The note had no signature, but the reader knew the hand of Cagliostro.
Madam Campan entered from the Queen's apartments; she brought a note to the effect that the King would be glad to have Dr. Gilbert's proposition in writing, while the Queen could not return from being called away on important business.
"Lunatics," he said after musing. "Here, take them this as my answer."
And he gave the lady Cagliostro's warning, as he went out.
On the day after theConstituentAssembly dissolved, that is, the second of October, at Barnave's usual hour for seeing the Queen, he was ushered into the Grand Study.
On the day of the King taking the oath to the Constitution, Lafayette's aids and soldiers had been withdrawn from the palace and the King had become less hampered if not more powerful.
It was slender satisfaction for the humiliations they had lately undergone. In the street, when out for carriage exercise, as some voices shouted "Long live the King!" a roughly dressed man, walking beside the coach and laying his unwashed hand on the window ledge, kept repeating in a loud voice:
"Do not believe them. The only cry is, 'The Nation Forever!'"
The Queen had been applauded at the Opera where the "house was packed," but the same precaution could not be adopted at theItalians, where the pit was taken in advance. When the hirelings in the gallery hailed the Queen, they were hushed by the pit.
Looking into the pit to see who these were who so detested her, the Queen saw that the leader was the Arch-Revolutionist, Cagliostro, the man who had pursued from her youth.Once her eyes were fastened on his, she could not turn hers aloof, for he exercised the fascination of the serpent on the bird.
The play commenced and she managed to tear her gaze aloof for a time, but ever and anon it had to go back again, from the potent magnetism. It was fatal possession, as by a nightmare.
Besides, the house was full of electricity; two clouds surcharged were floating about, restless to thunder at each other: a spark would send forth the double flame.
Madam Dugazon had a song to sing with the tenor in this opera of Gretry, "Unforeseen Events." She had the line to sing:
"Oh, how I love my mistress!"
"Oh, how I love my mistress!"
The Queen divined that the storm was to burst, and involuntarily she glanced towards the man controlling her. It seemed to her that he gave a signal to the audience, and from all sides was hurled the cry:
"No more mistresses—no more masters! away with kings and queens!"
She screamed and hid her eyes, unable to look longer on this demon of destruction who ruled the disorder. Pursued by the roar: "No more masters, no more kings and queens!" she was borne fainting to her carriage.
She received the orator standing, though she knew the respect he cherished for her and saw that he was paler and sadder than ever.
"Well," she said, "I suppose you are satisfied, since the King has followed your advice and sworn to the Constitution?"
"You are very kind to say my advice has been followed," returned Barnave, bowing, "but if it had not been the same as that from Emperor Leopold and Prince von Kaunitz, perhaps his Majesty would have put greater hesitation in doing the act, though the only one to save the King if the King——"
"Can be saved, do you imply?" questioned she, taking the dilemma by the horns with the courage, orrashnesspeculiar to her.
"Lord preserve me from being the prophet of such miseries! And yet I do not want to dispirit your Majesty too much or leave too many deceptions as I depart from Paris to dwell afar from the throne."
"Going away from town and me?"
"The work of the Assembly of which I am a member has terminated, and I have no motive to stay here."
"Not even to be useful to us?"
"Not even that." He smiled sadly. "For indeed I cannot be useful to you in any way now. My strength lay in my influence over the House and at the Jacobin club, in my painfully acquired popularity, in short; but the House is dissolved, the Jacobins are broke up, and my popularity is lost."
He smiled more mournfully than before.
She looked at him with a strange glare which resembled the glow of triumph.
"You see, sir, that popularity may be lost," she said.
By his sigh, she felt that she had perpetrated one of those pieces of petty cruelty which were habitual to her.
Indeed, if he had lost it in a month, was it not for her, the angel of death, like Mary Stuart, to those who tried to serve her?
"But you will not go?" she said.
"If ordered to remain by the Queen, I will stay, like a soldier who has his furlough but remains for the battle; but if I do so, I become more than weak, a traitor."
"Explain: I do not understand," she said, slightly hurt.
"Perhaps the Queen takes the dissolved Assembly as her enemy?"
"Let us define matters; in that body were friends of mine. You will not deny that the majority were hostile."
"It never passed but one bill really an act of hostility to your Majesty and the King; that was the decree that none of its members could belong to the Legislative. That snatched the buckler from your friends' arms."
"But also the sword from our foemen's hand, methinks."
"Alas, you are wrong. The blow comes from Robespierre and is dreadful like all from that man. As things were we knew whom we had to meet; with all uncertainty we strike in thefog. Robespierre wishes to force France to take the rulers from the class above us or beneath. Above us there is nothing, the aristocracy having fled; but anyway the electors would not seek representatives among the noble. The people will choose deputies from below us and the next House will be democratic, with slight variations."
The Queen began to be alarmed from following this statement.
"I have studied the new-comers: particularly those from the South," went on Barnave; "they are nameless men eager to acquire fame, the more as they are all young. They are to be feared as their orders are to make war on the priests and nobles; nothing is said as to the King, but if he will be merely the executive, he may be forgiven the past."
"How? they will forgive him? I thought it lay in the King to pardon?" exclaimed insulted majesty.
"There it is—we shall never agree. These new-comers, as you will unhappily have the proof, will not handle the matter in gloves. For them the King is an enemy, the nucleus, willingly or otherwise, of all the external and internal foes. They think they have made a discovery though, alas! they are only saying aloud what your ardent adversaries have whispered all the time."
"But, the King the enemy of the people?" repeated the lady.
"Oh, M. Barnave, this is something you will never induce me to admit, for I cannot understand it."
