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 with 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.”