The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

CHAPTER VII
THE ABDICATION IN A FARMHOUSE

AFTER having appeased the duties of obedience, Pitou wished to satisfy the cravings of his heart. It is sweet to obey when the order chimes in with one’s secret sympathies.

Ange Pitou was in love with Catherine, daughter of farmer Billet who had succored him when he fled from his aunt’s and with whom he had taken the trip to Paris which returned him a full-fledged hero to his fellow-villagers.

When he perceived the long ridge of the farmhouse roofs, measured the aged elms which twisted to stand the higher over the smoking chimneys, when he heard the distant lowing of the cattle, the barking of the watchdogs, and the rumbling of the farm carts, he shook his casque on his head to tighten its hold, hung the calvary sabre more firmly by his side, and tried to give himself the bold swagger of a lover and a soldier. As nobody recognized him at the first it was a proof that he had fairly succeeded.

The farmhands responded to his hail by taking off their caps or pulling their forelocks.

Through the dininghall window pane Mother Billet saw the military visitor. She was a comely, kind old soul who fed her employes like fighting cocks. She was, like other housewives, on the alert, as there was talk of armed robbers being about the country. They cut the woods down and reaped the green corn. What did this warrior’s appearance signify? attack or assistance?

She was perplexed by the clodhopper shoes beneath a helmet so shining and her supposition fluctuated between suspicion and hope.

She took a couple of steps towards the new-comer as he strode into the kitchen, and he took off his headpiece not to be outdone in politeness.

“Ange Pitou?” she ejaculated. “Whoever would have guessed that you would enlist.”

“Enlist indeed?” sneered Pitou, smiling loftily.

As he looked round him, seeking someone, Mistress Billet smiled, divining who he was after.

“Looking for Catherine?” she asked unaffectedly.

“To present her with my duty,” said Pitou.

“She is ironing,” responded Mrs. Billet; “but sit ye down and talk to me.”

“Quite willing, mother.” And he took a chair.

In all the doorways and windows the servants and laboring men flocked to see their old fellow. He had a kindly glance for them all, a caress in his smile for the most part.

“So you come from town, Ange?” began Mother Billet. “How did you leave the master?”

“He is all right, but Paris is all wrong.”

The circle of listeners drew in closer.

“What about the King?” inquired the mistress.

Pitou shook his head and clacked his tongue in a way humiliating to the head of the monarchy.

“And the Queen?”

Pitou said never a word.

“Oh,” groaned the crowd.

Pitou was aching for Catherine’s coming.

“Why are you wearing a helmet?”

“It is a trophy of war,” rejoined the young peasant. “A trophy is a tangible testimonial that you have vanquished an enemy.”

“Have you vanquished an enemy, Pitou?”

“An enemy – pooh!” said the valiant one, disdainfully. “Ah, good Mother Billet, you do not know that Farmer Billet and yours truly took the Bastile between us.”

This speech electrified the auditory. Pitou felt the breath on his hair and the helmet mane, while their hands grasped the back of his chair.

“Do tell us what our master has done,” pleaded Mrs. Billet, proud and tremulous at the same time.

Pitou was hurt that Catherine did not leave her linen to come and hear such a messenger as he was. He shook his head for he was growing discontented.

“It will take a time,” he observed.

“Are you hungry, or thirsty?”

“I am not saying no.”

Instantly all the men and maids bustled about so that Pitou found under his hand goblets, mugs, bread, meat, cheese, without realizing the extent of his hint. He had a hot liver, as the rustics say: that is, he digested quickly. But he had not shaken down the Angelican fowl in rice; he tried to eat again but had to give up at the second mouthful.

“If I begin now,” he said, “I should have to do it all over again when Miss Catherine comes.”

While they were all hunting after the young girl, Pitou happened to look up and saw the girl in question leaning out of a window on the upper landing. She was gazing towards Boursonne Woods.

“Oh,” he sighed, “she is looking towards the manor of the Charnys. She is in love with Master Isidor Charny, that is what it is.”

He sighed again, much more lamentably than before.

