HOWEVER, on arriving at Villers-Cotterets, towards ten o'clock at night, after having had the long run we have endeavored to describe, Pitou felt that however melancholy he might be, it was much better to stop at the Dauphin Hotel and sleep in a good bed, than to sleep canopied by the stars, under some beech or oak in the forest.
For as to sleeping in a house at Haramont, arriving there at half-past ten at night, it was useless to think of it. For more than an hour and a half every light had been extinguished, and every door closed in that peaceful village.
Pitou therefore, put up at the Dauphin Hotel, where, for a thirty-sous piece, he had an excellent bed, a four-pound loaf, a piece of cheese, and a pot of cider.
Pitou was both fatigued and in love, tired out and in despair. The result of this was a struggle between his moral and physical feelings, in which the moral were in the first instance victorious, but at length succumbed.
That is to say, that from eleven o'clock to two in the morning, Pitou groaned, sighed, turned and twisted in his bed, without being able to sleep a wink; but at two o'clock, overcome by fatigue, he closed his eyes, not to open them again till seven.
As at Haramont every one was in bed at half-past ten at night, so at Villers-Cotterets everybody was stirring at seven in the morning.
Pitou, on leaving the Dauphin Hotel, again found that his helmet and sabre attracted public attention.
After going about a hundred paces, he consequently found himself the centre of a numerous crowd.
Pitou had decidedly acquired an enormous popularity.
There are few travellers who have such good luck. The sun, which, it is said, shines for the whole world, does not always shine with a favorable brilliancy for peoplewho return to their own native place with the desire of being considered prophets.
But also it does not happen to every one to have an aunt crabbed and avaricious to so ferocious a degree as Aunt Angélique; it does not happen to every Gargantua capable of swallowing an old cock boiled with rice, to be able to offer a half-crown to the proprietor of the victim.
But that which happens still less often to returning persons, whose origin and traditions can be traced back to the Odyssey, is to return with a helmet on their heads and a sabre by their sides; above all, when the rest of their accoutrements are far from being military.
For we must avow that it was, above all, this helmet and this sabre which recommended Pitou to the attention of his fellow-citizens.
But for the vexations which Pitou's love encountered on his return, it has been seen that all sorts of good fortune awaited him. This was undoubtedly a compensation.
And immediately on seeing him, some of the inhabitants of Villers-Cotterets, who had accompanied Pitou from the Abbé Fortier's door in the Rue de Soissons to Dame Angélique's door at Pleux, resolved, in order to continue the ovation, to accompany him from Villers-Cotterets to Haramont.
And they did as they had resolved; on seeing which, the above-mentioned inhabitants of Haramont began to appreciate their compatriot at his just value.
It is, however, only justice to them to say that the soil was already prepared to receive the seed. Pitou's first passage through Haramont, rapid as it had been, had left some traces in the minds of its inhabitants; his helmet and his sabre had remained impressed on the memories of those who had seen him appearing before them as a luminous apparition.
In consequence, the inhabitants of Haramont, seeing themselves favored by this second return of Pitou, which they no longer hoped for, received him with every manifestation of respect and consideration, entreating him to doff for a time his warlike accoutrements, and fix his tent under the four linden-trees which overshadowed the little village square, as the Thessalians used to entreat Mars on the anniversary of his great triumphs.
Pitou deigned the more readily to consent to this, from its being his intention to fix his domicile at Haramont. He therefore accepted the shelter of a bedroom which a warlike person of the village let to him ready furnished.
It was furnished with a deal bedstead, a paillasse, and a mattress, two chairs, a table, and a water-jug.
The rent of the whole of this was estimated by the proprietor himself at six livres per annum; that is to say, the value of two dishes of fowl and rice.
The rent being agreed upon, Pitou took possession of his domicile, and supplied those who had accompanied him with refreshments at his own charge; and as these events—without speaking of the cider he had imbibed—had somewhat excited his brain, he pronounced an harangue to them, standing on the threshold of his new residence.
