Ange Pitou Page 3

  And had any one followed the path which led into the schoolroom, and which the pupils had just used, in the inverse sense, to get out of it, he would,—after going through a narrow alley, which prudently ran outside of the fruit garden and opened into a large yard which served as a private playground,—he would, as we have said, have heard, on entering this courtyard, a loud harsh voice resounding from the upper part of a staircase, while a scholar, whom our impartiality as historians compels us to acknowledge as belonging to the third class we have mentioned, that is to say, to that of the idle boys, was precipitately descending the said staircase, making just such a movement with his shoulders as asses are wont to do when endeavoring to rid themselves of a cruel rider, or as scholars when they have received a sharp blow from the cat-o'-nine-tails, to alleviate the pain they are enduring.

  "Ah! miscreant; ah! you little excommunicated villain," cried the voice, "ah! you young serpent, away with you, off with you; vade, vade! Remember that for three whole years have I been patient with you; but there are rascals who would tire the patience of even God himself. But now it is all over. I have done with you. Take your squirrels, take your frogs, take your lizards, take your silk-worms, take your cock-chafers, and go to your aunt, go to your uncle if you have one, or to the devil if you will, so that I never more set eyes upon you; vade, vade!"

  "Oh, my good Monsieur Fortier, do pray forgive me," replied the other voice, still upon the staircase and in a supplicating tone; "is it worth your while to put yourself into such a towering passion for a poor little barbarism and a few solecisms, as you call them?"

  "Three barbarisms and seven solecisms in a theme of only twenty-five lines!" replied the voice, in a rougher and still more angry tone.

  "It has been so to-day, sir, I acknowledge; Thursday is always my unlucky day; but if by chance to-morrow my theme should be well written, would you not forgive me my misfortunes of to-day? Tell me, now, would you not, my good Abbé?"

  "On every composition day for the last three years you have repeated that same thing to me, you idle fellow, and the examination is fixed for the first of November, and I, on the entreaty of your aunt Angelique, have had the weakness to put your name down on the list of candidates for the Soissons purse; I shall have the shame of seeing my pupil rejected, and of hearing it everywhere declared that Pitou is an ass,—Angelus Petovius asinus est."

  Let us hasten to say—that the kind-hearted reader may from the first moment feel for him all the interest he deserves—that Ange Pitou, whose name the Abbé Fortier had so picturesquely Latinized, is the hero of this story.

  "Oh, my good Monsieur Fortier! oh, my dear master!" replied the scholar, in despair.

  "I, your master!" exclaimed the abbé, deeply humiliated by the appellation. "God be thanked, I am no more your master than you are my pupil. I disown you,—I do not know you. I would that I had never seen you. I forbid you to mention my name, or even to bow to me. Retro, miserable boy, retro!"

  "Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé," insisted the unhappy Pitou, who appeared to have some weighty motive for not falling out with his master, "do not, I entreat you, withdraw your interest in me on account of a poor halting theme."

  "Ah!" exclaimed the abbé, quite beside himself on hearing this last supplication, and running down the first four steps of the staircase, while Ange Pitou jumped down the four bottom ones and made his appearance in the courtyard,—"ah! you are chopping logic when you cannot even write a theme; you are calculating the extent of my patience, when you know not how to distinguish the nominative from the accusative."

  "You have always been so kind to me, Monsieur l'Abbé," replied the committer of barbarisms, "and you will only have to say a word in my favor to my lord the bishop."

  "Would you have me belie my conscience, wretched boy?"

  "If it be to do a good action, Monsieur l'Abbé, the God of mercy will forgive you for it."

  "Never! never!"

  "And besides, who knows, the examiners perhaps will not be more severe towards me than they were towards my foster-brother, Sebastian Gilbert, when last year he was a candidate for the Paris purse; and he was a famous fellow for barbarisms, if ever there was one, although he was only thirteen years old, and I was seventeen."