Taking the farmer’s wife by the hand as the searchers returned fruitless in their search, he took her up a couple of the stairs and showed her the girl, mooning on the window sill among the morning glories and vines.

“Catherine!” she called: “Come, Catherine, here is Ange Pitou, with news from town.”

“Ah,” said Catherine coldly.

So coldly that Pitou’s heart failed him as he anxiously waited for her reply.

She came down the stairs with the phlegm of the Flemish girls in the old Dutch paintings.

“Yes, it is he,” she said, when on the floor.

Pitou bowed, red and trembling.

“He’s wearing a soldier’s helmet,” said a servant-woman in her young mistress’s ear.

Pitou overheard and watched for the effect. But her somewhat pallid though evercharming face showed no admiration for the brazen cap.

“What is he wearing that thing for?” she inquired.

This time indignation got the upperhand in the peasant.

“I am wearing helmet and sabre,” he retorted proudly, “because I have been fighting and have killed Swiss and dragoons: and if you doubt me, Miss Catherine, you can ask your father, and that is all.”

She was so absent-minded that she appeared to catch the latter part of the speech alone.

“How is my father?” asked she; “and why does he not return home with you? Is the news from Paris bad?”

“Very,” replied the young man.

“I thought that all was settled,” the girl objected.

“Quite true, but all is unsettled again.”

“Have not the King and the people agreed and is not the recall of Minister Necker arranged?”

“Necker is not of much consequence now,” said Pitou jeeringly.

“But that ought to satisfy the people.”

“It falls so short of that, that the people are doing justice on their own account and killing their enemies.”

“Their enemies? who are their enemies?” cried the girl astonished.

“The aristocrats, of course,” answered the other.

“Whom do you call aristocrat?” she asked, turning paler.

“Why, naturally, they that have grand houses, and big properties, and starve the nation – those that have everything while we have nothing; that travel on fine horses or in bright coaches while we jog on foot.”

“Heavens,” exclaimed the girl, so white as to be corpselike.

“I can name some aristo’s of our acquaintance,” continued he, noticing the emotion. “Lord Berthier Sauvigny, for instance, who gave you those gold earrings you wore on the day you danced with Master Isidore. Well, I have seen men eat the heart of him!”

A terrible cry burst from all breasts and Catherine fell back in the chair she had taken.

“Did you see that?” faltered Mother Billet, quivering with horror.

“And so did Farmer Billet. By this time they have killed or burnt all the aristocrats of Paris and Versailles. What do you call it dreadful for? you are not of the higher classes, Mother Billet.”

“Pitou, I did not think you were so bloodthirsty when you started for Paris,” said Catherine with sombre energy.

“I do not know as I am so, now; but – “

“But then do not boast of the crimes which the Parisians commit, since you are not a Parisian and did not do them.”

“I had so little hand in them that Farmer Billet and me were nigh slaughtered in taking the part of Lord Berthier – though he had famished the people.”

“Oh, my good, brave father! that is just like him,” said Catherine, excitedly.

“My worthy man,” said Mrs. Billet with tearful eyes. “What has he been about?”

Pitou related that the mob had seized Foulon and Berthier for being the active agents for higher personages in the great Grain Ring which held the corn from the poor, and torn them to pieces, though Billet and he had tried to defend them.

“The farmer was sickened and wanted to come home, but Dr. Gilbert would not let him.”

“Does he want my man to get killed there?” sobbed poor Mother Billet.

“Oh, no,” replied Pitou. “It is all fixed between master and the doctor. He is going to stay a little longer in town to finish up the revolution. Not alone, you understand, but with Mayor Bailly and General Lafayette.”

“Oh, I am not so much alarmed about him as long as in the gentlemen’s company,” said the good old soul with admiration.

“When does he think of returning?” inquired the daughter.

“I don’t know in the least.”

“Then, what have you come back for?”

“To bring Sebastian Gilbert to Father Fortier’s school, and you, Farmer Billet’s instructions.”

Pitou spoke like a herald, with so much dignity that the farmer’s wife dismissed all the gapers.

