ONCE upon the quay, the two countrymen saw glittering on the bridge near the Tuileries the arms of another body of men, which in all probability was not a body of friends; they silently glided to the end of the quay and descended the bank which leads along the Seine.
The clock of the Tuileries was just then striking eleven.
When they had got beneath the trees which line the banks of the river, fine aspen-trees and poplars, which bathe their feet in its current; when they were lost to the sight of their pursuers, hid by their friendly foliage, the farmer and Pitou threw themselves upon the grass and opened a council of war.
The question was to know,—and this was suggested by the farmer,—whether they should remain where they were, that is to say, in safety, or comparatively so, or whether they should again throw themselves into the tumult and take their share of the struggle which was going on, and which appeared likely to be continued the greater part of the night.
The question being mooted, Billot awaited the reply of Pitou.
Pitou had risen very greatly in the opinion of the farmer,—in the first place, by the knowledge which he had shown the day before, and afterwards by the courage of which he had given such proofs during the evening.
Pitou instinctively felt this, but instead of being prouder for it, he was only the more grateful towards the good farmer. Pitou was naturally very humble.
“Monsieur Billot,” said he, “it is evident that you are more brave and I less a poltroon than I imagined. Horace, who, however, was a very different man from us, with regard to poetry, at least, threw away his arms and ran off at the very first blow. As to me, I have still my musketoon, my cartridge-box, and my sabre, which proves that I am braver than Horace.”
“Well, what are you driving at?”
“What I mean is this, dear Monsieur Billot,—that the bravest man in the world may be killed by a ball.”
“And what then?” inquired the farmer.
“And then, my dear sir, thus it is: as you stated, on leaving your farm, that you were going to Paris for an important object—”
“Oh, confound it, that is true, for the casket!”
“Well, then, did you come about this casket,—yes, or no?”
“I came about the casket, by a thousand thunders! and for nothing else.”
“If you should allow yourself to be killed by a ball, the affair for which you came cannot be accomplished.”
“In truth, you are ten times right, Pitou.”
“Do you hear that crashing noise—those cries?” continued Pitou, encouraged by the farmer's approbation; “wood is being torn like paper, iron is twisted as if it were but hemp.”
“It is because the people are angry, Pitou.”
“But it appears to me.” Pitou ventured to say, “that the king is tolerably angry too.”
“Undoubtedly; the Austrians, the Germans, the Kaiserliks, as you call them, are the king's soldiers. Well, if they charge the people, it is the king who orders them to charge, and for him to give such an order, he must be angry too.”
“You are both right and wrong, Pitou.”
“That does not appear possible to me, Monsieur Billot, and I dare not say to you that had you studied logic, you would not venture on such a paradox.”
“You are right and you are wrong, Pitou and I will presently make you comprehend how this can be.”
“I do not ask anything better, but I doubt it.”
“See you now, Pitou, there are two parties at court,—that of the king, who loves the people, and that of the queen, who loves the Austrians?”
“That is because the king is a Frenchman, and the queen an Austrian,” philosophically replied Pitou.
“Wait a moment. On the king's side are Monsieur Turgot and Monsieur Necker, on the queen's, Monsieur de Breteuil and the Polignacs. The king is not the master, since he has been obliged to send away Monsieur Turgot and Monsieur Necker. It is therefore the queen who is the mistress, the Breteuils and the Polignacs: therefore all goes badly.
“Do you see, Pitou, the evil proceeds from Madame Deficit, and Madame Deficit is in a rage, and it is in her name that the troops charge; the Austrians defend the Austrian woman, that is natural enough.”
“Your pardon, Monsieur Billot,” said Pitou, interrupting him, “but deficit is a Latin word, which means to say a want of something. What is it that is wanting?”
“Zounds! why, money, to be sure; and it is because money is wanting, it is because the queen's favorites have devoured this money which is wanting, that the queen is called Madame Deficit. It is not therefore the king who is angry, but the queen. The king is only vexed,—vexed that everything goes so badly.”
“I comprehend,” said Pitou; but the casket?”