This harangue of Pitou was a great event, and consequently all Haramont was assembled round the house.
Pitou was somewhat of a clerk, and knew what fine language was; he knew the eight words by which at that period the haranguers of nations—it was thus Homer called them—stirred up the popular masses.
Between Monsieur de Lafayette and Pitou there was undoubtedly a great distance, but between Haramont and Paris the distance was greater still; morally speaking, it will be clearly understood.
Pitou commenced by an exordium with which the Abbé Fortier, critical as he was, would not have been dissatisfied.
“Citizens,” said he, “citizens,—this word is sweet to pronounce,—I have already addressed other Frenchmen by it, for all Frenchmen are brothers; but on this spot I am using it, I believe, towards real brothers, and I find my whole family here in my compatriots of Haramont.”
The women—there were some few among the auditory, and they were not the most favorably disposed towards the orator, for Pitou's knees were still too thick, and the calves of his legs too thin, to produce an impression in his favor on a feminine audience—the women, on hearing the word “family,” thought of that poor Pitou, the orphan child, the poor abandoned lad, who, since the death of his mother, had never had a meal that satisfied his hunger. And this word “family,” uttered by a youth who had none, moved in some among them that sensitive fibre which closes the reservoir of tears.
The exordium being finished, Pitou began the narrative, the second head of an oration.
He related his journey to Paris, the riots with regard to the busts, the taking of the Bastille, and the vengeance of the people; he passed lightly over the part he had taken in the combats on the Place Vendôme, the square before the Palais Royal, and in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But the less he boasted, the greater did he appear in the eyes of his compatriots; and at the end of Pitou's narrative, his helmet had become as large as the dome of the Invalides, and his sabre as long as the steeple of Haramont church.
The narrative being ended, Pitou then proceeded to the confirmation, that delicate operation by which Cicero recognized a real orator.
He proved that popular indignation had been justly excited against speculators; he said two words of Messieurs Pitt, father and son; he explained the Revolution by the privileges granted to the nobility and to the clergy; finally, he invited the people of Haramont to do that in particular which the people of France had done generally,—that is to say, to unite against the common enemy.
Then he went on from the confirmation to the peroration, by one of those sublime changes common to all great orators.
He let fall his sabre; and while picking it up, he accidentally drew it from its scabbard.
This accident furnished him with a text for an incendiary resolution, calling upon the inhabitants of Haramont to take up arms, and to follow the example of the revolted Parisians.
The people of Haramont were enthusiastic, and replied energetically.
The Revolution was proclaimed with loud acclamation throughout the village.
The men from Villers-Cotterets who had remained at the meeting, returned home, their hearts swelling with the patriotic leaven, singing in the most threatening tones towards the aristocrats, and with savage fury:
Rouget de l'Isle had not then composed the “Marseillaise,” and the Federalists of '90 had not yet re-awakened the old popular “Ça ira,” seeing that they were then only in the year of grace 1789.
Pitou thought that he had merely made a speech. Pitou had made a revolution.
He re-entered his own house, regaled himself with a piece of brown bread and the remains of his cheese, from the Dauphin Hotel, which he had carefully stowed away in his helmet; then he went and bought some brass wire, made some snares, and when it was dark, went to lay them in the forest.
That same night Pitou caught a good-sized rabbit, and a young one about four months old.
Pitou would have much wished to have set his wires for hares, but he could not discern a single run, and this proved to him the correctness of the old sporting axiom, “Dogs and cats, hares and rabbits, live not together.”
It would have been necessary to go three or four leagues before reaching a country well-stocked with hares, and Pitou was rather fatigued; his legs had done their utmost the day before, for besides the distance they had performed, they had carried for the last four or five leagues a man worn out with grief, and there is nothing so heavy as grief to long legs.
Towards one in the morning he returned with his first harvest; he hoped to gather another after the passage in the morning.
