Ange Pitou

by Alexandre Dumas

  After this he had set out again for Paris, leaving his address with the Abbé Fortier.

  Pitou's mother was aware of all these circumstances. When at the point of death, those words, 'In the hour of need calculate upon me,' returned to her recollection. This was at once a ray of light to her; doubtless Providence had regulated all this in such a manner that poor Pitou might find even more than he was about to lose. She sent for the curate of the parish; as she had never learned to write, the curate wrote, and the same day the letter was taken to the Abbé Fortier, who immediately added Gilbert's address, and took it to the post-office.

  It was high time, for the poor woman died two days afterwards. Pitou was too young to feel the full extent of the loss he had suffered. He wept for his mother, not from comprehending the eternal separation of the grave, but because he saw his mother cold, pale, disfigured. Then the poor lad felt instinctively that the guardian angel of their hearth had fled; that the house, deprived of his mother, had become deserted and uninhabitable. Not only could he not comprehend what was to be his future fate, but even how he was to exist the following day. Therefore, after following his mother's remains to the churchyard, when the earth, thrown into the grave, resounded upon her coffin, when the modest mound that covered it had been rounded off, he sat down upon it, and replied to every observation that was made to him as to his leaving it, by shaking his head and saying that he had never left his mother Madeleine, and that he would remain where she remained.

  He stayed during the whole of that day and night, seated upon his mother's grave.

  It was there that the worthy Doctor Gilbert,—have we not already informed the reader that the future protector of Pitou was a physician?—it was there that the worthy doctor found him, when, feeling the full extent of the duty imposed upon him by the promise he had made, he had hastened to fulfil it, and this within forty-eight hours after the letter had been despatched.

  Ange was very young when he had first seen the doctor, but it is well known that the impressions received in youth are so strong that they leave eternal reminiscences. Then the passage of the mysterious young man had left its trace in the house. He had there left the young child of whom we have spoken, and with him comparative ease and comfort; every time that Ange had heard his mother pronounce the name of Gilbert, it had been with a feeling that approached to adoration; then again, when he had reappeared at the house a grown man, and with the title of doctor, when he had added to the benefits he had showered upon it the promise of future protection, Pitou had comprehended, from the fervent gratitude of his mother, that he himself ought also to be grateful, and the poor youth, without precisely understanding what he was saying, had stammered out the words of eternal remembrance and profound gratitude which had before been uttered by his mother.

  Therefore, as soon as he saw the doctor appear at the grated gate of the cemetery, and saw him advancing towards him amid the mossy graves and broken crosses, he recognized him, rose up and went to meet him, for he understood that to the person who had thus come on being called for by his mother he could not say no, as he had done to others; he therefore made no further resistance than that of turning back to give a last look at the grave, when Gilbert took him by the hand and gently drew him away from the gloomy enclosure. An elegant cabriolet was standing at the gate; he made the poor child get into it, and for the moment leaving the house of Pitou's mother under the guardianship of public faith and the interest which misfortune always inspires, he drove his young protégé to the town and alighted with him at the best inn, which at that time was called The Dauphin. He was scarcely installed there when he sent for a tailor, who, having been forewarned, brought with him a quantity of ready-made clothes. He with due precaution selected for Pitou garments which were too long for him by two or three inches,—a superfluity which, from the rate at which our hero was growing, promised not to be of long duration. After this he walked with him towards that quarter of the town which we have designated, and which was called Pleux.

  The nearer Pitou approached this quarter, the slower did his steps become, for it was evident that he was about to be conducted to the house of his aunt Angélique; and notwithstanding that he had but seldom seen his godmother,—for it was Aunt Angélique who had bestowed on Pitou his poetical Christian name,—he had retained a very formidable remembrance of his respectable relative.

  And in fact there was nothing about Aunt Angélique that could be in any way attractive to a child accustomed to all the tender care of maternal solicitude. Aunt Angélique was at that time an old maid between fifty-five and fifty-eight years of age, stultified by the most minute practices of religious bigotry, and in whom an ill-understood piety had inverted every charitable, merciful, and humane feeling, to cultivate in their stead an unnatural thirst for malicious gossip, which was increased day by day from her constant intercourse with the bigoted old gossips of the town. She did not precisely live on charity; but besides the sale of the thread she spun upon her wheel, and the letting out of chairs in the church, which office had been granted to her by the chapter, she from time to time received from pious souls, who allowed themselves to be deceived by her pretensions to religion, small sums, which from their original copper she converted into silver, and then from silver into golden louis, which disappeared not only without any person seeing them disappear, but without any one ever suspecting their existence, and which were buried, one by one, in the cushion of the arm-chair upon which she sat at work; and when once in this hiding-place, they rejoined by degrees a certain number of their fellow-coins, which had been gathered one by one, and like them destined thenceforth to be sequestered from circulation until the unknown day of the death of the old maid should place them in the hands of her heir.

  It was, then, towards the abode of this venerable relation that Doctor Gilbert was advancing, leading the great Pitou by the hand.

  We say the great Pitou, because from three months after his birth Pitou had been too tall for his age.

