"My Dear Friend Billet: I arrive from America where I found a people richer, greater and happier than ours. This arises from their being free, while we are not. But we are marching towards this new era, and all must labor for the light to come. I know your principles, Friend Billet, and your influence on the farmers, your neighbors; and all the honest population of toilers and hands whom you lead, not like a king but a father."Teach them the principles of devotion and brotherhood I know you cherish. Philosophy is universal, all men ought to read their rights and duties by its light. I send you a little book in which these rights and duties are set forth. It is my work, though my name is not on the title-page. Propagate these principles, those of universal equality. Get them read in the winter evenings. Reading is the food of the mind as bread is that for the body."One of these days I shall see you, and tell you about a new kind of farming practiced in the United States. It consists, in the landlord and the tenant working on shares of the crop. It appears to me more according to the laws of primitive society and to the love of God.
"My Dear Friend Billet: I arrive from America where I found a people richer, greater and happier than ours. This arises from their being free, while we are not. But we are marching towards this new era, and all must labor for the light to come. I know your principles, Friend Billet, and your influence on the farmers, your neighbors; and all the honest population of toilers and hands whom you lead, not like a king but a father.
"Teach them the principles of devotion and brotherhood I know you cherish. Philosophy is universal, all men ought to read their rights and duties by its light. I send you a little book in which these rights and duties are set forth. It is my work, though my name is not on the title-page. Propagate these principles, those of universal equality. Get them read in the winter evenings. Reading is the food of the mind as bread is that for the body.
"One of these days I shall see you, and tell you about a new kind of farming practiced in the United States. It consists, in the landlord and the tenant working on shares of the crop. It appears to me more according to the laws of primitive society and to the love of God.
"Greeting and brotherly feeling,
"Honore Gilbert, Citizen of Philadelphia."
"This letter is nicely written," observed Pitou.
"I warrant it is," said Billet.
"Yes, father dear; but I doubt the quarter-master will be of your opinion. Because, this not only will get Dr. Gilbert into trouble, but you, too."
"Pooh, you are always scarey," sneered the farmer. "This does not hinder me having the book, and—we have got something for you to do, Pitou—you shall read me this in the evenings."
"But in the daytime?"
"Tend the sheep and cows. Let us have a squint at the book."
He took out one of those sewn pamphlets in a red cover, issued in great quantity in those days, with or without permission of the authorities. In the latter case the author ran great risk of being sent to prison.
"Read us the title, Pitou, till we have a peep at the book inside. The rest afterwards."
The boy read on the first page these words, which usage has made vague and meaningless lately but at that epoch they had a deep effect on all hearts:
"On the Independence of Man and the Freedom of Nations."
"What do you say to that, my lad?" cried the farmer.
"Why, it seems to me that Independence and Freedom are much of a muchness? my guardian would be whipped out of the class by Father Fortier for being guilty of a pleonasm.
"Fleanism or not, this book is the work of a real man," rejoined the other.
"Never mind, father," said Catherine, with the admirable instinct of womankind: "I beg you to hide the book. It will get you into some bad scrape. I tremble merely to look at it."
"Why should it do me any harm, when it has not brought it on the writer?"
"How do you know that, father? This letter was written a week ago, and took all that time to arrive from Havre. But I had a letter this morning from Sebastian Gilbert, at Paris, who sends his love to his foster-brother—I forgot that—and he has been three days without his father meeting him there."
"She is right," said Pitou: "this delay is alarming."
"Hold your tongue, you timid creature; and let us read the doctor's treatise?" said the farmer: "It will not only make you larned, but manly."
Pitou stuck the book under his arm with so solemn a movement that it completed the winning of his protector's heart.
"Have you had your dinner?" asked he.
"No, sir," replied the youth.
"He was eating when he was driven from home," said the girl.
"Well, you go in and ask Mother Billet for the usual rations and to-morrow we will set you regularly to work."
With an eloquent look the orphan thanked him, and, conducted by Catherine, he entered the kitchen, governed by the absolute rule of Mother Billet.
LONG LEGS ARE GOOD FOR RUNNINGIF NOT FOR DANCING.
Mistress Billet was a fat woman who honored her husband, delighted in her daughter and fed her field hands as no other housewife did for miles around. So there was a rush to be employed at Billet's.
Pitou appreciated his luck at the full value when he saw the golden loaf placed at his elbow, the pot of cider set on his right, and the chunk of mild-cured bacon before him. Since he lost his mother, five years before, the orphan had never enjoyed such cheer, even on a feast day.
He remembered, too, that his new duties of neatherd and shepherd had been fulfilled by gods and demigods.
Besides Mrs. Billet had the management of the kine and orders were not harsh from Catherine's mouth.
"You shall stay here," said she; "I have made father understand that you are good for a heap of things; for instance, you can keep the accounts——"
"Well, I know the four rules of arithmetic," said Pitou, proudly.
"You are one ahead of me. Here you stay."
"I am glad, for I could not live afar from you. Oh, I beg pardon, but that came from my heart."
"I do not bear you ill will for that," said Catherine; "it is not your fault if you like us here."
Poor young lambs, they say so much in so few words!
So Pitou did much of Catherine's work and she had more time to make pretty caps and "titivate herself up," to use her mother's words.
"I think you prettier without a cap on," he remarked.
"You may; but your taste is not the rule. I cannot go over to the town and dance without a cap on. That is all very well for fine ladies, who have the right to go bareheaded and wear powder on the hair."
"You beat them all without powder."
"Compliments again, did you learn to make them at Fortier's."
"No, he taught nothing like that."
"Dancing?"
"Lord help us—dancing at Fortier's! he made us cut capers at the end of the birch."
"So you do not know how to dance? Still you shall come along with me on Sunday, and see Master Isidor Charny dance: he is the best dancer of all the gentlemen round here."
"Who is he?"
"Owner of Boursiennes Manor. He will dance with me next Sunday."
Pitou's heart shrank without his knowing why.