“That is true, that is true, Pitou; these devilish politics always drag me on farther than I would go—yes, the casket, before everything. You are right, Pitou; when I shall have seen Doctor Gilbert, why, then, we can return to politics—it is a sacred duty.”
“There is nothing more sacred than sacred duties,” said Pitou.
“Well, then, let us go to the College Louis-le-Grand, where Sebastien Gilbert now is,” said Billot.
“Let us go,” said Pitou, sighing; for he would be compelled to leave a bed of moss-like grass, to which he had accustomed himself. Besides which, notwithstanding the over-excitement of the evening, sleep, the assiduous host of pure consciences and tired limbs, had descended with all its poppies to welcome the virtuous and heartily tired Pitou.
Billot was already on his feet, and Pitou was about to rise, when the half-hour struck.
“But,” said Billot, “at half-past eleven o'clock the college of Louis-le-Grand must, it would appear to me, be closed.”
“Oh, most assuredly,” said Pitou.
“And then, in the dark,” continued Billot, “we might fall into some ambuscade; it seems to me that I see the fires of a bivouac in the direction of the Palace of Justice. I may be arrested, or I may be killed; you are right, Pitou, I must not be arrested,—I must not be killed.”
It was the third time since morning that Pitou's ears had been saluted with those words so flattering to human pride,—
Pitou thought he could not do better than to repeat the words of Billot.
“You are right,” he repeated, lying down again upon the grass; “you must not allow yourself to be killed, dear Monsieur Billot.”
And the conclusion of this phrase died away in Pitou's throat. Vox faucibus hæsit, he might have added, had he been awake; but he was fast asleep.
“Listen to me; I have an idea. Notwithstanding all the precautions I am taking, I may be killed. I may be cut down by a sabre or killed from a distance by a ball,—killed suddenly upon the spot; if that should happen, you ought to know what you will have to say to Doctor Gilbert in my stead: but you must be mute, Pitou.”
Pitou heard not a word of this, and consequently made no reply.
“Should I be wounded mortally, and not be able to fulfil my mission, you will, in my place, seek out Doctor Gilbert, and you will say to him—do you understand me, Pitou?” added the farmer, stooping towards his companion, “and you will say to him—why, confound him, he is positively snoring, the sad fellow!”
All the excitement of Billot was at once damped on ascertaining that Pitou was asleep.
“Well, let us sleep, then,” said he; and he laid himself down by Pitou's side, without grumbling very seriously. For, however accustomed to fatigue, the ride of the previous day and the events of the evening did not fail to have a soporific effect on the good farmer.
And the day broke about three hours after they had gone to sleep, or rather, we should say, after their senses were benumbed.
When they again opened their eyes, Paris had lost nothing of that savage countenance which they had observed the night before. Only there were no soldiers to be seen; the people were everywhere.
The people armed themselves with pikes hastily manufactured, with muskets which the majority of them knew not how to handle, with magnificent weapons made centuries before, and of which the bearers admired the ornaments, some being inlaid with gold or ivory or mother-of-pearl, without comprehending the use or the mechanism of them.
Immediately after the retreat of the soldiers the populace had pillaged the palace called the Garde-Meuble.
And the people dragged towards the Hôtel de Ville two small pieces of artillery.
The alarm-bell was rung from the towers of Notre Dame, at the Hôtel de Ville, and in all the parish churches. There were seen issuing,—from where no one could tell,—but as from beneath the pavement, legions of men and women, squalid, emaciated, in filthy rags, half naked, who but the evening before cried, “Give us bread!” but now vociferated, “Give us arms!”
Nothing could be more terrifying than these bands of spectres, who, during the last three months had poured into the capital from the country, passing through the city gates silently, and installing themselves in Paris, where famine reigned, like Arabian ghouls in a cemetery.
On that day the whole of France, represented in Paris by the starving people from each province, cried to its king, “Give us liberty!” and to its God, “Give us food!”
Billot, who was first to awake, roused up Pitou, and they both set off to the College Louis-le-Grand; looking around them, shuddering and terrified at the miserable creatures they saw on every side.
