Pitou had not even the courtesy to utter one word of admiration on seeing this great marvel.
Spoiled by good living, he forgot—the ungrateful fellow!—that such magnificence had never until then inhabited the cupboard of Aunt Angélique.
He held his great hunch of bread in his right hand.
He seized the vast dish in his left, and held it in equilibrium by the pressure of his immense square thumb, buried as far as the first joint in the unctuous mess, the odor of which was grateful to his olfactory organs. At this moment it appeared to Pitou that a shadow interposed between the light of the doorway and himself.
He turned round, smiling, for Pitou’s was one of those artless dispositions whose faces always give evidence of the satisfaction of their hearts.
The shadow was the body of Aunt Angélique.
Of Aunt Angélique, more miserly, more crabbed, and more skin-and-bone than ever.
In former days—we are obliged incessantly to return to the same figure of speech; that is to say, to the comparative, as comparison alone can express our thought—in former times, at the sight of Aunt Angélique, Pitou would have let fall the dish, and while Aunt Angélique would have bent forward in despair to pick up the fragments of her fowl and the grains of rice, he would have bounded over her head, and would have taken to his heels, carrying off his bread under his arm.
But Pitou was no longer the same; his helmet and his sabre had less changed him, physically speaking, than his having associated with the great philosophers of the day had changed him morally.
Instead of flying terrified from his aunt, he approached her with a gracious smile, opened wide his arms, and although she endeavored to escape the pressure, embraced her with all his might, squeezing the old maid energetically to his breast, while his hands, the one loaded with the dish containing the fowl and rice, and the other with the bread and knife, were crossed behind her back.
When he had accomplished this most nephew-like act, which he considered as a duty imposed upon him, and which it was necessary to fulfil, he breathed with all the power of his vast lungs, and said:—
“Aunt Angélique, you may well be surprised; but it is indeed your poor Pitou.”
When he had clasped her so fervently in his arms, the old maid imagined that, having been surprised in the very act by her, Pitou had wished to suffocate her, as Hercules, in former days, had strangled Anttæus.
She, on her side, breathed more freely when she found herself relieved from this dangerous embrace.
Only Aunt Angélique had remarked that Pitou had not even manifested his admiration of the dish he was devouring.
Pitou was not only ungrateful, but he was also ill-bred.
But there was one thing which disgusted Aunt Angelique more than the rest; and this was that formerly, while she would be seated in state in her leather arm chair, Pitou would not even dare to sit down on one of the dilapidated chairs or one of the lame stools which surrounded it; but now instead of this, after having so cordially embraced her, Pitou had very coolly ensconced himself in her own armchair, had placed the dish between his knees, and was leisurely devouring its contents.
In his powerful right hand he held the knife already mentioned, the blade of which was wide and long,—a perfect spatula, with which Polyphemus himself might have eaten his pottage.
In the other hand he held a bit of bread three fingers wide and six inches long,—a perfect broom, with which he swept up the rice; while on its side, the knife, in seeming gratitude, pushed the meat upon the bread.
A learned, though pitiless manœuvre, the result of which, in a few minutes, was that it caused the blue and white of the interior of the dish to become visible, as during the ebbing tide we gradually perceive the rings and marks upon the quays of a seaport.
We must renounce attempting to describe the frightful perplexity and despair of Aunt Angélique.
At one moment she imagined that she could call out.