"So you make yourself lovely to dance with him?" he inquired.
"With him and all the rest. You, too, if you like to learn."
Next day he applied himself to the new accomplishment and had to acknowledge that tuition is agreeable according to the tutor. In two hours he had a very good idea of the art.
"Ah, if you had taught me Latin, I don't believe I should have made so many mistakes," he sighed.
"But then you would be a priest and be shut up in an ugly old monastery where no women are allowed."
"That's so; well, I am not sorry I am not to be a priest."
At breakfast Billet reminded his new man that the reading of the Gilbert pamphlet was to take place in the barn at tena.m.next day. That was the hour for mass, Pitou objected.
"Just why I pitch on it, to test my lads," replied the farmer.
Billet detested religious leaders as the apostles of tyranny, and seized the opportunity of setting up one altar against another.
His wife and daughter raising some remonstrance, he said that church was good enough for womanfolks, no doubt, and they might go and sleep away their time there; but it suited men to hear stronger stuff, or else the men should not work on his land.
Billet was a despot in his house; only Catherine ever coped with him and she was hushed when he frowned.
But she thought to gain something for Pitou on the occasion. She pointed out that the doctrines might suffer by the mouthpiece; that the reader was too shabby for the phrases to make a mark. So Pitou was agreeably surprised when Sunday morning came round to see the tailor enter while he was ruminating how he could "clean up," and lay on a chair a coat and breeches of sky blue cloth and a long waistcoat of white and pink stripes. At the same time a housemaid came in to put on another chair opposite the first, a shirt and a neckcloth; if the former fitted, she was to make half-a-dozen.
It was the day for surprises: behind the two came the hatter who brought a three-cocked hat of the latest fashion so full of style and elegance that nothing better was worn in Villers Cotterets.
The only trouble was that the shoes were too small for Ange: the man had made them on the last of his son who was four years the senior of Pitou. This superiority of our friend made him proud for a space, but it was spoilt by his fear that he would have to go to the ball in his old shoes—which would mar the new suit. This uneasiness was of short duration. A pair of shoes sent for Father Billet were brought at the same time and they fitted Pitou—a fact kept hidden from Billet, who might not like his new man literally stepping into his own shoes.
When Pitou, dressed, hatted, shod and his hair dressed, looked at himself in the mirror, he did not know himself. He grinned approvingly and said, as he drew himself up to his full height:
"Fetch along your Master Charnys now!"
"My eyes," cried the farmer, admiring him as much as the women when he strutted into the main room: "you have turned out a strapper, my lad. I should like Aunt Angelique to see you thus togged out. She would want you home again."
"But, papa, she could not take him back, could she?"
"As long as he is a minor—unless she forfeited her right by driving him out."
"But the five years are over," said Pitou quickly, "for which Dr. Gilbert paid a thousand francs."
"There is a man for you!" exclaimed Billet: "just think that I am always hearing such good deeds of his. D'ye see, it islife and death for him!" and he raised his hand to heaven.
"He wanted me to learn a trade," went on the youth.
"Quite right of him. See how the best intentions are given a twist. A thousand francs are left to fit a lad for the battle of life, and they put him in a priest's school to make a psalm-singer of him. How much did your aunt give old Fortier?"
"Nothing."
"Then she pocketed Master Gilbert's money?"
"It is likely enough."
"Mark ye, Pitou, I have a bit of a hint to give you. When the old humbug of a saint cracks her whistle, look into the boxes, demijohns and old crocks, for she has been hiding her savings. But to business. Have you the Gilbert book?"
"Here, in my pocket."
"Have you thought the matter over, father?" said Catherine.
"Good actions do not want any thought," replied the farmer. "The doctor bade me have the book read and the good principles sown. The book shall be read and the principles scattered."
"But we can go to church?" ventured the maid timidly.
"Mother and you can go to the pew, yes: but we men have better to do. Come alone, Pitou, my man."
Pitou bowed to the ladies as well as the tight coat allowed and followed the farmer, proud to be called a man.
The gathering in the barn was numerous. Billet was highly esteemed by his hired men and they did not mind his roaring at them as long as he boarded and lodged them bounteously. So they had all hastened to come at his invitation.
Besides, at this period, the strange fever ran through France felt when a nation is going to go to work. New and strange words were current in mouths never pronouncing them. Freedom, Independence, emancipation, were heard not only among the lower classes but from the nobility in the first place, so that the popular voice was but their echo.
From the West came the light which illumined before it burnt. The sun rose in the Great Republic of America which was to be in its round a vast conflagration for France by the beams of which frightened nations were to see "Freedom" inscribed in letters of blood.
So political meetings were less rare than might be supposed. Apostles of an unknown deity sprang up from heaven knows where, and went from town to town, disseminating words of hope. Those at the head of the government found certain wheels clogged without understanding where the hindrance lay. Opposition was in all minds before it appeared in hands and limbs, but it was present, sensible, and the more menacing as it was intangible like a spectre and could be premised before it was grappled with.
Twenty and more farmers, field hands, and neighbors of Billet were in the barn.
When their friend walked in with Pitou, all heads were uncovered and all hats waved at arms-length. It was plain that these men were willing to die at the master's call.
The farmer explained that the book was by Dr. Gilbert which the young man was about to read out. The doctor was well-known in the district where he owned much land, while Billet was his principal tenant.
A cask was ready for the reader, who scrambled upon it, and began his task.
Common folks, I may almost say, people in general, listen with the most attention to words they do not clearly understand. The full sense of the pamphlet escaped the keenest wits here, and Billet's as well. But in the midst of the cloudy phrases shone the words Freedom, Independence and Equality like lightnings in the dark, and that was enough for the applause to break forth:
"Hurrah for Dr. Gilbert!" was shouted.
When the book was read a third through, it was resolved to have the rest in two more sessions, next time on the Sunday coming, when all hands promised to attend.
