The bearers of the litter received the first shock, and were knocked down when it was overthrown. A Savoyard, beforeBillet, was the first to rise. He picked up the effigy of Prince Orleans, and fixing it on the top of his walking stick, waved it above his head, crying: "Long live the Duke of Orleans!" whom he had never seen, and "Hurrah for Necker!" whom he did not know from Adam.
Billet was going to do the same with Necker's bust, but he was forestalled. A young dandy in elegant attire had been watching it, the easier for him than Billet as he was not burdened with the barrow poles, and he sprang for it the moment it reached the ground.
Up it went on the point of a pike, and, set close to the other, served as rallying-point for the scattered processionists.
Suddenly a flash lit up the square. At the same instant bang went the report, and the bullets whistled. Something heavy struck Billet in the forehead so that he fell, believing that he was killed. But as he did not lose his senses, and felt no hurt except pain in the head, he understood that at the worst he was merely wounded. He slapped his hand to his brow and perceived it was but a bump there, though his palm was smeared with blood.
The well-dressed stripling in front of the farmer had been shot in the breast; it was he who was slain and his blood that had splashed Billet. The shock the latter felt was from Necker's bust, falling from want of a holder, on the farmer's head.
He uttered a shout, half rage, half horror.
He sprang aloof from the youth, writhing in the death-gasp. Those around fell back in like manner, and the yell which he gave, repeated by the multitude, was prolonged in funeral echoes to the last groups in St. Honore Street.
This shout was a new proof of revolt. A second volley was heard: and deep gaps in the throng showed where the projectiles had passed.
What indignation inspired in Billet, and what he did in the gush of enthusiasm, was to pick up the blood-spattered bust, wave it over his head, and cheer with his fine manly voice in protest at the risk of being killed like the patriotic fop dead at his feet.
But instantly a large and vigorous hand came down on the farmer's shoulder and so pressed him that he had to bow to the weight. He tried to wrest himself from the grasp, but another fist, quite as strong and heavy, fell on his other shoulder. He turned, growling, to learn what kind of antagonist was this.
"Pitou?" he cried.
"I am your man—but stop a little and you will see why."
Redoubling his efforts he brought the resisting man to his knees and flat on his face. Scarcely was this done than a second volley thundered. The Savoyard bearing the Orleans bust came down in his turn, hit by a ball in the thigh.
Then they heard iron on the paving stones—the dragoons charged for the second time. One horse, furious and shaking his mane like the steed in the Apocalypse, jumped over the unhappy Savoyard, who felt the chill of a lance piercing his chest as he fell on Billet and Pitou.
The whirlwind rushed to the end of the street, where it engulfed itself in terror and death! Nothing but corpses strewed the ground. All fled by the adjacent streets. The windows banged to. A lugubrious silence succeeded the cheers and the roars of rage.
For an instant Billet waited, held by the prudent peasant; then, feeling that the danger went farther away, he rose on one knee while the other, like the hare in her form, pricked up his ear only without raising his head.
"I believe you are right, Master," said the young man; "we have arrived while the soup is hot."
"Lend me a hand."
"To help you out of this?"
"No: the young exquisite is dead, but the Savoyard is only in a swoon, I reckon. Help me get him on my back. We cannot leave so plucky a fellow here to be butchered by these cursed troopers."
Billet used language going straight to Pitou's heart; he had no answer but to obey. He took up the warm and bleeding body and loaded it like a bag of meal on to the robust farmer's back. Seeing St. Honore Street looked clear and deserted, he took that road to the Palais Royale with his man.
PITOU DISCOVERS HE IS BRAVE.
The street appeared void and lonesome to Billet and his friend because the cavalry in chase of the Hyers, had gone through the market and scattered after them in the side streets; but as the pair got nearer the Palais Royale, calling out in a hoarse voice by instinct "Revenge!" men began to appear in doorways, up cellars, out of alleys, from the carriage gateways, mute and frightened at the first, but, when assured that the horse-soldiers had gone on, forming the procession anew, they repeated in a low tone, but soon in a loud one: "Revenge!"
Pitou marched behind the farmer, carrying the Savoyard's cap.
Thus the mournful and ghastly cortege arrived on Palais Royale Place, where a concourse, drunk with wrath, were holding council and soliciting the French troops to help them against the foreign ones.
"What are these men in uniform?" inquired Billet, in front of a company, standing under arms, to bar the road from the Palace main doors to Chartres Street.
"The French Guards," answered several voices.
"Oh," said the countryman, going nearer and showing the body of the Savoyard which was lifeless now: "are you Frenchmen and let us be murdered by foreigners?"
The guardsmen shrank back a step involuntarily.
"Dead?" uttered several.
"Dead—murdered, along with lots more by the Royal German dragoons. Did you not hear the charging cry, the shots, the sword-slashes and the shrieks of the defenseless?"
"Yes," shouted two or three hundred voices: "the people were cut down on Vendome Square."
"And so are you the people," shouted Billet to the soldiers: "It is cowardice of you to let your brothers be hacked to pieces."
"Cowardice?" muttered some of the men in the ranks, threateningly.
"Yes, I said Cowardice, and I say it again. Look here," Billet went on, taking three steps towards the point where the protest had risen, "perhaps you will shoot me down to prove that you are not cowards?"
"That is all very good," said a soldier; "you are a honest, blunt fellow, my friend, but you are citizens and you do not understand that soldiers are bound by orders."
"Do you mean to say?" said Billet, "that if you receive orders to fire on us, unarmed men, that you, the successors of the Guards who, at Fontenoy, bade the English shoot first,—would do that?"
"I wager I would not," said the soldier.
"Nor I, nor I," echoed several of his comrades.