He went to bed, retaining within his breast remains of so bitter a nature of that grief which had so much fatigued his legs the day before that he could only sleep six hours consecutively upon the atrocious mattress, which the proprietor himself called a shingle.
Pitou therefore slept from one o'clock to seven. The sun was therefore shining upon him through his open shutter while he was sleeping.
Through this open shutter, thirty or forty inhabitants of Haramont were looking at him as he slept.
He awoke as Turenne did, on his gun-carriage, smiled at his compatriots, and asked them graciously why they had come to him in such numbers and so early.
One of them had been appointed spokesman. We shall faithfully relate this dialogue. This man was a wood-cutter, and his name Claude Tellier.
“Ange Pitou,” said he, “we have been reflecting the whole night; citizens ought, in fact, as you said yesterday, to arm themselves in the cause of liberty.”
“I said so,” replied Pitou, in a firm tone, and which announced that he was ready to maintain what he had said.
“Only in order to arm ourselves the principal thing is wanting.”
“And what is that?” asked Pitou, with much interest.
“Ah! yes, that is true,” said Pitou.
“We have, however, reflected enough not to allow our reflections to be lost; and we will arm ourselves, cost what it may.”
“When I went away,” said Pitou, “there were five guns in Haramont,—three muskets, a single-barrelled fowling-piece, and a double-barrelled one.”
“There are now only four,” rejoined the orator; “one of the fowling-pieces burst from old age a month ago.”
“That must have been the fowling-piece which belonged to Désiré Maniquet,” said Pitou.
“Yes, and, by token when it burst, it carried off two of my fingers,” said Désiré Maniquet, holding above his head his mutilated hand; “and as this accident happened to me in the warren of that aristocrat who is called Monsieur de Longpré, the aristocrats shall pay me for it.”
Pitou nodded his head to show that he approved this just revenge.
“We therefore have only four guns left,” rejoined Claude Tellier.
“Well, then, with four guns you have already enough to arm five men,” said Pitou.
“Oh, the fifth will carry a pike! That is the way they do at Paris; for every four men armed with guns, there is always one man armed with a pike. Those pikes are very convenient things; they serve to stick the heads upon which have been cut off.”
“Oh, oh!” cried a loud, joyous voice, “it is to be hoped that we shall not cut off heads.”
“No,” gravely replied Pitou; “if we have only firmness enough to reject the gold of Messieurs Pitt, father and son. But we were talking of guns; let us not wander from the question, as Monsieur Bailly says. How many men have we in Haramont capable of bearing arms? Have you counted them?”
“Then there are twenty-eight muskets deficient?”
“Which we shall never get,” said the stout man with the good-humored face.
“Ah,” said Pitou, “it is necessary to know that, my friend Boniface.”
“And how is it necessary to know?”
“Yes, I say it is necessary to know, because I know.”
“I know where they are to be procured.”
“Yes; the people of Paris had no arms either. Well, Monsieur Marat, a very learned doctor, but very ugly, told the people of Paris where arms were to be found; the people of Paris went where Monsieur Marat told them, and there they found them.”
“And where did Marat tell them to go?” inquired Désiré Maniquet.
“He told them to go to the Invalides.”
“Yes; but we have no Invalides at Haramont.”
“But I know a place in which there are more than a hundred guns,” said Pitou.
“In one of the rooms of the Abbé Fortier's college.”
“The Abbé Fortier has a hundred guns He wishes, then, to arm his singing boys, the beggarly black cap!” cried Claude Tellier.
Pitou had not a deep-seated affection for the Abbé Fortier; however, this violent outburst against his former professor profoundly wounded him.
“I did not say that the guns belong to the Abbé Fortier.”
“If they are in his house, they belong to him.”
“That position is a false one. I am in the house of Bastien Godinet, and yet the house of Bastien Godinet does not belong to me.”
“That is true,” said Bastien, replying without giving Pitou occasion to appeal to him directly.
