Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part one

But at the period at which this history commences, royal affairs, though already somewhat tottering, had not yet fallen to the low degree to which they have fallen in our days; the château was no longer inhabited by a prince, ‘t is true, but it had not yet become the abode of beggars; it was simply uninhabited, excepting the indispensable attendants required for its preservation; among whom were to be remarked the doorkeeper, the master of the tennis court, and the house steward; and therefore the windows of this immense edifice, some of which looked toward the park and others on a large court aristocratically called the square of the chateau, were all closed, which added not a little to the gloominess and solitary appearance of this square, at one of the extremities of which rose a small house, regarding which the reader, we hope, will permit us to say a few words.

It was a small house, of which, if we may be allowed to use the term, the back only was to be seen. But, as is the case with many individuals, this back had the privilege of being the most presentable part. In fact, the front, which was towards the Rue de Soissons, one of the principal streets of the town, opened upon it by an awkwardly constructed gate, which was ill-naturedly kept closed eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, while the back was gay and smiling; that is to say, on the back was a garden, above the wall of which could be seen the tops of cherry, pear, and plum trees, while on each side of a small gate by which the garden was entered from the square was a centenary acacia-tree, which in the spring appeared to stretch out their branches above the wall to scatter their perfumed flowers over the surrounding grounds.

The abode was the residence of the chaplain of the chateau, who, notwithstanding the absence of the master, performed mass every Sunday in the seignorial church. He had a small pension, and besides this had the charge of two purses,—the one to send a scholar yearly to the college of Plessis, the other for one to the seminary at Soissons. It is needless to say that it was the Orleans family who supplied these purses,—founded, that of the seminary by the son of the Regent, that for the college by the father of the prince,—and that these two purses were the objects of ambition to all parents, at the same time that they were a cause of absolute despair to the pupils, being the source of extraordinary compositions, which compositions were to be presented for approval of the chaplain every Thursday.

Well, one Thursday in the month of July, 1789, a somewhat disagreeable day, being darkened by a storm, beneath which the two magnificent acacias we have spoken of, having already lost the virginal whiteness of their spring attire, shed a few leaves yellowed by the first heats of summer, after a silence of some duration, broken only by the rustling of those leaves as they whirled against each other upon the beaten ground of the square, or by the shrill cry of the martin pursuing flies as it skimmed along the ground, eleven o’clock resounded from the pointed and slated belfry of the town hall.

Instantly a hurrah, loud as could have been uttered by a whole regiment of fusileers, accompanied by a rushing sound like that of the avalanche when bounding from crag to crag, was heard; the door between the two acaciatrees was opened, or rather burst open, and gave egress to a torrent of boys, who spread themselves over the square, when instantly some five or six joyous and noisy groups were formed,—one around a circle formed to keep pegtops prisoners, another about a game of hop-scotch traced with chalk upon the ground, another before several holes scientifically hollowed out, where those who were fortunate enough to have sous might lose them at pitch and toss.

At the same time that these gambling and playful scholars—who were apostrophized by the few neighbors whose windows opened on this square as wicked do-no-goods, and who, in general, wore trousers the knees of which were torn, as were also the elbows of their jackets—assembled to play upon the square, those who were called good and reasonable boys, and who, in the opinion of the gossips, must be the pride and joy of their respective parents, were seen to detach themselves from the general mass, and by various paths, though with slow steps, indicative of their regret, to walk, basket in hand, towards their paternal roofs, where awaited them the slice of bread and butter, or of bread and preserved fruit, destined to be their compensation for the games they had thus abjured. The latter were, in general, dressed in jackets in tolerably good condition, and in breeches which were almost irreproachable; and this, together with their boasted propriety of demeanor, rendered them objects of derision and even of hatred to their worse-dressed and, above all, worse-disciplined companions.

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