"Then stop the others firing on us," continued Billet: "To let the Royal Germans cut our throats is tantamount to doing it yourselves."
"The dragoons, here come the dragoons!" yelled many at the same time as the gathering began to retire over the square to get away up Richelieu Street.
At a distance but approaching, they heard the clatter of heavy cavalry.
"To arms, to arms," cried the runaways.
"Plague on you," said Billet, throwing down the dead Savoyard, "Lend us your guns if you will not use them."
"Hold on till you see whether we won't use them," said the soldier whom Billet had addressed, as he snatched back the musket which the farmer had torn from his grip. "Bite your cartridges, boys—and make the Austrians bite the dust if they interfere with these good fellows."
"Ay, they shall see," said the soldiers, carrying their hands from the cartridge-boxes to their mouths.
"Thunder," muttered Billet, stamping his foot: "why did I not bring my old duck-gun along? But one of these pesky Austrians may be laid out and I can get his carbine."
"In the meantime," said a voice, "taking this gun—it is ready loaded."
A stranger slipped a handsome fowling-piece into Billet's hands.
At this very instant, the dragoons rushed into the square, upsetting everybody they ran against.
The officer commanding the French Guards came out three steps to the front.
"Halloa, you gentlemen of the heavy dragoons," he called out. "Halt, please."
Whether the cavalry did not hear him, or did not want to hear him, or, again, were carried on by the impetus of a charge too violent to check, the Germans wheeled by a half-turn to the right and trampled down an old man and a woman who disappeared under the hoofs.
"Fire," roared Billet, "why don't you fire?"
He was near the officer and the order might have been taken as coming from him. Anyway, the French Guards carried their muskets to the shoulder, and delivered a volley which stopped the dragoons short.
"Here, gentlemen of the Guards," said a German officer, coming before the squadron thrown into disorder, "do you know you are firing on us?"
"Yes, by heaven we know it, and you shall know it, too." So Billet retorted, taking aim at the speaker and dropping him with the shot.
Thereupon the reserve rank of the Guards made a discharge and the Germans, seeing that they had trained soldiery to deal with and not citizens who broke and fled at the first shot, pulled round and made off for Vendome Square in the midst of a formidable outburst of hoots and cheers of triumph so that some horses broke loose and smashed their heads against the store shutters.
"Hurrah for the French Guards!" shouted the multitude.
"Hurrah for the Guards of the Country!" said Billet.
"Thank you," said a soldier, "we are given the right name and christened with fire."
"I have been under fire, too," said Pitou, "and it is not as dreadful as I imagined it."
"Now, who owns this gun?" queried Billet, examining the rifle which was a costly one.
"My master," answered the man who had lent him it, and who wore the Orleans livery. "He thinks you use it too handsomely to have to return it."
"Where is your master?" demanded the farmer.
The servant pointed to a half-open blind behind which the prince was watching what happened.
"Is he with us, then?"
"With heart and soul for the people," replied the domestic.
"In that case, three cheers again for the Duke of Orleans!" said the farmer. "Friends the Duke of Orleans is on our side—three cheers for the duke!"
He pointed upwards and the prince showed himself for an instant while he bowed three times to the shouting; short as was the appearance it lifted enthusiasm to the utmost.
"Break open the gunsmith's," shouted a voice in the turbulence.
"Let us go to the Invalid Soldiers Hospital," added some old veterans. "General Sombreuil has twenty thousand muskets there."
"And to the City Hall!" exclaimed others: "Flesselles, Provost of the Traders, has the keys for the town guards' armory and he must give them up."
"To the Hall!" bellowed a fraction of the assemblage.
All flowed away in one or the other of the three directions called out.
During this time the dragoons had rallied around Baron Bezenval and Prince Lambesq on Louis XV. Square.
Billet and Pitou were unaware of this as they followed none of the parties and were left pretty well alone on Palais Royale Square.
"Well, where are we off to, dear Master Billet?" inquired Ange Pitou.
"I should like to follow the crowd," replied the other: "not to the gunmakers', as I have a first-rate gun, but to the City Hall or the military Asylum. Still, as we came to town not to fight, but to learn Doctor Gilbert's address. I think we ought to go to Louis-the-Great's College, where his sonis. When I shall have got through with the doctor, we can jump back into the chafing-dish."
His eyes flashed lightnings.
"This course seems logical to me," observed the young peasant.
"So take some weapon, gun or sword, from those beer drinkers lying there," said the farmer, pointing to half-a-dozen dragoons on the pave, "and let us go to the college."
"But these weapons are not mine, but the King's," objected Pitou.
"They are the people's," corrected Billet, whereupon the other who knew the speaker was incapable of wronging a man to the extent of a mustard-seed, went up to the nearest corpse with multiplied caution, and making sure he was lifeless, he took his musket, cartridge-box and sabre.
He wanted to take his hamlet but had his doubts about the defensive armor being "confisticatable" like the offensive arms; while deliberating he listened towards Vendome Square.
"It seems to me that the Royal Germans are coming back again," he said.
Indeed a troop of horse was heard coming at the walking gait.
"Quick, quick, they are returning," said Pitou.
"Billet looked around to see what means of resistance were offered, but the place was almost deserted.
"Let us be off," said he.
He went down Chartres Street, followed by Pitou who dragged the sabre after him by the scabbard-straps, not knowing how it ought to be hooked up till Billet showed him.
"You looked like a traveling-tinker," he said.
On Louis XV. Square they met the column, started off to go over the river to the Invalides but stopped short. The bridges and the Champs Elysées were blocked.
"Try the Tuileries Garden bridge," suggested Billet.
It was quite a simple proposition; the mob accepted it and followed Billet: but swords shining half way to the Gardens indicated that cavalry intercepted the march to that bridge.
