“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.