“The guns, therefore, do not belong to the Abbé Fortier,” continued Pitou.
“They belong to the township.”
“If they belong to the township, how does it happen that they are in the Abbé Fortier's house?”
“They are in the Abbé Fortier's house, because the house in which the Abbé Fortier lives belongs to the township, which gives it to him rent free because he says Mass and teaches the children of poor citizens gratis. Now, since the Abbé Fortier's house belongs to the township, the township has a right to reserve a room in the house that belongs to it, in which to put its muskets,—ah!”
“That is true,” said the auditors; “the township has the right.”
“Well, then, let us see; how are we to get hold of these guns,—tell us that?”
The question somewhat embarrassed Pitou, who scratched his ear.
“Yes, tell us quickly,” cried another voice, “for we must go to our work.”
Pitou breathed again; the last speaker had opened to him a door for escape.
“Work!” exclaimed Pitou. “You speak of arming yourselves for the defence of the country, and you think of work!”
And Pitou accompanied his words with a laugh, so ironical and so contemptuous that the Haramontese looked at one another, and felt humiliated.
“We would not mind sacrificing a few days more, should it be absolutely necessary,” said the other, “to gain our liberty.”
“To gain our liberty,” cried Pitou, “it will be necessary to sacrifice more than a day; we must sacrifice all our days.”
“Then,” said Boniface, “when people are working for liberty they are resting.”
“Boniface,” replied Pitou, with the air of Lafayette when irritated, “those will never know how to be free who do not know how to trample their prejudices under foot.”
“As to myself,” said Boniface, “I ask nothing better than not to work; but what is to be done, then, with regard to eating?”
“Do people eat?” cried Pitou, disdainfully.
“At Haramont they do so yet. Do they no longer eat at Paris?”
“They eat when they have vanquished the tyrants,” replied Pitou. “Did any one eat on the 14th of July? Did they even think of eating on that day? No; they had not time even to think of it.”
“Ah! ah!” cried some of the most zealous, “the takng of the Bastille must have been a fine sight.”
“But,” continued Pitou, disdainfully, “as to drinking, I will not say no; it was so hot, and gunpowder has so acrid a taste.”
“What had the people to drink? Why, water, wine, and brandy. It was the women who had taken this in charge.”
“Yes, and handsome women, too, who had made flags of the front part of their dresses.”
“Can it be possible?” cried the auditors, with much astonishment.
“But at all events,” observed the sceptic, “they must have eaten the next day.”
“I do not say that they did not,” replied Pitou.
“Then,” rejoined Boniface, triumphantly, “if they ate, they must have worked.”
“Monsieur Boniface,” replied Pitou, “you are speaking of things without understanding them. Paris is not a hamlet. It is not composed of a heap of villagers accustomed to think only of their bellies,— obedientia ventri, as we say in Latin, we who are learned. No; Paris, as Monsieur de Mirabeau says, is the head of all nations; it is a brain which thinks for the whole world. The brain, sir, never eats.”
“That is true,” thought the auditors.
“And yet,” said Pitou, “the brain, though it does not eat, still feeds itself.”
“But then how does it feed itself?” answered Boniface.
“Invisibly, with the nutriment of the body.”
Here the Haramontese were quite at a loss; the question was too profound for them to understand.
“Explain this to us, Pitou,” said Boniface.
“That is easily done,” replied Pitou: “Paris is the brain, as I have said; the provinces are the members. The provinces will work, drink, eat; and Paris will think.”
“Then I will leave the provinces and go to Paris,” rejoined the sceptical Boniface. “Will you come to Paris with me, my friends?”
A portion of the audience burst into a loud laugh, and appeared to side with Boniface.
Pitou perceived that he would be discredited by this sarcastic railer.
“Go, then, to Paris,” cried he in his turn; “and if you find there a single face as ridiculous as yours, I will buy of you such young rabbits as this at a louis apiece.”
