Taking the Bastile. Dumas Alexandre
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good Master Gilbert," said the pious dame, "forget not that we have the Father of the fatherless above and that He has promised that a swallow shall not be sold for a penny without its being spent for the orphan's share."
"The text may be so, but it nowhere says that the orphan is to be bound out as a servant. I am afraid to do with Ange as I suggested; it would be too dear for your slight resources."
"But with the sum you spoke of, in your pocket," said the old devotee, with her eyes rivetted on the place whence the chink had sounded.
"I would give it, assuredly, but only on condition that the boy should be brought up to some livelihood."
"I promise that," cried Aunt Angelique; "I vow it, as true as the sheep are tempered for the storm-wind." And she raised her skeleton hand to heaven.
"Well," replied Gilbert, drawing out a bag rounded with coin; "I am ready to deposit the funds, but you must sign a contract at Lawyer Niquet's."
Niquet was her own business man and she raised no objections.
A bargain was made for five years: Ange Pitou was to be brought up to some trade and boarded, etc., for two hundred livres to his aunt, a-year. The doctor paid down the money.
Next day he quitted Villers, after arranging matters with a farmer on some property of his, named Billet, whose acquaintance we shall make in good time.
Miss Pitou, pouncing on the first payment in advance of the maintenance fund, buried eight bright gold pieces in her armchair bottom.
With eight livres over, she put the small change waiting to make up the amount of a gold piece to be placed, when converted, in the peculiar savings-bank.
We noticed the scant sympathy Ange felt for his aunt; he had foreseen the sorrow, disappointment and tribulations awaiting him under her roof.
In the first place, as soon as the doctor had turned his back, there was no longer a question about his learning any trade. When the good notary made a remark on this agreement, the tender aunt rejoined that her nephew was too delicate to be put out to work. The lawyer had admired his client's sensitive heart and deferred the apprenticeship question for another year. He was only twelve so that it would not waste much valuable time.
While his aunt was ruminating how to evade the contract, Ange resumed his truant life in the woods, as led at Haramont: it was the same woods and hence the same life.
As soon as he had the best spots located for bird-catching, he made some birdlime and having a four-pound loaf under his arm, he went off into the forest for the whole day.
He had foreseen a storm when he came back at nightfall, but he expected to parry it with the proceeds of his skill.
He had not presaged how the tempest would fall. In fact, Aunt Angelique had ambushed herself behind the door to deal him a cuff, as he crept in which he recognized as inflicted by her hard hand. Happily he had a hard head, too, and though the blow staggered him, he had the sense left to hold out as a peace-offering and buckler the talisman he had prepared. It was a bunch of two dozen small birds.
"What is this?" challenged his aunt, continuing to grumble for form's sake but opening her eyes more widely than her mouth.
"Birds, you see, good Aunt Angelique," replied Pitou as she grabbed the lot.
"Good to eat?" questioned the old maid who was greedy in all her senses of the word.
"Redbreasts and larks – I should bet they are good to eat – but they are better to sell. They command a good price in the market."
Where did you steal them, you little rogue?"
"Steal? they ain't stolen – I took 'em at the pool in the woods. A fellow has only to set up limed twigs anywhere round the water and the silly birds get tangled; then you run up, wring their necks, and there you have them."
"Lime? do you catch birds with lime?" queried Angelique.
"Not mortar lime, bless your innocence, but birdlime; it is made by boiling down holly sap."
"I understand, but where did you get the money to buy holly sap?"
"I should be a saphead to buy that: one makes it."
"Ah, then these birds are to be had for the picking up?"
"Yes: any day; but not everyday, for, of course, you cannot catch on Tuesday those you caught on Monday."
"Very true," returned the aunt, amazed at the brightness her nephew was for once displaying: "you are right."
This unheard of approval delighted the boy.
"But, on the days when you ought not to go to the pools, you go elsewhere. When you are not catching birds, you snare hares. You can eat them, too, and sell the skins for two cents."
Angelique stared at her nephew who was coming out as a financier.
"Oh, I can do the selling!"
"Of course, just as Mother Madeline did," for Pitou had never supposed he was to enjoy the fruit of his hunting.
"When will you go snaring hares?" she asked eagerly.
"I will go snaring hares and rabbits when I have wire for snares."
"All right, make it."
"Oh, I cannot do that," Pitou said, scratching his head. "I must buy that at the store but I can weave the springes."
"What does it cost?"
"I can make a couple of dozen with four cents' worth, and it ought to catch half a dozen bunnies – and the snares are used over and over again – unless the gamekeepers seize them."
"Here are four cents," said Aunt Angelique, "go and buy wire and get the rabbits to-morrow."
Wire was cheaper in the town than at the village so that Ange got material for twenty-four snares for three cents; he brought the odd copper to his aunt who was touched by this honesty. For an instant she felt like giving him the cent but unfortunately for Ange, it had been flattened by a hammer and might be passed in the dusk for a twosous piece. She thought it wicked to squander a piece that might bring a hundred per cent, and she popped it into her pouch.
Pitou made the snares and in the morning asked mysteriously for a bag. In it she put the bread and cheese for his meals, and away he went to his hunting ground.
Meanwhile she plucked the robins intended for their dinner; she took a brace of larks to Abbe Fortier, and two brace to the Golden Ball innkeeper, who paid her three cents for them and ordered as many as she could supply at that rate.
She went home beaming: the blessing of heaven had entered the house with Ange Pitou.
"They are quite right who say a good action is never thrown away," she observed as she munched the robins, as fat as ortolans and delicate as beccaficoes.
At dark in walked Ange, with the rounded out bag on his shoulders; Aunt Angelique received him on the threshold but not with a slap.
"Here I am, with my bag," said he with the calmness of having well spent his day.
"And what have you in the bag?" cried the aunt, stretching out her hand in sharp curiosity.
"Beech-mast," replied Pitou. "It is this way. If Daddy Lajeunesse, the gamekeeper, saw me rambling without the bag he would want to know what I was lurking for and he would feel suspicion. But when he challenged me with the bag, I just answered him: 'I am gathering beechmast, father – it is not forbidden to gather mast, is it?' and not being forbidden, he could not do anything. So he said nothing except: 'You have a good aunt, Pitou; give her my compliments.'"
"So you have been collecting mast instead of catching rabbits," cried Aunt Angelique, angrily.
"No, no, I laid my snares under cover of mast-gathering: the old donkey saw me doing that and thought it right."
"But the game?" said the woman, bent on the first principle.
"The moon will be up at twelve and I will go and see how many I have snared."
"You will go into the woods at midnight?"
"Why,