  "Ah! indeed; and this is another precious stupidity which you have uttered," cried the abbé, coming down the remaining steps, and in his turn appearing at the door with his cat-o'-nine-tails in his hand, while Pitou took care to keep at the prudent distance from his professor which he had all along maintained. "Yes, I say stupidity," continued the abbé, crossing his arms and looking indignantly at his scholar; "and this is the reward of my lessons in logic. Triple animal that you are! it is thus you remember the old axiom,—Noli minora, loqui majora volens. Why, it was precisely because Gilbert was so much younger, that they were more indulgent towards a child—a child of fourteen years old—than they would have been to a great simpleton of nearly eighteen."

  "Yes, and because he is the son of Monsieur Honoré Gilbert, who has an income of eighteen thousand livres from good landed property, and this on the plain of Pillaleux," replied the logician, in a piteous tone.

  The Abbé Fortier looked at Pitou, pouting his lips and knitting his brows.

  "This is somewhat less stupid," grumbled he, after a moment's silence and scrutiny. "And yet it is but specious, and without any basis: Species, non autem corpus."

  "Oh, if I were the son of a man possessing an income of eighteen thousand livres!" repeated Ange Pitou, who thought he perceived that his answer had made some impression on the professor.

  "Yes, but you are not so, and to make up for it, you are as ignorant as the clown of whom Juvenal speaks,—a profane citation," the abbe crossed himself, "but no less just,—Arcadius juvenis. I would wager that you do not even know what Arcadius means?"

  "Why, Arcadian, to be sure," replied Ange Pitou, drawing himself up with the majesty of pride.

  "And what besides?"

  "Besides what?"

  "Arcadia was the country of donkeys, and with the ancients, as with us, asinus was synonymous with stultus."

  "I did not wish to understand your question in that sense," rejoined Pitou, "seeing that it was far from my imagination that the austere mind of my worthy preceptor could have descended to satire."

  The Abbé Fortier looked at him a second time, and with as profound attention as the first.

  "Upon my word!" cried he, somewhat mollified by the incense which his disciple had offered him; "there are really moments when one would swear that the fellow is less stupid than he appears to be."

  "Come, Monsieur l'Abbé," said Pitou, who, if he had not heard the words the abbe had uttered, had caught the expression of a return to a more merciful consideration which had passed over his countenance, "forgive me this time, and you will see what a beautiful theme I will write by to-morrow."

  "Well, then, I will consent," said the abbé, placing, in sign of truce, his cat-o'-nine-tails in his belt and approaching Pitou, who observing this pacific demonstration, made no further attempt to move.

  "Oh, thanks, thanks!" cried the pupil.

  "Wait a moment, and be not so hasty with your thanks. Yes, I forgive you, but on one condition."

  Pitou hung down his head, and as he was now at the discretion of the abbé, he waited with resignation.

  "It is that you shall correctly reply to a question I shall put to you."

  "In Latin?" inquired Pitou with much anxiety.

  "Latinè," replied the professor.

  Pitou drew a deep sigh.

  There was a momentary silence, during which the joyous cries of the schoolboys who were playing on the square reached the ears of Ange Pitou. He sighed a second time, more deeply than the first.

  "Quid virtus, quid religion?" asked the abbé.

  These words, pronounced with all the pomposity of a pedagogue, rang in the ears of poor Ange Pitou like the trumpet of the angel on the day of judgment; a cloud passed before his eyes, and such an effect
was produced upon his intellect by it, that he thought for a moment he was on the point of becoming mad.

  However, as this violent cerebral labor did not appear to produce any result, the required answer was indefinitely postponed. A prolonged noise was then heard, as the professor slowly inhaled a pinch of snuff.

  Pitou clearly saw that it was necessary to say something.

  "Nescio," he replied, hoping that his ignorance would be pardoned by his avowing that ignorance in Latin.

  "You do not know what is virtue!" exclaimed the abbé, choking with rage; "you do not know what is religion!"

  "I know very well what it is in French," replied Ange, "but I do not know it in Latin."