"Still it is the fact. Did not the King accept the Constitution the other day? well, he flew into a passion when he returned within the palace and wrote that night to the Emperor."
"How can you expect us to bear such humiliations?"
"Ah, you see, madam! he is the born enemy and so by his character. He was brought up by the chief of the Jesuits, and his heart is always in the hands of the priests, those opponents of free government, involuntarily but inevitably counter to Revolution. Without his quitting Paris he is with the princes at Coblentz, with the clergy in Lavendee, with his allies in Vienna and Prussia. I admit that the King doesnothing, but his name cloaks the plots; in the cabin, the pulpit and the castle, the poor, good, saintly King is prated about, so that the revolution of pity is opposed to that of Freedom."
"Is it really you who cast this up, M. Barnave, when you were the first to be sorry for us."
"I am sorry for you still, lady; but there is this difference, that I was sorry in order to save you while these others want to ruin you."
"But, in short, have these new-comers, who have vowed a war of extermination on us, any settled plan?"
"No, madam, I can only catch a few vague ideas: to suppress the title of Majesty in the opening address, and set a plain arm-chair beside the Speaker's instead of throne-chair. The dreadful thing is that Bailly and Lafayette will be done away with."
"I shall not regret that," quickly said the Queen.
"You are wrong, madam, for they are your friends——"
She smiled bitterly.
"Your last friends, perhaps. Cherish them, and use what power they have: their popularity will fly, like mine."
"This amounts to your leading me to the brink of the crater and making me measure the depth without telling me I may avoid the eruption."
"Oh, that you had not been stopped on the road to Montmedy!" sighed Barnave after being mute for a spell.
"Here we have M. Barnave approving of the flight to Varennes!"
"I do not approve of it: but the present state is its natural consequence, and so I deplore its not having succeeded—not as the member of the House, but as Barnave your humble servant, ready to give his life, which is all he possesses."
"Thank you," replied the Queen: "your tone proves you are the man to hold to your word, but I hope no such sacrifice will be required of you."
"So much the worse for me, for if I must fall, I would wish it were in a death-struggle. The end will overtake me in my retreat. Your friends are sure to be hunted out; I will be taken, imprisoned and condemned: yet perhaps my obscure death will be unheard of by you. But should the news reachyou, I shall have been so little a support to you that you will have forgotten the few hours of my use."
"M. Barnave," said Marie Antoinette with dignity, "I am completely ignorant what fate the future reserves to the King, and myself, but I do know that the names of those to whom we are beholden are written on our memory, and nothing ill or good that may befall them will cease to interest us. Meanwhile, is there anything we can do for you?"
"Only, give me your hand to kiss."
A tear stood in her dry eyes as she extended to the young man the cold white hand which had at a year's interval been kissed by the two leaders, Mirabeau and Barnave.
"Madam," said he, rising, "I cannot say, 'I save the monarchy!' but he who has this favor will say 'If lost, he went down with it.'"
She sighed as he went forth, but her words were:
"Poor squeezed lemon, they did not take much time to leave nothing of you but the peel!"
Lugubrious was the scene which met the eye of a young man who trod the Champ de Mars, after the tragedy of which Bailly and Lafayette were the principal actors.
It was illumined by the moon two-thirds full, rolling among huge black clouds in which it was lost now and then.
It had the semblance of a battle field, covered with maimed and dead, amid which wandered like shades the men charged to throw the lifeless into the River Seine and load up the wounded to be transported to the Groscaillou Hospital.
The young man was dressed like a captain of the National Guards. He paused on the way over the Field, and muttered as he clasped his hands with unaffected terror:
"Lord help us, the matter is worse than they gave me to understand."
After looking for a while on the weird work in operation, he approached two men who were carrying a corpse towards the water, and asked:
"Citizens, do you mind telling me what you are going to do with that man?"
"Follow us, and you will know all about it," replied one.
He followed them. On reaching the wooden bridge, they swung the body between them as they counted: "One, two, three, and it's off!" and slung it into the tide.
The young officer uttered a cry of terror.
"Why, what are you about, citizens?" he demanded.
"Can't you see, officer," replied one, "we are clearing up the ground."
"And you have orders to act thus?"
"It looks so, does it not?"
"From whom?"
"From the Municipality."
"Oh," ejaculated the young man, stupefied. "Have you cast many bodies into the stream?" he inquired, after a little pause during which they had returned upon the place.
"Half a dozen or so," was the man's answer.
"I beg your pardon, citizens," went on the captain, "but I have a great interest in the question I am about to put. Among those bodies did you notice one of a man of forty-five or so, six feet high but looking less from his being strongly built; he would have the appearance of a countryman."
"Faith, we have only one thing to notice," said the man, "it is whether the men are alive or dead: if dead, we just fling them over board; if alive, we send them on to the hospital."
"Ah," said the captain: "the fact is that one of my friends, not having come home and having gone out here, as I learnt, I am greatly afeared that he may be among the hurt or killed."
"If he came here," said one of the undertakers, shaking a body while his mate held up a lantern, "he is likely to be here still; if he has not gone home, the chances are he has gone to his last long one." Redoubling the shaking, to the body lying at his feet, he shouted: "Hey, you! are you dead or alive? if you are not dead, make haste to tell us."
"Oh, he is stiff enough," rejoined his associate; "he has a bullet clean through him."
"In that case, into the river with him."
They lifted the body and retook the way to the bridge.
"Citizens," said the young officer, "you don't need your lamp to throw the man into the water; so be kind enough to lend it me for a minute: while you are on your errand, I will seek my friend."
