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