Taking the Bastile. Dumas Alexandre

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

      "Good," said the doctor, delighted to find a moist spot in this desert.

      "I will recommend him to the Augustin Monastery and have them take him as a boy of all work."

      The doctor was a philosopher, we have mentioned; which means that he was the opponent of all the churchmen. He resolved to tear this recruit from the enemy with all the warmth that the Augustines would have shown to deprive him of a disciple.

      "Well," he rejoined, sticking his hand in his deepest pocket, "since you are in so hard a position, dear Miss Angelique, that you are forced to send your nephew into beggary, I will find somebody else to take him and the sum I am going to set aside for his maintenance. I am obliged to return to America. Meanwhile I must apprentice the boy to some craft, which he can choose for himself. In my absence he will grow up and then we will see what to make of him. Kiss your good aunt good-bye, and let us try our luck elsewhere," concluded the doctor.

      He had barely finished before Pitou rushed into his aunt's long, bony arms to exchange the hug which he wanted to be in token of eternal separation. But the mention of a sum of money and Gilbert's movements of putting his hand in his pocket for cash, with the chink of silver, set the warmth of greed up from her old heart.

      "Lord, doctor, do not you know that nobody in all the wide world can love this poor lone, lorn thing like his own dear fond auntie?"

      Entwining him with her long arms, she imprinted on his cheeks a couple of kisses so sour that they made his hair stand on end and then curl with a shriveling up.

      "Just what I thought; but still you are too poor to do the proper thing."

      "Nay, 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 СКАЧАТЬ