Pitou had read very well: nothing succeeds like success. He took his share in the cheers for the language, and Billet himself felt some respect arise for the dismissed pupil of Father Fortier.
One thing was lacking to Ange, that Catherine had not witnessed his oratorical triumph.
But Billet hastened to impart his pleasure to his wife and daughter. Mother Billet said nothing, being a woman of narrow mind.
"I am afraid you will get into trouble," sighed Catherine, smiling sadly.
"Pshaw, playing the bird of ill-omen again. Let me tell you that I like larks better than owls."
"Father, I had warning that you were looked upon suspiciously."
"Who said so?"
"A friend."
"Advice ought to be thanked. Tell me the friend's name?"
"He ought to be well informed, as it is Viscount Isidor Charny."
"What makes that scented dandy meddle with such matters? Does he give me advice on the way I should think? Do I suggest how he should cut his coat? It seems to me that it would be only tarring him with the same brush."
"I am not telling you this to vex you, father: but the advice is given with good intention."
"I will give him a piece, and you can transmit it with my compliments. Let him and his upper class look to themselves. The National Assembly is going to give them a shaking up; and the question will be roughly handled of the royal pets and favorites. Warning to his brother George, the Count of Charny, who is one of the gang, and on very close terms with the Austrian leech."
"Father, you have more experience than we, and you can act as you please," returned the girl.
"Indeed," said Pitou in a low voice, "why does this Charny fop shove in his oar anyhow?" for he was filled with arrogance from his success.
Catherine did not hear, or pretended not, and the subject dropped.
Pitou thought the dinner lasted a long time as he was in a hurry to go off with Catherine and show his finery at the rustic ball. Catherine looked charming. She was a pretty, black-eyed but fair girl, slender and flexible as the willows shading the farm spring. She had tricked herself out with the natural daintiness setting off all her advantages, and the little cap she had made for herself suited her wonderfully.
Almost the first of the stray gentlemen who condescended to patronize the popular amusement was a young man whom Pitou guessed to be Isidor Charny.
He was a handsome young blade of twenty-three or so, graceful in every movement like those brought up in aristocratic education from the cradle. Besides, he was one of those who wear dress to the best harmony.
On seeing his hands and feet, Pitou began to be less proud over Nature's prodigality towards him in these respects. He looked down at his legs with the eye of the stag in the fable. He sighed when Catherine wished to know why he was so glum.
But honest Pitou, after being forced to own the superiority of Charny as a beauty, had to do so as a dancer.
Dancing was part of the training, then: Lauzum owed his fortune at court to his skill in a curranto in the royal quadrille. More than one other nobleman had won his way by the manner of treading a measure and arching the instep.
The viscount was a model of grace and perfection.
"Lord 'a' mercy," sighed Pitou when Catherine returned to him; "I shall never dare to dance with you after seeing Lord Charny at it."
Catherine did not answer as she was too good to tell a lie; she stared at the speaker for he was suddenly becoming a man: he could feel jealousy.
She danced three or four times yet, and after another round with Isidor Charny, she asked to be taken home; that was all she had come for, one might guess.
"What ails you?" she asked as her companion kept quiet; "why do you not speak to me?"
"Because I cannot talk like Viscount Charny," was the other's reply. "What can I say after all the fine things he spoke during the dances?"
"You are unfair, Ange; for we were talking about you. If your guardian does not turn up, we must find you a patron."
"Am I not good enough to keep the farm books?" sighed Pitou.
"On the contrary, with the education you have received you are fitted for something better."
"I do not know what I am coming to, but I do not want to owe it to Viscount Charny."
"Why refuse his protection? His brother the Count, is, they say, particularly in favor at the court, and he married a bosom friend of the Queen Marie Antoinette. Lord Isidor tells me that he will get you a place in the custom-house, if you like."
"Much obliged, but as I have already told you, I am content to stay as I am, if your father does not send me away."
"Why the devil should I," broke in a rough voice which Catherine started to recognize as her father's.
"Not a word about Lord Isidor," whispered she to Pitou.
"I—I hardly know—I kind o' feared I was not smart enough, stammered Ange.
"When you can count like one o'clock, and read to beat the schoolmaster, who still believes himself a wise clerk. No, Pitou, the good God brings people to me, and once they are under my rooftree, they stick as long as He pleases."
With this assurance Pitou returned to his new home. He had experienced a great change. He had lost trust in himself. And so he slept badly. He recalled Gilbert's book; it was principally against the privileged classes and their abuses, and the cowardice of those who submitted to them. Pitou fancied he began to understand these matters better and he made up his mind to read more of the work on the morrow.
Rising early, he went down with it into the yard where he could have the light fall on the book through an open window with the additional advantage that he might see Catherine through it. She might be expected down at any moment.
But when he glanced up from his reading at the intervention of an opaque body between him and the light, he was amazed at the disagreeable person who caused the eclipse.
This was a man of middle age, longer and thinner than Pitou, clad in a coat as patched and thread-bare as his own—for Pitou had resumed his old clothes for the working day—while thrusting his head forward on a lank neck, he read the book with as much curiosity as the other felt relish—though it was upside down to him.
Ange was greatly astonished. A kind smile adorned the stranger's mouth in which a few snags stuck up, a pair crossing another like boar's fangs.
"The American edition," said the man snuffling up his nose, "In octavo, 'On the Freedom of Man and the Independence of Nations. Boston, 1788.'"
Pitou opened his eyes in proportion to the progress of the unknown reader, so that when he had reached the end his eyes were at the utmost extent.
"Just so, sir," said Pitou.
"This is the treatise of Dr. Gilbert's?" said the man in black.
"Yes, sir," rejoined the young man politely.
He rose as he had been taught that he must not sit in a superior's presence and to simple Ange everybody was a superior. In rising something fair and rosy attracted his attention at the window: it was Catherine come down at last, who was making cautionary signs to him.
"I do not want to be inquisitive, sir, but I should like to know whose book this is?" remarked the stranger pointing at the book without touching it as it was between Pitou's hands.
