Pitou thought with his head in his hands and his body prostrate.
Cæsar amid the thickets of Gaul, Hannibal wandering on the Alps, and Columbus drifting over the ocean, never thought more deeply, and never more fully devoted themselves diis ignotis, the fearful powers who hold the secrets of life and death, than did Pitou.
“Come,” said Pitou, “time speeds, and to-morrow I must appear in all my insignificance.
“To-morrow the captor of the Bastille, the god of war, will be called by all Haramont an idiot, as—I do not know who was by the Greeks.
“To-day I triumph, but to-morrow I shall be hooted.
“This cannot be. Catherine will know it, and will think me disgraced.”
Pitou paused.
“What will extricate me from this dilemma?
“Audacity.
“Not so. Audacity lasts a second. To load in the Prussian times requires half a minute.
“Strange idea, to teach the Prussian drill to Frenchmen! I am too much of a patriot to teach Frenchmen any of their inventions. I will make a national drill.
“But I may go astray.
“I saw a monkey once go through the manual at a fair. He probably though, being a monkey, had never served.
“Ah! I have an idea.”
He began to stride as fast as his long legs would permit, but was suddenly brought to a stand by the idea.
“My disappearance will astonish my men. I must inform them.”
He then sent for his subalterns and said:—
“Tell the men that the first drill will take place on the day after to-morrow.”
“Why not to-morrow?”
“You are fatigued, and before drilling the men I must instruct the officers. Be careful, too, to obey your superior officers, without asking questions.”
They saluted him à la militaire.
“Very well; the drill will be at half-past four on the day after to-morrow.”
The subalterns left, and as it was half after nine, went to bed.
Pitou let them go, and when they had turned the corner, went in an opposite direction, and soon was hidden in the thickest of the park.
Now let us see what Pitou was thinking of.
Chapter XXXVII
How Pitou learned Tactics, and Acquired a Noble Bearing
PITOU hurried on for half an hour into the very depth of the wood.
There was in the undergrowth, beneath a huge rock, a hut built some thirty-five or forty years before, which was inhabited by a person who in his day had excited no little mystery.
This hut, half buried in the ground and surrounded by foliage, received light only by an oblique opening. Not unlike a gypsy hut, it was often to be detected only by the smoke which rose from it.
Otherwise none but gamekeepers, poachers, and sportsmen would ever have suspected its existence, or that it was inhabited.
For forty years, though, it had been the abode of a retired keeper whom the Duke of Orléans, father of Louis Philippe, had permitted to remain, with the privilege of killing a rabbit or a hare a day.
Fowl and large game were excepted.
At the time we speak of the old man was sixty-nine years old. His name was Clovis originally, to which, as he grew old, the title Father was annexed.
From his residence the rock took the name of Clovis’s Stone.
He had been wounded at Fontenoy, and consequently had lost a leg, and had therefore been treated kindly by the duke.
He never went into great cities, and visited VillersCotterets but once a year, for the purpose of buying three hundred and sixty-five loads of powder and ball. On leap years he bought three hundred and sixty-six.
On that day he took to the hatter, Monsieur Cornu, three hundred and sixty-five or three hundred and sixty-six rabbit and hare skins, for which he received seventy-five Tours livres. He never missed a shot, and we are therefore able to be so exact.
He lived on the flesh of the animals, though sometimes he sold it.
With the skins of the animals he bought powder and lead.
Once a year Father Clovis entered into a kind of speculation.
The rock which served as a support to his hut was in the form of an inclined plane, like the roof of a house, and at its widest part measured eighteen feet.