  Mademoiselle Rose Angélique Pitou, at the moment when her door opened to give ingress to her nephew and the doctor, was in a perfect transport of joyous humor. While they were singing mass for the dead over the dead body of her sister-in-law in the church at Haramont, there was a wedding and several baptisms in the church of Villers-Cotterets, so that her chair-letting had in a single day amounted to six livres. Mademoiselle Angélique had therefore converted her sous into a silver crown, which, in its turn, added to three others which had been put by at different periods, had given her a golden louis. This louis had at this precise moment been sent to rejoin the others in the chair-cushion, and these days of reunion were naturally days of high festivity to Mademoiselle Angélique.

  It was at the moment, and after having opened her door, which had been closed during the important operation, and Aunt Angélique had taken a last walk round her arm-chair to assure herself that no external demonstration could reveal the existence of the treasure concealed within, that the doctor and Pitou entered.

  The scene might have been particularly affecting, but in the eyes of a man who was so perspicacious an observer as Doctor Gilbert, it was merely grotesque. On perceiving her nephew, the old bigot uttered a few words about her poor dear sister, whom she had loved so much; and then she appeared to wipe away a tear. On his side the doctor, who wished to examine the deepest recesses of the old maid's heart before coming to any determination with respect to her, took upon himself to utter a sort of sermon on the duties of aunts toward their nephews. But by degrees, as the sermon was progressing and the unctuous words fell from the doctor's lips, the arid eyes of the old maid drank up the imperceptible tear which had moistened them; all her features resumed the dryness of parchment, with which they appeared to be covered; she raised her left hand to the height of her pointed chin, and with the right hand she began to calculate on her skinny fingers the quantity of sous which her letting of chairs produced to her per annum. So that chance having so directed it that her calculation had term
inated at the same time with the doctor's sermon, she could reply at the very moment, that whatever might have been the love she entertained for her poor sister, and the degree of interest she might feel for her dear nephew, the mediocrity of her receipts did not permit her, notwithstanding her double title of aunt and godmother, to incur any increased expense.

  The doctor, however, was prepared for this refusal. It did not, therefore, in any way surprise him. He was a great advocate for new ideas; and as the first volume of Lavater had just then appeared, he had already applied the physiognomic doctrines of the Zurich philosopher to the yellow and skinny features of Mademoiselle Angélique.

  The result of this examination was, that the doctor felt assured, from the small sharp eyes of the old maid, her long and pinched-up nose and thin lips, that she united in her single person the three sins of avarice, selfishness, and hypocrisy.

  Her answer, as we have said, did not cause any species of astonishment. However, he wished to convince himself, in his quality of observer of human nature, how far the devotee would carry the development of these three defects.

  "But, Mademoiselle," said he, "Ange Pitou is a poor orphan child, the son of your own brother, and in the name of humanity you cannot abandon your brother's son to be dependent on public charity."

  "Well, now, listen to me, Monsieur Gilbert," said the old maid; "it would be an increase of expense of at least six sous a day, and that at the lowest calculation; for that great fellow would eat at least a pound of bread a day."

  Pitou made a wry face: he was in the habit of eating a pound and a half at his breakfast alone.

  "And without calculating the soap for his washing," added Mademoiselle Angélique; "and I recollect that he is a sad one for dirtying clothes."

  In fact, Pitou did sadly dirty his clothes, and that is very conceivable, when we remember the life he had led, climbing trees and lying down in marshes; but we must render him this justice, that he tore his clothes even more than he soiled them.

  "Oh, fie, Mademoiselle," cried the doctor, "fie, Mademoiselle Angélique! Can you, who so well practise Christian charity, enter into such minute calculations with regard to your own nephew and godson?"

  "And without calculating the cost of his clothes," cried the old devotee most energetically, who suddenly remembered having seen her sister Madeleine busily employed in sewing patches on her nephew's jacket and knee-caps on his small-clothes.

  "Then," said the doctor, "am I to understand that you refuse to take charge of your nephew? The orphan who has been repulsed from his aunt's threshold will be compelled to beg for alms at the threshold of strangers."

  Mademoiselle Angélique, notwithstanding her avarice, was alive to the odium which would naturally attach to her if from her refusal to receive her nephew he should be compelled to have recourse to such an extremity.

  "No," said she, "I will take charge of him."

  "Ah!" exclaimed the doctor, happy to find a single good feeling in a heart which he had thought completely withered.

  "Yes," continued the devotee, "I will recommend him to the Augustin Friars at Bourg Fontaine, and he shall enter their monastery as a lay-servant."

  We have already said that the doctor was a philosopher. We know what was the meaning of the word philosopher in those days.

  He therefore instantly resolved to snatch a neophyte from the Augustin brotherhood, and that with as much zealous fervor as the Augustins, on their side, could have displayed in carrying off an adept from the philosopher.

