The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
“You are too fragile--we should only have you ill. She will get along
finely with Mother Clement and Ange to look after her.”
“Ange?”
“Yes, he has a leaning toward medicine and I shall make him my
assistant. He is coming over to my place now to get a soothing potion
made up. He will bring it back and direct the administration of it. He
will remain on duty here, to run over to me with the news of any
change.”
“You know best, doctor; but give the poor father a word of your hope.”
“Where is he?”
“In the next room.”
“Useless,” said a voice on the threshold, “I have heard all.”
As though this was all he wanted, the pale-faced farmer withdrew and
offered no opposition to this ruling of the house by the medical
adviser.
The latter was not a light of science but he was a keen observer.
He had seen that Pitou would be the best confidant to place before his
patient’s eyes as soon as they opened to life and reason.
He was able with the first words to reassure her upon Isidore’s health.
There was no rioting in Paris and the young noble had gone off to Italy
as a messenger.
He was sure to write to Catherine, she said, and she authorized him to
go to the post for the letter.
As Pitou on the farm ate and drank with his accustomed appetite Billet
did not suspect the treacherous part he was playing.
Consoled by the progress the girl made after the receipt of the beloved
letter, Pitou was enabled to proceed with his public work.
With the money Gilbert gave him, he equipped the Haramont National
Guards with new suits; this was for the ceremony of the Federation of
Villers Cotterets and other villages of the canton, to be held on a
following Sunday.
At this prospect of uniforms, the Guards assembled with their two
minstrels and gave their liberal leader a serenade, interspersed with
fire-crackers and cheers, among which was to be heard a voice or two,
slightly tipsy, shouting:
“Long live Pitou, the Hero of the People!”
Remembering the impression the Haramont National Guard had created when
they had hats alike, you can appreciate the justice in the roar of
admiration when they appeared in uniforms, and what a dashing air the
captain must have worn, with his little cap cocked over one ear, his
gorget shining on his breast, his catspaws, as the epaules were
irreverently called, and his sword.
Aunt Angelique could hardly identify her nephew who almost rode her down
on his white horse.
But he saluted her with a wave of the sword and left her crushed by the
honor.
Recalling that the tailor had boasted of the order which Pitou had paid,
she thought he had come home a millionaire.
“I must not quarrel with him,” she mumbled: “aunts inherit from
nephews.”
Alas! he had forgotten her by this time. Among the girls wearing
tricolored sashes and carrying green palm boughs, he recognized
Catherine. She was pale, her beauty more delicate, but Raynal had
fulfilled his word.
She was happy, for Pitou had managed to find a hollow tree where he
deposited letters for her to take them out in a stroll, and that morning
one was there.
Pitou came up and saluted her with his sword. He would have only touched
his hat for General Lafayette.
“How grand you look in your uniform,” she said loudly. “I thank you, my
dear Pitou,” she added in a voice for him alone; “how good you are. I
love you!”
She took his hand and pressed it in hers. Giddiness passed into poor
Pitou’s head; he dropped his hat from the free hand, and would have
fallen at her feet like the hat only for a great tumult with menacing
sounds being heard towards Soissons.
Whatever the cause, he profited by it to get out of the awkward
situation.
He disengaged his hand from Catherine’s, picked up his hat and put it on
as he ran to the head of his thirty-three men, shouting:
“To arms!”
It was an old enemy of his who was causing a block to the festivities.
Father Fortier had been designated to perform the office of celebrating
the Federation Mass on the Altar of the Country, for which the holy
vessels were to be carried from the church. The mayor, Longpre, was to
superintend the transfer. Like everybody he knew the schoolmaster’s
temper and thought he would not bear him good will for the part he took
in the turning over the muskets.
So, rather than face him, he had sent him an order in writing to be
present for the mass at ten.
At half past nine he sent his secretary to see how things looked. The
gentleman brought bad news. The church was locked up. The church
officials were all laid up with various complaints. It had the air of a
conspiracy.
At ten the crowd gathered and talked of beating in the church doors and
taking out the church plate.
As a conciliator, Longpre quieted them as well as he could and went to
knock at Fortier’s housedoor.
In the meantime he sent for the armed forces. The gendarmes officers
came up. They were attended by additions to the mob.
As they had no catapult to force the door, they summoned the locksmith.
But when he was going to insert a picklock, the door opened and Abbé
Fortier appeared, with fiery eye and hair bristling.
“Back,” he cried with a threatening gesture, “back, heretics, impious
relapsers! avaunt ye from the sill of the man of God!”
The murmur receiving his outburst was not flattering to him.
“Excuse me,” said the unctuous mayor, “but we only wanted to know
whether you would serve the mass on the altar of the country, or not?”
“Sanction revolt, rebellion and ingratitude,” yelled the holy man in one
of the fits of passion habitual to him: “curse virtue and bless sin? you
cannot have hoped it, mayor. I will not say your sacrilegous mass!”
“Very well; this is a free country now--you need not unless you like.”
“Free? ha, ha, ha!” and with a most exasperating laugh he was going to
slam the door in their faces when a man burst through the throng, pushed
the door nearly open again and all but overturned Fortier though he was
a stout man.
