The invaders wanted to pillage everything, but Pitou only selected thirty-three muskets, with an extra one, a rifle, for himself, together with a straight sword, which he girded on.
The others, made up into two bundles, were carried by the joyous pair of officers in spite of the weight, past the disconsolate priest.
They were distributed to the Haramontese that evening, and in presenting a gun to each, Pitou said, like the Spartan mother giving out the buckler: “Come home with it, or go to sleep on it!”
Thus was the little place set in a ferment by Pitou’s act. The delight was great to own a gun where firearms had been forbidden lest the lords’ game should be injured and where the long oppression of the gamekeepers had infused a mania for hunting.
But Pitou did not participate in the glee. The soldiers had weapons but not only was their captain ignorant how to drill them but to handle them in file or squad.
During the night his taxed brain suggested the remedy.
He remembered an old friend, also an old soldier, who had lost a leg at the Battle of Fontenoy; the Duke of Orleans gave him the privilege to live in the woods, and kill either a hare or a rabbit a-day. He was a dead shot and on the proceeds of his shooting under this license he fared very well.
His manual of arms might be musty but then Pitou could procure from Paris the new Drill-book of the National Guards, and correct what was obsolete by the newest tactics.
He called on old Clovis at a lucky moment as the old hunter was saddened by his gun having burst. He welcomed the present of the rifle which Ange brought him and eagerly embraced the opportunity of paying him in kindness by teaching him the drill.
Each day Pitou repeated to his soldiery what he had learnt overnight from the hunter, and he became more popular, the admired of men, children and the aged. Even women were quieted when his lusty voice thundered: “Heads up—eyes right! bear yourselves nobly! look at me!” for Pitou looked noble.