The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

"Oh, poor aunt!" he wailed, "and I thought she was so rich. I am a villain for having left her to poverty. Oh, had I only known this! It can not be, Doctor Raynal!"

"Look into the hutch and see if there is any bread; in the wood-box and see if there is any fire-wood. I have always foretold that the old miser would end in this way."

Searching, they found not a crumb or a splinter.

"Oh, why did she not tell me this?" mourned Pitou. "I would have chopped up some wood for her and done some poaching to fill the larder. It is your fault, too," the poor fellow added, accusing the crowd; "you ought to have told me that she was in want."

"We did not tell you that she was in want," returned wiseacre Farolet, "for the plain reason that everybody believed that she was rolling in riches."

Dr. Raynal had thrown the sheet over the cold face, and proceeded to the door, when Pitou intercepted him.

"Are you going, doctor?"

"Why, what more do you expect me to do here?"

"Then she is undoubtedly dead? Dear me, to die of cold and hunger, too!"

Raynal beckoned him.

"Boy, I am of the opinion that you should none the less seek high and low," he said.

"But, doctor, after your saying she died of want – "

"Misers have been known to die the same way, lying on their treasures. Hush!" he said, laying a finger on his lips, and going out-doors.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE EASY-CHAIR

Pitou would have pondered more deeply on what the doctor told him, only he spied Catherine running up, with her boy in her arms.

Since there was no doubt that Aunt Angelique had died of privation, the eagerness of the neighbors to help her nephew had lessened. So Catherine arrived most timely. As she might be considered the wife of Pitou, it was her place to attend to his aunt, which the good creature set about doing with the same tenderness she had shown awhile before to her own mother.

Meanwhile, Pitou ran out to arrange for the funeral, which would be at two days' time, as the suddenness of the death compelled retention of the remains forty-eight hours. Religious ceremonies being suppressed for funerals as for marriages, he had only to do business with the sexton and the grave digger, after the mayor.

Before he departed, Catherine suggested that the marriage should be deferred for a day or two, as it would look strange for an act so important and joyous as a wedding to be performed on the same day as he conducted his aunt's remains to the cemetery.

"Besides, my dear, it is bad luck to have a wedding while a grave is open."

"Stuff," said Pitou; "from the moment I am your husband, I defy misfortune to get a grip on me."

"Dear Pitou, let us put it off till Monday," said the bride, holding up her hand to him; "you see that I am trying to make your wishes suit proprieties."

"But two days is a deuce of a long time, Catherine."

"Not when you have been waiting five years."

"A lot of things may happen in forty-eight hours," moaned Pitou.

"My falling off in love can not happen, Ange; and as you pretend that is the only thing in the world which concerns you – "

"Lord, yes, Catherine; the only – only thing!"

"Why, then, look here, Isidore, say to Papa Pitou: 'Do not be afraid, Papa Pitou; mamma loves you dearly, and will always love you.'"

The child repeated this in his pretty voice.

On this assurance, Pitou made no difficulty about going to the mayor's. He returned in about an hour, with all settled and paid for. With what money he had left he laid in a stock of wood and food for a couple of days.

It was high time that the firing had come into the old, weather-worn house, where the wind poured in at many a chink, and they might perish of cold. Pitou had found Catherine half frozen when he got back.

According to Catherine's wish, the marriage was postponed until Monday.

The intermediate time passed with the pair mourning by the death-bed.

Despite the huge fire Pitou kept roaring, the wind came in so sharp and chill that Pitou acknowledged that if his aunt had not died of hunger she must have been carried off by cold.

The time came for the removal of the corpse, the transit not taking long, as Aunt Angelique's dwelling adjoined the burial-ground.

All of that quarter and other representatives of the town went to the funeral, which Pitou and Catherine led as the chief mourners.

When the ceremony terminated, Pitou thanked those attending in his name and that of the dead, and they all filed before him, throwing holy water into the old maid's grave.

When left alone, Pitou looked round for Catherine, and saw her and Isidore kneeling on another grave where cypresses were planted. It was Mother Billet's. Pitou had dug those four cypresses in the woods and transplanted them. He did not care to disturb them in this pious occupation, but thinking that Catherine would be very cold at the end of her devotions, he determined to run on before and have a good fire blazing at her return.

Unfortunately, one thing opposed the realization of this good intention – they were out of wood. Pitou was in a pinch, for he was out of money, too.

He looked around him to see if there was nothing good to burn. There was Aunt Angelique's bread-safe, bed, and easy-chair. The bed and cupboard were not unworn, but they were still good; while the arm-chair was so rickety that nobody but the owner had ever risked themselves in it. It was therefore condemned.

Like the Revolutionary Tribunal, Pitou had no sooner condemned a thing than he proceeded to execute it.

Pitou set his knee to the seat, and seizing one of the sides, gave a pull. At the third of such tugs, it gave way at the joints. It uttered a kind of squeak, as if an animal capable of feeling pain and expressing emotion. If Pitou had been superstitious, he might have imagined that the aunt's spirit had located itself in her old arm-chair.

But Pitou had no superstition except his love for Catherine. This article of furniture was doomed to warm her, and though it had bled in each limb like an enchanted tree, it would have been rent to pieces.

He grasped the other arm with the same fierceness, and tore that from the carcass, which began to look dismantled.

Again the chair sent forth a sound strange and metallic.

Pitou remained insensible. He took up the chair by one leg, and swinging the whole round his head, he brought it down on the floor.

This split the seat in half, and to the great astonishment of the destroyer, out of the yawning chasm spouted torrents of gold.

Our readers will remember that it was Angelique's habit to change all her coppers into silver, and them into gold pieces, which she stowed away inside her chair.

When Pitou recovered from his surprise and dismay, his first impulse was to run out to Catherine and little Isidore and bring them in to view the riches he had discovered.

But the dreadful terror seized him that Catherine would not marry him if he were a rich man, and he shook his head.