As soon as the manoeuvres became complicated, Pitou went over to a large town where he studied the troops on the parade grounds, and picked up more in a day from practice than from the books in three months.
Thus two months passed by, in fatigue, toil and feverish excitement.
Pitou was still unhappy in love, but he was satiated with glory. He had run about so much, so moved his limbs, and whetted his mind, that you may be astonished that he should long to appease or comfort his heart. But he was thinking of that.
CHAPTER X.
THE LOVER’S PARTING.
MANY times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.
Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.
What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.
He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.
All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to despair.
Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.