
"Pshaw!" said Angélique. "I well know what your sickness is; and it would be cured at once by putting back the hands of the clock an hour and a half."
"Oh, good heavens, no!" cried Pitou; "for I am not hungry."
Aunt Angélique was surprised and almost anxious. Sickness equally alarms affectionate mothers and crabbed stepmothers,—affectionate mothers from the dangers caused by sickness, and stepmothers from the heavy pulls it makes upon their purse.
"Well, what is the matter? Come, now, speak out at once," said the old maid.
On hearing these words, which were, however, pronounced without any very tender sympathy, Ange Pitou burst into tears; and it must be acknowledged that the wry faces he made when proceeding from complaints to tears were the most terrifically ugly wry faces that could be seen.
"Oh, my good Aunt," cried he, sobbing, "a great misfortune has happened to me!"
"And what is it?" asked the old maid.
"The Abbé Fortier has sent me away," replied Ange, sobbing so violently that he was scarcely intelligible.
"Sent you away?" repeated Mademoiselle Angélique, as if she had not perfectly comprehended what he said.
"Yes, Aunt."
"And from where has he sent you!"
"From the school."
And Pitou's sobs redoubled.
"From the school?"
"Yes, Aunt."
"What! altogether?"
"Yes, Aunt."
"So there is to be no examination, no competition, no purse, no seminary?"
Pitou's sobs were changed into perfect howlings.
Mademoiselle Angélique looked at him, as if she would read the very heart of her nephew to ascertain the cause of his dismissal.
"I will wager that you have again been among the bushes instead of going to school. I would wager that you have again been prowling about Father Billot's farm. Oh, fie! and a future abbé!"
Ange shook his head.
"You are lying," cried the old maid, whose anger augmented in proportion as she acquired the certainty that the state of matters was very serious. "You are lying. Only last Sunday you were seen in the Lane of Sighs with La Billote."
It was Mademoiselle Angélique who was lying. But devotees have, in all ages, considered themselves authorized to lie, in virtue of that Jesuitical axiom, "It is permitted to assert that which is false, in order to discover that which is true."
"No one could have seen me in the Lane of Sighs," replied Pitou; "that is impossible, for we were walking near the orangery."
"Ah, wretch! you see that you were with her."
"But, Aunt," rejoined Pitou, blushing, "Mademoiselle Billot has nothing to do with this affair."
"Yes, call her mademoiselle, in order to conceal your impure conduct. But I will let this minx's confessor know all about it."
"But, Aunt, I swear to you that Mademoiselle Billot is not a minx."
"Ah! you defend her, when it is you that stand in need of being excused. Oh, yes; you understand each other better and better. What are we coming to, good heaven! and children only sixteen years old."
"Aunt, so far from there being any understanding between me and Catherine, it is Catherine who always drives me away from her."
"Ah! 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."
"Ho! ho!" said Pitou to himself, illuminated by this idea. "Well, that is true. I had never thought of that."
"Ah, there again!" 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, she shall have a taste of it. We will send her to St. Remy."
The old maid uttered these last words wit
h 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."
"Impurity is the mother of all vices," sententiously rejoined Mademoiselle Angélique.
"Aunt, I again tell you that the Abbé 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 purse; then you will not be an abbé; then I shall not be your housekeeper?"
"Ah, good heaven, no! 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! Providence, you say. I see how it is," exclaimed Mademoiselle Angélique. "Some one has been exciting his brain. Some one has been talking to him of these new ideas; some one has been endeavoring to fill him with these principles of philosophy."
"It cannot be that, Aunt; because no one gets into philosophy before having gone through his rhetoric, and I have never yet been able to get even so far as that."
"Oh, yes!—jest—jest! It is not of that philosophy that I am speaking. I speak of the philosophy of the philosophers, you wretch. I speak of the philosophy of Monsieur Arouet; I speak of the philosophy of Monsieur Jean Jacques; of the philosophy of Monsieur Diderot, who wrote 'La Religieuse.'"
Mademoiselle Angélique crossed herself.
"'La Religieuse!'" cried Pitou; "what is that, Aunt?"
"You have read it, wretch!"
"I swear to you, Aunt, that I have not."
"And this is the reason why you will not go into the church."
"Aunt, Aunt, you are mistaken. It is the church that will not admit me."
"Why, decidedly, this child is a perfect serpent. He even dares to retort."
"No, Aunt; I answer, and that is all."
"Oh, he is lost!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Angélique, with all the signs of most profound discouragement, and falling into her favorite arm-chair.
In fact, "He is lost!" merely signified, "I am lost!"
The danger was imminent; Aunt Angélique formed an extreme resolve. She rose as if some secret spring had forced her to her feet, and ran off to the Abbé 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 Angélique, and 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.
Mademoiselle Angélique had given herself the title of Pitou's second mother.
While he was watching, a handsome young girl passed at the end of the Pleux, going along a narrow lane which led from the end of the Rue de Soissons to that of the Rue de Lormet. 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 his door, she stopped.
Pitou blushed as was his wont, then remained with his mouth wide open, looking at her, that is to say, admiring her,—for Mademoiselle Billot was 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 time enough to occupy the tall scholar's attention, who was quite lost in his contemplation, and continued eagerly gazing at the spot where Mademoiselle Catherine had appeared, so as to prevent him from perceiving his aunt when she returned from the Abbé 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 Angélique 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.
Mademoiselle Angélique uttered a cry of terror, and Pitou a groan of alarm; Angélique raised her bony hand, Pitou bobbed down his head; Angélique seized a broomhandle 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 now understood each other, and felt that henceforth there could be no communion between them.
Mademoiselle Angélique 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 Angélique was very far from foreseeing, and which certainly Pitou in no way expected.
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Chapter V
A Philosophical Farmer
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, you frightened us both so much."
"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! great God, what a misfortune!"
"Oh, you quite terrify me!" said the young girl, pulling up her horse in the middle of the road. "What, then, has happened, Monsieur Ange?"
"What has happened!" said Pitou; and then, lowering his voice as if about to reveal some mysterious iniquity, "why, it is, that I am not to be an abbé, 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 abbé?" asked Catherine.
"No," replied Pitou, in perfect consternation; "it appears that it is impossible."
"Well, then, you can be a soldier," said Catherine.
"A soldier?"
"Undoubtedly. You should not be in despair for such a trifle. Good Lord! I at first thought that you had come to announce to me the sudden death of your aunt."
"Oh," 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 scandalized poor Pitou more than ever.
"But did you not hear that she has turned me out of doors?" rejoined the student, in despair.
"Well, so much the better," she replied.
"You are very happy in being ab
le to laugh in that manner, Mademoiselle Billot; and it proves that you have a most agreeable disposition, since the sorrows of others make so little impression upon you."
"And who has told you, then, 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! But do you not, then, know that I have no other resource?"
"So much the better again!" cried Catherine.
Pitou was perplexed.
"But one must eat!" said he; "one cannot live without eating! 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 Angélique have told me more than a hundred times that I was fit for nothing. Ah! if they had only apprenticed me to a carpenter or a blacksmith, instead of wanting to make an abbé of me! 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 neighborhood, 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 Abbé 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 rent of the farm to him in America, and pays the remainder to a notary at Paris."