By degrees, as they advanced towards that part of the town which we now call the Latin Quarter, as they ascended the Rue de la Harpe, as they approached their destination, the Rue Saint Jacques, they saw, as during the times of La Fronde, barricades being raised in every street. Women and children were carrying to the tops of the houses ponderous folio volumes, heavy pieces of furniture, and precious marble ornaments, destined to crush the foreign soldiers in case of their venturing into the narrow and tortuous streets of old Paris.
From time to time Billot observed one or two of the French Guards forming the centre of some meeting which they were organizing, and which, with marvellous rapidity, they were teaching the handling of a musket,-exercises which women and children were curiously observing, and almost with a desire of learning them themselves.
Billot and Pitou found the College of Louis-le-Grand in flagrant insurrection; the pupils had risen against their teachers, and had driven them from the building. At the moment when the farmer and his companion reached the grated gate, the scholars were attacking this gate, uttering loud threats, to which the affrighted principal replied with tears.
The farmer for a moment gazed on this intestine revolt, when suddenly, in a stentorian voice, he cried out:—
“Which of you here is called Sebastien Gilbert?”
“'Tis I,” replied a young lad, about fifteen years of age, of almost feminine beauty, and who, with the assistance of four or five of his comrades, was carrying a ladder wherewith to escalade the walls, seeing that they could not force open the gate.
“Come nearer to me, my child.”
“What is it that you want with me?” said young Sebastien to Billot.
“Do you wish to take him away?” cried the principal, terrified at the aspect of two armed men, one of whom—the one who had spoken to young Gilbert—was covered with blood.
The boy, on his side, looked with astonishment at these two men, and was endeavoring, but uselessly, to recognize his foster-brother, Pitou, who had grown so immeasurably tall since he last saw him, and who was altogether metamorphosed by the warlike accoutrements he had put on.
“Take him away!” exclaimed Billot, “take away Monsieur Gilbert's son, and lead him into all this turmoil,—expose him to receiving some unhappy blow! Oh! no, indeed!”
“Do you see, Sebastien,” said the principal, “do you see, you furious fellow, that even your friends will have nothing to do with you? For, in short, these gentlemen appear to be your friends. Come, gentlemen, come, my young pupils, come, my children,” cried the poor principal, “obey me—obey me, I command you—obey me, I entreat you.”
“Oro obtestorque,” said Pitou.
“Sir,” said young Gilbert, with a firmness that was extraordinary in a youth of his age, “retain my comrades, if such be your pleasure; but as to me, do you understand me, I will go out.”
He made a movement towards the gate; the professor caught him by the arm.
But he, shaking his fine auburn curls upon his pallid forehead,—
“Sir,” said he, “beware what you are doing. I am not in the same position as your other pupils. My father has been arrested, imprisoned; my father is in the power of the tyrants.”
“In the power of the tyrants!” exclaimed Billot; “speak, my child; what is it that you mean?”
“Yes, yes,” cried several of the scholars, “Sebastien is right; his father has been arrested; and since the people have opened the prisons, he wishes they should open his father's prison too.”
“Oh, oh!” said the farmer, shaking the bars of the gate with his herculean arms, “ they have arrested Doctor Gilbert, have they? By Heaven! my little Catherine, then, was right!”
“Yes, sir,” continued young Gilbert, “they have arrested my father, and that is why I wish to get out, why I wish to take a musket, why I wish to fight until I have liberated my dear father.”
And these words were accompanied and encouraged by a hundred furious voices, crying in every key:—
“Arms! arms! let us have arms!”
On hearing these cries, the crowd which had collected in the street, animated in its turn by an heroic ardor, rushed towards the gate to give liberty to the collegians.
The principal threw himself upon his knees between his scholars and the invaders, and held out his arms with a supplicating gesture.
“Oh, my friends! my friends!” cried he, “respect my children!”
“Do we not respect them?” said a French Guard. “I believe we do, indeed. They are fine boys, and they will do their exercise admirably.”
“My friends! my friends! These children are a sacred deposit which their parents have confided to me; I am responsible for them; their parents calculate upon me; for them I would sacrifice my life; but, in the name of Heaven! do not take away these children!”