Pitou was going to say it belonged to Billet, but the girl motioned that he ought to lay claim to it himself. So he majestically responded:
"This book is mine."
The man in black had seen nothing but the book and its reader and heard but these words. But he suspiciously glanced behind: swift as a bird, Catherine had vanished.
"Your book?"
"Yes; do you want to read it—'Avidus legendi libri' or 'legendie historiae?'"
"Hello! you appear much above the condition your clothes beseem," said the stranger: "'Non dives vestitu sed ingenio'—— and it follows that I take you into custody."
"Me, in custody?" gasped Pitou at the summit of stupefaction.
At the order of the man in black, two sergeants of the Paris Police seemed to rise up out of the ground.
"Let us draw up a report," said the man, while one of the constables bound Pitou's hands by a rope and took the book into his own possession, and the other secured the prisoner to a ring happening to be by the window.
Pitou was going to bellow, but the same person who had already so influenced him seemed to hint he should submit.
He submitted with a docility enchanting the policemen, and the man in a black suit in particular. Hence, without any distrust, they walked into the farmhouse where the two policemen took seats at a table while the other—we shall know what he was after presently.
Scarcely had the trio gone in than Pitou heard the voice:
"Hold up your hands."
He raised them and his head as well, and saw Catherine's pale and frightened face: in her hand she held a knife.
Pitou rose on tiptoe and she cut the rope round his wrists.
"Take the knife," she said, "and cut yourself free from the ringbolt."
Pitou did not wait for twice telling but found himself wholly free.
"Here is a double-louis," went on the girl; "you have good legs. Make away. Go to Paris and warn the doctor."
She could not conclude for the constables appeared again as the coin fell at Pitou's feet. He picked it up quickly. Indeed the armed constables stood on the sill for an instant, astounded to see the man free whom they had left bound. But as at the dog's least stir the hare bolts, at the first move of the police, Pitou made a prodigious leap and was on the other side of the hedge.
They uttered a yell which brought out the corporal, who held a little casket under the arm. He lost no time in speech-making but darted after the escaped one. His men followed his example. But they were not able to jump the hedge and ditch, like Pitou, and were forced to go roundabout.
But when they got over, they beheld the youth five hundred paces off on the meadow, tearing away directly to the woods, a quarter of a league distant, which he would gain in a short time.
He turned at this nick, and perceiving the enemy take up the chase, though more for the name of the thing than any hope of overtaking him, he doubled his speed and soon dashed out of sight in the thicket.
He had the wind as well as the swiftness of the buck, and he ran for ten minutes as he might for an hour. But judging that he was out of danger, by his instinct, he stopped to breathe, listen and make sure that he was quite alone.
"It is incredible what a quantity of incidents have been crammed into three days," he mused.
He looked alternately at his coin and the knife.
"I must find time to change the gold and give Miss Catherine a penny for the knife, for fear it will cut our friendship. Never mind, since she bade me go to Paris, I shall go."
On making out where he was, he struck a straight line over the heath to come out on the Paris highroad.
WHY THE POLICE AGENT CAME WITH THE CONSTABLES.
About six that morning a police-agent from the capital, accompanied by two inferior policemen, had arrived at Villers Cotterets where they presented themselves to the police justice, and asked him to tell them where Farmer Billet dwelt.
Five hundred paces from the farmhouse the corporal, as the exempt's rank was in the semi-military organization of the police of the era, perceived a peasant working in the field, of whom he inquired about his master.
The man pointed to a horseman a quarter of a league off.
"He won't be back till nine," he said; "there he is inspecting the work. He comes in for breakfast, then."
"If you want to please your master, run and tell him a gentleman from town is waiting to see him."
"Do you mean Dr. Gilbert?"
"Run and tell him, all the same."
No sooner was he notified than Billet galloped home but when he entered the room where he expected to see his landlord under the canopy of the large fireplace, none were there but his wife, sitting in the middle, plucking ducks with all the care such a task demands. Catherine was up in her room, preparing finery for Sunday, from the pleasure girls feel in getting ready for fun.
"Who asked for me?" demanded Billet, stopping on the threshold and looking round.
"Me," replied a flute-like voice behind him.
"Turning, the yeoman beheld the police-agent and his two myrmidons.
"How now? what do you want?" he snarled, making three steps backwards.
"Next to nothing, dear Master Billet," replied the unctuous speaker: "we have to make a search in your premises, that is all."
"A search, hey?" repeated Billet, glancing at his gun, on hooks over the mantelpiece. "Since we had a National Assembly," he said, "I thought citizens were no longer exposed to proceedings which smack of another age and style of things. What do you want with a peaceable and loyal man?"
Policemen are alike all the world over in their never answering questions of their victims; some bewail them while clapping on the iron cuffs, searching them or pinioning; they are the most dangerous as they appear to be the best. The fellow who descended on Farmer Billet was of the hypocritical school, those who have a tear for those they overhaul, but they never let their hands be idle to dash away the tear.
Uttering a sigh, this man waved his hand to his acolytes, who went up to Billet. He jumped back and reached out for his musket.
But his hand was turned aside from the doubly dangerous weapon to him who made use of it and her whose pair of slight hands was strong with terror and mighty with entreaty.
It was Catherine who had rushed to the spot in time to save her father from the crime of rebellion to justice.
After this first outburst, Billet made no further resistance.
The police agent ordered him to be locked up in one of the ground floor rooms which he had noticed to be barred, thoughBillet, who had the grating done, had forgotten the precaution. Catherine was placed in a first-floor room and Mrs. Billet was shoved into the kitchen as inoffensive. Master of the fort, the Exempt set to searching all the furniture.
"What are you doing?" roared Billet who saw through the keyhole that his house was turned out of windows.
"Looking, as you see, for something we cannot find," replied the police officer.
"But you may be robbers, burglars, scoundrels!"
"Oh, you wrong us, master," rejoined the fellow through the door; "we are honest folk like yourself—only we are in the wages of the King and we have to obey his orders."
