THE Abbé Fortier was far from suspecting what danger He was in, prepared carefully for him by deep diplomacy. He had no idea of Pitou's influence.
He was seeking to prove to Sebastien that bad company is the ruin of innocence; that Paris is a pit of perdition; that even angels would be corrupted there,—like those who went astray at Gomorrah,—and seriously impressed by Pitou's visit, besought Sebastien always to remember to be a good and true loyalist.
By those words the abbé meant a very different thing from what Doctor Gilbert meant.
He forgot that as long as this difference existed, he was committing a very bad action; for he sought to excite the son's opinions against the father.
He soon found, however, that his labor was lost.
Strange to say, at a period when the minds of most children are, so to say, mere potter's clay, on which every pressure leaves a mark, Sebastien, in fixity of purpose was a man.
Was that to be attributed to that aristocratic nature which disdains everything plebeian
Or was it plebeianism pushed to stoicism?
The mystery was too deep for the Abbé Fortier. He knew the doctor was an enthusiastic patriot, and with the simplicity of mind peculiar to ecclesiastics, sought, for the glory of God, to reform the son.
Though Sebastien appeared to listen, he did not, but was musing on those strange visions which previously had taken possession of him under the tall trees of the park of Villers-Cotterets when the abbé took his pupils thither, and which had become, so to say, a kind of second life, running parallel with his natural life,—a life of fiction and poetic pleasure in comparison with the dull prosaic days of study and college routine.
All at once a loud knock was heard at the door in the Rue de Soissons, and it immediately opened and admitted several persons.
They were the maire, adjunct, and town clerk.
Behind them were the gendarmes, after whom came several curious persons.
The abbé went at once to the maire, and said:-"Monsieur Longpé, what is the matter?”
“Abbé, are you aware of the new order of the Minister of War?”
As he read it, he grew pale. “Well?” said he.
“Well, the gendarmes of Haramont expect you to surrender your arms.”
The abbé sprang forward as if he would devour the National Guard.
Pitou, thinking it time to show himself, followed by his lieutenant and his sergeant, approached the abbé.
“Here are the gentlemen,” said the maire.
The maire was a good-natured man, and as yet had no decided political opinions. He had no disposition to quarrel either with the Church or the National Guard.
The words of the abbé excited a loud laugh, and the maire said to Pitou:—
“Do you hear how he speaks of your command?”
“Because the abbé knew us when children, he fancies we can never grow old.”
“The children, however, have now grown men,” said Maniquet, reaching forth his mutilated hand towards the abbé.
“And these men are serpents,” cried the enraged abbé.
“Who will bite if they be trampled on,” said Sergeant Claude.
In these threats the maire saw all the future Revolution; and the abbé martyrdom.
“Some of your arms are needed,” said the maire, who sought to effect a reconciliation.
“They are not mine,” said the abbé. “Whose are they?”
“Well, that matters not,” said Pitou. “How so?” said the abbé.
“We desire you to deliver them up to us, all the same.”
“I will write to the duke,” said the abbé, majestically.
“The abbé forgets,” said the maire, in a low tone, “that if the duke were written to, he would reply that not only the muskets of his English enemies, but the artillery of his grandfather, Louis XIV. must be surrendered to patriots.”
The abbé knew that this was true.
“Circumdedisti me hostibus meis.”
“True, Abbé! but by your political enemies only. We hate in you only the bad patriot.”
“Fool!” said Fortier, with an excitement which inspired him with a certain kind of eloquence,—” fool, and dangerous tool! which is the patriot,—I, who would keep these arms for the peace of the country, or you, who would use them in rapine and civil war? Which is the better son,—I, who cultivate the olive of peace, or you, who would lacerate the bosom of France, our common mother, with war?”
The maire sought to conceal his emotion, and nodded to the abbé, as if to say:—
The adjunct, like Tarquin, cut down flowers with his cane.
The two subalterns saw it, and were surprised.
Sebastien, the young Spartan, alone was cool.]
He approached Pitou and said:—
Pitou told him in a few words.
“Is the order signed?” asked Sebastien.
“The order is signed,” answered Pitou, and he showed the minister's, his father's, and Lafayette's signatures.
Sebastien's flashing eye, his erect form, showed clearly the two indomitable races from which he sprang.
The abbé heard his words, shuddered, and said:—
“Three generations oppose me!”
“Abbé,” said the maire, “the order must be obeyed.”
The abbé put his hand on the keys which were in the girdle that from monastic habit he yet wore, and said:
“Never! they are not mine, and I will not surrender them till my master orders me.”
“Abbé, Abbé!” said the maire, who felt compelled to disapprove.
“This is rebellion,” said Sebastien to the abbé. “Master, be careful!”
“Tu quoque,” said the abbé, like Cæsar folding his robe over his bosom.
“Be at ease, abbé,” said Pitou; “these arms will be in good hands for France.”
“Hush, Judas, you have betrayed your old master! Why will you not betray your country?”
Pitou felt his conscience prick him. What he had done was not at the instinct of a noble heart, though he had acted bravely.
