The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
“But we have become men,” roughly said Maniquet, holding out towards the
priest his hand, maimed by a gun going off prematurely while he was
poaching on a nobleman’s warren. Needless to say he was determined the
nobility should pay for this accident.
“Serpents,” said the schoolmaster in irritation.
“Who will sting if trodden on,” retorted Sergeant Claude, joining in.
In these threats the mayor saw the extent of the Revolution and the
priest martyrdom.
“We want some of the arms here,” said the former, to conciliate
everybody.
“They are not mine but belong to the Duke of Orleans,” was the reply.
“Granted,” said Pitou, “but that does not prevent us asking for them all
the same.”
“I will write to the prince,” said the pedagogue loftily.
“You forget that the delay will avail nothing,” interposed the mayor;
“the duke is for the people and would reply that they ought to be given
not only the muskets but the old cannon.”
This probability painfully struck the priest who groaned in Latin: “I am
surrounded by foes.”
“Quite true, but these are merely political enemies,” observed Pitou;
“we hate in you only the bad patriot.”
“Absurd and dangerous fool,” returned the priest, in excitement which
gave him eloquence of a kind, “which is of us the better lover of his
country, I who wish to keep cruel weapons in the shade, or you demanding
them for civil strife and discord? which is the true son, I who seek
palms to decorate our common mother, or you who hunt for the steel to
rend her bosom?”
The mayor turned aside his head to hide his emotion, making a slight nod
as much as to say: “That is very neatly put.” The deputy mayor, like
another Tarquin, was cropping the flowers with his cane. Ange was set
back, which caused his two companions to frown.
Sebastian, a Spartan child, was impassible. Going up to Pitou he asked
him what was the to-do.
“An order signed by General Lafayette, and written by my father?” he
repeated when briefly informed. “Why is there any hesitation in obeying
it?”
He revealed the indomitable spirit of the two races creating him in his
dilated pupils, and the rigidity of his brow.
The priest shuddered to hear the words and lowered his crest.
“This is rebellion,” continued Sebastian; “beware, sir!”
“Thou, also?” cried the schoolmaster, draping himself in his gown after
the manner of Caesar.
“And I,” said Pitou, comprehending that his post was at stake. “Do you
style me a traitor, because I came to you with the olive branch in my
hand to ask the arms, and am forced this day to wrench them from you
under support of the authorities? Well, I would rather appear as a
traitor to my duties than give a favoring hand to the Anti-Revolution.
The Country forever and above all! hand over the arms, or we will use
ours!”
The mayor nodded on the sly to Pitou as he had to the priest to signify:
“You have said that finely.”
The speech had thunderstricken the priest and electrified the hearers.
The mayor slipped away, and the deputy would have liked to follow his
example, but the absence of the two principal functionaries would look
bad. He therefore followed the secretary, who led the gendarmes along to
the museum, guided by Pitou who, instructed in the place was also
instructed on the place of deposit.
Like a lion cub, Sebastian bounded with the patriots. The schoolmaster
fell half dead on a chair.
The invaders wanted to pillage everything, but Pitou only selected
thirty-three muskets, with an extra one, a rifle, for himself, together
with a straight sword, which he girded on.
The others, made up into two bundles, were carried by the joyous pair of
officers in spite of the weight, past the disconsolate priest.
They were distributed to the Haramontese that evening, and in presenting
a gun to each, Pitou said, like the Spartan mother giving out the
buckler: “Come home with it, or go to sleep on it!”
Thus was the little place set in a ferment by Pitou’s act. The delight
was great to own a gun where firearms had been forbidden lest the lords’
game should be injured and where the long oppression of the gamekeepers
had infused a mania for hunting.
But Pitou did not participate in the glee. The soldiers had weapons but
not only was their captain ignorant how to drill them but to handle them
in file or squad.
During the night his taxed brain suggested the remedy.
He remembered an old friend, also an old soldier, who had lost a leg at
the Battle of Fontenoy; the Duke of Orleans gave him the privilege to
live in the woods, and kill either a hare or a rabbit a-day. He was a
dead shot and on the proceeds of his shooting under this license he
fared very well.
His manual of arms might be musty but then Pitou could procure from
Paris the new Drill-book of the National Guards, and correct what was
obsolete by the newest tactics.
He called on old Clovis at a lucky moment as the old hunter was saddened
by his gun having burst. He welcomed the present of the rifle which Ange
brought him and eagerly embraced the opportunity of paying him in
kindness by teaching him the drill.