"His Majesty's orders," repeated the farmer: "King Louis XVI. gives you orders to rummage my desk and turn my things upside down? When the famine was so dreadful last year that we thought of eating our horses; when the hail on the thirteenth of July two years back cut our wheat to chaff—his Majesty never bothered about us. What has happened at my farm at present for him to concern himself—never having seen or known me?"
"You will please excuse me," said the man, opening the door a little and warily showing a search-warrant issued by the Chief of Police but as usual commencing with "In the King's Name"—"His Majesty has heard about you, old fellow; though he may not personally know you, do not kick at the honor he does you, and try to receive properly those whom he sends in his royal name."
With a polite bow and a friendly wink, the chief policeman slammed the door, and recommenced the ferreting.
Billet held his tongue and with folded arms, trod the room: he felt he was in the men's power. The searching went on silently. These men seemed fallen from the skies. No one had seen them but the farm-hand who had pointed out the way to the farmhouse. In the yard the watch-dogs had not barked; the leader of the expedition must be a celebrated man in his line and not making his first arrest.
Billet heard his daughter wailing in the room overhead. He recalled her prophetic words, for he had no doubt that the investigation was caused by the doctor's book.
Nine o'clock struck, and Billet could count his hired men returning for their morning meal from the fields. This made him comprehend that, in case of conflict, he could have numbers of not law on his side. This made the blood boil in his veins. He had not the temper to bear inaction any longer and grasping the door he gave it such a shaking by the handle that with such another he would send the lock flying.
The police opened it at once and confronted the farmer, threatening and upright before the house turned inside out.
"But, to make it short, what are you looking for?" roared the caged lion: "Tell me, or by the Lord Harry of Navarre, I swear I'll thump it out of you."
The flocking in of the farm lads had not escaped the corporal's alert eye; he reckoned them and was convinced that, in case of a tussel, he could not crow on the battlefield.
With more honeyed politeness than before, he sneaked up to the speaker and said as he bowed to the ground:
"I am going to tell you, Master Billet, though it goes dead against the rules and regulations. We are looking for a subversive publication, and incendiary pamphlet put on the back list by the Royal Censors."
"A book in the house of a farmer who cannot read?"
"What is there amazing in that, when you are friend of the author and he sent you a copy?"
"I am not the friend of Dr. Gilbert but his humble servant," replied the other. "To be his friend would be too great an honor for a poor farmer like me."
This unreflected reply, in which Billet betrayed himself by confessing that he not only knew the author, which was natural being his landlord, but the book—assured victory to the officer of the law. This man drew himself up to his full height, with his most benignant air, and smiling as he tapped Billet on the shoulder, so that he seemed to cleave his head in twain, he said:
"You have let the cat out of the bag. You have been the first to name Gilbert, whose name we kept back out of discretion."
"That's so," muttered the farmer. "Look here, I will not merely own up but—will you stop pulling things about if I tell you where the book is?"
"Why, certainly," said the chief making a sign to his associates; "for the book is the object of the search. Only," he added with a sly grin, "don't allow you have one copy when you have a dozen."
"I swear, I have only the one."
"We are obliged to get that down to a certainty by the most minute search, Master Billet. Have five minute's farther patience. We are only poor servants of justice, under orders from those above us, and you will not oppose honorable men doing their duty—for there are such in all walks of life."
He had found the flaw in the armor: he knew how to talk Billet over.
"Go on, but be done quickly," he said, turning his back on them.
The man closed the door softly and still more quietly turned the key: which made Billet snap his fingers: sure that he could burst the door off its hinges if he had to do it.
On his part the policeman waved his fellows to the work. All three in a trice went through the papers, books and linen. Suddenly, at the bottom of an open clothespress, they perceived a small oak casket clamped with iron. The corporal pounced on it as a vulture on its prey. By the mere view, by his scent, by the place where it was stored, he had divined what he sought, for he quickly hid the box under his tattered mantle and beckoned to his bravoes that he had accomplished the errand.
At that very moment Billet had come to the end of his patience.
"I tell you that you cannot find what you are looking for unless I tell you," he called out. "There is no need to 'make hay' with my things. I am not a conspirator, confound you! Come, get this into your noddles. Answer, or, by all the blue moons, I will go to Paris and complain to the King, to the Assembly and to the people."
At this time the King was still spoken of before the people.
"Yes, dear Master Billet, we hear you, and we are ready to bow to your excellent reasons. Come, let us know where the book is, and, as we are now convinced that you have only the single copy, we will seize that and get away. There it is in a nutshell."
"Well, the book is in the hands of a lad to whom I entrusted it this morning to carry it to a friend's," said Billet.
"What is the name of this honest lad?" queried the man in black coaxingly.
"Ange Pitou; he is a poor orphan whom I housed from charity, and who does not know the nature of the book."
"I thank you, dear Master Billet," said the corporal, throwing the linen into the hole in the wall and closing the lid. "And where may this nice boy be, prithee?"
"I fancy I saw him as I came in, under the arbor by the Spanish climbing beans. Go and take the book away but do not hurt him."
"Hurt? oh, Master, you do not know us to think we would hurt a fly."
They advanced in the indicated direction, where they had the adventure with Pitou already described. Catherine had heard enough in the words about the doctor, the book, and the search-warrant, to save the innocent holder of the treasonable pamphlet.
Since the double errand of the police was fulfilled, the commander of the expedition was only too glad of the excuse to get far away. So he bounded on his men by his voice and example till they ran him into the woods. Then they came to a halt in the bushes. In the chase they were joined by two more policeman who had hidden on the farm with orders not to run up unless called.
"Faith, it is a good job the lad did not have the box instead of the book," said the organizer of the attack, "we would be obliged to take post-horses to catch up with him. Hang me if he is a man at all so much as a deer."
"But you have the prize, eh, Master Wolfstep?" said one of the subordinates.
