In these moments, of the filling-out Pitou, thin only in the legs, nothing remained but the geometrical expression of a straight line.
He chose a spot where the masonry shaped out cavities and projections so that his head was shielded by a stone, his heart by another and his knees by still another slab. Nowhere could a mortal wound be got in on him.
He fired a shot now and then, to relieve his feelings and because Billet told him to "blaze away." But he had nothing but wood and stone before him.
For his part he kept begging his friend not to expose himself to the firing. "There goes the Sackbut," or "I hear a hammer coming down."
Despite these injunctions the farmer executed prodigies of daring and energy, all in pure waste, till the idea struck him to go along the woodwork of the bridge and chop the chains of the second one, as he had done with the first.
Ange howled for him to stay and seeing that howls were useless, he followed him, from cover, saying
"Dear Master Billet, your wife will be a widow if you get killed."
The Swiss thrust their guns through the loopholes by which the Sackbut was fired to try to pick off the daring fellow who was making the chips fly off their bridge.
Billet called on his single gun to answer the Sackbut, but when the latter fired, the other artillerists retreated and the farmer was left alone to serve the cannon. This again drew Pitou out of his refuge.
"Master," he sued, "in the name of Catherine! think if you are done for, that Catherine will be an orphan."