“Mrs. Billet,” began the messenger, “the master wants you to be worried as little as possible, so he thinks that while he is away, the management of the farm should be in other hands, younger and livelier.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, and he has selected Miss Catherine.”

“My daughter to rule in my house,” cried the woman, with distrust and inexpressible jealousy.

“Under your orders,” the girl hastened to say, while reddening.

“No, no,” persisted Pitou, who went on well since he was in full swing: “I bear the commission entire: Master Billet delegates and authorizes Miss Catherine to see to all the work and govern the house and household in his stead.”

As Billet was infallible in his wife’s eyes, all her resistance ceased instantly.

“Billet is right,” she declared after a glance at her daughter; “she is young but she has a good head, and she can even be headstrong. She can get along outdoors better than me; she knows how to make folks obey. But to be running about over field and hills will make a tomboy of her – “

“Fear nothing for her,” interposed Pitou with a consequential air; “I am here and I will go around with her.”

This gracious offer, by which Ange probably intended to make an effect, drew such a strange glance from Catherine that he was dumbfounded.

Pitou was not experienced in feminine ways but he guessed by her blush that she was not giving complete acquiescence, for he said with an agreeable smile which showed his strong teeth between the large lips:

“Even the Queen has a Lifeguard. Besides, I may be useful in the woods.”

“Is this also in my husband’s instructions?” queried Madam Billet who showed some tendency towards cutting sayings.

“Nay,” said Catherine, “that would be an idle errand and father would not have set it for Master Pitou while he would not have accepted it.”

Pitou rolled his frightened eyes from one to the other: all his castle in the air came tumbling down. A true woman, the younger one understood his painful disappointment.

“Did you see the girls in Paris with the young men tagging at their gown-tails?”

“But you are not a girl, after you become mistress of the house,” remonstrated Pitou.

“Enough chatter,” interrupted Mother Billet; “the mistress of the house has too much work to do. Come, Catherine, and let me turn over things to you, as your father bids us.”

As soon as the house was placed under the new ruler the servants and workmen were presented to her as the one from whom in the future orders would flow. Each departed with the alacrity shown by the new officials at the beginning of a fresh term.

“What about me?” inquired Pitou, left alone and going up to the girl.

“I have no orders for you. What do you think of doing?”

“What I did before I went away.”

“Then you worked for my father and mother. I have nothing in your line, for you are a scholar and a fine Paris gentleman now.”

“But look at the muscle in my arms,” protested the poor fellow in desperation. “Why do you force me to die of hunger under the pretence that I am a learned man? Are you ignorant that Epictetus the philosopher was a tavern waiter to earn his bread, and that Æsop the fabulist had to work for a living? and yet they were more learned than ever I shall be. But Master Billet sent me down here to help on the farm.”

“Be it so; but my father can force you to do things that I should shrink from imposing upon you.”

“Don’t shrink, and impose on me. You will see that I can stand anything. Besides you have books to keep and accounts to make out; and my strong point is figuring and ciphering.”

“I do not think it enough for a man,” rejoined Catherine.

“Am I good for nothing, then?” groaned Pitou.

“Well, live here a bit,” she said; “I will think it over and we shall see what turns up.”

“You want to think it over, about my staying. What have I done to you, Miss Catherine? you do not seem to be the same as before.”

Catherine shrugged her shoulders very slightly. She had no good reasons to fear Pitou and yet his persistency worried her.

“Enough of this,” she said, “I am going over to Fertemilon.”

“I will saddle a horse and go with you.”

“No; stay where you are.”

She spoke so imperiously that the peasant remained riveted to the spot, hanging his head.

“She thinks I am changed, but,” said he, “it is she who is another sort altogether.”

When he was roused by hearing the horse’s hoofs going away, he looked out and saw Catherine riding by a side path towards the highway.

It occurred to him that though she had forbid him to accompany her, she had not said he must not follow her.

He dashed out and took a short cut through the woods, where he was at home, till he reached the main road. But though he waited a half-hour, he saw nobody.

He thought she might have forgotten something at the farm and started back for it; and he returned by the highway. But on looking up a lane he spied her white cap at a distance.