"Certainly, comrade, for here it is," answered the police agent, to whom the nickname had been given for his sidelong "lope" or wolfish tread and its lightness.
"Then we are entitled to the promised reward, eh?"
"Ay, and here you are," said the captain of the squad, distributing gold pieces among them with no preference for those who had actively prosecuted the search and the others.
"Long live the Chief!" called out the men.
"There is no harm in your cheering the Chief," said Wolfstep: "but it is not he who cashes up this trip. It is some friend of his, lady or gentleman, who wants to keep in the background."
"I wager that he or she wants that little box bad," suggested one of the hirelings.
"Rigoulet, my friend," said the leader, "I have always certified that you are a chap full of keenness; but while we wait for the gift to win its reward, we had better be on the move. That confounded countryman does not look easily cooled down, and when he perceives the casket is missing, he may set his farm boys on our track; and they are poachers capable of keeling us over with a shot as surely as the best Swiss marksmen in his Majesty's forces."
This advice was that of the majority, for the five men kept on along the forest skirts out of sight till they reached the highroad.
This was no useless precaution for Catherine had no sooner seen the party disappear in pursuit of Pitou than, full of confidence in the last one's agility, who would lead them a pretty chase, she called on the farm-men to open the door.
They knew something unusual was going on but not exactly what.
They ran in to set her free and she liberated her father.
Billet seemed in a dream. Instead of rushing out of the room, he walked forth warily, and acted as if not liking to stay in any one place and yet hated to look on the furniture and cupboards disturbed by the posse.
"They have got the book, anyway?" he questioned.
"I believe they took that, dad, but not Pitou, who cut away? If they are sticking to him, they will all be over at Cayelles or Vauciennes by this time."
"Capital! Poor lad, he owes all this harrying to me."
"Oh, father, do not bother about him but look to ourselves. Be easy about Pitou getting out of his scrape. But what a state of disorder! look at this, mother!"
"They are low blackguards," said Mother Billet: "they have not even respected my linen press."
"What, tumbled over the linen?" said Billet, springing towards the cavity which the corporal had carefully closed but into which, opening it, he plunged both arms deeply. "It is not possible!"
"What are you looking for, father?" asked the girl as her father looked about him bewildered.
"Look, look if you can see it anywhere: the casket! that is what the villains were raking for."
"Dr. Gilbert's casket?" inquired Mrs. Billet, who commonly let others do the talking and work in critical times.
"Yes, that most precious casket," responded the farmer thrusting his hands into his mop of hair.
"You frighten me, father," said Catherine.
"Wretch that I am," cried the man, in rage, "and fool never to suspect that. I never thought about the casket. Oh, what will the doctor say? What will he think? That I am a betrayer, a coward, a worthless fellow!"
"Oh, heavens, what was in it, dad?"
"I don't know; but I answered for it to the doctor on my life and I ought to have been killed defending it."
He made so threatening a gesture against himself that the women recoiled in terror.
"My horse, bring me my horse," roared the madman. "I must let the doctor know—he must be apprised."
"I told Pitou to do that."
"Good! no, what's the use?—a man afoot. I must ride to Paris. Did you not read in his letter that he was going there? My horse!"
"And will you leave us in the midst of anguish?"
"I must, my girl, I must," he said, kissing Catherine convulsively: "the doctor said: 'If ever you lose that box, or rather if it is stolen from you, come to warn me the instant you perceive the loss, Billet, wherever I am. Let nothing stop you, not even the life of man.'"
"Lord, what can be in it?"
"I don't know a bit. But I do know that it was placed in my keeping, and that I have let it be snatched away. But here is my nag. I shall learn where the father is by his son at the college."
Kissing his wife and his daughter for the last time, the farmer bestrode his steed and set off towards the city at full gallop.
ON THE ROAD.
Pitou was spurred by the two most powerful emotions in the world, love and fear. Panic bade him take care of himself as he would be arrested and perhaps flogged; love in Catherine's voice had said: "Be off to Paris."
These two stimulants led him to fly rather than run.
Heaven is infallible as well as mighty: how useful were the long legs of Pitou, so ungraceful at a ball, in streaking it over the country, as well as the knotty knees, although his heart, expanded by terror, beat three to a second. My Lord Charny, with his pretty feet and little knees, and symmetrically placed calves, could not have dashed along at this gait.
He had gone four leagues and a half in an hour, as much as is required of a good horse at the trot. He looked behind: nothing on the road; he looked forward; only a couple of women.
Encouraged, he threw himself on the turf by the roadside and reposed. The sweet smell of the lucerne and marjoram did not make him forget Mistress Billet's mild-cured bacon and the pound-and-a-half of bread which Catherine sliced off for him at every meal. All France lacked bread half as good as that, so dear that it originated the oft repeated saying of Duchess Polignac that "the poor hungry people ought to eat cake."
Pitou said that Catherine was the most generous creature in creation and the Billet Farm the most luxurious palace.
He turned a dying eye like the Israelites crossing the Jordan towards the east, where the Billet fleshpots smoked.
Sighing, but starting off anew, he went at a job-pace for a couple of hours which brought him towards Dammartin.
Suddenly his expert ear, reliable as a Sioux Indian's, caught the ring of a horseshoe on the road.
He had hardly concluded that the animal was coming at the gallop than he saw it appear on a hilltop four hundred paces off.
Fear which had for a space abandoned Pitou, seized him afresh, and restored him the use of those long if unshapely legs with which he had made such marvellous good time a couple of hours previously.
Without reflecting, looking behind or trying to hide his fright, Ange cleared the ditch on one side and darted through the woods to Ermenonville. He did not know the place but he spied some tall trees and reasoned that, if they were on the skirts of a forest, he was saved.
This time he had to beat a horse; Pitou's feet had become wings.
He went all the faster as on glancing over his shoulder, he saw the horseman jump the hedge and ditch from the highway.
He had no more doubts that the rider was after him so that he not only doubled his pace but he dreaded to lose anything by looking behind.
