ON the borders of Picardy and the province of Soissons, and on that part of the national territory which, under the name of the Isle of France, formed a portion of the ancient patrimony of our kings, and in the centre of an immense crescent formed by a forest of fifty thousand acres which stretches its horns to the north and south, rises, almost buried amid the shades of a vast park planted by Francis I. and Henry II., the small city of Villers-Cotterets. This place is celebrated from having given birth to Charles Albert Demoustier, who, at the period when our present history commences, was there writing his “Letters to Emilie on Mythology,” to the unbounded satisfaction of the pretty women of those days, who eagerly snatched his publications from each other as soon as printed.
Let us add, to complete the poetical reputation of this little city, whose detractors, not withstanding its royal chateau and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants, obstinately persist in calling it a mere village,—let us add, we say, to complete its poetical reputation, that it is situated at two leagues' distance from Laferté-Milon, where Racine was born, and eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.
Let us also state that the mother of the author of “Britannicus” and “Athalie” was from Villers-Cotterets.
But now we must return to its royal chateau and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants.
This royal chateau, begun by Francis I., whose salamanders still decorate it, and finished by Henry II., whose cipher it bears entwined with that of Catherine de Médicis and encircled by the three crescents of Diana of Poictiers, after having sheltered the loves of the knightking with Madame d'Étampes, and those of Louis-Philippe of Orleans with the beautiful Madame de Montesson, had become almost uninhabited since the death of this last named prince; his son, Philippe d'Orléans, afterwards called Égalité, having reduced it from the rank of a royal residence to that of a mere hunting rendezvous.
It is well known that the chateau and forest of Villers-Cotterets formed part of the appanage settled by Louis XIV. on his brother Monsieur, when the second son of Anne of Austria married the sister of Charles II., the Princess Henrietta of England.
As to the two thousand four hundred inhabitants of whom we have promised our readers to say a word, they were, as in all localities where two thousand four hundred people are united, a heterogeneous assemblage.
First, of a few nobles, who spent their summers in the neighboring châteaux and their winters in Paris, and who, mimicking the prince, had only a lodging-place in the city.
Secondly, of a goodly number of citizens, who could be seen, let the weather be what it might, leaving their houses after dinner, umbrella in hand, to take their daily walk,—a walk which was regularly bounded by a wide ditch which separated the park from the forest, situated about a quarter of a league from the town, and which was called, doubtless on account of the exclamation which the sight of it drew from the asthmatic lungs of the promenaders, satisfied at finding themselves, after so long a walk, not too much out of breath, the “Ha! ha!”
Thirdly, of a considerably greater number of artisans, who worked the whole of the week, and only allowed themselves to take a walk on the Sunday; whereas their fellow-townsmen, more favored by fortune, could enjoy it every day.
Fourthly and finally, of some miserable proletarians, for whom the week had not even a Sabbath, and who, after having toiled six days in the pay of the nobles, the citizens, or even of the artisans, wandered on the seventh day through the forest to gather up dry wood or branches of the lofty trees, torn from them by the storm,—that mower of the forest, to whom oak-trees are but as ears of wheat,—and which it scattered over the humid soil beneath the lofty trees, the magnificent appanage of a prince.
If Villers-Cotterets (Villerii ad Cotiam Retiæ) had been, unfortunately, a town of sufficient importance in history to induce archaeologists to ascertain and follow up its successive changes from a village to a burgh and from a burgh to a city,—the last, as we have said, being strongly contested,—they would certainly have proved this fact, that the village had begun by being a row of houses on either side of the road from Paris to Soissons; then they would have added that its situation on the borders of a beautiful forest having, though by slow degrees, brought to it a great increase of inhabitants, other streets were added to the first, diverging like the rays of a star and leading towards other small villages with which it was important to keep up communication, and converging towards a point which naturally became the centre,—that is to say, what in the provinces is called The Square,—around which the handsomest buildings of the village, now become a burgh, were erected, and in the middle of which rises a fountain, now decorated with a quadruple dial; in short, they would have fixed the precise date when, near the modest village church—the first want of a people—arose the first turrets of the vast château, the last caprice of a king; a château which, after having been, as we have already said, by turns a royal and a princely residence, has in our days become a melancholy and hideous receptacle for mendicants under the direction of the Prefecture of the Seine.
But at the period at which this history commences, royal affairs, though already somewhat tottering, had not yet fallen to the low degree to which they have fallen in our days; the château was no longer inhabited by a prince, 't is true, but it had not yet become the abode of beggars; it was simply uninhabited, excepting the indispensable attendants required for its preservation; among whom were to be remarked the doorkeeper, the master of the tennis court, and the house steward; and therefore the windows of this immense edifice, some of which looked toward the park and others on a large court aristocratically called the square of the chateau, were all closed, which added not a little to the gloominess and solitary appearance of this square, at one of the extremities of which rose a small house, regarding which the reader, we hope, will permit us to say a few words.
