Taking the Bastile; Or, Pitou the Peasant. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.
for form's sake but opening her eyes more widely than her mouth.
"Birds, you see, good Aunt Angelique," replied Pitou as she grabbed the lot.
"Good to eat?" questioned the old maid who was greedy in all her senses of the word.
"Redbreasts and larks—I should bet they are good to eat—but they are better to sell. They command a good price in the market."
Where did you steal them, you little rogue?"
"Steal? they ain't stolen—I took 'em at the pool in the woods. A fellow has only to set up limed twigs anywhere round the water and the silly birds get tangled; then you run up, wring their necks, and there you have them."
"Lime? do you catch birds with lime?" queried Angelique.
"Not mortar lime, bless your innocence, but birdlime; it is made by boiling down holly sap."
"I understand, but where did you get the money to buy holly sap?"
"I should be a saphead to buy that: one makes it."
"Ah, then these birds are to be had for the picking up?"
"Yes: any day; but not everyday, for, of course, you cannot catch on Tuesday those you caught on Monday."
"Very true," returned the aunt, amazed at the brightness her nephew was for once displaying: "you are right."
This unheard of approval delighted the boy.
"But, on the days when you ought not to go to the pools, you go elsewhere. When you are not catching birds, you snare hares. You can eat them, too, and sell the skins for two cents."
Angelique stared at her nephew who was coming out as a financier.
"Oh, I can do the selling!"
"Of course, just as Mother Madeline did," for Pitou had never supposed he was to enjoy the fruit of his hunting.
"When will you go snaring hares?" she asked eagerly.
"I will go snaring hares and rabbits when I have wire for snares."
"All right, make it."
"Oh, I cannot do that," Pitou said, scratching his head. "I must buy that at the store but I can weave the springes."
"What does it cost?"
"I can make a couple of dozen with four cents' worth, and it ought to catch half a dozen bunnies—and the snares are used over and over again—unless the gamekeepers seize them."
"Here are four cents," said Aunt Angelique, "go and buy wire and get the rabbits to-morrow."
Wire was cheaper in the town than at the village so that Ange got material for twenty-four snares for three cents; he brought the odd copper to his aunt who was touched by this honesty. For an instant she felt like giving him the cent but unfortunately for Ange, it had been flattened by a hammer and might be passed in the dusk for a twosous piece. She thought it wicked to squander a piece that might bring a hundred per cent, and she popped it into her pouch.
Pitou made the snares and in the morning asked mysteriously for a bag. In it she put the bread and cheese for his meals, and away he went to his hunting ground.
Meanwhile she plucked the robins intended for their dinner; she took a brace of larks to Abbe Fortier, and two brace to the Golden Ball innkeeper, who paid her three cents for them and ordered as many as she could supply at that rate.
She went home beaming: the blessing of heaven had entered the house with Ange Pitou.
"They are quite right who say a good action is never thrown away," she observed as she munched the robins, as fat as ortolans and delicate as beccaficoes.
At dark in walked Ange, with the rounded out bag on his shoulders; Aunt Angelique received him on the threshold but not with a slap.
"Here I am, with my bag," said he with the calmness of having well spent his day.
"And what have you in the bag?" cried the aunt, stretching out her hand in sharp curiosity.
"Beech-mast," replied Pitou. "It is this way. If Daddy Lajeunesse, the gamekeeper, saw me rambling without the bag he would want to know what I was lurking for and he would feel suspicion. But when he challenged me with the bag, I just answered him: 'I am gathering beechmast, father—it is not forbidden to gather mast, is it?' and not being forbidden, he could not do anything. So he said nothing except: 'You have a good aunt, Pitou; give her my compliments.'"
"So you have been collecting mast instead of catching rabbits," cried Aunt Angelique, angrily.
"No, no, I laid my snares under cover of mast-gathering: the old donkey saw me doing that and thought it right."
"But the game?" said the woman, bent on the first principle.
"The moon will be up at twelve and I will go and see how many I have snared."
"You will go into the woods at midnight?"
"Why, not? what is there to be afraid of?"
The woman was as amazed at Ange's courage as at the breadth of his speculations. But brought up in the woods, Ange was not to be scared at what terrifies the town boy.
So at midnight he set out, skirting the cemetery wall, for the innocent lad, never in his ideas offending anybody, had no more fear of the dead than of the living.
The only person he dreaded was Lajeunesse. So he made a turn round his house and stopped to imitate the barking of a dog so naturally that the gamekeeper's basset "Snorer," deceived by the provocation, replied with a full throat and came to the door to sniff the air.
Pitou ran on, chuckling, for if Snorer were home his master was surely asleep there, as the man and the dog were inseparable.
In the snares two rabbits had been strangled, Pitou stuffed them into the pockets of a coat made too long for him and now too small.
Greed kept the aunt awake, though she had lain down. She had reckoned on two brace of game.
"Only a pair," said Pitou. "It is not my fault that I have not done better but these are the cunningest rabbits for miles round."
Next day Pitou renewed his enterprises and had the luck to catch three rabbits. Two went to the tavern and one to Abbe Fortier, who recommended Aunt Angelique to the benevolent of the town.
Thus things went on for three or four months, the woman enchanted and Ange thinking life endurable. Except for his mother's loss, matters were such as at Haramont: he passed his time in rural pleasures.
But an unexpected circumstance broke the jar of illusion of the prude and stopped the nephew's trapping.
A letter from Dr. Gilbert arrived from New York. He had not forgotten his little ward on landing, but asked Master Niquet if his instructions had been followed and if young Pitou were learning the means to make his own living.
It was a pinch, for there was no denying that Ange was in first-rate health. He was tall and lank but so are hickory saplings, and nobody doubts their strength and elasticity.
The aunt asked a week to put in her reply; it was miserable for both. Pitou asked no better career than he was leading, but it was quiet at the time; not only did the cold weather drive the birds away but the snow fell and as it would retain footprints, he dared not go into the woods to lay traps and snares.
During the week the old maid's claws grew; she made the stripling so wretched that he was ready to take up any trade rather than be her butt any longer.
Suddenly a sublime idea sprouted in her cruelly tormented brain, where peace reigned again.
Father Fortier had two purses for poor students attached to his school, out of the bounty of the Duke of Orleans.
Angelique resolved to beg him to enter Ange for one of them. This would cost the teacher nothing, and to say nothing of the