"These confounded dragoons are everywhere," grumbled the farmer.
"I believe we are caught," said his friend.
"Nonsense, five or six thousand men are to be caught, and we are that strong."
The dragoons came forward, slowly, but it was an advance.
"The Royale Street is left us," said Billet; "come this way, Ange."
But a line of soldiers shut this street up.
"It looks as though you were right," said the countryman.
"Alas!" sighed Ange, who had followed him like his shadow.
All his regret at not being wrong was shown in the single word by the tone it was spoken in.
By its clamor and motion the mob showed that it was no less sensible than he about the quandary all were in.
Indeed, by a skillful manœuvre, Prince Lambesq had encircled the rioters in a bow of iron, the cord being represented by the Tuileries garden-wall, hard to climb over, and the drawbridge railing, almost impossible to force. Billet judged that the position was bad. Still, being a cool fellow, full of resources when the emergency rose, he looked round him. Seeing a pile of lumber by the riverside, he said:
"I have a notion, Pitou; come along."
Billet went up to a beam and took up one end, making a nod to his followers as much as to say, "Take your end of it."
Pitou was bent on helping his leader without questioning: he had such trust in him that he would have gone down into sheol without grumbling on the length of the road or how the heat increased as they got on. The pair returned to the waterside walk, carrying a burden which half a dozen ordinary men would have sunk under.
Strength is always an object of admiration to the crowd. Although very closely packed, way was made for the peasants. Catching an idea of the work ahead, some men walked before the joist-carriers, calling out: "Clear the way, there!"
"I say, Father Billet, are we to make a long job of this?" asked Pitou when they had gone some thirty strides.
"Up to that gateway."
"I can go it," replied the young man laconically, as he saw it was about as much farther and the crowd, having an inkling of the plan, cheered them.
Besides, some helped to carry and the beam went on much more rapidly. In five minutes they stood before the gates.
"Now, then, heave and all together," said Billet.
"I understand," said Pitou. "This is what the ancient Romans called a battering-ram."
The piece of timber set going, was banged with a terrible blow against the gate lock.
The military on guard within the gardens, ran to check this inroad. But at the third swing the gates yielded, and the multitude flowed into the dark gap.
By the movement, Prince Lambesq perceived that the netted rioters had found an outlet. Rage mastered him to see his prisoners escape. He started his horse forward to learn what was the matter, when his men, thinking he was leading a charge, followed him closely. The horses were heated with their recent work, and could not be restrained. Thirsting for retaliation for their check on Palais Royale Square, the men did not probably try hard to restrain them.
The prince, seeing that it was impossible to stop the movement, let himself be carried away, and a shriek of frightful intensity from women and children rose to heaven as a claim for its vengeance.
A dreadful scene took place in the gloom. The victims went mad with pain while they who charged were mad with fury.
A kind of defense was organized and chairs were flung at the cavalry. Struck on the head, Prince Lambesq replied with a sword cut, without thinking that he was striking the innocent for the guilty. An old man was sent to the ground. Billet saw this and he uttered a shout. At the same time he took aim with his rifle and the prince would have been killed but for his horse having reared at the very instant. It received the bullet in the neck and died instantly.
The fallen Prince was believed slain, and the dragoons rushed into the Tuileries Gardens, firing their pistols at the fugitives.
But they, having plenty of room, dodged behind the trees.
Billet tranquilly reloaded his fowling-piece.
"You are right, Pitou, we have come to town on time," he said.
"And I think I am becoming brave," remarked Pitou, standingthe pistol fire of a horseman and spilling him out of the saddle with his musketoon; "it is not so hard as I thought."
"That's so," replied the other, "but useless bravery is bravado. Come along, and don't let your sword trip you up."
"Wait for me, Father Billet, for I do not know Paris like you do; and without you, I shall go astray."
"Come, come," said the farmer, leading him along the river terrace until they had distanced the troops advancing by the quays as rapidly as they could to help the Lambesq Dragoons, if needed.
At the end of the terrace, he sat on the parapet and jumped down on the embankment running along the river. Pitou did the same.
"TO THE BASTILE!"
Once on the river edge, the two countrymen, spying arms glitter on the Tuileries Bridge, in all probability, not in friendly hands, lay down in the grass beneath the trees, and held a council.
The question was, as laid down by the elder, whether they ought to stay where they were, in comparative safety, or return into the action. He waited for Pitou's opinion.
Pitou had grown in the farmer's estimation, from the learning he had shown down in the country and the bravery he showed this evening. Pitou instinctively felt this, but he was naturally so humble that he was only the more grateful to his friend.
"Master," he said, "it is clear that you are braver and I less of a coward than was supposed by ourselves. Horace the poet, a very different character from you, flung down his weapons and took to his heels at the first conflict he was in. This proves that I am more courageous than Horace, with my musket, cartridge-box and sword to show for it. My conclusion is that the bravest man in the world may be killed bya bullet. Ergo, as your design in quitting the farm was to come to Paris on an important errand——"
"By all that is blue, the casket!"
"You have hit it; and for nothing else."
"Then, if you are killed, the business will not come off."
"Quite so. When we shall have seen the doctor, we will return to politics as a sacred duty."
"Come on then, to the college where is Sebastian Gilbert," said Billet, rising.
"Let us go," added Pitou, rising but reluctantly so soft was the grass. Besides good Pitou was sleepy.
"If anything happens me, you must know what to say to Dr. Gilbert in my stead. But be mute."
Ange was not saying anything, for he was dozing.
"If I should be mortally wounded you must go to the doctor and say—Bless me, the boy's asleep——"
Indeed, Pitou was snoring where he had sunk down again.
"After all, the college will be shut at this hour," thought Billet; "we had better take a rest."