It was a small house, of which, if we may be allowed to use the term, the back only was to be seen. But, as is the case with many individuals, this back had the privilege of being the most presentable part. In fact, the front, which was towards the Rue de Soissons, one of the principal streets of the town, opened upon it by an awkwardly constructed gate, which was ill-naturedly kept closed eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, while the back was gay and smiling; that is to say, on the back was a garden, above the wall of which could be seen the tops of cherry, pear, and plum trees, while on each side of a small gate by which the garden was entered from the square was a centenary acacia-tree, which in the spring appeared to stretch out their branches above the wall to scatter their perfumed flowers over the surrounding grounds.
The abode was the residence of the chaplain of the chateau, who, notwithstanding the absence of the master, performed mass every Sunday in the seignorial church. He had a small pension, and besides this had the charge of two purses,—the one to send a scholar yearly to the college of Plessis, the other for one to the seminary at Soissons. It is needless to say that it was the Orleans family who supplied these purses,—founded, that of the seminary by the son of the Regent, that for the college by the father of the prince,—and that these two purses were the objects of ambition to all parents, at the same time that they were a cause of absolute despair to the pupils, being the source of extraordinary compositions, which compositions were to be presented for approval of the chaplain every Thursday.
Well, one Thursday in the month of July, 1789, a somewhat disagreeable day, being darkened by a storm, beneath which the two magnificent acacias we have spoken of, having already lost the virginal whiteness of their spring attire, shed a few leaves yellowed by the first heats of summer, after a silence of some duration, broken only by the rustling of those leaves as they whirled against each other upon the beaten ground of the square, or by the shrill cry of the martin pursuing flies as it skimmed along the ground, eleven o'clock resounded from the pointed and slated belfry of the town hall.
Instantly a hurrah, loud as could have been uttered by a whole regiment of fusileers, accompanied by a rushing sound like that of the avalanche when bounding from crag to crag, was heard; the door between the two acaciatrees was opened, or rather burst open, and gave egress to a torrent of boys, who spread themselves over the square, when instantly some five or six joyous and noisy groups were formed,—one around a circle formed to keep pegtops prisoners, another about a game of hop-scotch traced with chalk upon the ground, another before several holes scientifically hollowed out, where those who were fortunate enough to have sous might lose them at pitch and toss.
At the same time that these gambling and playful scholars—who were apostrophized by the few neighbors whose windows opened on this square as wicked do-no-goods, and who, in general, wore trousers the knees of which were torn, as were also the elbows of their jackets—assembled to play upon the square, those who were called good and reasonable boys, and who, in the opinion of the gossips, must be the pride and joy of their respective parents, were seen to detach themselves from the general mass, and by various paths, though with slow steps, indicative of their regret, to walk, basket in hand, towards their paternal roofs, where awaited them the slice of bread and butter, or of bread and preserved fruit, destined to be their compensation for the games they had thus abjured. The latter were, in general, dressed in jackets in tolerably good condition, and in breeches which were almost irreproachable; and this, together with their boasted propriety of demeanor, rendered them objects of derision and even of hatred to their worse-dressed and, above all, worse-disciplined companions.
Besides the two classes we have pointed out under the denomination of gambling and well-conducted scholars, there was still a third, which we shall designate by the name of idle scholars, who scarcely ever left school with the others, whether to play in the square or to return to their paternal homes; seeing that this unfortunate class were almost constantly, what in school language is termed “kept,” which means to say, that while their companions, after having said their lessons and written their themes, were playing at top or eating their bread and jam, they remained nailed to their school benches or before their desks, that they might learn their lessons or write their themes during the hours of recreation, which they had not been able to accomplish satisfactorily during the class, when, indeed, the gravity of their faults did not demand a punishment more severe than that of mere detention, such as the rod, the cane, or the cat-o'-nine-tails.
And had any one followed the path which led into the schoolroom, and which the pupils had just used, in the inverse sense, to get out of it, he would,—after going through a narrow alley, which prudently ran outside of the fruit garden and opened into a large yard which served as a private playground,—he would, as we have said, have heard, on entering this courtyard, a loud harsh voice resounding from the upper part of a staircase, while a scholar, whom our impartiality as historians compels us to acknowledge as belonging to the third class we have mentioned, that is to say, to that of the idle boys, was precipitately descending the said staircase, making just such a movement with his shoulders as asses are wont to do when endeavoring to rid themselves of a cruel rider, or as scholars when they have received a sharp blow from the cat-o'-nine-tails, to alleviate the pain they are enduring.