The carriers of the dead consented to this request; and the lantern passed into the young man's hands, whereupon he commenced his search with care and an expression denoting that he had not entitled the lost one his friend merely from the lips but out of his heart.
Ten or more persons, supplied like him with lights, were engaged likewise in the ghastly scrutiny. From time to time, in the midst of stillness—for the awful solemnity of the picture seemed to hush the voice of the living amid the dead—a name spoken in a loud tone, would cross the space.
Sometimes a cry, a moan, or groan would reply to the call; but most often, the answer was gruesome silence.
After having hesitated for a time as though his voice was chained by awe, the young officer imitated the example set him, and three times called out:
"Farmer Billet!"
No voice responded.
"For sure he is dead," groaned he, wiping with his sleeve the tears flowing from his eyes: "Poor Farmer Billet!"
At this moment, two men came along, bearing a corpse towards the river.
"Mild, I fancy our stiff one gave a sigh," said the one who held the upper part of the body and was consequently nearer the head.
"Pooh," laughed the other: "if we were to listen to all these fellows say, there would not be one dead!"
"Citizens, for mercy's sake," interrupted the young officer, "let me see the man you are carrying."
"Oh, willingly, officer," said the men.
They placed the dead in a sitting posture for him to examine it. Bringing the lantern to it, he uttered a cry. In spite ofthe terrible wound disfiguring the face, he believed it was the man he was seeking.
But was he alive or dead?
This wretch who had gone half way to the watery grave, had his skull cloven by a sword stroke. The wound was dreadful, as stated: it had severed the left whisker and left the cheekbone bare; the temporal artery had been cut, so that the skull and body were flooded with gore. On the wounded side the unfortunate man was unrecognizable.
The lantern-bearer swung the light round to the other side.
"Oh, citizens," he cried, "it is he, the man I seek: Farmer Billet."
"Thedeuceit is—he seems to have his billet for the other world—ha, ha, ha!" said one of the men. "He is pretty badly hammered."
"Did you not say he heaved a sigh?"
"I think so, anyhow."
"Then do me a kindness," and he fumbled in his pocket for a silver coin.
"What is it?" asked the porter full of willingness on seeing the money.
"Run to the river and bring me some water."
"In a jiffy."
While the fellow ran to the river the officer took his place and held up the wounded one.
In five minutes he had returned.
"Throw the water in his face," said the captain.
The man obeyed by dipping his hand in his hat, which was his pitcher, and sprinkling the slashed face.
"He shivered," exclaimed the young man holding the dying one: "he is not dead. Oh, dear M. Billet, what a blessing I came here."
"In faith, it is a blessing," said the two men; "another twenty paces and your friend would have come to his senses in the nets at St. Cloud."
"Throw some more on him."
Renewing the operation, the wounded man shuddered and uttered a sigh.
"Come, come, he certainly ain't dead," said the man.
"Well, what shall we do with him?" inquired his companion.
"Help me to carry him to St. Honore Street, to Dr. Gilbert's house, if you would like good reward," said the young captain.
"We cannot do that. Our orders are to heave the dead over, or to hand the hurt to the carriers for the hospital. Since this chap makes out he is not dead, why, he must be taken to the hospital."
"Well, carry him there," said the young man, "and as soon as possible. Where is the hospital?" he asked, looking round.
"Close to the Military Academy, about three hundred paces."
"Then it is over yonder?"
"You have it right."
"The whole of the place to cross?"
"And the long way too."
"Have you not a hand-barrow?"
"Well, if it comes to that, such a thing can be found, like the water, if a crownpiece or two——"
"Quite right," said the captain; "you shall not lose by your kindness. Here is more money—only, get the litter."
Ten minutes after the litter was found.
The wounded man was laid on a pallet; the two fellows took up the shafts and the mournful party proceeded towards the military hospital escorted by the young officer, the lantern in hand, by the disfigured head.
A dreadful thing was this night marching over the blood-stained ground, among the stiffened and motionless remains, against which one stumbled at every step, or wounded wretches who rose only to fall anew and called for succor.
In a quarter of an hour they crossed the hospital threshold.
Gilbert had obeyed Cagliostro's injunction to go to the Groscaillou Hospital to attend to a patient.
At this period hospitals were far from being organized as at present, particularly military ones like this which was receiving the injured in the massacre, while the dead were bundled into the river to save burial expenses and hide the extent of the crime of Lafayette and Bailly.
Gilbert was welcomed by the overworked surgeons amid the disorder which opposed their desires being fulfilled.
Suddenly in the maze, he heard a voice which he knew but had not expected there.
"Ange Pitou," he exclaimed, seeing the peasant in National Guards uniform by a bed; "what about Billet?"
"He is here," was the answer, as he showed a motionless body. "His head is split to the jaw."
"It is a serious wound," said Gilbert, examining the hurt. "You must find me a private room; this is a friend of mine," he added to the male nurses.
There were no private rooms but they gave up the laundry to Dr. Gilbert's special patient. Billet groaned as they carried him thither.
"Ah," said the doctor, "never did an exclamation of pleasure give me such joy as that wrung by pain; he lives—that is the main point."
It was not till he had finished the dressing that he asked the news of Pitou.
The matter was simple. Since the disappearance of Catherine, whom Isidore Charny had had transported to Paris with her babe, and the departure of Billet to town also, Mother Billet, whom we have never presented as a strong-minded woman, fell into an increasing state of idiocy. Dr. Raynal said that nothing would rouse her from this torpor but the sight of her daughter.
Without waiting for the cue, Pitou started to Paris. He seemed predestined to arrive there at great events.