It was Billet.
There was profound silence as all divined that not two mere men, but two
forces were opposing each other.
Though Billet had displayed so much strength to open the door, he spoke
in a calm voice:
“Pardon me, mayor, but I think I heard you say that the father might say
the mass or not, at his pleasure? this is an error and it is no longer
the time when errors are allowed to flourish. Every man who is paid to
do work is bound to do it. You are paid by the country to say mass and
you shall say it.”
“Blasphemer, Manichean,” roared the priest.
“You ought to set the example of obedience and here you are doing the
other thing. If you are a citizen and a Frenchman, obey the nation.”
“Bravo, Billet!” cried the multitude. “To the altar, with the priest.”
Encouraged by the acclamations, Billet lugged out from his hall the
first priest who had given the signal for counter-revolution.
“I am a martyr,” groaned the priest, comprehending that resistance was
impossible in the farmer’s vigorous hands, “I call for martyrdom!” And
as he was hurried along he sang “Good Lord, deliver us!”
This crowd conducting him was the cause of the turbulence towards which
Pitou was marching his cohort. But on seeing the reason, he and
Catherine appealed to the farmer with the same voice.
Untouched, the latter carried the prize up to the altar where he let him
fall.
“I proclaim you unworthy to serve at this altar which you disdained,”
said Billet: “no man should go up these steps unless his head is filled
with these feelings, the desire of liberty, devotion to the country and
love of mankind. Priest, have you these sentiments? if so, go up boldly
and invoke our Maker. But if you do not feel you are the foremost of us
all as a citizen, give place to the more worthy, and be off!”
“Madman, you do not know what you are declaring war upon,” hissed the
priest, retiring with uplifted finger.
“I do know, if they are like you, vipers, foxes, wolves,” returned
Billet: “all that sneak and poison and tear in the shade. Come at me,
then--I can face ye, in the open!” he concluded, smiting his broad
chest.
During a silent moment the throng parted to let the priest skulk
through, and, closing, remained mute and admiring the vigorous man who
offered himself as target to the terrible power to which half the world
was enslaved at that era.
There was no longer mayor, town councilmen or gendarmes, only the Hero
of the People, Billet.
“But we have no priest now,” said Mayor Longpre.
“We do not want him,” replied Billet who had never been in church but
twice, for his wedding and his child’s baptism. “We will read the
Declaration of the Rights of Man from the altar. That is the Creed of
Liberty and the Gospel of the Future.”
Billet could not read but he had his manifesto by heart. When he had
finished and with a noble movement embraced the Law and the Sword by
taking the mayor’s and Pitou’s hands, the multitude appreciated the
grandeur of what they were doing in shouting:
“Long live the Nation!”
It was one of the scenes of which Gilbert had spoken to the Queen
without her understanding him.
From that time forward, France became one great family, with one heart
and one language.
CHAPTER XXX.
UNDER THE WINDOW.
On the surface all was calm and almost smiling on the Billet Farm.
As before, Billet, on his strong horse, trotted all over the land
keeping his hands up to the mark. But a sharp observer would have
noticed that on whatever part he was he tried to get a look at his
daughter’s room window.
Though his face had a little softened toward her, Catherine felt that
paternal distrust hovered over her.
Mother Billet was vegetating as formerly; she did not know that her
husband harbored suspicion in his bosom, and her daughter anguish in
hers.
Pitou, after his glory as captain of the uniformed National Guards, had
fallen back into his habitual state of sweet and kindly melancholy. By
the postmark on Isidore’s letters he noticed that he had returned to
Paris.
He concluded that he would not be long before returning to his estate.
Pitou’s heart shrank at this prospect.
Under pretence of snaring rabbits to give his friend more succulent food
than farm fare, he haunted the wood until he saw Catherine. She was
seeking him, too, for she had a word for him.
He need not trouble about her letters as she would not be receiving any
for some days.
He guessed that the writer was coming in person to repeat his vows.
“Have you noticed,” he said, “how gloomy the master has become of late?”
Catherine turned pale.
“I tell you as a sure thing that whoever is the cause of this change in
such a hearty good fellow, will have an unpleasant time with him when he
meets him.”
“You say, ‘him,'” said Catherine; “why may he not have quarrelled with
a woman, against whom he nurses this sullen rage?”
“You have seen something? have you any reason to fear?”
“I have to fear all that a girl may fear when she loves above her
station and has an irritated father.”
“It seems to me that in your place,” Pitou ventured to give advice, “I
should--no, it nearly killed you to part with him, and to give him up
altogether would be your death. Oh, all this is very unfortunate!”
“Hush, speak of something else--here comes father.”
Indeed, seeing his daughter with a man, the farmer rode up at speed: but
recognizing Pitou, he asked him in to dinner with less gloom on his
face.
“Gracious,” muttered Catherine at the door, “can he know?”
“What?” whispered Pitou.
“Nothing,” replied the girl, going up to her room and closing the
shutters.
When she came down, dinner was ready, but she ate little.
“You might tell us what brought you our way to-day,” asked the morose
farmer of Pitou.