Instead of going to Fertemilon, as she distinctly stated, she was proceeding to Boursonne.

He darted on in the same direction but by a parallel line.

It was no longer to follow her but to spy her.

She had spoken a falsehood. In what end?

He was answered by seeing her thrash her horse into the trot in order to rejoin a horseman who rode to meet her with as much eagerness as she showed on her part.

On coming nearer, as the pair halted at meeting, Pitou recognized by his elegant form and stylish dress the neighboring lord, Isidore Charny. He was brother of the Count of Charny, lieutenant of the Royal Lifeguards, and accredited as favorite of the Queen.

Pitou knew him well and lately from having seen him at the village dances where Catherine chose him for partner.

Dropping to the ground in the brush and creeping up like a viper, he heard the couple.

“You are late to-day, Master Isidore,” began Catherine.

“To-day?” thought the eavesdropper; “it appears that he has been punctual on other meetings.”

“It is not my fault, my darling Kate,” replied the young noble. “A letter from my brother delayed me, to which I had to reply by the bearer. But fear nothing, I shall be more exact another time.”

Catherine smiled and Isidore pressed her hand so tenderly that Pitou felt upon thorns.

“Fresh news from Paris?” she asked. “So have I. Did you not say that when something alike happens to two persons, it is called sympathy?”

“Just so. Who brings you news?”

“Pitou.”

“And pray who is Pitou?” asked the young noble with a free and easy air which changed the red of the listener’s cheek to crimson.

“You know well enough,” was her reply: “Pitou is the farmboy that my father took on out of charity: the one who played propriety for me when I went to the dance.”

“Lord, yes – the chap with knees that look like knots tied in a rope.”

Catherine set to laughing. Pitou felt lowered; he looked at his knees, so useful lately while he was keeping pace with a horse, and he sighed.

“Come, come, do not tear my poor Pitou to pieces,” said Catherine; “Let me tell you that he wanted to come with me just now – to Fertemilon, where I pretended I was going.”

“Why did you not accept the squire – he would have amused you.”

“Not always,” laughed the girl.

“You are right, my pet,” said Isidore, fixing his eyes, brilliant with love, on the pretty girl.

She hid her blushing face in his arms closing round it.

Pitou closed his eyes not to see, but he did not close his ears, and the sound of a kiss reached them. He tore his hair in despair.

When he came to his senses the loving couple were slowly riding away.

The last words he caught were:

“You are right, Master Isidore; let us ride about for an hour which I will gain by making my nag go faster – he is a good beast who will tell no tales,” she added, merrily.

This was all: the vision vanished. Darkness fell on Pitou’s spirit and he said:

“No more of the farm for me, where I am trodden on and made fun of. I am not going to eat the bread of a woman who is in love with another man, handsomer, richer and more graceful than me, I allow. No, my place is not in the town but in my village of Haramont, where I may find those who will think well of me whether my knees are like knots in a rope or not.”

He marched towards his native place, where his reputation and that of his sword and helmet had preceded him, and where glory awaited him, if not happiness. But we know that perfect bliss is not a human attribute.

CHAPTER VIII
ANOTHER BLOW

AS everybody in his village would be abed by ten o’clock, Pitou was glad to find accommodation at the inn, where he slept till seven in the morning. At that hour everybody had risen.

On leaving the Dolphin Tavern, he noticed that his sword and casque won universal attention. A crowd was round him in a few steps.

Undoubtedly he had attained popularity.

Few prophets have this good fortune in their own country. But few prophets have mean and acrimonious aunts who bake fowls in rice for them to eat up the whole at a sitting. Besides, the brazen helmet and the heavy dragoon’s sabre recommended Pitou to his fellow-villager’s attention.

Hence, some of the Villers Cotterets folk, who had escorted him about their town, were constrained to accompany him to his village of Haramont. This caused the inhabitants of the latter to appreciate their fellow-villager at his true worth.

The fact is, the ground was prepared for the seed. He had flitted through their midst before so rapidly that it was a wonder he left any trace of memory: but they were impressed and they were glad of his second appearance. They overwhelmed him with tokens of consideration, begged him to lay aside his armor, and pitch his tent under the four lime trees shading the village green.

