When left alone, Pitou looked round for Catherine, and saw her and Isidore kneeling on another grave where cypresses were planted. It was Mother Billet's. Pitou had dug those four cypresses in the woods and transplanted them. He did not care to disturb them in this pious occupation, but thinking that Catherine would be very cold at the end of her devotions, he determined to run on before and have a good fire blazing at her return.
Unfortunately, one thing opposed the realization of this good intention—they were out of wood. Pitou was in a pinch, for he was out of money, too.
He looked around him to see if there was nothing good to burn. There was Aunt Angelique's bread-safe, bed, and easy-chair. The bed and cupboard were not unworn, but they were still good; while the arm-chair was so rickety that nobody but the owner had ever risked themselves in it. It was therefore condemned.
Like the Revolutionary Tribunal, Pitou had no sooner condemned a thing than he proceeded to execute it.
Pitou set his knee to the seat, and seizing one of the sides, gave a pull. At the third of such tugs, it gave way at the joints. It uttered a kind of squeak, as if an animal capable of feeling pain and expressing emotion. If Pitou had been superstitious, he might have imagined that the aunt's spirit had located itself in her old arm-chair.
But Pitou had no superstition except his love for Catherine. This article of furniture was doomed to warm her, and though it had bled in each limb like an enchanted tree, it would have been rent to pieces.
He grasped the other arm with the same fierceness, and tore that from the carcass, which began to look dismantled.
Again the chair sent forth a sound strange and metallic.
Pitou remained insensible. He took up the chair by one leg, and swinging the whole round his head, he brought it down on the floor.