The first time, he was in time to take a hand in the storming of the Bastile; the next, to help the Federation of 1790; and now he arrived for the Massacre of the Champ de Mars. He heard that it had all come about over a petition drawn up by Dr. Gilbert and presented by Billet to the signers.
Pitou learnt at the doctor's house that he had come home, but there were no tidings of the farmer.
On going to the scene of blood, Pitou happened on the nearly lifeless body which would have been hurled in the river but for his interposition.
It was thus that Pitou hailed the doctor in the hospital and the wounded man had his chances improved by being in such skillful hands as his friend Gilbert's.
As Billet could not be taken to his wife's bedside, Catherine was more than ever to be desired there. Where was she? The only way to reach her would be through the Charny family.
Happily Ange had been so warmly greeted by her when he took Sebastian to her house that he did not hesitate to callagain.
He went there with the doctor in the latter's carriage; but the house was dark and dismal. The count and countess had gone to their country seat at Boursonnes.
"Excuse me, my friend," said the doctor to the janitor who had received the National Guards captain with no friendliness, "but can you not give me a piece of information in your master's absence?"
"I beg pardon, sir," said the porter recognizing the tone of a superior in this blandness and politeness.
He opened the door and in his nightcap and undress came to take the orders of the carriage-gentleman.
"My friend, do you know anything about a young woman from the country in whom the count and countess are taking interest?"
"Miss Catherine?" asked the porter.
"The same," replied Gilbert.
"Yes, sir; my lord and my lady sent me twice to see herand learn if she stood in need of anything, but the poor girl, whom I do not believe to be well off, no more than her dear little child, said she wanted for nothing."
Pitou sighed heavily at the mention of the dear little child.
"Well, my friend," continued the doctor, "poor Catherine's father was wounded on the Field of Mars, and her mother, Mrs. Billet, is dying out at Villers Cotterets, which sad news we want to break to her. Will you kindly give us her address?"
"Oh, poor girl, may heaven assist her. She was unhappy enough before. She is living at Villedavray, your honor, in the main street. I cannot give you the number, but it is in front of the public well."
"That is straight enough," said Pitou; "I can find it."
"Thanks, my friend," said Gilbert, slipping a silver piece into the man's hand.
"There was no need of that, sir, for Christians ought to do a good turn amongst themselves," said the janitor, doffing his nightcap and returning indoors.
"I am off for Villedavray," said Pitou.
He was always ready to go anywhere on a kind errand.
"Do you know the way?"
"No; but somebody will tell me."
"You have a golden heart and steel muscles," said the doctor laughing; "but you want rest and had better start to-morrow."
"But it is a pressing matter——"
"On neither side is there urgency," corrected the doctor; "Billet's state is serious but not mortal unless by mischance. Mother Billet may linger ten days yet."
"She don't look it, but, of course, you know best."
"We may as well leave poor Catherine another night of repose and ignorance; a night's rest is of importance to the unfortunate, Pitou."
"Then, where are we going, doctor?" asked the peasant, yielding to the argument.
"I shall give you a room you have slept in before; and to-morrow at six, my horses shall be put to the carriage to take you to Villedavray."
"Lord, is it fifty leagues off?"
"Nay, it is only two or three."
"Then I can cover it in an hour or two—I can lick it up like an egg."
"Yes, but Catherine can lick up like an egg the distance from Villedavray to Paris and the eighteen leagues from Paris to Villers Cotterets?"
"True: excuse me, doctor, for being a fool. Talking of fools—no, I mean the other way about—how is Sebastian?"
"Wonderfully well, you shall see him to-morrow."
"Still at college? I shall be downright glad."
"And so shall he, for he loves you with all his heart."
At six, he started in the carriage and by seven was at Catherine's door. She opened it and shrieked on seeing Pitou:
"I know—my mother is dead!"
She turned pale and leaned against the wall.
"No; but you will have to hasten to see her before she goes," replied the messenger.
This brief exchange of words said so much in little that Catherine was at once placed face to face with her affliction.
"That is not all," added the peasant.
"What's the other misfortune?" queried Catherine, in the sharp tone of one who has exhausted the measure of human ails and has no fear of an overflow.
"Master Billet was dangerously wounded on the parade-grounds."
"Ah," said she, much less affected by this news than the other.
"So I says to myself, and Dr. Gilbert bears me out: 'Miss Catherine will pay a visit to her father at the hospital on the way down to her mother's.'"
"But you, Pitou?" queried the girl.
"While you go by stage-coach to help Mother Billet to make her long journey, I will stay by the farmer. You understand that I must stick to him who has never a soul to look after him, see?"
Pitou spoke the words with that angelic simplicity of his, with no idea that he was painting his whole devoted nature.
"You have a kind heart, Ange," said she, giving him her hand. "Come and kiss my little Isidore."
She walked into the house, prettier than ever, though she was clad in black, which drew another sigh from Pitou.
She had one little room, overlooking the garden, its furniture a bed for the mother and a cradle for the infant. It was sleeping.
She pulled a muslin curtain aside for him to see it.
"Oh, the sweet little angel!" exclaimed Pitou.
He knelt as it were to an angel, and kissed the tiny hand. He was speedily rewarded for his devotion for he felt Catherine's tresses on his head and her lips on his forehead. The mother was returning the caress given her son.
"Thank you, good Pitou," she said; "since the last kiss he had from his father, I alone have fondled the pet."
"Oh, Miss Catherine!" muttered Pitou, dazzled and thrilled by the kiss as by an electrical shock.
And yet it was purely what a mother's caress may contain of the holy and grateful.
