These two hearts now understood each other, and felt that henceforth there could be no communion between them.
Mademoiselle Angélique went into her house and double-locked the door. Pitou, whom the grating noise alarmed as a continuation of the storm, ran on still faster.
From this scene resulted an effect which Mademoiselle Angélique was very far from foreseeing, and which certainly Pitou in no way expected.
Chapter V
A Philosophical Farmer
PITOU ran as if all the demons of the infernal regions were at his heels, and in a few seconds he was outside the town.
On turning round the corner of the cemetery, he very nearly ran his head against the hind part of a horse.
“Why, good Lord!” cried a sweet voice well known to Pitou, “where are you running to at this rate, Monsieur Ange? You have very nearly made Cadet run away with me, you frightened us both so much.”
“Ah, Mademoiselle Catherine!” cried Pitou, replying rather to his own thoughts than to the question of the young girl. “Ah, Mademoiselle Catherine, what a misfortune! great God, what a misfortune!”
“Oh, you quite terrify me!” said the young girl, pulling up her horse in the middle of the road. “What, then, has happened, Monsieur Ange?”
“What has happened!” said Pitou; and then, lowering his voice as if about to reveal some mysterious iniquity, “why, it is, that I am not to be an abbé, Mademoiselle.”
But instead of receiving the fatal intelligence with all those signs of commiseration which Pitou had expected, Mademoiselle Billot gave way to a long burst of laughter.
“You are not to be an abbé?” asked Catherine.
“No,” replied Pitou, in perfect consternation; “it appears that it is impossible.”
“Well, then, you can be a soldier,” said Catherine.
“A soldier?”
“Undoubtedly. You should not be in despair for such a trifle. Good Lord! I at first thought that you had come to announce to me the sudden death of your aunt.”
“Oh,” said Pitou, feelingly, “it is precisely the same thing to me as if she were dead indeed, since she has driven me out of her house.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Catherine, laughing; “you have not now the satisfaction of weeping for her.”
And Catherine began to laugh more heartily than before, which scandalized poor Pitou more than ever.
“But did you not hear that she has turned me out of doors?” rejoined the student, in despair.
“Well, so much the better,” she replied.
“You are very happy in being able to laugh in that manner, Mademoiselle Billot; and it proves that you have a most agreeable disposition, since the sorrows of others make so little impression upon you.”
“And who has told you, then, that, should a real misfortune happen to you, I would not pity you, Monsieur Ange?”
“You would pity me if a real misfortune should befall me! But do you not, then, know that I have no other resource?”
“So much the better again!” cried Catherine.
Pitou was perplexed.
“But one must eat!” said he; “one cannot live without eating! and I, above all, for I am always hungry.”
“You do not wish to work, then, Monsieur Pitou?”
“Work, and at what? Monsieur Fortier and my Aunt Angélique have told me more than a hundred times that I was fit for nothing. Ah! if they had only apprenticed me to a carpenter or a blacksmith, instead of wanting to make an abbé of me! Decidedly, now, Mademoiselle Catherine,” said Pitou, with a gesture of despair, “decidedly there is a curse upon me.”
“Alas!” said the young girl, compassionately, for she knew, as did all the neighborhood, Pitou’s lamentable story. “There is some truth in what you have just now said, my dear Monsieur Ange; but why do you not do one thing?”
“What is it?” cried Pitou, eagerly clinging to the proposal which Mademoiselle Billot was about to make, as a drowning man clings to a willow branch. “What is it; tell me?”
“You had a protector; at least, I think I have heard so.”
“Doctor Gilbert.”
“You were the schoolfellow of his son, since he was educated, as you have been, by the Abbé Fortier.”
“I believe I was indeed, and I have more than once saved him from being thrashed.”