Chapter III

I enlisted into the noble corps of the Royal Auvergne. My training began, and I was promised that, if I behaved well, I should be admitted by-and-by into the first company of Grenadiers. I soon had a powdered _queue_ falling in an imposing fashion over my white vest, but I no longer had Pierrette, or her mother, or the curé of Montreuil, and I made no more music.

One fine day, when I, confined to the barracks, was undergoing some absurd little punishment for having made three errors in the management of my arms, I received a visit from Michel.

"Ah, Mathurin!" he said to me, "you are well punished for having left Montreuil. You enjoy no longer the counsel and instruction of the good curé, and you are fast forgetting the music which you used to love so well."

"No matter," said I; "I have my wish."

"You no longer tend the fruit trees and gather the peaches of Montreuil with your Pierrette, who is as fresh and sweet as they."

"No matter," said I; "I have my wish."

"You will have to work hard for a very long time before you can become even a corporal."

"No matter," said I, again; "when I am a sergeant, I will marry Pierrette."

"Ah, Mathurin!" continued my friend; "believe me, you are unwise. You have too much ambition and pride. Would you not like someone to buy you out, so that you might return to marry Pierrette?"

"Michel! Michel!" I cried; "have you not often told me yourself, 'Each one must make his own lot'? I do not choose to marry Pierrette with the money of others, and I am making my own lot, as you see. Besides, it was the Queen who put this idea into my head, and the Queen _must_ know best. She said: 'He will be a soldier, and I will marry you to him.' She did not say, 'He will return after having been a soldier.'"

"But suppose," said Michel, "the Queen were to provide you with the means of marrying, would you not accept her bounty?"

"No, Michel! Even if such an unlikely thing were to happen, I would not take her money."

"And if Pierrette herself earned her _dot_?"

"Then, Michel, I would marry her at once."

"Well!" returned he, "I will tell that to the Queen."

"Are you crazy?" I said to him, "or are you now a servant in her house?"

"Neither the one nor the other, Mathurin, although I no longer cut stone."

"What do you cut, then?" asked I.

"I cut pieces, out of paper and ink."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, my boy; I write simple little plays, easy to be understood. Some day, perhaps, you shall see one."