Pitou yielded all the more readily as it was his intention to take up residence here and he accepted the offer of a room which a bellicose villager let him have furnished. Settling the terms, the rent per annum being but six livres, the price of two fowls baked in rice, Ange took possession, treated those who had accompanied him to mugs of cider all round, and made a speech on the doorsill.

His speech was a great event, with all Haramont encircling the doorstep. Pitou had studied a little; he had heard Paris speechifying inexhaustibly; there was a space between him and General Lafayette as there is between Paris and Haramont, mentally speaking.

He began by saying that he came back to the hamlet as into the bosom of his only family. This was a touching allusion to his orphanage for the women to hear.

Then he related that he and Farmer Billet had gone to Paris on hearing that Dr. Gilbert had been arrested and because a casket Gilbert had entrusted to his farmer had been stolen from him by the myrmidons of the King under false pretences. Billet and he had rescued the doctor from the Bastile by attacking it, with a few Parisians at their back. At the end of his story his helmet was as grand as the cupola of an observatory.

He ascribed the outbreak to the privileges of the nobility and clergy and called on his brothers to unite against the common enemy.

At this point he drew his sabre and brandished it.

This gave him the cue to call the Haramontese to arms after the example of revolted Paris.

The Revolution was proclaimed in the village.

All echoed the cry of “To arms!” but the only arms in the place were those old Spanish muskets kept at Father Fortier’s.

A bold youth, who had not, like Pitou, been educated under his knout, proposed going thither to demand them. Ange wavered, but had to yield to the impulse of the mob.

“Heavens,” he muttered: “if they thus lead me before I am their leader, what will it be when I am at their head?”

He was compelled to promise to summon his old master to deliver the firearms. Next day, therefore, he armed himself and departed for Father Fortier’s academy.

He knocked at the garden door loud enough to be heard there, and yet modestly enough not to be heard in the house.

He did it to tranquilize his conscience, and was surprised to see the door open; but it was Sebastian who stood on the sill.

He was musing in the grounds, with an open book in his hand.

He uttered a cry of gladness on seeing Pitou, for whom he had a line in his father’s letter to impart.

“Billet wishes you to remind him to Pitou and tell him not to upset the men, and things on the farm.”

“Me? a lot I have to do with the farm,” muttered the young man: “the advice had better be sent on to Master Isidore.”

But all he said aloud was: “Where is the father?”

Sebastian pointed and walked away. Priest Fortier was coming down into the garden. Pitou composed his face for the encounter with his former master.

Fortier had been almoner of the old hunting-box in the woods and as such was keeper of the lumber-room. Among the effects of the hunting establishment of the Duke of Orleans were old weapons and particularly some fifty musketoons, brought home from the Ouessant battle by Prince Joseph Philip, which he had given to the township. Not knowing what to do with them, the section selectmen left them under charge of the schoolmaster.

The old gentleman was clad in clerical black, with his cat-o’-nine tails thrust into his girdle like a sword. On seeing Pitou, who saluted him, he folded up the newspaper he was reading and tucked it into his band on the opposite side to the scourge.

“Pitou?” he exclaimed.

“At your service as far as he is capable,” said the other.

“But the trouble is that you are not capable, you Revolutionist.”

This was a declaration of war, for it was clear that Pitou had put the abbe out of temper.

“Hello! why do you call me a Revolutionist? do you think I have turned the state over all by myself?”

“You are hand and glove with those who did it.”

“Father, every man is free in his mind,” returned Pitou. “I do not say it in Latin for I have improved in that tongue since I quitted your school. Those whom I frequent and at whom you sneer, talk it like their own and they would think the way you taught it to be faulty.”

“My Latin faulty?” repeated the pedagogue, visibly wounded by the ex-pupil’s manner. “How comes it that you never spoke up in this style when you were under my – whip – that is, roof?”

“Because you brutalized me then,” responded Pitou: “your despotism trampled on my wits, and liberty could not lay hold of my speech. You treated me like a fool, whereas all men are equal.”

