With this assurance Pitou returned to his new home. He had experienced a great change. He had lost trust in himself. And so he slept badly. He recalled Gilbert's book; it was principally against the privileged classes and their abuses, and the cowardice of those who submitted to them. Pitou fancied he began to understand these matters better and he made up his mind to read more of the work on the morrow.
Rising early, he went down with it into the yard where he could have the light fall on the book through an open window with the additional advantage that he might see Catherine through it. She might be expected down at any moment.
But when he glanced up from his reading at the intervention of an opaque body between him and the light, he was amazed at the disagreeable person who caused the eclipse.
This was a man of middle age, longer and thinner than Pitou, clad in a coat as patched and thread-bare as his own—for Pitou had resumed his old clothes for the working day—while thrusting his head forward on a lank neck, he read the book with as much curiosity as the other felt relish—though it was upside down to him.
Ange was greatly astonished. A kind smile adorned the stranger's mouth in which a few snags stuck up, a pair crossing another like boar's fangs.
"The American edition," said the man snuffling up his nose, "In octavo, 'On the Freedom of Man and the Independence of Nations. Boston, 1788.'"
Pitou opened his eyes in proportion to the progress of the unknown reader, so that when he had reached the end his eyes were at the utmost extent.
"Just so, sir," said Pitou.
"This is the treatise of Dr. Gilbert's?" said the man in black.
"Yes, sir," rejoined the young man politely.