Each day Pitou repeated to his soldiery what he had learnt overnight
from the hunter, and he became more popular, the admired of men,
children and the aged. Even women were quieted when his lusty voice
thundered: “Heads up--eyes right! bear yourselves nobly! look at me!”
for Pitou looked noble.
As soon as the manoeuvres became complicated, Pitou went over to a large
town where he studied the troops on the parade grounds, and picked up
more in a day from practice than from the books in three months.
Thus two months passed by, in fatigue, toil and feverish excitement.
Pitou was still unhappy in love, but he was satiated with glory. He had
run about so much, so moved his limbs, and whetted his mind, that you
may be astonished that he should long to appease or comfort his heart.
But he was thinking of that.
CHAPTER X.
THE LOVER’S PARTING.
Many times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the
tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how
faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.
Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would
go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne
Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and
handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.
What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to
make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.
He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a
dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of
the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.
All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly
superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore
Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome
and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower
orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to
despair.
Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.
“She showed no proper feeling in letting me go from the farm,” he mused,
“and since I went off, she has not inquired whether I starved to death
or not. What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus
cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard
that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to
keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say
much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of
revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.
But it is grander not to use them.
Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless
the actions are known to the person befriended.
Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her?
He knew that she came through the woods to go to the hunting-box, and it
was very easy for him to plant himself under the trees, a book in hand
as if he were studying, where she would be sure to come along.
Indeed, as he was pretending to pore over the “Perfect National
Guardsman,” after having watched her to her rendezvous, he heard the
soft shutting of a door. The rustle of a dress in the brush came next.
Catherine’s head appeared above the bushes, looking with an apprehensive
air all round for fear somebody would see her.
She was ten paces from her rustic worshipper, who kept still with the
book on his knee. But he no longer looked on it but at the girl so that
she should mark that he saw her.
She uttered a slight faint, stifled scream, recognized him, became pale
as though death had flitted by and grazed her, and, after a short
indecision betrayed in her trembling and the shrug of her shoulders, she
flew wildly into the underwood and found her hitched-up horse in the
forest. She mounted and fled.
Pitou’s plot was well laid and she had fallen into it.
He went home, half-frightened, half delighted.
He perceived a number of details most alarming in the accomplished
trick.
The following Sunday was appointed for a grand military parade at
Haramont. Sufficiently drilled, the Haramontese meant to give warlike
exercises. Several rival villages also making military studies, were to
contest with them in the career of arms.
The announcement drew a great crowd, and the people in holiday attire
gathered on the green, where they feasted frugally on homemade cake and
fruit, washed down with spring water.
Some of the spectators were the gentry and squires, come to laugh at the
clowns playing at soldiers.
Haramont had become a centre, for four corps of other Guards came
hither, headed by fife and drum.
Among the farmers, came Catherine and Mother Billet on horseback.
This was at the same time as the Haramont National Guard marched up,
with fife and drum, with Commander Pitou on a borrowed white horse, in
order that the likeness should be complete to General Lafayette
reviewing the National Guards at Paris.
Without joking, if he did not look stylish and aristocratic, he was
noble and valiant and pleasant to behold.
This company of Guards had shining muskets, the national cockades, and
marched with most satisfactory time in two files. It had won the tribute
before reaching the parade ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pitou saw that Catherine changed color.
From that moment the review had more interest to him than anything in
the world.
He passed his men through the simple manual of arms, and they did it so
smartly and neatly that it elicited applause.
Not so with the competitors, who were irregularly armed and had not been
trained steadily. Others exaggerated from their conceit what they could
have done properly.
On the whole imperfect results.
For the grand array, Pitou was outranked in seniority by an army
sergeant who took the general command; but unhappily he had grasped more
than he could hold: he bunched his men, lost grip of some files, let a
company meander under the surrounding trees, and finally lost his head
so that his own soldiers began to grumble.
From the Haramont side rose a shout:
“Let Pitou try!”
“Yes, yes Pitou!” caught up the other villagers, furious at their
inferiority being manifested through their own instructors.
Pitou jumped on his white charger, and replacing himself at the head of
his troop, become the rallying point of the little army, uttered a word
of command so superbly that the oaks shivered. On the instant, and as by
miracle, order was re-established: the movements fitted in with one
another with such uniformity that the enthusiasm did not disturb the
regularity. Pitou so well applied the theory of the instruction books