“Ah! miscreant; ah! you little excommunicated villain,” cried the voice, “ah! you young serpent, away with you, off with you; vade, vade! Remember that for three whole years have I been patient with you; but there are rascals who would tire the patience of even God himself. But now it is all over. I have done with you. Take your squirrels, take your frogs, take your lizards, take your silk-worms, take your cock-chafers, and go to your aunt, go to your uncle if you have one, or to the devil if you will, so that I never more set eyes upon you; vade, vade!”
“Oh, my good Monsieur Fortier, do pray forgive me,” replied the other voice, still upon the staircase and in a supplicating tone; “is it worth your while to put yourself into such a towering passion for a poor little barbarism and a few solecisms, as you call them?”
“Three barbarisms and seven solecisms in a theme of only twenty-five lines!” replied the voice, in a rougher and still more angry tone.
“It has been so to-day, sir, I acknowledge; Thursday is always my unlucky day; but if by chance to-morrow my theme should be well written, would you not forgive me my misfortunes of to-day? Tell me, now, would you not, my good Abbé?”
“On every composition day for the last three years you have repeated that same thing to me, you idle fellow, and the examination is fixed for the first of November, and I, on the entreaty of your aunt Angelique, have had the weakness to put your name down on the list of candidates for the Soissons purse; I shall have the shame of seeing my pupil rejected, and of hearing it everywhere declared that Pitou is an ass,—Angelus Petovius asinus est.“
Let us hasten to say—that the kind-hearted reader may from the first moment feel for him all the interest he deserves—that Ange Pitou, whose name the Abbé Fortier had so picturesquely Latinized, is the hero of this story.
“Oh, my good Monsieur Fortier! oh, my dear master!” replied the scholar, in despair.
“I, your master!” exclaimed the abbé, deeply humiliated by the appellation. “God be thanked, I am no more your master than you are my pupil. I disown you,—I do not know you. I would that I had never seen you. I forbid you to mention my name, or even to bow to me. Retro , miserable boy, retro!”
“Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé,” insisted the unhappy Pitou, who appeared to have some weighty motive for not falling out with his master, “do not, I entreat you, withdraw your interest in me on account of a poor halting theme.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the abbé, quite beside himself on hearing this last supplication, and running down the first four steps of the staircase, while Ange Pitou jumped down the four bottom ones and made his appearance in the courtyard,—“ah! you are chopping logic when you cannot even write a theme; you are calculating the extent of my patience, when you know not how to distinguish the nominative from the accusative.”
“You have always been so kind to me, Monsieur l'Abbé,” replied the committer of barbarisms, “and you will only have to say a word in my favor to my lord the bishop.”
“Would you have me belie my conscience, wretched boy?”
“If it be to do a good action, Monsieur l'Abbé, the God of mercy will forgive you for it.”
“And besides, who knows, the examiners perhaps will not be more severe towards me than they were towards my foster-brother, Sebastian Gilbert, when last year he was a candidate for the Paris purse; and he was a famous fellow for barbarisms, if ever there was one, although he was only thirteen years old, and I was seventeen.”
“Ah! indeed; and this is another precious stupidity which you have uttered,” cried the abbé, coming down the remaining steps, and in his turn appearing at the door with his cat-o'-nine-tails in his hand, while Pitou took care to keep at the prudent distance from his professor which he had all along maintained. “Yes, I say stupidity,” continued the abbé, crossing his arms and looking indignantly at his scholar; “and this is the reward of my lessons in logic. Triple animal that you are! it is thus you remember the old axiom,—Noli minora, loqui majora volens. Why, it was precisely because Gilbert was so much younger, that they were more indulgent towards a child—a child of fourteen years old—than they would have been to a great simpleton of nearly eighteen.”
“Yes, and because he is the son of Monsieur Honoré Gilbert, who has an income of eighteen thousand livres from good landed property, and this on the plain of Pillaleux,” replied the logician, in a piteous tone.
The Abbé Fortier looked at Pitou, pouting his lips and knitting his brows.
“This is somewhat less stupid,” grumbled he, after a moment's silence and scrutiny. “And yet it is but specious, and without any basis: Species, non autem corpus.“
“Oh, if I were the son of a man possessing an income of eighteen thousand livres!” repeated Ange Pitou, who thought he perceived that his answer had made some impression on the professor.
“Yes, but you are not so, and to make up for it, you are as ignorant as the clown of whom Juvenal speaks,—a profane citation,” the abbe crossed himself, “but no less just,—Arcadius juvenis. I would wager that you do not even know what Arcadius means?”