Dawn appeared when they had slept three hours; but the day did not bring any change in the warlike aspect of Paris.
Only, there were no soldiers to be seen. The populace were everywhere. They were armed with quickly made pikes, guns of which most knew not the use, and old time weapons of which the bearers admired the ornamentation. After the military had been withdrawn they had pillaged the Royal Storage Magazines. Towards the City Hall a crowd rolled a couple of small cannon. At the Cathedral and other places the general alarm was rung on the big bells. Out from between the flagstones, so to say, oozed the lowest of the low, legions of men and women, if human they were, pale, haggard, and ill-clad, who had been yelling "Bread!" the night before, but howled for "Weapons!" now.
Nothing was more sinister than these spectres who had been stealing into the capital from all the country round during the last few months. They slipped silently through the bars and installed themselves in the town like ghouls in a cemetery.
On this day all France, represented in the capital by these starvelings, called out to the King: "Make us free!" while howling to heaven: "Feed us."
Meanwhile Billet and his pupil were proceeding to the college. On the way they saw the barricades growing up, with even children lending a hand and the richest like the poorest contributing some object that would build the wall. Among the crowds Billet recognized one or two French Guardsmen by their uniform, who were drilling squads and teaching the use of firearms, with the women and boys looking on.
The college was insurrection also. The boys had driven out the masters and were attacking the gates to get out with threats which terrified the tearful principal.
"Who of you is Sebastian Gilbert?" demanded Billet in his stentor's voice after regarding the intestine war.
"I am he," replied a boy of fifteen, of almost girlish beauty, who was helping three or four schoolfellows to bring up a ladder with which to scale the wall as they could not force the lock. "What do you want of me?"
"Are you going to take him away?" asked the head teacher, alarmed by the sight of two armed men one of whom, the speaker, was covered with blood.
The boy was also looking at them without recognizing his foster-brother who had grown out of all reason since he left him and was farther disguised by the martial harness.
"Take away Dr. Gilbert's son into that infernal rumpus?" said the yeoman: "Expose him to some ugly blow? oh, dear, no."
"You see, you mad fellow, Sebastian, that your friends do not approve of your attempt," said the principal. "For these gentlemen do appear to be your friends. Aid me, gentlemen, and ye, my children, obey me, when I command, and entreat."
"Keep my mates if you will," replied young Gilbert with a firmness marvellous at his age: "but I must go forth. I am not in the position of these; my father has been arrested and is imprisoned—he is in the tyrant's power."
"Yes, yes," shouted the boys; "Sebastian is right; they have locked up his father, and as the people are opening the prisons, they must set his father free."
"Eh? have they arrested Dr. Gilbert?" roared the farmer, shaking the gates: "Death of my life! little Catherine was right."
"Yes, they have taken away my father," continued little Gilbert, "and that is why I want to get a gun and fight till I deliver my father."
This plan was hailed by a hundred shrill voices: "Yes, give us weapons—let us fight."
At this, the mob outside the gates ran at them to give the scholars passage. The principal threw himself on his knees to supplicate both parties, crying:
"Friends, friends, spare tender youth!"
"Spare them? of course we will," said an old soldier: "they will be just the chaps to form a cadet corps with."
"But they are a sacred deposit entrusted to me by their parents," continued the head teacher; "I owe my life to them, so, in heaven's name, do not take away my lambs."
Hooting from both sides of the wall killed his doleful entreaties.
Billet stepped forward, and interposed between the soldiers and the mob and the schoolboys.
"The old gentleman is right," he said. "The youngsters are a sacred trust. Let men go and fight and get knocked over, that is their duty, but children are the seed for the future."
A disapproving murmur was heard.
"Who grumbles?" demanded the farmer; "I am sure it is not a father. Now, I am a father; I have had two men killed in my arms this last night; it is their blood on my breast—see!"
He showed the stains to the assemblage with a grand gesture electrifying all.
"Yesterday, I was fighting at the Palais Royale and in the Tuileries Garden," resumed the farmer; "and this lad fought by my side; but then he has no father or mother: and besides he is almost a man grown."
Pitou looked proud.
"I shall be fighting again to-day; but I do not want anybody to say the Parisians could not thrash the enemy until they brought the children to help them."
"The man's right," chorussed the soldiers and women. "No children in the fighting. Keep them in."
"Oh, thank you, sir," said the head master to Billet, trying to shake hands with him through the bars.
"And above all take good care of Gilbert," said the latter.
"Keep me in? I tell you they shall not," cried the boy, livid with anger as he struggled in the grasp of the school servants.
"Let me go in, and I undertake to quiet him."
The crowd divided and let the farmer and Pitou go into the schoolyard. Already three or four French Guards and a dozen other soldiers instinctively stood sentry at the gates and prevented the young insurgents from bolting out.
Billet went straight up to Sebastian and taking his fine white hands in his large, horny ones, said:
"Sebastian, do you not know Farmer Billet, who farms your father's own land?"
"Yes, sir, I know you now."
"And this lad with me?"
"It must be Ange Pitou."
Pitou threw himself on the other's neck, blubbering with joy.
"If they have taken away your father, I will bring him back. I, and the rest of us. Why not? yesterday we had a turn-up with the Austrians and we saw the flat of their backs."
"In token of which here is a cartridge-box one of them has no farther use for," added Ange.
"Will we not liberate his father?" cried Billet to the mob, who shouted an assent.
"But my father is in the Bastile," said Sebastian, shaking his head in melancholy. "None can take the Bastile." "What were you going to do then, had you got out?"
"I should have gone under the Bastile walls and when my father was out walking on the ramparts, where they tell me the prisoners come for an airing, I should have shown myself to him."