Ten minutes afterwards, Catherine, little Isidore and Pitou were rolling in the doctor's carriage towards the hospital, where she handed the child to the peasant with as much or more trust as she would have had in a brother, and walked in at the door.
Dr. Gilbert was by his patient's side. Little change had taken place. Despite the beginning of fever, the face was still deadly pale from the great loss of blood and one eye and the left cheek were swelling.
Catherine dropped on her knees by the bedside, and said as she raised her hands to heaven,
"O my God, Thou knowest that my utmost wish has been for my father's life to be spared."
This was as much as could be expected from the girl whose lover's life had been attempted by her father.
The patient shuddered at this voice, and his breathing was more hurried; he opened his eyes and his glance, wandering for a space over the room, was fixed on the woman. His hand made a move to repulse this figure which he doubtless took to be a vision. Their glances met, and Gilbert was horrifiedto see the hatred which shot towards each, rather than affection.
She rose and went to find Pitou by the door. He was on all fours, playing with the babe.
She caught up her boy with a roughness more like a lioness than a woman, and pressed it to her bosom, crying,
"My child, oh, my child!"
In the outburst were all the mother's anguish, the widow's wails, and the woman's pangs.
Pitou proposed seeing her to the stage, but she repulsed him, saying:
"Your place is here."
Pitou knew nothing but to obey when Catherine commanded.
It was six o'clock in the afternoon, broad day, when Catherine arrived home.
Had Isidore been alive and she were coming to visit her mother in health, she would have got down from the stage at the end of the village and slipped round upon her father's farm, without going through. But a widow and a mother, she did not give a thought to rustic jests; she alighted without fear; it seemed to her that scorn and insult ought to be warded off from her by her child and her sorrow, the dark and the bright angel.
At the first she was not recognized; she was so pale and so changed that she did not seem the same woman; and what set her apart from her class was the lofty air which she had already caught from community with an elegant man.
One person knew her again but not till she had passed by.
This was Pitou's aunt Angelique. She was gossiping at the townhouse door with some cronies about the oath required of the clergy, declaring that she had heard Father Fortier say that he would never vow allegiance to the Revolution,preferring to submit to martyrdom than bend his head to the democratic yoke.
"Bless us and save us!" she broke forth, in the midst of her speech, "if here ain't Billet's daughter and her fondling a-stepping down off the coach."
"Catherine?" cried several voices.
"Yes, but look at her running away, down the lane."
Aunt Angelique was making a mistake: Catherine was not running away and she took the sideway simply because she was in haste to see her mother.
At the cry the children scampered after her, and as she was fond of them always, and more than ever at present, she gave them some small change with which they returned.
"What is that?" asked the gossips.
"It is Miss Catherine; she asked how her mother was and when we said the doctor says she is good for a week yet, she thanked us and gave us some money."
"Hem! then, she seems to have taken her pigs to a good market in Paris," sneered Angelique, "to be able to give silver to the urchins who run at her heels."
She did not like Catherine because the latter was young and sweet and Angelique was old and sour; Catherine was tall and well made while the other was short and limped. Besides, when Angelique turned her nephew Ange out of doors, it was on Billet's farm that he took refuge.
Again, it was Billet who had lugged Father Fortier out of his rectory to say the mass for the country on the day of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
All these were ample reasons for Angelique to hate Catherine, joined to her natural asperity, in particular, and the Billet's in general. And when she hated it was thorough, as becomes a prude and a devotee.
She ran to the priest's to tell him and his sister the fresh scandal of Billet's daughter returning home with her child.
"Indeed," said Fortier, "I should have thought she would drop it into the box at the Foundling Hospital."
"The proper thing to do, for then the thing would not have to blush for his mother."
"That is a new point from which to regard that institution! But what has she come after here?"
"It looks as if to see her mother, who might not have been living still."
"Stay, a woman who does not come to confess, methinks?" said the abbé, with a wicked smile.
"Oh, that is not her fault!" said the old maid, "but she has had softening of the brain lately; up to the time when her daughter threw this grief upon her, she was a pious soul who feared God and paid for two chairs when she came to church, one to sit in, the other to put her feet upon."
"But how many chairs did her husband pay for, Billet, the Hero of the Mobs, the Conqueror of the Bastile?" cried the priest, his little eyes sparkling with spite.
"I do not know," returned Angelique simply, "for he never comes to church, while his good wife——"
"Very well, we will settle accounts with him on the day of his good wife's funeral."
In the meantime Catherine continued her way, one long series of memories of him who was no more, unless his arms were around the little boy whom she carried on her bosom.
What would the neighbors say of her shame and dishonor? So handsome a boy would be a shame and disgrace to a peasant!
But she entered the farm without fear though rapidly.
A huge dog barked as she came up, but suddenly recognizing his young mistress, he neared her to the stretch of his chain, and stood up with his forepaws in the air to utter little joyous yelps.
At the dog's barking a man ran out to see the cause.
"Miss Catherine," he exclaimed.
"Father Clovis," she said.
"Welcome, dear young mistress—the house much needs you, by heaven!"
"And my poor mother?"
"Sorry to say she is just the same, neither worse nor better—she is dying out like an oilless lamp, poor dear!"
"Where is she?"
"In her own room."
"Alone?"
"No, no, no! I would not have allowed that. You mustexcuse me, Miss Catherine, coming out as the master here, but your having stopped at my house before you went to town made me one of the family, I thought, in a manner of speaking, and I was very fond of you and poor Master Isidore."
"So you know?" said Catherine, wiping away her tears.