“Why, Arcadian, to be sure,” replied Ange Pitou, drawing himself up with the majesty of pride.
“Arcadia was the country of donkeys, and with the ancients, as with us, asinus was synonymous with stultus.“
“I did not wish to understand your question in that sense,” rejoined Pitou, “seeing that it was far from my imagination that the austere mind of my worthy preceptor could have descended to satire.”
The Abbé Fortier looked at him a second time, and with as profound attention as the first.
“Upon my word!” cried he, somewhat mollified by the incense which his disciple had offered him; “there are really moments when one would swear that the fellow is less stupid than he appears to be.”
“Come, Monsieur l'Abbé,” said Pitou, who, if he had not heard the words the abbe had uttered, had caught the expression of a return to a more merciful consideration which had passed over his countenance, “forgive me this time, and you will see what a beautiful theme I will write by to-morrow.”
“Well, then, I will consent,” said the abbé, placing, in sign of truce, his cat-o'-nine-tails in his belt and approaching Pitou, who observing this pacific demonstration, made no further attempt to move.
“Oh, thanks, thanks!” cried the pupil.
“Wait a moment, and be not so hasty with your thanks. Yes, I forgive you, but on one condition.”
Pitou hung down his head, and as he was now at the discretion of the abbé, he waited with resignation.
“It is that you shall correctly reply to a question I shall put to you.”
“In Latin?” inquired Pitou with much anxiety.
“Latinè,” replied the professor.
There was a momentary silence, during which the joyous cries of the schoolboys who were playing on the square reached the ears of Ange Pitou. He sighed a second time, more deeply than the first.
“Quid virtus, quid religion?” asked the abbé.
These words, pronounced with all the pomposity of a pedagogue, rang in the ears of poor Ange Pitou like the trumpet of the angel on the day of judgment; a cloud passed before his eyes, and such an effect was produced upon his intellect by it, that he thought for a moment he was on the point of becoming mad.
However, as this violent cerebral labor did not appear to produce any result, the required answer was indefinitely postponed. A prolonged noise was then heard, as the professor slowly inhaled a pinch of snuff.
Pitou clearly saw that it was necessary to say something.
“Nescio,” he replied, hoping that his ignorance would be pardoned by his avowing that ignorance in Latin.
“You do not know what is virtue!” exclaimed the abbé, choking with rage; “you do not know what is religion!”
“I know very well what it is in French,” replied Ange, “but I do not know it in Latin.”
“Well, then, get thee to Arcadia, juvenis; all is now ended between us, pitiful wretch!”
Pitou was so overwhelmed that he did not move a step, although the Abbé Fortier had drawn his cat-o'-nine-tails from his belt with as much dignity as the commander of an army would, at the commencement of a battle, have drawn his sword from the scabbard.
“But what is to become of me?” cried the poor youth, letting his arms fall listlessly by his side. “What will become of me if I lose the hope of being admitted into the seminary?”
“Become whatever you can. It is, by heaven! the same to me.”
The good abbé was so angry that he almost swore.
“But you do not know, then, that my aunt believes I am already an abbé?”
“Well, then, she will know that you are not fit to be made even a sacristan!”
“I tell you to depart—limine linguæ.”
“Well, then,” cried Pitou, as a man who makes up his mind to a painful resolution, but who in fact does make it, “will you allow me to take my desk?” said he to the abbé, hoping that during the time he would be performing this operation a respite would be given him, and the abbé's heart would become impressed with more merciful feelings.
“Most assuredly,” said the latter; “your desk, with all that it contains.”
Pitou sorrowfully reascended the staircase, for the schoolroom was on the first floor. On returning to the room—in which, assembled around a large table, and pretending to be hard at work, were seated some fourteen boys—and carefully raising the flap of his desk to ascertain whether all the animals and insects which belonged to him were safely stowed in it, and lifting it so gently that it proved the great care he took of his favorites, he walked with slow and measured steps along the corridor.
At the top of the stairs was the Abbé Fortier, with outstretched arm, pointing to the staircase with the end of his cat-o'-nine-tails.
It was necessary to run the gauntlet. Ange Pitou made himself as humble and as small as he possibly could, but this did not prevent him from receiving, as he passed by, a last thwack from the instrument to which Abbé Fortier owed his best pupils, and the employment of which, although more frequent and more prolonged on the back of Ange Pitou, had produced the sorrowful results just witnessed.
While Ange Pitou, wiping away a last tear, was bending his steps, his desk upon his head, towards Pleux, the quarter of the town in which his aunt resided, let us say a few words as to his physical appearance and his antecedents.
