An object placed at the top slid gently down to the bottom.
He spread the report quietly through the neighboring villages, through the intervention of the old women who came to buy his hares and rabbits, that all the young women who on Saint Louis’s Day should let themselves slide from the top to the bottom of his rock would certainly be married within the year.
The first year many young women came, but none dared the attempt.
On the next year three tried to do so. Two were married during the course of the year, and Father Clovis said the third would have been married had she had as much faith as the others.
The next year all the young women of the neighborhood came and dared the attempt.
Father Clovis declared that enough men could not be found for so many young women, but that those who had most faith would be married. He had brilliant success. His matrimonial reputation was established.
Then, as people cannot slide all day without something to eat and drink, Father Clovis secured the monopoly of selling all kinds of viands to the male and female sliders; for the young men had persuaded the young ladies that in order that the efficacy of the rock should be infallible, both sexes should slide together and at the same time.
For thirty-five years Clovis lived in this manner. The country treated him as the Arabs do their marabouts. He had become a legend.
One thing, however, excited the jealousy of the guards on duty. It was said that Father Clovis fired but three hundred and sixty-five times yearly, and that at every shot, without fail, he killed either a hare or a rabbit.
More than once the nobles of Paris, invited by the Duke of Orléans, who had heard of Father Clovis, placed a louis or a crown in his broad hand, and sought to ascertain, how any one could never miss.
Old Clovis, however, told them nothing more than that with the same gun, in the army, he had never missed a man at a hundred yards. If he could kill a man with ball, it was far easier to kill a hare with shot.
If any smiled when Clovis spoke thus, he used to say: “Why do you fire when you are not sure of the mark?”
A saying which might have been worthy to have ranked among the boasts of Monsieur de Palisse, had it not been for the established reputation of the old marksman.
“But,” they would ask, “why did Monsieur d’ Orléans’s father, who was not at all mean, grant you permission to fire but once a day?”
“Because he knew that one shot would be enough.”
The curiosity of this spectacle, and the oddness of this theory, brought at least ten louis a year to the old anchorite.
Now, as he gained much money by the sale of his hare-skins and the holiday he had established, and he purchased only a pair of gaiters in every five years, and a coat every ten, he was not at all unhappy.
On the contrary, it was said that he had a concealed treasure, and that his heir would get a good thing.
Such was the singular person whom Pitou went to at midnight when the brilliant idea of which we have spoken entered his mind.
To fall in with Father Clovis, however, required much address.
Like Neptune’s old herdsman, he was not easily overtaken. He knew easily how to distinguish the useless man from one from whom he could make money.
Clovis was lying down on his aromatic bed of heath, which the woods afford in September, and which would not require to be changed until the same month of the next year.
It was eleven o’clock, and the night was calm and bright.
To reach the hut of Clovis, Pitou had to pass through thickets of oak and underbrush so dense that his arrival could not be unheard.
Pitou made four times as much noise as an ordinary person would have done, and old Clovis lifted up his head. He was not asleep, but was on that day in a terribly bad humor. An accident had happened which made him almost unapproachable. The accident was terrible.