But the animal, superior to the biped in running, gained on him, and Pitou heard the rider plainly calling him by name.
Nearly overtaken, still he struggled till the cut of a whip crossed his legs, and a well-known voice thundered:
"Blame you, you idiot—have you made a vow to founder Younker?"
The horse's name put an end to the fugitive's irresolution.
"Oh, I hear Master Billet," he groaned, as he rolled over on his back, exhaustion and the lash having thrown him on the grass.
Assured of the identity he sat up, while the farmer reined in Younker, streaming with white froth.
"Oh, dear master," said Pitou, "how kind of you to ride after me. I swear to you that I should come back to the farm late. I got to the end of the double-louis Miss Catherine gaveme. But since you have overtaken me, here is the gold, for it is your'n, and let us get back."
"A thousand devils," swore the yeoman, "we have a lot to do at the farm, I don't think. Where are the sleuth-hounds?"
"Sleuth hounds?" repeated Pitou, not understanding the nickname for what we call detective police officer's, though it had already entered into the language.
"Those sneaks in black," continued Billet, "if you can understand that better."
"Oh, you bet that I did not amuse myself by waiting till they came up."
"Bravo, dropped them, eh?"
"Flatter myself I did."
"Then, if certain what did you keep on running for?"
"I thought you were their captain who had taken to horse to have me."
"Come, come you are not such a dunderhead as I thought. As the road is clear, make an effort, get up behind me on the crupper and let us hurry into Dammartin. I will change horses at Neighbor Lefranc's, for Younker is done up, so we can push ahead for Paris."
"But I do not see what use I shall be there," remonstrated Pitou.
"But I think the other way. You can serve me there, for you have big fists, and I hold it for a fact that they are going to fall to hitting out at one another in the city."
Far from charmed by this prospect, the lad was wavering when Billet caught hold of him as of a sack of flour and slung him across the horse.
Regaining the road, by dint of spur, cudgel and heel, Younker was sent along at so fair a gait that they were in Dammartin in less than half an hour.
Billet rode in by a lane, not the main road, to Father Lefranc's farm, where he left his man and horse in the yard, to run direct into the kitchen where the master, going out, was buttoning up his leggings.
"Quick, quick, old mate, your best horse," he hailed him before he recovered from his astonishment.
"That's Maggie—the good beast is just harnessed. I was going out on her."
"She'll do; only I give fair warning that I shall break her down most likely."
"What for, I should like to know?"
"Because I must be in Paris this evening," said the farmer, making the masonic sign of "Pressing danger."
"Ride her to death, then," answered Lefranc; "but give me Younker."
"A bargain."
"Have a glass of wine?"
"Two. I have an honest lad with me who is tired with traveling this far. Give him some refreshment."
In ten minutes the gossips had put away a bottle and Pitou had swallowed a two-pound loaf and a hunk of bacon, nearly all fat. While he was eating, the stableman, a good sort of a soul, rubbed him down with a wisp of hay as if he were a favorite horse. Thus feasted and massaged, Pitou swallowed a glass of wine from a third bottle, emptied with so much velocity that the lad was lucky to get his share.
Billet got upon Maggie, and Pitou "forked" himself on, though stiff as a pair of compasses.
The good beast, tickled by the spur, trotted bravely under the double load towards town, without ceasing to flick off the flies with her robust tail, the strong hairs lashing the dust off Pitou's back and stinging his thin calves, from which his stockings had run down.
THE FIRST BLOOD.
Night was thickening as the two travelers reached La Villette, a suburb of Paris. A great flame rose before them. Billet pointed out the ruddy glare.
"They are troops camping out," said Pitou; "Can't you see that, and they have lighted campfires. Here are some, so that there may naturally be more over yonder."
Indeed, on attentively looking on the right, Father Billet saw black detachments marching noiselessly in the shadow of St. Denis Plain, horse and foot. Their weapons glimmered in the pale starry light.
Accustomed to see in the dark from his night roaming in the woods, Pitou pointed out to his master cannon mired to the hubs in the swampy fields.
"Ho, ho," muttered Billet: "something new is going on here. Look at the sparks yonder. Make haste, my lad."
"Yes, it is a house a-fire. See the sparks fly," added the younger man.
Maggie stopped; the rider jumped off upon the pavement and going up to a group of soldiers in blue and yellow uniforms, bivouacking under the roadside trees, asked:
"Comrades, can you tell me what is the matter in Paris?"
The soldiers merely replied with some German oaths.
"What the deuce do they say?" queried Billet of his brother peasant.
"All I can tell is that it is not Latin," replied the youth, trembling greatly.
"I was a fool to apply to theKaiserlicks(Kaiserlich, Imperial Austrian grenadiers)?" muttered Billet, in his curiosity still standing in the middle of the road.
"Bass on mit your vay," said an officer, stepping up; "Und bass bretty tam queeck, doo!"
"Excuse me, captain," said the farmer, "but I want to go into Paris."
"Vat next?"
"As I see you are between me and the turnpike bars, I feared I would not be let go by."
"Yah, you gan by go."
Remounting, Billet indeed got on. But it was only to run in among the Bercheny Hussars, swarming in La Villette. This time, as they were his own countrymen, he got along better.
"Please, what is the news from Paris?" he asked.
"Why, it's your crazy Parisians, who want their Necker, and fire their guns off at us, as if we had anything to do with the matter." So replied a hussar.
"What Necker? have they lost him?" questioned Billet.
"Certainly, the King has turned him out of office."
"That great man turned out?" said the farmer with the stupor of a priest who hears of a sacrilege."
"More than that, he is on the way to Brussels at present."
"Then it is a joke we shall hear some laughing over," cried Billet in a terrible voice, without thinking of the danger he ran in preaching insurrection amid twelve or fifteen thousand royalist sabres.