Hootings, proceeding from the street, that is to say, from the hindmost ranks of the crowd, replied to these piteous supplications.
Billot rushed forward, opposing the French Guards, the crowd, the scholars themselves:—
“He is right, it is a sacred trust; let men fight, let men get themselves killed, but let children live; they are seed for the future.”
A disapproving murmur followed these words.
“Who is it that murmurs?” cried Billot; “assuredly, it cannot be a father. I who am now speaking to you, had two men killed in my arms; their blood is upon my shirt. See this!”
And he showed his shirt and waistcoat all begrimed with blood, and with a dignified movement which electrified the crowd.
“Yesterday,” continued Billot, “I fought at the Palais Royal; and at the Tuileries, and this lad also fought there, but this lad has neither father nor mother; moreover, he is almost a man.”
And he pointed to Pitou, who looked proudly around him.
“To-day,” continued Billot, “I shall fight again; but let no one say to me, 'The Parisians were not strong enough to contend against the foreign soldiers, and they called children to their aid.'“
“Yes, yes,” resounded on every side, proceeding from women in the crowd, and several of the soldiers; “he is right, children: go into the college; go into the college.”
“Oh, thanks, thanks, sir!” murmured the principal of the college, endeavoring to catch hold of Billot's hand through the bars of the gate.
“And, above all, take special care of Sebastien; keep him safe,” said the latter.
“Keep me! I say, on the contrary, that I will not be kept here,” cried the boy, livid with anger, and struggling with the college servants, who were dragging him away.
“Let me in,” said Billot. “I will engage to quiet him.”
The crowd made way for him to pass; the farmer dragged Pitou after him, and entered the courtyard of the college.
Already three or four of the French Guards, and about ten men, placed themselves as sentinels at the gate, and prevented the egress of the young insurgents.
Billot went straight up to young Sebastien, and taking between his huge and horny palms the small white hands of the child—
“Sebastien,” he said, “do you not recognize me?”
“I am old Billot, your father's farmer.”
“And this lad,” rejoined Billot, pointing to his companion, “do you know him?”
“Yes, Sebastien; it is I—it is I.”
And Pitou, weeping with joy, threw his arms round the neck of his foster-brother and former schoolfellow.
“Well,” said the boy, whose brow still remained scowling, “what is now to be done?”
“What?” cried Billot. “Why, if they have taken your father from you, I will restore him to you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I—I, and all those who are out yonder with me. What the devil! Yesterday, we had to deal with the Austrians, and we saw their cartridge-boxes.”
“In proof of which, I have one of them,” said Pitou.
“Shall we not release his father?” cried Billot, addressing the crowd.
“Yes! yes!” roared the crowd. “We will release him.”
“My father is in the Bastille,” said he in a despairing tone.
“And what then?” cried Billot.
“The Bastille cannot be taken,” replied the child.
“Then what was it you wished to do, if such is your conviction?”
“I wished to go to the open space before the castle. There will be fighting there, and my father might have seen me through the bars of his window.”
“Impossible? And why should I not do so? One day, when I was walking out with all the boys here, I saw the head of a prisoner. If I could have seen my father as I saw that prisoner, I should have recognized him, and I would have called out to him, 'Do not be unhappy, Father, I love you!'“
“And if the soldiers of the Bastille should have killed you?”
“Well, then, they would have killed me under the eyes of my father.”
“The death of all the devils!” exclaimed Billot. “You are a wicked lad to think of getting yourself killed in your father's sight, and make him die of grief, in a cage,—he who has only you in the world, he who loves you so tenderly Decidedly, you have a bad heart, Gilbert.”
And the farmer pushed the boy from him.
“Yes, yes; a wicked heart!” howled Pitou, bursting into tears.
And, while he was meditating in gloomy silence, Billot was admiring his beautifully pale face, his flashing eyes, his ironical expressive mouth, his well-shaped nose, and his strongly developed chin, all of which gave testimony at once of his nobility of soul and nobility of race.
“You say that your father is in the Bastille,” said the farmer, at length breaking the silence.