"Yes, yes, killed for the Queen's sake, like his brother. But he has left something behind him, a lovely boy, so while we mourn for the father we must smile for the son."
"Thank you, Clovis," said she, giving her hand: "but my mother?"
"I had Mother Clement the nurse to sit with her, the same who attended to you——"
"Has my mother her senses yet?" asked the girl hesitating.
"Sometimes I think so, when your name is spoken. That was the great means of stirring her, but since yesterday she has not showed any signs even when you are spoken of."
He opened the bedroom door and she could glance in.
Mother Clement was dozing in a large armchair, while her patient seemed to be asleep: she was not much changed but her complexion was like ivory in pallor.
"Mother, my dear mother," exclaimed Catherine, rushing into the room.
The dying one opened her eyes and tried to turn her head, as a gleam of intelligence sparkled in her look; but, babbling, her movement was abortive, and her arm sank inert on the head of the girl, kneeling by her side.
From the lethargy of the father and the mother had shot two opposite feelings: hate from the former, love from the latter.
The girl's arrival caused excitement on the farm, where Billet was expected, not his daughter. She related the accident to the farmer, and how he was as near death's door as his wife at home, only he was moving from it on the right side.
She went into her own room, where there were many tears evoked by the memories where she had passed in the bright dreams of childhood, and the girl's burning passions, and returned with the widow's broken heart.
At once she resumed the sway over that house in disorder which her father had delegated to her to the detriment of her mother.
Father Clovis, thanked and rewarded, retook the road to his "earth," as his hut was called.
When Dr. Raynal came next day on his tri-weekly visit, he was glad to see the girl.
He broached the great question which he had not dared debate with Billet, whether the poor woman should receive the Last Sacrament. Billet was a rabid Voltairian, while the doctor was a scientist. But he believed it his duty in such cases to warn the family of the dying and let them settle it.
Catherine was pious and attached little importance to the wrangles between her father and the priest.
But the abbé was one of the sombre school, who would have been an inquisitor in Spain. When he found the sufferer unconscious, he said that he could not give absolution to those unable to confess, and went out again.
There was no use applying elsewhere as he was monarch over this parish.
Catherine accepted the refusal as still another grief and went on with her cares as daughter and mother for eight or nine days and nights.
As she was watching by her mother, frail bark sinking deeper and deeper on Eternity's sea, the door opened, and Pitou appeared on the sill.
He came from Paris that morning. Catherine shuddered to see him, fearing that her father was dead. But his countenance, without being what you would call gay, was not that of the bearer of bad news. Indeed, Billet was mending; since a few days the doctor had answered for him: that morning he had been moved from the hospital to the doctor's house.
Pitou feared for Catherine, now. His opinion was that the moment Billet learned what he was sure to ask, how his wife was, he would start for home.
What would it be if he found Catherine there?
It was Gilbert who had therefore sent Pitou down into the country. But when Pitou expressed their fears about theirmeeting, Catherine declared that she would not leave her mother'spillowalthough her father slew her there.
Pitou groaned at such a determination but he did not combat it.
So he stayed there to intervene, if he might.
During two days and nights, Mother Billet's life seemed going, breath by breath. It was a wonder how a body lived with so little breath, but how slightly it lived!
During the night, when all animation seemed extinct, the patient awoke as it were, and she stared at Catherine, who ran to bring her boy.
The eyes were bright when she returned, a sound was heard, and the arms were held out.
Catherine fell on her knees beside the bed.
A strange phenomenon took place: Mother Billet rose on her pillow, slowly held out her arms over the girl's head and the boy, and with a mighty effort, said:
"Bless you, my children!"
She fell back, dead. Her eyes remained open, as though she longed to see her daughter from beyond the grave from not having seen enough of her before.
Catherine piously closed her mother's eyes, with her hand and then with her lips, while Mother Clement lit the candles and arranged other paraphernalia.
Pitou took charge of the other details. Reluctant to visit Father Fortier, with whom he stood on delicate ground, he ordered the mortuary mass of the sacristan, and engaged the gravedigger and the coffin-bearers.
Then he went over to Haramont to have his company of militia notified that the wife of the Hero of the People would be buried at eleven on the morrow. It was not an official order but an invitation. But it was too well known what Billet had done for this Revolution which was turning all heads and enflamingall hearts; what danger Billet was even then running for the sake of the masses—for this invitation not to be regarded as an order: all the volunteer soldiers promised their captain that they would be punctual.
Pitou brought the joiner with him, who carried the coffin. He had all the heartfelt delicacy rare in the lowborn, and hid the man and his bier in the outhouse so Catherine should not see it, and to spare her from hearing the sound of the hammering of the nails, he entered the dwelling alone.
Catherine was still praying by the dead, which had been shrouded by two neighbors.
Pitou suggested that she should go out for a change of air; then for the child's sake, upon which she proposed he should take the little one. She must have had great confidence in Pitou to trust her boy to him for a time.
"He won't come," reported Pitou, presently. "He is crying."
She kissed her mother, took her child by the hand and walked away with Pitou. The joiner carried in the coffin when she was gone.
He took her out on the road to Boursonnes, where she went half a league without saying a word to Pitou, listening to the voices of the woodland which talked to her heart.
When she got home, the work was done, and she understood why Ange had insisted on her going out. She thanked him with an eloquent look. She prayed for a long while by the coffin, understanding now that she had but one of the two friends, left, her mother and Pitou, when Isidore died.
"You must come away," said the peasant, "or I must go and hire a nurse for Master Isidore."
"You are right, Pitou," she said. "My God, how good Thou art to me—and how I love you, Pitou!"
