The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
eager to offer hospitality to a captor of the Bastile, and
boon-companion of General Lafayette.
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?”