As the door was fastened, from the old lady being out gossiping, and Pitou declared that an aunt should never shut out a loving nephew, he drew his great sabre and opened the lock with it as it were an oyster, to the admiration of the boys.
Pitou entered the familiar cottage with a bland smile, and went straight up to the cupboard where the food was kept. He used in his boyish days to ogle the crust and the hunk of cheese with the wish to have magical powers to conjure them out into his mouth.
Now he was a man: he went up to the safe, opened it, opened also his pocket-knife, and taking out a loaf, cut off a slice which might weigh a fair two pounds.
He seemed to hear Aunt Angelique snarl at him, but it was only the creak of the door hinges.
In former times, the old fraud used to whine about poverty and palm him off with cheap cheese and few flavors. But since he had left she got up little delicacies of value which lasted her a week, such as stewed beef smothered in carrots and onions; baked mutton with potatoes as large as melons; or calves-foot, decked with pickled shallots; or a giant omelet sprinkled with parsley or dotted with slices of fat pork of which one sufficed for a meal even when she had an appetite.
Pitou was in luck. He lighted on a day when Aunt Angelique had cooked an old rooster in rice, so long that the bones had quitted the flesh and the latter was almost tender. It was basking in a deep dish, black outside but glossy and attractive within. The coxcomb stuck up in the midst like Ceuta in Gibraltar Straits.
Pitou had been so spoilt by the good living at Paris that he never even reflected that he had never seen such magnificence in his relative's house.
He had his hunk of bread in his right hand: he seized the baking dish in his left and held it by the grip of his thumb in the grease. But at this moment it seemed to him that a shadow clouded the doorway.
He turned round, grinning, for he had one of those characters which let their happiness be painted on their faces.
The shadow was cast by Angelique Pitou, drier, sourer, bonier, not bonnier, and more mean than ever.
Formerly, at this sight, Pitou would have dropped the bread and dish and fled.
But he was altered. His helmet and sword had not more changed his aspect than his mind was changed by frequenting the society of the revolutionary lights of the capital.