He reeled and nearly fell over backwards. He leaned up against the wall, choking, for Catherine had said that she loved him! He did not deceive himself about the kind of love, but any kind was a great deal for him.
Finishing her prayer, she rose and went with a slow step to lean on his shoulder. He put his arm round her to sustain her; she allowed this. Turning at the door, she breathed: "Farewell, mother!" and went forth.
Pitou stopped her at her own door. She began to understand Pitou.
"Why, Miss Catherine," he stammered, "do you not think it is a good time to leave the farm?"
"I shall only leave when my mother shall no longer be here," she replied.
She spoke with such firmness that he saw it was an irrevocable resolve.
"When you do go, you know you have two homes, Father Clovis' and my house."
Pitou's "house" was hissitting roomand bedroom.
"I thank you," she replied, her smile and nod meaning that she accepted both offers.
She went into her room without troubling about the young man, who had the knack of finding some burrow.
At ten next day all the farmers for miles around flocked to the farm. The Mayor came, too. At half after ten up marched the Haramont National Guards, with colors tied up in black, without a man being missing. Catherine, dressed in black, with her boy in mourning, welcomed all comers and it must be said that there was no feeling for her but of respect.
At eleven, some three hundred persons were gathered at the farm. The priest and his attendants alone were absent. Pitou knew Father Fortier and he guessed that he who had refused the sacraments to the dying woman, would withhold the funeral service under the pretext that she had died unconscious. These reflections, confided to Mayor Longpre, produced a doleful impression. While they were looking at each other in silence, Maniquet, whose opinions were anti-religious, called out:
"If Abbé Fortier does not like to say mass, we will get on without it."
But it was evidently a bold act, although Voltaire and Rousseau were in the ascendancy.
"Gentlemen," suggested the mayor, "let us proceed to Villers Cotterets where we will have an explanation."
The procession moved slowly past Catherine and her little boy, and was going down the road, when the rear guards heard a voice behind them. It was a call and they turned.
A man on a horse was riding from the side of Paris.
Part of the rider's face was covered with black bandages; he waved his hat in his hand and signalled that he wanted the party to stop.
Pitou had turned like the others.
"Why, it is Billet," he said, "good! I should not like to be in Father Fortier's skin."
At the name everybody halted. He advanced rapidly and as he neared all were able to recognize him as Pitou had done.
On reaching the head of the line, Billet jumped off his horse, threw the bridle on its neck, and, after saying a lusty: "Good day and thank ye, citizens!" he took his proper place which Pitou had in his absence held to lead the mourners.
A stable boy took away the horse.
Everybody looked curiously at the farmer. He had grown thinner and much paler. Part of his face and around his left eye had retained the black and blue tint of extravasated blood. His clenched teeth and frowning brows indicated sullen rage which waited the time for a vent.
"Do you know what has happened?" inquired Pitou.
"I know all," was the reply.
As soon as Gilbert had told his patient of the state of his wife, he had taken a cabriolet as far as Nanteuil. As the horse could go no farther, though Billet was weak, he had mounted apost horseand with a change at Levignan, he reached his farm as we know.
In two words Mother Clement had told the story. He remounted the horse and stopped the procession which he descried on turning a wall.
Silent and moody before, the party became more so since this figure of hate led the way.
At Villers Cotterets a waiting party fell into the line. As the cortege went up the street, men, women and children flowed out of the dwellings, saluted Billet, who nodded, and incorporated themselves in the ranks.
It numbered five hundred when it reached the church. It was shut, as Pitou had anticipated. They halted at the door.
Billet had become livid; his expression had grown more and more threatening.
The church and thetown halladjoined. The player of the bassoon in the holy building was also janitor at the mayor's, so that he belonged under the secular and the clerical arm. Questioned by Mayor Longpre, he answered that Father Fortier had forbidden any retainer of the church to lend his aid to the funeral. The mayor asked where the keys were, and was told the beadle had them.
"Go and get the keys," said Billet to Pitou, who opened out his long compass-like legs and, having been gone five minutes, returned to say:
"Abbé Fortier had the keys taken to his house to be sure the church should not be opened."
"We must go straight to the priest for them," suggested Maniquet, the promoter of extreme measures.
"Let us go to the abbé's," cried the crowd.
"It would take too long," remarked Billet: "and when death knocks at a door, it does not like to wait."
He looked round him. Opposite the church, a house was being built. Some carpenters had been squaring a joist. Billet walked up and ran his arm round the beam, which rested on trestles. With one effort he raised it. But he had reckoned on absent strength. Under the great burden the giant reeled and it was thought for an instant that he would fall. It was but a flash; he recovered his balance and smiled terribly; and forward he walked, with the beam under his arm, with a firm step albeit slow.
He seemed one of those antique battering-rams with which the Caesars overthrow walls.
He planted himself, with legs set apart, before the door and the formidable machine began to work. The door was oak with iron fastenings; but at the third shove, bolts, bars and lock had flown off; the oaken panels yawned, too.
Billet let the beam drop. It took four men to carry it back to its place, and not easily.
"Now, mayor, have my poor wife's coffin carried to the midst of the choir—she never did harm to anybody—and you, Pitou, collect the beadle, the choirboys and the chanters, while I bring the priest."
Several wished to follow Billet to Father Fortier's house.
"Let me go alone," said he: "maybe what I do is serious and I should bear my own burden."
This was the second time that the revolutionist had come into conflict with the son of the church, at a year's interval. Remembering what had happened before, a similar scene was anticipated.
