As to Aunt Angélique, she set to work to pick the twelve redbreasts which she had destined for her own breakfast and dinner. She carried two thrushes to the Abbé Fortier, and sold the remaining four to the host of the Golden Ball, who paid her three sous apiece for them, promising her to take as many as she would bring him at the same price.
Aunt Angélique returned home transported with joy. The blessing of heaven had entered beneath her roof with Ange Pitou.
“Ah!” cried she, while eating her robin-redbreasts, which were as fat as ortolans and as delicate as beccaficos, “people are right in saying that a good deed never goes unrewarded.”
In the evening Ange returned; his bag, which was magnificently rounded, he carried on his shoulders. On this occasion Aunt Angélique did not waylay him behind the door, but waited for him on the threshold, and instead of giving him a box on the ear, she received the lad with a grimace which very much resembled a smile.
“Here I am!” cried Pitou, on entering the room with all that firmness which denotes a conviction of having well employed one’s time.
“You and your bag,” said Aunt Angélique.
“I and my bag,” said Pitou
“And what have you in your bag?” inquired Aunt Angélique, stretching forth her hand with curiosity.
“Beech-mast,” said Pitou.1
“Beech-mast!”
“Undoubtedly; you must understand, Aunt Angélique, that if old Father La Jeunesse, the gamekeeper at the Wolf’s Heath, had seen me prowling over his grounds without my bag, he would have said to me, ‘What do you come here after, you little vagabond?’ And this without calculating that he might have suspected something; while having my bag, were he to ask me what I was doing there, I should say to him, ‘why I am come to gather mast; is it forbidden to gather mast?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, then, if it is not forbidden, you have nothing to say.’ And indeed, should he say anything, Father La Jeunesse would be in the wrong.”
“Then you have spent your whole day in gathering mast instead of laying your wires, you idle fellow!” exclaimed aunt Angélique angrily, who thought that the rabbits were escaping her through her nephew’s excessive cunning.
“On the contrary, I laid my snares while he saw me at work gathering the mast.”
“And did he say nothing to you?”
“Oh, yes, he said to me, ‘You will present my compliments to your aunt, Pitou.’ Hey! Is not Father La Jeunesse a kind, good man?”
“But the rabbits?” again repeated the old devotee, whom nothing could divert from her fixed idea.
“The rabbits? Why, the moon will rise at midnight, and at one o’clock I will go and see if there are any caught.”
“Where?”
“In the woods.”
“How! would you go into the woods at one o’clock in the morning?”
“To be sure.”
“And without being afraid?”
“Afraid! of what?”
Angélique was as much astounded at Pitou’s courage as she had been astonished at his calculations.
The fact is, that Pitou, as simple as a child of nature, knew nothing of those factitious dangers which terrify children born in cities.
Therefore at midnight he went his way, walking along the churchyard wall without once looking back. The innocent youth who had never offended, at least according to his ideas of independence, either God or man, feared not the dead more than he did the living.
There was only one person of whom he felt any sort of apprehension, and this was Father La Jeunesse; and therefore did he take the precaution to go somewhat out of his way to pass by his house. As the doors and shutters were all closed, and there was no light to be perceived, Pitou, in order to assure himself that the keeper was really at home and not upon the watch, began to imitate the barking of a dog, and so perfectly that Ronflot, the keeper’s terrier, was deceived by it, and answered it by giving tongue with all his might, and by sniffing the air under the door.
From that moment Pitou was perfectly reassured; as Ronflot was at home, Father La Jeunesse must be there also. Ronflot and Father La Jeunesse were inseparable; and at the moment the one was seen, it was certain that the other would soon make his appearance.