And with one hand Pitou held up the young rabbit he had caught, and with the other made the louis, which remained of Doctor Gilbert's munificence jingle, in his pocket.
Pitou this time had the laugh in his favor.
Upon this, Boniface became positively purple with rage.
“Why, Master Pitou, you are playing the insolent to call us ridiculous.”
“Ridiculus tu es,” majestically replied Pitou.
“But look at yourself,” retorted Boniface.
“It would be but to little purpose,” replied Pitou. “I might see something as ugly as yourself, but never anything half so stupid.”
Pitou had scarcely said these words, when Boniface—at Haramont they are almost as passionate as in Picardy—struck at him with his fist, which Pitou adroitly parried, but to which he replied by a kick in the true Parisian fashion.
This kick was followed by a second, which sent the sceptic flying some few feet, when he fell heavily to the ground.
Pitou bent down over his adversary so as to give the victory the most fatal consequences, and all were already rushing to save poor Boniface, when, raising himself up,—
“Learn,” said Pitou, “that the conquerors of the Bastille do not fight with fists. I have a sabre; take another sabre, and let us end the matter at once.”
Upon this, Pitou drew his sword, forgetting, or perhaps not forgetting, that the only sabre in all Haramont was his own, with the exception of that of the rural guard, at least two feet shorter than his own.
It is true that to establish a more perfect equilibrium he put on his helmet.
This greatness of soul electrified the assembly. It was agreed by all that Boniface was a rascallion, a vile fellow, an ass unworthy of being admitted to share in any discussion on public affairs.
And consequently he was expelled.
“You see, then,” said Pitou, “the image of the Revolution of Paris; as Monsieur Prudhomme or Loustalot has said—I think it was the virtuous Loustalot who said it—yes, 'twas he, I am now certain of it:—
“'The great appear to us to be great, solely because we are upon our knees; let us stand up.'“
This epigram had not the slightest bearing on the question in dispute, but perhaps for that very reason it produced a prodigious effect.
The sceptic Boniface, who was standing at a distance of twenty paces, was struck by it, and he returned to Pitou, humbly saying to him:—
“You must not be angry with us, Pitou, if we do not understand liberty as well as you do.”
“It is not liberty,” said Pitou, “but the rights of man.”
This was another blow with the sledge-hammer, with which Pitou a second time felled the whole auditory.
“Decidedly,” said Boniface, “you are a learned man, and we pay homage to you.”
“Yes,” said he,” education and experience have placed me above you; and if just now I spoke to you rather harshly, it was from my friendship for you.”
Loud applause followed this; Pitou saw that he could now give vent to his eloquence.
“You have just talked of work,” said he, “but do you know what work is? To you labor consists in splitting wood, in reaping the harvest, in picking up beech-mast, in tying up wheat-sheaves, in placing stones one above another, and consolidating them with cement. That is what you consider work. In your opinion I do not work at all. Well, then, you are mistaken, for I alone labor much more than you do all together,—for I am meditating your emancipation; for I am dreaming of your liberty, of your equality. A moment of my time is therefore of more value than a hundred of your days. The oxen who plough the ground do but one and the same thing; but the man who thinks surpasses all the strength of matter. I, by myself, am worth the whole of you. Look at Monsieur de Lafayette; he is a thin, fair man, not much taller than Claude Tellier. He has a pointed nose, thin legs, and arms as small as the back joints of this chair. As to his hands and feet, it is not worth while to mention them; a man might as well be without. Well! this man has carried two worlds on his shoulders, which is one more than Atlas did, and his little hands have broken the chains of America and France.
“Now, as his arms have done all this, arms not thicker than the back railing of a chair, only imagine to yourselves what arms like mine can do.”
And Pitou bared his arms, which were as knotty as the trunk of a holly-tree.
And having drawn this parallel, he paused, well assured that he had produced, without coming to a regular conclusion, an immense effect.