  "Well, then, get thee to Arcadia, juvenis; all is now ended between us, pitiful wretch!"

  Pitou was so overwhelmed that he did not move a step, although the Abbé Fortier had drawn his cat-o'-nine-tails from his belt with as much dignity as the commander of 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 arms fall listlessly by his side. "What will become of me if I lose the hope of being admitted into the seminary?"

  "Become whatever you can. It is, by heaven! the same to me."

  The good abbé was so angry that he almost swore.

  "But you do not know, then, that my aunt believes I am already an abbé?"

  "Well, then, she will know that you are not fit to be made even a sacristan!"

  "But, Monsieur Fortier—"

  "I tell you to depart—limine linguæ."

  "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 abbé, hoping that during the time he would be performing this operation a respite would be given him, and the abbé'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 favorites, he walked with slow and measured steps along the corridor.

  At the top of the stairs was the Abbé Fortier, with outstretched arm, pointing to the staircase with the end of his cat-o'-nine-tails.

  It was necessary to run the gauntlet. 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 Abbé 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.

  While Ange Pitou, wiping away a last tear, was bending his steps, his desk upon his head, towards Pleux, the quarter of the town in which his aunt resided, let us say a few words as to his physical appearance and his antecedents.

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  Chapter II

  In which it is proved that an Aunt is not always a Mother

  LOUIS ANGE PITOU, as he himself said in his dialogue with the Abbé Fortier, 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 calfskin shoes reddened by constant use; such, with a sort of cassock of brown serge, a garment something between a frock-coat and a blouse, is an exact and impartial description of the ex-disciple of the Abbé 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, of whom he was the only child. That is to say, that since the death of his father, which event had occurred before he had attained the years of recollection, Ange Pitou, adored by his poor mother, 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, thus directed towards one sole object, was, that at ten years old Pitou was a very distinguished poacher, and a birdcatcher of the first order; and that almost without any labor, and above all without receiving lessons from any one, but by the sole power of that instinct given by nature to man when born in the midst of woods, and which would seem to be a portion of that same instinct with which she has endowed the animal kingdom. And therefore every run of hare or rabbit within the circle of three leagues was known to him, and not a marshy pool, where birds were wont to drink, had escaped his investigation. In every direction were to be seen the marks made by his pruning-knife on trees that were adapted to catching birds by imitating their calls. 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 imi- tating the cry of the jay or the owlet,—birds which, among the plumed tribe, enjoy the bitter hatred of the whole species, and to such an extent that every sparrow, every finch or tomtit, hastens at the call in the hope of plucking out a single feather from the common enemy, and, for the most, leave all their own,—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 managed to imitate indifferently 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. It was, in short, his own lips that 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, we will not say by this note, but 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 covering 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 clearsightedness which must insure the due mixture, though in scientifically unequal quantities, of the rosin, oil, and glue, in order that the glue should not become either too fluid or too brittle.

  Now, as the estimation of the qualities of a m
an changes according to the theatre on which these qualities are produced, and according to the spectators before whom they are exhibited, Pitou, in his own native village, Haramont, amidst his country neighbors,—that is to say, men accustomed to demand of nature at least half their resources, and, like all peasants, possessing an instinctive hatred of civilization,—Pitou enjoyed such distinguished consideration that his poor mother could not for a moment entertain the idea that he was pursuing a wrong path, and that the most perfect education that can be given, and at great expense, to a man, was not precisely that which her son, a privileged person in this respect, had given, gratis, to himself.

  But when the good woman fell sick, when she felt that death was approaching, when she understood that she was about to leave her child alone and isolated in the world, 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-Cotterets. 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 stiff in his demeanor, dogmatical 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 calculate upon me."

  Then he had taken the child, had inquired the way to Ermenonville, and with his son performed the pilgrimage to the tomb of Rousseau, after which he returned to Villers-Cotterets. Then, induced, no doubt, by the wholesome air he breathed there, by the favorable manner in which the notary had spoken of the school under the charge of the Abbé 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.