"But if the sentinels shot you when they caught you making signs to a prisoner?"
"I should have died under my father's eyes."
"Death of all the devils, you are a bad boy. To want to get killed under your father's eyes! To make him die of grief in his cell when he has nobody but you to live for, and one he loves so well. Plainly you have no good heart, Sebastian."
"A bad heart," whimpered Pitou as Billet repulsed the boy.
While the boy was musing sadly, the farmer admired the noble face, white and pearly; the fiery eye, fine and ironical mouth, eagle nose and vigorous chin, revealing nobility of race and of spirit.
"You say your father has been put in the Bastile? why?" he inquired.
"Because he is a friend of Washington and Lafayette; has fought with the sword for the Independence of America; and with the pen for France; is known in the Two Worlds as a hater of tyranny: because he has cursed this Bastile where others were suffering—and now he is there himself."
"How long since?"
"He was arrested the moment he landed at Havre; at least at Lillebonne, for he wrote me a letter from the port."
"Don't be cross, my boy: but let me have the points. I swear to deliver your father from the Bastile or leave my bones at the foot of its walls."
Sebastian saw that the former spoke from the bottom of his heart and he replied:
"He had time at Lillebonne to scribble these words in pencil in a book:
"'Sebastian: I am taken to the Bastile. Patience, Hope and Labor. 7th July, 1789. P. S.—I am arrested for Liberty's cause. I have a son at Louis-the-Great College, Paris. The finder of this book is begged to bear this note on to my son Sebastian Gilbert, in the name of humanity.'"
"'Sebastian: I am taken to the Bastile. Patience, Hope and Labor. 7th July, 1789. P. S.—I am arrested for Liberty's cause. I have a son at Louis-the-Great College, Paris. The finder of this book is begged to bear this note on to my son Sebastian Gilbert, in the name of humanity.'"
"And the book?" inquired Billet, breathless with emotion.
"He put a gold piece in the book, tied a string round it, and threw it out of the window. The Parish Priest found it and picked out a sturdy fellow among his flock, to whom he said:
"'Leave twelve francs with your family who are without bread. With the other twelve go carry this book to Paris, toa poor boy whose father has been taken away from him because he loves the people too well.' The young man got in yesterday at noon: he handed me the book and thus I knew of the arrest."
"Good, this makes me friends with the priests again!" exclaimed Billet. "A pity they are not all built on this pattern. What about the peasant?"
"He went back last evening, hoping to carry his family the five francs he had saved on the journey."
"How handsome of him," said Billet. "Oh, the people are good for something, boy."
"Now, you know all: you promised if I told you, to restore me my father."
"I said I should or get killed. Now show me that book."
The boy drew from his pocket a copy of Rousseau's "Social Contract."
Billet kissed where the doctor's hand had traced the appeal.
"Now, be calm," he said: "I am going to fetch your father from the Bastile."
"Madman," said the principal, grasping his hands; "how will you get at a prisoner of state?"
"By taking the Bastile," replied the farmer.
Some guardsmen laughed and the merriment became general.
"Hold on," said Billet, casting his blazing glance around him. "What is this Bogey's Castle, anyhow?"
"Only stones," said a soldier.
"And iron," said another.
"And fire," concluded a third. "Mind you do not burn your fingers, my hero."
"Yes, he'll get burnt," cried the crowd.
"What," roared the peasant, "have you got no pickaxes, you Parisians, that you are afraid of stone walls? no bullets for you to shrink from steel? no powder when they fire on you? You must be cowards, then, dastards; machines fit for slavery. A thousand demons! Is there no man with a heart who will come with me and Pitou to have a go at this Bastile of the King? I am Billet, farmer in the Ile-de-France section, and I am going to knock at that door. Come on!"
Billet had risen to the summit of sublime audacity. The enflamed and quivering multitude around him shouted:
"Down with the Bastile!"
Sebastian wished to cling to Billet, but he gently put him aside.
"Your father bade you hope and have patience while you worked. Well, we are going to work, too—only the other name for our work is slaying and destroying."
The youth did not say a word, but hiding his face in his hands he went off into spasms which compelled them to take him into the sick ward.
"On, to the Bastile!" called out Billet.
"To the Bastile," echoed Pitou.
"To the Bastile," thundered three thousand persons, a cry which was to become that of the entire population of Paris.
BLOWING HOT AND COLD.
It was on the morning of the fourteenth of July that Billet opened oratorical fire against the monument which had for five centuries weighed like an incubus on the breast of France—a rock of Sisyphus. Less confident than the Titan in her power, France had never thought to throw it off.
The Bastile was the seal of feudalism on the brow of Paris.
The King was accounted too good to order people to be beheaded; but he sent people into the Bastile. Once there a man was forgotten, isolated, sequestered, buried alive, annihilated. He stayed there till the monarch remembered him, and kings have so many new matters to think of that they often forget the old ones.
There were twenty other Bastiles in France, the name being general for prison, so that, to this day, the tramp on the dusty road speaks of the "Steel," without perhaps knowing that the title of ignominy referred to the great French Statesprison.
The fortress by the St. Antoine Gate wastheBastile pre-eminently. It was alone worth all the others.
Some of the prisoners were perhaps great criminals; but others like Latude had done nothing to merit thirty years' captivity.
He had fallen in love with Lady Pompadour, the King's mistress, and wrote her a note which caused his imprisonment for a life-time.
It was not for nothing that the Bastile was hated by the people.
It was hated like a living thing—a monster like the dragoons who defy a people till a champion rises, like Billet, to show them how to attack it.
Hence one may comprehend Sebastian's hopeless grief at his father being incarcerated in the Bastile.
Hence Billet's belief that he would never be liberated but by being plucked forth.