Remounting Maggie, he drove her with cruel digs of the heel up to the bars. As he advanced he saw the fire more plainly; a long column rose from the spot to the sky. It was the barrier that was burning. A howling and furious mob with women intermixed, yelling and capering as usual more excitedly than the men, fed the flames with pieces of the bars, the clerk's office and the custom-house officers' property.
On the road, Hungarian and German regiments looked on at the devastation, with their muskets grounded, without blinking.
Billet did not let the rampart of flame stop him: but urged Maggie through smoke and fire. She bravely burst through the incandescent barrier; but on the other side was a compact crowd stretching from the outer town to the heart of the city, some singing, some shouting:
"To arms!"
Billet looked what he was, a good farmer coming to town on his business. Perhaps he roared "Make way there!" too roughly, but Pitou tempered it with so polite a "Make way, if you please!" that one appeal corrected the other. Nobody had any interest in staying Billet in attending to his business and they let him go through.
Maggie had recovered her strength from the fire having singed her hide and all this unusual clamor worried her. Billet was obliged to hold her in now, in the fear of crushing the idlers classed before the town gate and the others who were as curiously running from the gates to the bars.
Somehow or other they pushed on, till they reached the boulevard, where they were forced to stop.
A procession was marching from the Bastile to the Royal Furniture Stores, the two stone knots binding the enclosure of Paris to its girth. This broad column followed a funeral barrow on which were placed two busts, one covered with crape, the other with flowers; the one in mourning was Necker's, the Prime Minister and eminently the Treasurer, dismissed but not disgraced; the flower-crowned bust was the Duke of Orleans', who had openly taken the Swiss financier's part.
Billet, asking, learned that this was popular homage to the banker and his defender.
The farmer was born in a country where the Orleans family had been venerated for a century and more. He belonged to the Philosophical sect and consequently regarded Necker not only as a great minister but an apostle of humanity.
There was ample to fire him. He jumped off his horse without clearly knowing what he was about and mingled with the throng, yelling:
"Long live the Duke of Orleans! Necker forever!"
Once a man mixes with a mob his individual liberty disappears. He was the more easily carried on as he was at the head of the party.
As they kept up the shouting, "Long live Necker—no more foreign troops—down with the outlandish cutthroats!" he added his lusty voice to the others.
Any superiority is always appreciated by the masses. The shrill, weak voice of the Parisian, spoilt by wine bibbing or want of proper food, was nowhere beside the countryman's fresh, full and sonorous roar, so that without too much jostling, shoving and knocking about, Billet finally reached the litter.
In another ten minutes, one of the bearers, whose enthusiasm had been too great for his strength, gave up his place to him.
Billet, you will observe, had got on.
Only the propagator of Gilbert's doctrines a day before, he was now one of the instruments in the triumph of Necker and the Duke of Orleans.
But he had hardly arrived at his post than he thought of Pitou and the borrowed horse. What had become of them?
While nearing the litter, Billet looked and, through the flare of the torches accompanying the turn-out, and by the lamps illumining all the house windows, he beheld a kind of walking platform formed of half a dozen men shouting and waving their arms. In the midst it was easy to discern Pitou and his long arms.
He did what he could to defend Maggie, but spite of all the horse was stormed and was carrying all who could clamber on her back and hang on to the harness and her tail. In the enlarging darkness she resembled an elephant loaded with hunters going for the tiger. Her vast neck had three or four fellows established on it, howling: "Three cheers for Orleans and Necker—down with the foreigners!"
To which Pitou answered: "All right, but you will smother Maggie among ye."
The intoxication was general.
For an instant Billet thought of carrying help to his friend and horse but he reflected that he would probably lose the honor of bearing the litter forever if he gave it up; he bethought him also of the bargain made with Lefranc about swapping the horses, and anyhow, if the worst happened, he was rich enough to sacrifice the price of a horse on the altar of his country.
Meanwhile the procession made way: turning to the left it went down Montmarte Street to Victoires Place. Reaching the Palais Royale, a great throng prevented its passing on, a number of men with green leaves stuck in their hats who were halloaing:
"To arms!"
Were these friends or foes? Why green cockades, green being the color of Count Artois, the King's youngest brother?
After a brief parley all was explained.
On hearing of Necker's removal from office, a young man had rushed out of the Foy Coffeehouse, jumped on a table in the Palais Royale Gardens, and flourishing a pistol, shouted:
"To arms!"
All the loungers in the public strolling grounds took up the call.
All the foreign regiments in the French army were gathered round the capital. It looked like an Austrian invasion, as the regimental names grated on French ears. Their utterance explained the fear in the masses. The young man named them and said that the Swiss troops, camped in the Champs Elysées, with four field pieces, were going to march into the city that night, with Prince Lambesq's Dragoons to clear the way. He proposed that the town defender should wear an emblem different from theirs and, plucking a horse-chestnut leaf, stuck it in his hat. All the beholders instantly imitated him so that the three thousand persons stripped the Palais Royale trees in a twinkling.
In the morning the young man's name was unknown but it was celebrated that night; it was Camille Desmoulins.
Men recognized one another in the crowd, shook hands in token of brotherhood and all joined in with the procession.
At Richelieu Street corner Billet looked back and saw the disappearance of Maggie; the increase of curiosity during the halt was such that more had been added to the poor animal's burden and she had sunk under the surcharge.
The farmer sighed. Then collecting his powers, he called out to Pitou three times like the ancient Romans at the funeral of their king; he fancied a voice made reply out of the bowels of the earth but it was drowned in the confused uproar, ascending to heaven partly cheers and partly threatening.
Still the train proceeded. All the stores were closed; but all windows were open, and thence fell encouragement on the marchers farther to frenzy them.
At Vendome Square, an unforeseen obstacle checked the march.
Like the logs rolling in a freshet which strike up against the piles of a bridge and rebound, the leaders recoiled from a detachment of a Royal German Regiment. These were dragoons, who, seeing the mob surge into the square from St. Honore Street, relaxed the reins of their chargers, impatient at having been curbed since five o'clock, and they dashed on the people at full speed.