  "Well, then," he rejoined, plunging his hand into his deep pocket, "since you are in such a position of pecuniary difficulty, my dear Mademoiselle Angélique, as to be compelled, from your deficiency in personal resources, to recommend your nephew to the charity of others, I will seek elsewhere for some one who can more efficaciously than yourself apply to the maintenance of your nephew the sum which I had designed for him. I am obliged to return to America. I will, before I set out, apprentice your nephew Pitou to some joiner, or a smith. He shall, however, himself choose the trade for which he feels a vocation. During my absence he will grow bigger, and on my return he will already have become acquainted with his business, and then—why, I shall see what can be made of him. Come, my child, kiss your aunt," continued the doctor, "and let us be off at once."

  The doctor had not concluded the sentence when Pitou rushed towards the antiquated spinster; his long arms were extended, and he was in fact most eager to embrace his aunt, on the condition that this kiss was to be the signal, between him and her, of an eternal separation.

  But at the words "the sum," the gesture with which the doctor had accompanied them, the thrusting his hand into his pocket, the silvery sound which that hand had incontinently given to a heap of crown-pieces, the amount of which might have been estimated by the tension of the pocket, the old maid had felt the fire of cupidity mount even to her heart.

  "Oh," cried she, "my dear Monsieur Gilbert, you must be well aware of one thing!"

  "And what is that?" asked the doctor.

  "Why, good heaven! that no one in the world can love this poor child half so much as I do."

  And entwining her scraggy arms round Pitou's neck, she imprinted a sour kiss on each of his cheeks, which made him shudder from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair.

  "Oh, certainly," replied the doctor; "I know that well, and I so little doubted your affection for him that I brought him at once to you as his natural support. But that which you have just said to me, dear mademoiselle, has convinced me at the same time of your good-will and of your inability, and I see clearly that you are too poor to aid those who are poorer than yourself."

  "Why, my good Monsieur Gilbert," rejoined the old devotee, "there is a merciful God in heaven, and from heaven does he not feed all his creatures?"

  "That is true," replied Gilbert; "but although he gives food to the ravens, he does not put out orphans as apprentices. Now, this is what must be done for Ange Pitou, and this, with your small means, would doubtless cost you too much."

  "But yet, if you were to give that sum, good Doctor."

  "What sum?"

  "The sum of which you spoke, the sum which is there in your pocket," added the devotee, stretching her crooked finger toward the doctor's coat.

  "I will assuredly give it, dear Mademoiselle Angélique," said the doctor; "but I forewarn you it will be on one condition."

  "And what is that?"

  "That the boy shall have a profession."

  "He shall have one, and that I promise you on the faith of Angélique Pitou, most worthy Doctor," cried the devotee, her eyes riveted on the pocket which was swaying to and fro.

  "You promise it?"

  "I promise you it shall be so."

  "Seriously, is it not?"

  "On the truth of the living God, my dear Monsieur Gilbert, I swear to do it."

  And Mademoiselle Angélique horizontally extended her emaciated hand.

  "Well, then, be it so," said the doctor, drawing from his pocket a well-rounded bag; "I am ready to give the money, as you see. On your side, are you ready to make yourself responsible to me for the child?"

  "Upon the true cross, Monsieur Gilbert."

  "Do not let us swear so much, dear Mademoiselle, but let us sign a little more."

  "I will sign, Monsieur Gilbert, I will sign."

  "Before a notary?"

  "Before a notary."

  "Well, then, let us go at once to Papa Niguet."

  Papa Niguet, to whom, thanks to his long acquaintance with him, the doctor applied this friendly title, was, as those know who are familiar with our work entitled "Joseph Balsamo," the notary of greatest reputation in the town.

  Mademoiselle Angélique, of whom Master Niguet was also the notary, had no objection to offer to the choice made by the doctor. She followed him therefore to the notary's office. There the scrivener registered the promise made by Mademoiselle Rose Angélique Pitou, to take charge of and to place in the exercise of an honorable pr
ofession Louis Ange Pitou, her nephew, and so doing should annually receive the sum of two hundred livres. The contract was made for five years. The doctor deposited eight hundred livres in the hands of the notary; the other two hundred were to be paid to Mademoiselle Angélique in advance.

  The following day the doctor left Villers-Cotterêts after having settled some accounts with one of his farmers, with regard to whom we shall speak hereafter; and Mademoiselle Pitou, pouncing like a vulture upon the aforesaid two hundred livres payable in advance, deposited eight golden louis in the cushion of her arm-chair.

  As to the eight livres which remained, they waited, in a small delf saucer which had, during the last thirty or forty years, been the receptacle of clouds of coins of every description, until the harvest of the following two or three Sunday had made up the sum of twenty-four livres, on attaining which, as we have already stated, the abovenamed sum underwent the golden metamorphosis, and passed from the saucer into the arm-chair.

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  Chapter III

  Ange Pitou at his Aunt's

  WE have observed the very slight degree of inclination which Ange Pitou felt towards a long-continued sojourn with his Aunt Angélique; the poor child, endowed with instinct equal to, and perhaps superior to, that of the animals against whom he continually made war, had divined at once, we will not say all the disappointments—we have seen that he did not for a single moment delude himself upon the subject—but all the vexations, tribulations, and annoyances to which he would be exposed.