I went to find Boudoux. I unburdened my heart to him, and I asked him to hide me for two or three days in one of his huts.
Of course he granted my request.
His only condition was that, as it was autumn, I ought to take a blanket with me, as the nights were not so warm as they had been.
I returned home, slipped into my room, took a blanket off my bed, and wrote on a bit of paper:—
"Do not be anxious about me, mother dear; I have run away, because I do not want to be a priest."
Then I rejoined Boudoux, who had collected his evening food and was waiting for me at the entrance to the park.
Boudoux had two snaring pools, one on the road to Vivières, and the other on the road to Compiègne. Near the pool on the road to Compiègne he had a hut, and it was in this hut that I asked shelter from the Seminary of Soissons.
I spent three days and three nights in the forest. At night, I rolled myself in my blanket, and I must own that I slept without any feeling of remorse; by day I wandered from one mare to another, collecting the snared birds. We took an incalculable number of birds during those three days; by the third day, the two mares were completely ruined until the next breeding season. I emphasise the word ruined, because that is the technical term for it.
Those three days increased my antipathy towards the Seminary, but at the same time it gave me a keen taste for la marette.