He looked around, and saw his two subalterns apparently ashamed of his weakness.
Pitou felt that he was in danger of losing his influence.
Pride came to the assistance of this champion of the Revolution.
“Abbé, submissive as I am to my old master, not unreplied to shall such comments be made.”
“Ah, you are going to reply,” said the Abbé Fortier, trusting to annihilate Pitou by raillery.
“Yes; and tell me if I am not right. You call me traitor, and refuse me the arms I asked you for peaceably, but which I now take in the name, and by the strong hand, of the law. Well, Abbé, I had rather be called traitor to my master than, like you, have opposed the liberty of my country. Our country forever!”
The maire nodded to Pitou as he previously had to the abbé.
The effect of this address ruined the abbé.
So too would the adjunct, but the absence of the two chiefs would certainly have been remarked.
He then, with the gendarmes and Pitou, who was perfectly familiar with the locale in which he had grown up, proceeded to the museum.
Sebastian rushed after the patriots; the other children appeared amazed.
After the door was opened, the abbé sank, half-dead with mortification and rage, on the first chair.
When once in the museum, Pitou's assistants wished to pillage everything, but the honesty of the commandant restrained them.
He took only thirty-three muskets, for he commanded thirty-three National Guards.
As it might be necessary for him some day to fire a shot, he took, as a thirty-fourth, an officer's gun, lighter and shorter than the others, which was adapted for shooting hares and rabbits as well as for killing either a false Frenchman or a true Prussian.
He then selected a straight sword like Lafayette's, which had perhaps been borne by some hero at Fontenoy or Philipsbourg. He buckled it on.
Each of his colleagues then placed twelve muskets on his shoulder, and both were so delighted that they scarcely felt the enormous weight.
They passed through the park, to avoid observation in going through the city.
It was also the shortest route.
Another advantage of this road was that they had no chance of meeting any of the partisans of the opposite faction. Pitou was not afraid of a battle, and the musket he had chosen inspired him with still greater courage; but Pitou had become a man of reflection, and he reflected that though one musket was a powerful weapon of defence for a man, a load of muskets could hardly be said to be so.
Our three heroes, loaded with their spoils, passed rapidly through the park, and reached the rendezvous. Exhausted and heated, they took their precious prize that night to Pitou's house. It may be the country had been too hasty in confiding it to them.
There was a meeting of the guard that night, and Pitou gave them the muskets, saying, in the words of the Spartan mother:—
Thus was the little commune, by the genius of Pitou, made to seem as busy as an ant-hill during an earthquake.
Delight at possessing a gun among a people poachers by nature, whom the long oppression of gamekeepers had incensed, could not but be great. Pitou consequently became a god on earth. His long legs and arms were forgotten. So too were his clumsy knees and his grotesque antecedents. He could not but be the tutelary god of the country.
The next day was passed by the enthusiasts in cleaning and repairing their arms. Some rejoiced that the cock worked well, and others repaired the springs of the lock or replaced the screws.
In the mean time, Pitou had retired to his room, as Agamemnon did to his tent, brightening his brains as others did their guns.
Pitou, become a leader of the people, was thinking of the hollowness of earthly grandeur.
The time had come when the whole edifice he had erected was about to crumble.
The guns had been issued on the evening before, and the day passed in putting them in order. On the next day he would have to drill his men, and Pitou did not know a single command of, “Load, in twelve times.”
What is the use of a commandant ignorant of the drill? The writer of these lines never knew but one so ignorant. He was, however, a countryman of Pitou.
Pitou thought with his head in his hands and his body prostrate.
Cæsar amid the thickets of Gaul, Hannibal wandering on the Alps, and Columbus drifting over the ocean, never thought more deeply, and never more fully devoted themselves diis ignotis, the fearful powers who hold the secrets of life and death, than did Pitou.
“Come,” said Pitou, “time speeds, and to-morrow I must appear in all my insignificance.
“To-morrow the captor of the Bastille, the god of war, will be called by all Haramont an idiot, as—I do not know who was by the Greeks.
“To-day I triumph, but to-morrow I shall be hooted.
“This cannot be. Catherine will know it, and will think me disgraced.”
“What will extricate me from this dilemma?
“Not so. Audacity lasts a second. To load in the Prussian times requires half a minute.
“Strange idea, to teach the Prussian drill to Frenchmen! I am too much of a patriot to teach Frenchmen any of their inventions. I will make a national drill.
“I saw a monkey once go through the manual at a fair. He probably though, being a monkey, had never served.
He began to stride as fast as his long legs would permit, but was suddenly brought to a stand by the idea.
“My disappearance will astonish my men. I must inform them.”
He then sent for his subalterns and said:—
“Tell the men that the first drill will take place on the day after to-morrow.”
“You are fatigued, and before drilling the men I must instruct the officers. Be careful, too, to obey your superior officers, without asking questions.”
They saluted him à la militaire.
“Very well; the drill will be at half-past four on the day after to-morrow.”
The subalterns left, and as it was half after nine, went to bed.
Pitou let them go, and when they had turned the corner, went in an opposite direction, and soon was hidden in the thickest of the park.