“I will never suffer anybody to utter such rank blasphemy before me,” cried the irritated schoolmaster. “You the equal of one whom nature and heaven have taken sixty years to form? never!”

“Ask General Lafayette, who has proclaimed the Rights of Man.”

“What, do you quote as an authority that traitor, that firebrand of all discord, that bad subject of the King?”

“It is you who blaspheme,” retaliated the peasant: “you must have been buried for the last three months. This bad subject is the very one who most serves the King. This torch of discord is the pledge of public peace. This traitor is the best of Frenchmen.”

“Oh,” thundered the priest, “that ever I should believe that the royal authority should sink so low that a goodfornothing of this sort invokes Lafayette as once they called on Aristides.”

“Lucky for you the people do not hear you,” said Pitou.

“Oho, you reveal yourself now in your true colors,” said the priest triumphantly: “you bully me. The people, those who cut the throats of the royal bodyguard; who trample on the fallen, the people of your Baillys, Lafayettes and Pitous. Why do you not denounce me to the people of Villers Cotterets? Why do you not tuck up your sleeves to drag me out to hang me up to the lamppost? where is your rope – you can be the hangman.”

“You are saying odious things – you insult me,” said Pitou. “Have a care that I do not show you up to the National Assembly!”

“Show me up? I will show you up, sirrah! as a failure as a scholar, as a Latinist full of barbarisms, and as a beggar who comes preaching subversive doctrines in order to prey upon your clients.”

“I do not prey upon anybody – it is not by preying I live but by work: and as for lowering me in the eyes of my fellow-citizens, know that I have been elected by them commander of the National Guards of Haramont.”

“National Guards at Haramont? and you, Pitou, the captain? Abomination of desolation! Such gangs as you would be chief of must be robbers, footpads, bandits, and highwaymen.”

“On the contrary, they are organized to defend the home and the fields as well as the life and liberties of all good citizens. That is why we have [illegible]oc me to – for the arms.”

“Arms? oh, my museum?” shrieked the schoolmaster. “You come to pillage my arsenal. The armor of the paladins on your ignoble backs. You are mad to want to arm the ragamuffins of Pitou with the swords of the Spaniards and the pikes of the Swiss.”

The priest laughed with such disdainful menace that Pitou shuddered in every vein.

“No, father, we do not want the old curiosities, but the thirty marines’ guns which you have.”

“Avaunt!” said the abbe, taking a step towards the envoy.

“And you shall have the glory of contributing to deliver the country of the oppressors,” said Pitou, who took a backward step.

“Furnish weapons against myself and friends,” said the other, “give you guns to be fired against myself?” He plucked his scourge from his belt. “Never, never!”

He waved the whip over his head.

“But your refusal will have a bad effect,” pleaded Pitou, retreating, “you will be accused of national treason, and of being no citizen. Do not expose yourself to this, good Father Fortier!”

“Mark me a martyr, eh, Nero? is that what you intend?” roared the priest, with flaring eye and much more resembling the executioner than the victim.

“No, father, I come as a peaceful envoy to – “

“Pillage my house for arms as your friends gutted the Soldiers’ Home at Paris.”

“We received plenty of praise for that up there,” said Ange.

“And you would get plenty of strokes of the whip down here.”

“Look out,” said Pitou, who had backed to the door, and who recognized the scourge as an old acquaintance, “you must not violate the rights of man!”

“You shall see about that, rascal.”

“I am protected by my sacred character as an ambassador – “

“Are you?”

And just as Pitou had to turn after getting the street door open, for he had backed through the hall, the infuriated schoolmaster let him have a terrible lash where his backplate would have to be unusually long to defend him. Whatever the courage of the conqueror of the Bastile, he could not help emitting a shriek of pain as he bounded out among the crowd expecting him.

At the yell, neighbors ran forth from their dwellings and to the profound general astonishment all beheld the young man flying with all swiftness under his helmet and with his sabre, while Father Fortier stood on the doorstep, brandishing his whip like the Exterminating Angel waves his sword.