“I will not return to the farm,” said he. “I should only be humiliated, scoffed at. I should eat the bread of a woman who loves another man, and a man, I cannot but acknowledge, who is handsomer, richer, and more elegant than I am. No, my place is no longer at the farm, but at Haramont,—at Haramont, my own country, where I shall perhaps find people who will not think that my knees are like knots made in a table-napkin.”
Having said this, Pitou trotted his good long legs towards Haramont, where, without his at all suspecting it, his reputation and that of his helmet and sabre had preceded him, and where awaited him, if not happiness, at least a glorious destiny.
But, it is well known, it is not an attribute of humanity to be perfectly happy.
Chapter XXXII
Pitou an Orator
HOWEVER, on arriving at Villers-Cotterets, towards ten o’clock at night, after having had the long run we have endeavored to describe, Pitou felt that however melancholy he might be, it was much better to stop at the Dauphin Hotel and sleep in a good bed, than to sleep canopied by the stars, under some beech or oak in the forest.
For as to sleeping in a house at Haramont, arriving there at half-past ten at night, it was useless to think of it. For more than an hour and a half every light had been extinguished, and every door closed in that peaceful village.
Pitou therefore, put up at the Dauphin Hotel, where, for a thirty-sous piece, he had an excellent bed, a four-pound loaf, a piece of cheese, and a pot of cider.
Pitou was both fatigued and in love, tired out and in despair. The result of this was a struggle between his moral and physical feelings, in which the moral were in the first instance victorious, but at length succumbed.
That is to say, that from eleven o’clock to two in the morning, Pitou groaned, sighed, turned and twisted in his bed, without being able to sleep a wink; but at two o’clock, overcome by fatigue, he closed his eyes, not to open them again till seven.
As at Haramont every one was in bed at half-past ten at night, so at Villers-Cotterets everybody was stirring at seven in the morning.
Pitou, on leaving the Dauphin Hotel, again found that his helmet and sabre attracted public attention.
After going about a hundred paces, he consequently found himself the centre of a numerous crowd.
Pitou had decidedly acquired an enormous popularity.
There are few travellers who have such good luck. The sun, which, it is said, shines for the whole world, does not always shine with a favorable brilliancy for peoplewho return to their own native place with the desire of being considered prophets.
But also it does not happen to every one to have an aunt crabbed and avaricious to so ferocious a degree as Aunt Angélique; it does not happen to every Gargantua capable of swallowing an old cock boiled with rice, to be able to offer a half-crown to the proprietor of the victim.
But that which happens still less often to returning persons, whose origin and traditions can be traced back to the Odyssey, is to return with a helmet on their heads and a sabre by their sides; above all, when the rest of their accoutrements are far from being military.
For we must avow that it was, above all, this helmet and this sabre which recommended Pitou to the attention of his fellow-citizens.
But for the vexations which Pitou’s love encountered on his return, it has been seen that all sorts of good fortune awaited him. This was undoubtedly a compensation.
And immediately on seeing him, some of the inhabitants of Villers-Cotterets, who had accompanied Pitou from the Abbé Fortier’s door in the Rue de Soissons to Dame Angélique’s door at Pleux, resolved, in order to continue the ovation, to accompany him from Villers-Cotterets to Haramont.
And they did as they had resolved; on seeing which, the above-mentioned inhabitants of Haramont began to appreciate their compatriot at his just value.
It is, however, only justice to them to say that the soil was already prepared to receive the seed. Pitou’s first passage through Haramont, rapid as it had been, had left some traces in the minds of its inhabitants; his helmet and his sabre had remained impressed on the memories of those who had seen him appearing before them as a luminous apparition.
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