Hence the popular transport may be felt when the shout rose of "Down with the Bastile!"
But it was, as the soldiers said, an insane project to think of capturing the King's Prison-Castle.
The Bastile had a garrison, artillery and provisions. The walls were fifteen feet thick at the top and forty at the base.
The governor was Count Launay, who had thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder in the magazine, and had promised in case of annoyance to blow up the fort and with it all that part of Paris.
Nevertheless Billet marched forward, but he did not have to do any shouting.
Liking his martial mien, the multitude felt he was one of their kind, and commenting on his words and bearing, it followed him, increasing like the flowing tide.
When Billet came out on St. Michel's quay, he had behind him more than three thousand men, armed with hatchets, cutlasses, pikes and guns.
All were shouting: "On, to the Bastile!"
Billet was making the reflections which his knowledge of the stronghold warranted, and the vapor of his enthusiasm faded gradually.
He saw clearly that the enterprise was sublime though insane.
That was easy to understand by the awed expression of those to whom he had first broached the project of taking the Bastile.
But he was only the more fortified in his resolve. But he understood that he had to answer to these mothers and fathers, girls and children, for the lives of those whom he was leading, and that he was bound to take all the precautions possible.
He commenced by collecting his followers at the City Hall.
He appointed lieutenants to control the flock—of wolves.
"Let me see," said Billet to himself; "there is more than one power in France. There are two—the head of the chief city, for one, and may be another yet."
He entered the City Hall, asking for the Chief civic magistrate. It was the Traders' Provost Flesselles.
"My lord de Flesselles," he repeated; "a noble and no friend of the people?"
"Oh, no, he is a sensible man."
Billet went up the stairs into the ante-chamber where he met an usher, who came up to him to see what he wanted.
"Speech with Lord Flesselles," replied Billet.
"Can't sir," answered the man. "He is completing the list for the militia which the City is to raise."
"Capital!" rejoined Billet; "I am also organizing a militia, and as I have three thousand men ready under arms, I am worth a Flesselles who is only going to get his together. Let me speak with him, and right off. If you like, just look out of the window at my soldiers."
One rapid glance on the waterside was enough for the servant who hastened to notify the Traders' Provost, to whom, as emphasis to his message, he pointed out the army.
This sight inspired respect in the provost for the man commanding them: he left the council and came into the ante-room. Perceiving Billet, he smiled at guessing the kind of man he must be.
"Were you wanting me?" he challenged.
"If you are Provost Flesselles," responded Billet.
"Yes; how can I serve you? please, be quick, for I am very busy."
"How many powers do you acknowledge in France, my Lord Provost?" queried Billet.
"Hem, that is just how one looks at it," replied the politician. "If you ask Bailly the Mayor he will say 'The National Assembly.' If Lord Dreux, he would say only one—'the King.'"
"And which is yours between the two?"
"Neither one, but the nation, at present," rejoined Flesselles, playing with his ruffles.
"Ah, the nation," repeated the farmer.
"Those gentlemen waiting below there with the wood-choppers and carving-knives; the nation, all the world to me."
"You may be right and there was no mistake in their warranting you to me as a knowing man."
"Which of the three powers do you belong to?" inquired the trimmer, bowing.
"Faith, when there is a question for the Grand Spirit and the angels, I apply to the Fountain—head."
"You mean the King? What for?"
"To ask for the release of Dr. Gilbert who is in the Bastile."
"He is one of those pamhleteers I believe," said the aristocratic one saucily.
"A lover of mankind."
"That is all one. My dear M. Billet, I believe you have little chances of obtaining such a favor from the King. If he put the doctor in his Bastile, he had reasons for it."
"All right," returned Billet; "he shall offer his reasons and I will match them with mine?"
"My dear sir, the King is so busy that he will not receive you."
"Oh, if he will not let me in, I shall walk in without his leave or licence."
"But you will find Lord Dreux Breze at the door who will put you away from it. It is true he failed to do that with the National Assembly in a body; but that failure will only themore put him on his mettle and he will take his revenge out of you."
"Then I will apply to the National Assembly."
"The way to Versailles is cut off."
"I will have my three thousand men with me.
"Have a care, my dear fellow, for you will meet on the road four or five thousand Swiss soldiers and two or three thousand Austrians who will make mincemeat of your forces; in a twinkling you will be swallowed."
"What the deuse am I to do, then?"
"Do what you like: but rid me of your three thousand tatterdemalions who are cracking the flagstones with thumps of their halberds, and smoking. In the vaults are seven or eight thousand pounds of gunpowder and a spark may send us all flying to the Eternal Throne."
"In that case, turning this over in my mind," said the farmer, "I will not trouble the King or the Assembly, but call in the nation and take the Bastile myself."
"With what?"
"With the powder you have kindly told me is stored in your cellar."
"You don't tell me that?" sneered Flesselles.
"That is the very thing. The cellar keys, my lord."
"Hello, you are joking," faltered the gentleman.
"I never joke," returned Billet, grasping the provost by the collar with both hands. "Let me have the keys or I shall sling you out to my tatterdemalions who know how to pick pockets."
Flesselles turned pale as death. His lips and teeth closed so convulsively but his voice did not alter in tone from the ironical one adopted.
"To tell you the truth, sir, you do me assistance in ridding me of this combustible," he said; "So I will hand you over the keys as you desire. Only do not forget that I am your first magistrate, and that if you are so unfortunate as to handle me roughly before others as you have done, catching me privately in an unguarded time, you will be hanged within the hour by the city guards. Do you persist in removing this powder?"
"I do, and will divide it out myself right away."
"Let us have this clear, then: I have business here for an other quarter of an hour and if it makes no difference to you, I should prefer the distribution to go on during my absence. It has been foretold me that I should die of a violent death, but I own to having a deep repugnance to being blown into the air."
