BILLOT, who, conjointly with Pitou, had been engaged in all the glorious libations, began to perceive that the cup was becoming bitter.
When he had completely recovered his senses, from the refreshing breezes on the river's banks:—
“Monsieur Billot,” said Pitou to him, “I long for Villers-Cotterets, do not you?”
These words, like the refreshing balm of calmness and virtue, aroused the farmer, whose vigor returned to him, and he pushed through the crowd, to get away at once from the scene of butchery.
“Come,” said he to Pitou, “you are right.”
And he at once determined on going to find Gilbert, who was residing at Versailles, but who, without having revisited the queen after the journey of the king to Paris, had become the right hand of Necker, who had been reappointed minister, and was endeavoring to organize prosperity by generalizing poverty.
Pitou had as usual followed Billot.
Both of them were admitted into the study in which the doctor was writing.
“Doctor,” said Billot, “I am going to return to my farm.”
“And why so?” inquired Gilbert.
“Ah, yes! I understand,” coldly observed Gilbert; “you are tired.”
“You no longer like the Revolution?”
“I should like to see it ended.”
“It is only now beginning,” he rejoined.
“That astonishes you, Billot?” asked Gilbert.
“What astonishes me the most is your perfect coolness.”
“My friend,” said Gilbert to him, “do you know whence my coolness proceeds?”
“It can only proceed from a firm conviction.”
“And what is that conviction?”
Gilbert smiled still more gloomily than the first time.
“No; on the contrary, from the conviction that all will end badly.”
Billot cried out with astonishment.
As to Pitou, he opened his eyes to an enormous width; he thought the argument altogether illogical.
“Let us hear,” said Billot, rubbing his ear with his big hand,—“let us hear; for it seems to me that I do not rightly understand you.”
“Take a chair, Billot,” said Gilbert, “and sit down close to me.”
“Closer, closer still, that no one may hear but yourself.”
“And I, Monsieur Gilbert?” said Pitou, timidly, making a move towards the door, as if he thought the doctor wished him to withdraw.
“Oh, no! stay here,” replied the Doctor. “You are young; listen.”
Pitou opened his ears, as he had done his eyes, to their fullest extent, and seated himself on the floor at Father Billot's feet.
This council was a singular spectacle, which was thus held in Gilbert's study, near a table heaped up with letters, documents, new pamphlets, and newspapers, and within four steps of a door which was besieged by a swarm of petitioners, or people having some grievance to complain of. These people were all kept in order by an old clerk, who was almost blind, and had lost an arm.
“I am all attention,” said Billot. “Now explain yourself, my master, and tell us how it is that all will finish badly.”
“I will tell you, Billot. Do you see what I am doing at this moment, my friend?”
“But the meaning of those lines, Billot?”
“How would you have me guess that, when you know that I cannot even read them?”
Pitou timidly raised his head a little above the table, and cast his eyes on the paper which was lying before the doctor.
“That is true,” said Gilbert; “they are figures, which are at the same time the salvation and the ruin of France.”
“Well, now!” exclaimed Billot.
“Well, now! well, now!” repeated Pitou.
“These figures, when they are presented to-morrow,” continued the doctor, “will go to the king's palace, to the mansions of the nobility, and to the cottage of the poor man, to demand of all of them one quarter of their income.”
“Oh, my poor Aunt Angélique!” cried Pitou; “what a wry face she will make!”
“What say you to this, my worthy friend?” said Gilbert. “People make revolutions, do they not? Well, they must pay for them.”
“Perfectly just!” heroically replied Billot. “Well, be it so; it will be paid.”
“Oh, you are a man who is already convinced, and there is nothing to astonish me in your answers; but those who are not convinced?”
“They will resist!” replied Billot, and in a tone which signified that he would resist energetically if he were required to pay a quarter of his income to accomplish a work which was contrary to his convictions.
“Then there would be a conflict,” said Gilbert.
“But the majority,” said Billot.
“Conclude your sentence, my friend.”
“The majority is there to make known its will.”
“Then there would be oppression.”
Billot looked at Gilbert, at first doubtingly, and then a ray of intelligence sparkled in his eye.
“Hold, Billot!” said the doctor, “I know what you are about to say to me. The nobility and the clergy possess everything, do they not?”
“That is undoubted,” replied Billot; “and therefore the convents—”
“The convents overflow with riches.”
“Notum certumque,” grumbled Pitou.
“The nobles do not pay in proportion to their income. Thus I, a farmer, pay more than twice the amount of taxes paid by my neighbors, the three brothers De Charny, who have between them an income of two hundred thousand livres.”
“But, let us see,” continued Gilbert. “Do you believe that the nobles and the priests are less Frenchmen than you are?”
Pitou pricked up his ears at this proposition, which sounded somewhat heretical at the time, when patriotism was calculated by the strength of elbows on the Place de Grève.
“You do not believe a word of it, do you, my friend? You cannot imagine that these nobles and priests, who absorb everything, and give back nothing, are as good patriots as you are?”