The rectory door was sealed up like that of the church. Billet looked round for some beam to be used like the other, but there was nothing of the sort. The only thing was a stone post, a boundary mark, with which the children had played so long at "over-ing" that it was loose in the socket like an old tooth.
The farmer stepped up to it, shook it violently to enlarge its orbit, and tore it clean out. Then raising it like a Highlander "putting the stone," he hurled it at the door which flew into shivers.
At the same time as this breach was made, the upper window opened and Father Fortier appeared, calling on his parishioners with all the power of his lungs. But the voice of the pastor fell lost, as the flock did not care to interfere between him and the wolf.
It took Billet some time to break all the doors down between him and his prey, but in ten minutes, more or less, that was done.
At the end of that time, loud shrieks were heard and by the abbé's most expressive gestures it was to be surmised that the danger was drawing nearer and nearer him.
In fact, suddenly was seen to rise behind the priest Billet's pale face, as his hand launched out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
The priest clutched the window sill; he was of proverbial strength and it would not be easy for Hercules to make him relax his grip.
Billet passed his arm around the priest as a girdle; straightened himself on both legs, and with a pull which would uproot an oak, he tore him away with the snapped wood between his hands.
Farmer and priest, they disappeared within the room, where in the depths were heard the wailings of the priest,dying away like the bellowing of a bull carried off by a lion.
In the meanwhile, Pitou had gathered up the trembling church staff, who hastened to don the vestments, light the candles and incense and prepare all things for the death mass.
Billet was seen coming, dragging the priest with him at as smart a pace, though he still made resistance, as if he were alone.
This was not a man, but one of the forces of nature: something like a torrent or an avalanche; nothing human could withstand him and it took an element to combat with him.
About a hundred steps from the church, the poor abbé ceased to kick, completely overpowered.
All stood aside to let the pair go by.
The abbé cast a frightened glance on the door, shivered like a pane of glass and seeing all his men at their stands whom he had forbidden to enter the place, he shook his head like one who acknowledges that some resistless power weighed on the church's ministers if not on itself.
He entered the sacristy and came forth in his robes, with the sacrament in his hand.
But as he was mounting the altar Billet stretched out his hand.
"Enough, you faulty servant of God," he thundered: "I only attempted to check your pride, that is all: but I want it known that a sainted woman like my wife can dispense with the prayers of a hateful and fanatical priest like you."
As a loud murmur rose under the vaulted ceiling of the fane, he said:
"If this be sacrilege, let it fall on my head."
Turning to the crowd he added: "Citizens, to the cemetery!"
"To the cemetery," cried the concourse which filled not the church alone but the square in front.
The four bearers passed their muskets under the bier lifting the body and as they had come without ecclesiastical pomp, such as religion has devised to accompany man to the grave, they went forth. Billet conducted the mourners, with six hundred persons following the remains, to the burial-ground,situated at the end of a lane near Aunt Angelique's house.
The cemetery-gates were closed but Billet respected the dead; he sent for the gravedigger who had the key, and Pitou brought it with two spades.
Fortier had proscribed the dead as unfit for consecrated ground, which the gravedigger had been ordered not to break for her.
At this last evidence of the priest's hatred for the farmer, a shiver of menace ran through the gathering: if Billet had had a little of the gall which the Tartuffes hold, to the amazement of Boileau, he had but a word to say and the Abbé Fortier would have had that satisfaction of martyrdom for which he had howled on the day when he refused to say mass on the Altar of the Country.
But Billet's wrath was that of the people and the lion; he did not retrace his steps to tear.
He thanked Pitou with a nod, took the key, opened the gates, passed the coffin in, and following it, was followed by the procession, recruited by all that could walk.
Arrived where the grave had been marked out before the sexton had the order not to open the earth, Billet held out his hand to Pitou for one of the spades.
Thereupon, with uncovered head, Pitou and Billet, amid the citizens bareheaded likewise, under the devouring July sun dug the resting-place for this poor creature who, pious and resigned throughout life, would have been greatly astonished in her lifetime if told what a sensation her death would cause.
The task lasted an hour without either worker thinking of being relieved. Meanwhile rope was sought for and was ready.
It was still Billet and Pitou who lowered the coffin into the pit. They did all so naturally that nobody thought of offering help. It would have been a sacrilege to have stayed them from carrying out all to the end. Only at the first clods falling on the coffin, Billet ran his hand over his eyes and Pitou his sleeve. Then they resolutely shoveled the earth in. When they had finished, Billet flung the spade far from him and gripped Pitou by the hand.
"God is my witness," said he, "that I hold in hand all the simple and grandest virtues on earth: charity, devotion, abnegation, brotherhood—and that I dedicate my life to these virtues." He held out his hand over the grave, saying: "God be again my witness that I swear eternal war against the King who tried to have me murdered; to the nobles who defamed my daughter; to the priests who refused sepulture to my wife!"
Turning towards the spectators full of sympathy with this adjuration, he said:
"Brothers, a new assembly is to be convoked in place of the traitors now in session; select me to represent you in this new parliament, and you will see how I keep my oath."
A shout of universal adhesion hailed this suggestion, and at once over his wife's grave, terrible altar, worthy of the dread vow, the candidature of Billet was proposed, seconded and carried. After this, he thanked his fellow citizens for their sympathy in his affliction, his friendship and his hatred, and each, citizen, countryman, peasant and forester, went home, carrying in heart that spirit of revolutionary propaganda to which in their blindness the most deadly weapons were afforded by those who were to be destroyed by them—priests, nobles and King!
How Billet kept his oath, with other circumstances which are linked with his return to Paris in the new Legislative Assembly, will be recorded in the sequel entitled "THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY."