“Well, then, why do you not write to his father? He will not abandon you.”
“Why, I would certainly do so, did I know what had become of him; but your father perhaps knows this, Mademoiselle Billot, since Doctor Gilbert is his landlord.”
“I know that he sends part of the rent of the farm to him in America, and pays the remainder to a notary at Paris.”
“Ah!” said Pitou, sighing, “in America; that is very far.”
“You would go to America,—you?” cried the young girl, almost terrified at Pitou’s resolution.
“Who, I, Mademoiselle Catherine! Never, never! If I knew where to go, and how to procure food, I should be very happy in France.”
“Very happy!” repeated Mademoiselle Billot.
Pitou cast down his eyes. The young girl remained silent. This silence lasted some time. Pitou was plunged in meditations which would have greatly surprised the Abbé Fortier, with all his logic.
These meditations, though rising from an obscure point, had become lucid; then they again became confused, though brilliant, like the lightning whose origin is concealed, whose source is lost.
During this time Cadet had again moved on, though at a walk, and Pitou walked at Cadet’s side, with one hand leaning on one of the panniers. As to Mademoiselle Catherine, who had also become full of thought, she allowed her reins to fall upon her courser’s neck, without fearing that he would run away with her. Moreover, there were no monsters on the road, and Cadet was of a race which had no sort of relation to the steeds of Hippolytus.
Pitou stopped mechanically when the horse stopped. They had arrived at the farm.
“Well, now, is it you, Pitou?” cried a broad-shouldered man, standing somewhat proudly by the side of a pond to which he had led his horse to drink.
“Eh! good Lord! Yes, Monsieur Billot, it is myself.”
“Another misfortune has befallen this poor Pitou,” said the young girl, jumping off her horse, without feeling at all uneasy as to whether her petticoat hitched or not, to show the color of her garters; “his aunt has turned him out of doors.”
“And what has he done to the old bigot?” said the farmer.
“It appears that I am not strong enough in Greek.”
He was boasting, the puppy. He ought to have said in Latin.
“Not strong enough in Greek!” exclaimed the broadshouldered man. “And why should you wish to be strong in Greek?”
“To construe Theocritus and read the Iliad.”
“And of what use would it be to you to construe Theocritus and read the Iliad?”
“It would be of use in making me an abbé.”
“Bah!” ejaculated Monsieur Billot, “and do I know Greek? do I know Latin? do I know even French? do I know how to read do I know how to write? That does not hinder me from sowing, from reaping, and getting my harvest into the granary.”
“Yes, but you, Monsieur Billot, you are not an abbé; you are a cultivator of the earth, agricola, as Virgil says. O fortunatos nimium—”
“Well, and do you then believe that a cultivator is not equal to a black-cap; say, then, you shabby chorister you, is he not so, particularly when this cultivator has sixty acres of good land in the sunshine, and a thousand louis in the shade?”
“I had been always told that to be an abbé was the best thing in the world. It is true,” added Pitou, smiling with his most agreeable smile, “that I did not always listen to what was told me.”
“And I give you joy, my boy. You see that I can rhyme like any one else when I set to work. It appears to me that there is stuff in you to make something better than an abbé, and that it is a lucky thing for you not to take to that trade, particularly as times now go. Do you see now, as a farmer I know something of the weather, and the weather just now is bad for abbés.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Pitou.
“Yes, we shall have a storm,” rejoined the farmer, “and that ere long, believe me. You are honest, you are learned—”