"You shall have the time but do me a favor in return. Come to this window, that I may make you popular."
"Much obliged: in what manner?"
"You shall see. Friends," he called out, as the two stood at the window, "you want to take the Bastile?"
"Ay, ay," replied the thousands of voices.
"But we want powder? now, here is the provost who gives us all there is in the City Hall cellars. Thank him, boys!"
"Long live the provost—Flesselles forever!" roared the mob.
"Now, my lord; there is no need for me to collar you before the crowd or when alone," said Billet: "for if you do not give the powder, the people—or the nation as you call it—will tear you to pieces."
"Here are the keys: your way of asking for anything allows no refusing."
"This encourages me," said Billet, who was meditating.
"Hang it all, have you more to ask?"
"Yes; if you know Governor Launay."
"Of the Bastile? he is a friend of mine."
"In that case, you cannot wish evil to befall him. To prevent that, ask him to give up the prison to me or at least the prisoner Gilbert."
"You cannot hope that I have any such influence?"
"That is my lookout—all I want is an introduction to him."
"My dear M. Billet, I must warn you that if you enter the Bastile, it will be alone, and it is likely that you will never come out again. Still I will give you a passport into the Bastile, on one condition, that you do not ask me another for the moon. I have no acquaintances lunatics."
"Flesselles," shrilled a harsh voice behind the speaker, "if you continue to wear two faces—one laughing with the aristocrats and the other smiling on the people, you willbe signing your own passport in a day or two to the other world whence none return."
"Who speak thus?" cried the provost, turning to the ill-favored man who interrupted.
"I, Marat."
"The surgeon Marat, the philosopher," said Billet.
"Yes, the same Marat," continued Flesselles; "who as a medical man ought to attend to the insane; he will have his hands full in France at this moment."
"Provost Flesselles," replied the sombre surgeon, "this honest citizen asks a passport to Governor Launay. I would point out that you are not only keeping him waiting but three thousand other honest citizens."
"Very well; he shall have it."
Going to a table, he passed his hand over his forehead before writing with the other a few rapid lines in ink.
"Here is your introduction," he said, presenting it to the countryman.
"I do not know how to read," said Billet.
"Give it to me and I will do so," said Marat; and he saw that the pass was couched in these words:
"Governor: We, Provost of Traders of Paris, send you M. Billet to confer on the welfare of the city.
14th July, 1789.
Flesselles.
"All right, let me have it," said Billet.
"Oh, you think it good enough?" sneered Marat; "Wait for the provost to add a postscript, which will improve it."
He went over to the provost, who was leaning one closed hand on the table and regarding with a scornful air not only the two men who were the jaws of a vice which enclosed him, but a third, whose breeches were torn, standing before the doorway, with a musketoon in his fist.
This was Pitou who followed his friend and was ready to execute any order of his.
"I suggest the following postscript to improve the paper," said Marat.
"Speak."
Marat laid the paper again on the table and pointing with his crooked finger to the place for the addendum, he dictated:
"Citizen Billet being under flag of truce, I confide his life to your honor."
Flesselles looked at the cunning face as if he had a strongest desire to smash it with a blow than do what he was counselled.
"Do you hesitate?" demanded the surgeon.
"No, for at the most, you only ask what is fair," replied the other, writing as proposed.
"Still, gentlemen, I want you to bear in mind that I do not answer for the envoy's safety."
"But I will," said Marat, taking the paper from his hands: "for your liberty is here to answer for his—your head will guarantee his. There is your pass, my brave Billet."
Flesselles called for his coach and said loudly:
"I suppose, my friends, you are asking nothing more?"
"No," replied the two together.
"Am I to let him pass?" asked Pitou.
"My young friend," said the gentleman, "I should like to observe that you are rather too insufficiently clad to stand guard at my door. If you feel constrained to do it, at least sling your cartridge-box round and stand with your back to the wall."
"Am I to let him go?" asked Pitou again, looking at the speaker as if he did not relish the jest.
"Yes," Billet said.
"Perhaps you are wrong to let him go," said Marat as Pitou stepped aside; "he was a good hostage to hold: but in any case, be he where he may, I can lay hands on him, never fear."
"Labrie," said Flesselles to his valet, as he got into his carriage, "they are going to serve out the powder. If the City Hall goes up in an explosion I should like to be well out of the reach of splinters. Tell the coachman to whip up smartly."
The vehicle rolled under the covered way and came out on the square before some thousands of spectators. The Provost feared that his departure might be misinterpreted and taken for a flight. So he leaned out of the window and said loudly:
"Drive to the National Assembly!"
This earned him a cheer. Up on the balcony, outside, Marat and Billet heard the order.
"My head to his, that he is not going to the Assembly but to the King," commented the surgeon.
"Had he not better be stopped?" said the farmer.
"No," replied the other with a hideous grin. "Be easy: go where he may, and however quickly, we shall travel more quickly than he. Now, let us get out that powder!"
"Out with the powder," said Billet.
Flesselles was right in saying there were eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in the vaults.
Marat and Billet walked in the first with a lantern which they hung to a beam. Pitou mounted guard at the door.
The powder was in twenty-pound kegs; men were stationed in a line and the kegs were passed out, hand to hand. There was a brief confusion as it was not known what was the amount and some feared they could not get any if they did not scramble for it. But Billet had selected his lieutenants on his own model, with leg-of-mutton fists, and the distribution went on with much order.
Each man received half a pound of powder, which would fire thirty or forty shots.
But when everybody had powder it was discovered that guns were short. Only some five hundred men had them.
