The reader may ask why the injustice was perpetrated of keeping Cartouche always fastened, while Pyramus was allowed his liberty at times. This is why: Pyramus was only a glutton by need, while Cartouche was destructive by instinct. One day he broke his chain, and went from our yard into the farmyard belonging to our neighbour Mauprivez. In less than ten minutes he had strangled seventeen fowls and two cocks. Nineteen cases of homicide: it was impossible to plead extenuating circumstances: he was condemned to death and executed. So Pyramus reigned sole master of the place, which, to his shame be it said, he appreciated greatly. His appetite seemed to increase when he was left alone. This appetite was a defect at home; but, out shooting, it was a vice. Nearly always, the first game I killed under his nose, were it small game, such as partridge, young pheasant or quail, would be lost to me. His big jaws would open, and, with a rapid gulp, the piece of game disappeared down his throat. Very rarely did I arrive in time to perceive, by opening his jaws, the last feathers of the bird's tail disappearing in the depths of his gullet. Then a lash with my horse-whip, vigorously applied on the loins of the guilty sinner, would cure him for the remainder of the chase, and it was seldom he repeated the same fault; but, between one shoot and another, he generally had time to forget the previous punishment, and more expenditure of whipcord was needed. On two other occasions, however, the gluttony of Pyramus turned out badly for him.
One day de Leuven and I were shooting over the marshes of Pondron. It was a place where two harvests were gathered during the year. The first harvest was that of a small thicket of alderwood. The owner of the land, after having cut his branches, stripped the twigs off, sawed it and tied it in bundles. Then he became busy over his second harvest, which was that of hay. They were just reaping this crop. But, as it was luncheon-time, the reapers had rested their scythes, here and there, and were feeding by a small river wherein they could moisten their hard bread. One of them had placed his scythe against one of the heaps of cut wood, about two feet and a half high, placed in cubic metres or half-mètres. I put up a snipe; I fired and killed it, and it fell behind this pile of wood against which the scythe was propped. It was the first thing I had killed that day, consequently it happened to be the perquisite Pyramus was in the habit of appropriating. So, putting two and two together, he had scarcely seen the snipe, stopped in its flight, fall vertically behind the wood pile, before he darted over the stack so as to fall on the spot as soon as it did, without loss of time. As I knew beforehand that it was a head of game lost, I did not hurry myself to see the tail feathers of my snipe in the depths of Pyramus's throat, but, to my great surprise, I saw no more of Pyramus than if he had tumbled down an invisible chasm, hewn out behind the pile of wood. When I had re-loaded my gun, I decided to fathom this mystery. Pyramus had fallen on the far side of the heap of wood, his neck on the point of the scythe; this point had penetrated to the right of the pharynx, behind the neck, and stuck out four inches in front. Poor Pyramus could not stir, and was bleeding' to death: the snipe, intact, was within six inches of his nose. Adolphe and I raised him up, so as to cause him the least possible hurt; we carried him to the river, and we bathed him in deep water; then I made him a compress with my handkerchief, folded in sixteen, which we bound round his neck with Adolphe's silk one. Then, seeing a peasant from Haramont passing, with a donkey carrying two baskets, we put Pyramus in one of the paniers and we had him carried to Haramont, whence next day I took him away in a small conveyance. Pyramus was a week between life and death. For a month he carried his head on one side, like Prince Tuffiakin. Finally, at the end of six weeks, he had regained his elasticity of movement, and appeared to have completely forgotten the terrible catastrophe. But whenever he saw a scythe, he made an immense detour to avoid coming in contact with it. Another day, he returned home, his body as full of holes as a sieve. He had been wandering about the forest alone, watching his opportunity, and he had leapt at the throat of a hare; the hare screamed out: a keeper, who was about a couple of hundred steps away, ran up; but before the keeper could clear the two hundred paces, the hare was half devoured. Now Pyramus, on seeing the approach of the keeper and on hearing his execrations, understood that something alarming would occur between himself and the man in blue clothes. He took to his heels and set off full tear. But, as Friday, of Robinson Crusoe memory remarked, "Small shot ran after me faster than you did!" the keeper's small shot travelled faster than Pyramus, and Pyramus returned home riddled in eight places.
I have already related what happened to him ten minutes after my return. A week later, he came in with a calf's lights in his mouth. A knife was quivering in his side. Behind him came one of the Mauprivez' sons.
"Ah!" he said, "isn't it enough that your beastly Pyramus carries away the contents of our shop, joint by joint, but he must needs carry away my knife too?"
Seeing Pyramus carry off the calfs lights, Mauprivez' boy had hurled at him the knife butchers generally wear at their girdles; but, as the knife went three or four inches into Pyramus's hide, Pyramus had carried off both meat and knife. Mauprivez recovered his implement; but the calfs lights were already devoured. Just when Pyramus's various misdeeds had incurred not merely our individual reprobation, but public reprobation still more, an advantageous occasion offered to get rid of him. But as that occasion was invested in my eyes with all the semblance of a miracle, I must be permitted to relate that miracle in its proper time and place, and not to anticipate it here.
Let us, for the moment, occupy ourselves over the unexpected return of the prodigal son to the maternal roof—a return from which Pyramus and Cartouche have incidentally diverted our attention.