“An error, my dear friend, an error. They are even better, and I will prove it to you.”
“Oh! that, for example, I deny.”
“On account of their privileges, is it not?”
“Well, then, I certify to you, Billot, that in three days from this time the person who will have the most privileges in France will be the man who possesses nothing.”
“Then I shall be that person,” said Pitou, gravely.
“Listen to me, Billot. These nobles and these ecclesiastics, whom you accuse of egotism, are just beginning to be seized with that fever of patriotism which is about to make the tour of France. At this moment they are assembled like so many sheep on the edge of the ditch; they are deliberating. The boldest of them will be the first to leap over it; and this will happen to-morrow, perhaps to-night; and after him, the rest will jump it.”
“What is the meaning of that, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“It means to say that, voluntarily abandoning their prerogatives, feudal lords will liberate their peasants, proprietors of estates their farms and the rents due to them, the dovecot lords their pigeons.”
“Oh, oh!” ejaculated Pitou, with amazement; “you think they will give up all that?”
“Oh,” cried Billot, suddenly catching the idea, “that will be splendid liberty indeed!”
“Well, then; arid after that, when we shall all be free, what shall we do next?”
“The deuce!” cried Billot, somewhat embarrassed; “what shall be done next? Why, we shall see!”
“Ah, there is the great word!” exclaimed Gilbert: “we shall see!”
He rose from his chair with a gloomy brow, and walked up and down the room for a few minutes; then, returning to the farmer, whose hand he seized with a violence which seemed almost a threat:—
“Yes,” said he, “we shall see! We shall all see,—you, as I shall; he, as you and I shall. And that is precisely what I was reflecting on just now, when you observed that composure which so much surprised you.”
“You terrify me. The people united, embracing each other, forming themselves into one mass to insure their general prosperity,—can that be a subject which renders you gloomy, Monsieur Gilbert?”
The latter shrugged his shoulders.
“Then,” said Billot, questioning in his turn, “what will you say of yourself if you now doubt, after having prepared everything in the Old World, by giving liberty to the New?”
“Billot,” rejoined Gilbert, “you have just, without at all suspecting it, uttered a word which is the solution of the enigma,—a word which Lafayette has uttered, and which no one, beginning with himself perhaps, fully understands. Yes, we have given liberty to the New World.”
“You! and Frenchmen, too! That is magnificent.”
“It is magnificent; but it will cost us dear,” said Gilbert, sorrowfully.
“Pooh! the money is spent; the bill is paid,” said Billot, joyously. “A little gold, a great deal of blood, and the debt is liquidated.”
“Blind enthusiast!” said Gilbert, “who sees not in this dawning in the west the germ of ruin to us all! Alas! why do I accuse them, when I did not see more clearly than they? The giving liberty to the New World, I fear, I fear greatly, is to prove the total ruin of the old one.”
“Rerum novus nascitur ordo!” exclaimed Pitou, with great Revolutionary self-possession.
“Silence, child!” said Gilbert.
“Was it, then, more difficult to overcome the English than it is now to quiet the French?” asked Billot.
“A new world,” repeated Gilbert; “that is to say, a vast open space, a clear table to work upon,—no laws, but no abuses; no ideas, but no prejudices. In France, thirty thousand square leagues of territory for thirty millions of people; that is to say, should the space be equally divided, scarcely room for a cradle or a grave for each. Out yonder, in America, two hundred thousand square leagues for three millions of persons; frontiers which are ideal, for they border on the desert, which is to say, immensity. In those two hundred thousand leagues, navigable rivers, having a course of a thousand leagues; virgin forests, of which God alone knows the limits,—that is to say, all the elements of life, of civilization, and of a brilliant future. Oh, how easy it is, Billot, when a man is called Lafayette, and is accustomed to wield a sword when a man is called Washington, and is accustomed to reflect deeply,—how easy is it to combat against walls of wood, of earth, of stone, of human flesh! But when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when we see in the old order of things that we are obliged to attack walls of bygone, crumbling ideas, and behind the ruins even of these walls, that crowds of people and of interests still take refuge; when, after having found the idea, we find that in order to make the people adopt it, it will be necessary, perhaps, to decimate that people, from the old who remember, down to the child who has still to learn; from the recollection which is the monument, down to the instinct which is the germ of it,-then, oh, then, Billot! it is a task which will make all those shudder who can see behind the horizon. I am far-sighted, Billot, and I shudder.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said Billot, with his sound good sense; “you accused me, a short time since, of hating the Revolution, and now you are making it execrable to me.”
“But have I told you that I renounce it?”
“Errare humanum est,” murmured Pitou; “sed perseverare diabolicum.”
And he drew his feet towards him with his hands.