While the powder was being dealt out, some of the unarmed went into a council chamber where a debate was proceeding. It was about the national guards of which the usher had mentioned a word to Billet. It was settled that the force should consist of forty-eight thousand men. The army existed only on paper and yet they were wrangling about who should have the command.
In the midst of this dispute in rushed the weaponless men. The people had formed an army of their own but they wanted arms.
At this moment was heard the arrival of a carriage: it was Flesselles', for they would not let him pass though he had shown the royal order for him to go to Versailles: and he was brought back to the Hall by main force.
"Arms, arms," they yelled at him as soon as they saw him.
"No arms here, but there must be some at the Arsenal," he replied.
So five thousand men ran over to the Arsenal to find it was bare. They returned howling to the City Hall. The provost had no firearms or he would not tell of them. He packed them off to the Old Carthusian Monastery, but it was empty too. Not so much as a pocket pistol rewarded them.
Meanwhile Flesselles, learning that Marat and Billet were still busy getting out the powder, suggested sending a deputation to Governor Launay to induce him to draw in the cannon. He had made the populace howl dreadfully on the evening before by running out his guns through the embrasures. Flesselles hoped that by having them taken in, the people would be satisfied and settle down.
The deputation was starting when the arm-seekers came back enraged.
On hearing their vociferations, Billet and Marat came up out of the underground.
On a lower balcony the provost was trying to quiet the multitude. He proposed a resolution that the wards should forge fifty thousand pikes. The people were jumping at the offer.
"Truly this fellow is playing with us," said the surgeon.
He turned to his new friend, saying:
"Go and get to work at the Bastile. In an hour I shall be sending you twenty thousand muskets with a man to each butt."
At first blush Billet had felt great confidence in this leader, whose name was so popular as to have reached him down in the country. He never thought to ask him how he was going to get them. He noticed a priest in the crowd working lustily and though he had no great confidence in the cloth he liked this one to whom he confided the serving out of the amunition.
Marat jumped upon a stone horseblock. The uproar was indescribable.
"Silence," he called out; "I am Marat and I want to speak."
Like magic all was hushed and every eye was turned upon the orator.
"You want arms to take the Bastile? come with me to the Invalides where are twenty-five thousand stand of arms, and you shall have them."
"To the Invalides!" shouted the throngs.
"Now," continued Marat to Billet, "you be off to the Bastile but stay—you may want help before I come."
He wrote on a leaf of his tablets "From Marat," and tore this out to give it to Billet, who smiled to see that it also bore a masonic sign. He and Marat belonged to the Order of the Invisibles over which presided Balsamo-Cagliostro, and his work was what they were prosecuting.
"What am I to do with a paper having no name or address?" inquired the peasant.
"My friend has no address; but his name is well-known. Ask the first workingman you come across for the People's Spokesman, Gonchon."
"Gonchon—fix that on your mind, Pitou."
"Gonchon, or Gonchonius, in Latin," repeated Pitou; "I shall retain it."
"To the Invalides," yelled the voices with increasing ferocity.
"Be on your way," said Marat, "and may the spirit of Liberty march by your side!"
"Now, then, brothers, on to the Invalides," shouted Marat in his turn.
He went off with more than twenty thousand men, while the farmer took away some six hundred in his train, but they were armed. As the two leaders were departing, the provost appeared at a window, calling out:
"Friends, why do I see the green cockade in your hats, when it is the color of Artois, though it may also be that of Hope? Don't look to be sporting the colors of a prince."
"No, no," was the chorus, with Billet's loudest of the voices.
"Then, change it, and as if you must wear a color, take that good old Paris town, our mother, blue and red, my friends."
(Later, General Lafayette, making the criticism that Blue and Red were the Orleans colors also, and perhaps having the stars and stripes of the Republic he had fought for in his mind,suggested the addition of white, saying that "The Red, White and Blue, would be a flag that would go round the world.")
With approving words, everybody tore off the leaves and trampled them underfoot, while they called for ribbons. As if by enchantment all windows opened, and there was a rain of red and blue ribbons. But this was scant supply for a thousand only. Aprons, silk dresses, tapes, scarves, all sorts of tissues were torn into strips and twisted up into rosettes, streamers, favors and ties, with which decorations the improvised army of Billet went its road.
It had recruits on the line: all the side streets of the St. Antoine or working quarter sent the warmest blooded and strongest of its sons. They reached in good order Lesdigures Street, where a number of folk were staring at the Bastile towers, their red brick ruddy in the setting sunshine. Some were calm, some saucy.
In the instant the arrivals of reinforcements changed the multitude in aspect and mood: they were the drumcorps, a hundred French Guards who came down the main avenue, and Billet's rough fellows upwards of twelve thousand strong. The timid grew bold, the calm were excited, and the pert were menacing.
"Down with the cannon," howled twenty thousand throats as twice as many fists were shaken at the brazen pieces stretching their necks over the crenelations.
At that very time, as though the fortress governor obeyed the injunction, the gunners came out to the pieces and retired them until they were no longer visible from below. The throngs clapped hands, thinking they were a power because they had apparently been obeyed.
The sentries continued to pace up and down the ramparts, with alternations of the Swiss and the Veterans.
After the shout of "Down with the cannons!" that of "Draw back the Swiss!" arose, in continuation of "Down with the Germans!" of the evening before.
But the Swiss continued all the same to march up and down to meet the French Invalides.
One of the shouters was impatient, and having a gun, he fired on a sentinel: the bullet struck the grey stone wall afoot above the cornice of the tower, above the soldier's head: it left a white mark, but the man did not halt—did not do much as turn his head.
A great hubbub rose around the firer of the first shot at the Bastile: it was the signal for a mad and unheard-of attack; the tumult had more dread in it than rage; many did not understand that to fire on a royal prison was incurring the death penalty.