“Because my father is the friend of Lafayette and Washington; because my father has fought with his sword for the independence of America, and with his pen for the liberty of France; because my father is well known in both worlds as the detester of tyranny; because he has called down curses on the Bastille, in which so many have suffered; therefore have they sent him there!”
“And where did they arrest him?”
“At Havre, where he had just landed.”
“I have received a letter from him.”
“And it was at Havre itself that he was arrested?”
“Come now, child, do not feel angry with me, but give me all the particulars that you know. I swear to you that I will either leave my bones on the Place de la Bastille, or you shall see your father again.”
Sebastien looked at the farmer, and seeing that he spoke from his heart, his angry feelings subsided.
“Well, then,” said he, “at Lillebonne he had time to write in a book, with a pencil, these words:—
SEBASTIEN,—I have been arrested, and they are taking me to the Bastille. Be patient, hope, and study diligently.
P.S.—I am arrested in the cause of Liberty. I have a son in the College Louis-le-Grand, at Paris. The person who shall find this book is entreated, in the name of humanity, to get it conveyed to my son. His name is Sebastien Gilbert.
“And this book?” inquired Billot, palpitating with emotion.
“He put a piece of gold into this book, tied a cord round it, and threw it out of the window.”
“The curate of the place found it, and chose from among his parishioners a robust young man, to whom he said:—
“'Leave twelve francs with your family, who are without bread, and with the other twelve go to Paris; carry this book to a poor boy whose father has just been arrested because he has too great a love for the people.'
“The young man arrived here at noon yesterday, and delivered to me my father's book. And this is the way I learned how my father had been arrested.”
“Come, come,” cried Billot, “this reconciles me somewhat to the priests. Unfortunately they are not all like this one. And this worthy young man,—what has become of him?”
“He set off to return home last night. He hoped to carry back with him to his family five francs out of the twelve he had brought with him.”
“Admirable! admirable!” exclaimed Pitou, weeping for joy. “Oh, the people have good feelings! Go on, Gilbert.”
“You promised me, if I would tell you all, that you would bring back my father to me. I have told you all; now remember your promise.”
“I told you that I would save him, or I should be killed in the attempt. That is true. And now, show me the book,” said Billot.
“Here it is,” said the boy, taking from his pocket a volume of the “Contrat Social.”
“And where is your father's writing?”
“Here,” replied the boy, pointing to what the doctor had written.
The farmer kissed the written characters.
“And now,” said he, “tranquillize yourself. I am going to seek your father in the Bastille.”
“Unhappy man!” cried the principal of the college, seizing Billot's hands; “how can you obtain access to a prisoner of State?”
“Zounds! by taking the Bastille!”
Some of the French Guards began to laugh. In a few moments the laugh had become general.
“Why,” said Billot, casting around him a glance flashing with anger, ” what then is in the Bastille, if you please?”
“And fire,” said a third. “Take care, my worthy man: you may burn your fingers.”
“Yes, yes; you may burn yourself,” reiterated the crowd, with horror.
“Ah! Parisians,” shouted the farmer, “you have pickaxes, and you are afraid of stone! Ah! you have lead, and you fear iron! You have gunpowder, and you are afraid of fire! Parisians!—cowards! Parisians!—poltroons! Parisians!—machines for slavery! A thousand demons!—where is the man of heart who will go with me and Pitou to take the king's Bastille? My name is Billot, a farmer of the Isle de France. Forward!”
Billot had raised himself to the very climax of audacity.
The crowd, rendered enthusiastic by his address, and trembling with excitement, pressed around him, crying, “To the Bastille!”
Sebastien endeavored to cling to Billot, but the latter gently pushed him back.
“Child,” said he, “what is the last word your father wrote to you?”
“Well, then, work here. We are going to work down yonder; only our work is called destroying and killing.”
The young man did not utter a word in reply. He hid his face with both hands, without even pressing the hand of Pitou, who embraced him; and he fell into such violent convulsions that he was immediately carried into the infirmary attached to the college.
“To the Bastille!” cried Billot.
“To the Bastille!” cried Pitou.
“To the Bastille!” shouted the crowd.
And they immediately commenced their march towards the Bastille.