“I shall, however, persevere,” continued Gilbert, “for although I see the obstacles, I can perceive the end; and that end is splendid, Billot. It is not only the liberty of France that I am dreaming of; but it is the liberty of the whole world. It is not physical equality; but it is equality before the laws,—equality of rights. It is not the fraternity of our own citizens, but fraternity between all nations. I may be losing my own soul; my body may perhaps perish in the struggle,” continued Gilbert, in a melancholy tone; “but it matters not. The soldier who is sent to the assault of a fortress, sees the cannon on its ramparts, sees the balls with which they are loaded, sees the match placed near the touch-hole; he sees even more than this,—he sees the direction in which they are pointed, he feels that this piece of black iron may pass through his own breast,—but he still rushes onward; the fortress must be taken. Well, we are all soldiers, Father Billot. Forward, then! and over the heaps of our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy now present is the advanced guard.”
“I do not really know why you despair, Monsieur Gilbert. Is it because an unfortunate man was this day murdered on the Place de Grève?”
“And why were you, then, so much horrified? Go, then, Billot, and cut throats also.”
“Oh, what are you now saying, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“Zounds! a man should be consistent. You came here, all pale, all trembling,—you, who are so brave, so strong,—and you said to me, 'I am tired out.' I laughed in your face, Billot; and now that I explain to you why you were pale, why you were worn out, it is you who laugh at me in turn.”
“Speak! Speak! but first of all give me the hope that I shall return cured, consoled, to my fields.”
“Your fields! Listen to me, Billot; all our hope is there. The country—a sleeping revolution, which wakes up once in a thousand years, and gives royalty the vertigo every time it awakens—the country will wake up in its turn, when the day snail come for purchasing or conquering those wrongly acquired territories of which you just now spoke, and with which the nobility and clergy are gorged, even to choking. But to urge on the country to a harvest of ideas, it will be necessary to urge on the countrymen to the conquest of the soil. Man, by becoming a proprietor, becomes free; and in becoming free, he becomes a better man. To us, then, privileged laborers, to whom God has consented that the veil of the future shall be raised; to us, then, the fearful work, which, after giving liberty to the people, shall give them the property of the soil! Here, Billot, will be a good work, and a sorry recompense perhaps; but an active, powerful work, full of joys and vexations, of glory and calumny. The country is still lulled in a dull, impotent slumber, but it waits only to be awakened by our summons, and that new dawn shall be our work. When once the country is awakened, the sanguinary portion of our labors will be terminated, and its peaceable labors, the labors of the country, will commence.”
“What, then, do you now advise that I should do, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“If you wish to be useful to your country, to the nation, to your brother men, to the world, remain here, Billot; take a hammer and work in this Vulcan's furnace, which is forging thunders for the whole world.”
“Remain here to see men butchered, and perhaps at last learn to butcher them myself?”
“How so?” said Gilbert, with a faint smile. “You, Billot, become a murderer! What is it you are saying?”
“I say that should I remain here as you request me,” cried Billot, trembling with agitation,—“I say that the first man whom I shall see attaching a rope to a lamp-post, I will hang that man with these my hands.”
Gilbert's smile became more positive.
“Well, now,” said he, “I find you understand me, and now you also are a murderer.”
“Yes; a murderer of vile wretches.”
“Tell me, Billot, you have seen De Losme, De Launay, De Flesselles, Foulon, and Berthier slaughtered?”
“What epithet did those who slaughtered them apply to them?”
“Oh! that is true,” said Pitou; “they did call them wretches.”
“Yes; but it is I who am right, and not they,” rejoined Billot.
“You will be in the right,” said Gilbert, “if you hang them; but in the wrong, if they hang you.”
Billot hung down his head under this heavy blow: then suddenly raising it again, with dignity:—-
“Will you venture to maintain,” said he, “that those who assassinate defenceless men, and who are under the safeguard of public honor,—will you maintain that they are as good Frenchmen as I am?”
“Ah!” said Gilbert, “that is quite another question. Yes, in France we have several sorts of Frenchmen. First of all, we have the people, to which Pitou belongs, to which you belong, to which I belong; then we have the French clergy, and then the French nobility,—three classes of Frenchmen in France, each French in its own point of view; that is to say, as regards its own interests, and this without counting the King of France, who is also a Frenchman in his way. Ah, Billot, here you see, in these different modes of all these Frenchmen considering themselves French, the real secret of the Revolution. You will be a Frenchman in your own way; the Abbé Maury will be a Frenchman in his way; Mirabeau will be a Frenchman in a mode that differs from that of the Abbé Maury; and the king will be a Frenchman in another way than that of Mirabeau. Well, Billot, my excellent friend, thou man of upright heart and sound judgment, you have just entered upon the second part of the question which I am now engaged upon. Do me the pleasure, Billot, to cast your eyes on this.”
And Gilbert presented a printed paper to the farmer.
“What is this?” asked Billot, taking the paper.
“Why, you know full well that I cannot read.”
“Tell Pitou to read it, then.”
Pitou rose, and standing on tiptoe, looked at the paper over the farmer's shoulder.
“That is not French,” said he, “it is not Latin, neither is it Greek.”
“It is English,” replied Gilbert.
“I do not know English,” said Pitou, proudly.
“I do,” said Gilbert, “and I will translate that paper to you; but in the first place, read the signature.”
“PITT,” spelled Pitou; “what does PITT mean?”
