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

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRY.

  Our intention being to temporarily abandon the fortunes of our high andmighty characters to follow those of more humble but perhaps no lessengaging heroes, we take up with Sebastian Gilbert whom his father,immediately after his release from the Bastile, confided to a youngpeasant named Ange Pitou, foster-brother of the youth, and despatchedthem to the latter's birthplace, Villers Cotterets.

  It was eighteen leagues from the city, and Gilbert might have sent themdown by stage-coach or his own carriage; but he feared isolation for theson of the mesmerists' victim, and nothing so isolates a traveler as aclosed carriage.

  Ange Pitou had accepted the trust with pride at the choice of the King'shonorary physician. He travelled tranquilly, passing through villagestrembling with the thrill from the shock of the events at Paris as itwas the commencement of August when the pair left town.

  Besides Pitou had kept a helmet and a sabre picked up on the battlefieldwhere he had shown himself more brave than he had expected. One does nothelp in the taking of a Bastile without preserving some heroic touch inhis bearing subsequently.

  Moreover he had become something of an orator; he had studied theClassics and he had heard the many speeches of the period, scattered outof the City Hall, in the mobs, during lulls in the street fights.

  Furnished with these powerful forces, added to by a pair of ponderousfists, plenty of broad grins, and a most interesting appetite forloiters-on who did not have to pay the bill, Pitou journeyed mostpleasantly. For those inquisitive in political matters, he told thenews, inventing what he had not heard, Paris having a knack that waywhich he had picked up.

  As Sebastian ate little and spoke hardly at all, everybody admiredPitou's vigorous paternal care.

  They went through Haramont, the little village where the mother of oneand the nurse of the other had died and was laid in earth.

  Her living home, sold by Pitou's Aunt Angelique, her sister-in-law, hadbeen razed by the new owner, and a black cat snarled at the young menfrom the wall built round the garden.

  But nothing was changed at the burying-ground; the grass had so grownthat the chances were that the young peasant could not find his mother'sgrave. Luckily he knew it by a slip of weeping willow, which he hadplanted; while the grass was growing it had grown also and had become ina few years a tolerable tree.

  Ange walked directly to it, and the pair said their prayers under thelithe branches which Pitou took in his arms as they were his mother'stresses.

  Nobody noticed them as all the country folk were in the field and noneseeing Pitou would have recognized him in his dragoon's helmet and withthe sword and belt.

  At five in the afternoon they reached their destination.

  While Pitou had been away from Haramont three years, it was only as manyweeks since he quitted Villers Cotterets, so that it was simple enoughthat he should be recognized at the latter place.

  The two visitors were reported to have gone to the back door of FatherFortier's academy for young gentlemen where Pitou had been educated withSebastian, and where the latter was to resume his studies.

  A crowd collected at the front door where they thought Pitou would comeforth, as they wanted to see him in the soldier's appurtenances.

  After giving the doctor's letter and money for the schooling to AbbeFortier's sister, the priest being out for a walk with the pupils, Pitouleft the house, cocking his helmet quite dashingly on the side of hishead.

  Sebastian's chagrin at parting was softened by Ange Pitou's promise tosee him often. Pitou was like those big, lubberly Newfoundland dogs whosometimes weary you with their fawning, but usually disarm you by theirjolly good humor.

  The score of people outside the door thought that as Pitou was in battlearray he had seen the fights in Paris and they wanted to have news.

  He gave it with majesty; telling how he and Farmer Billet, theirneighbor, had taken the Bastile and set Dr. Gilbert free. They hadlearnt something in the Gazettes but no newspaper can equal aneye-witness who can be questioned and will reply. And the obligingfellow did reply and explain and at such length that in an hour, one ofthe listeners suddenly remarked that he was flagging and said:

  "But our dear Pitou is tired, and here we are keeping him on his legs,when he ought to go home, to his Aunt Angelique's. The poor old girlwill be delighted to see him again."

  "I am not tired but hungry," returned the other. "I am never tired but Iam always sharpset."

  Before this plain way of putting it, the throng broke up to let Pitougo through. Followed by some more curious than the rest, he proceeded tohis father's sister's house.

  It was a cottage where he would have been starved to death by the piousold humbug of an old maid, but for his poaching in the woods forsomething that they could eat while the superfluity was sold by her tohave the cash in augmentation of a very pretty hoard the miser kept in achair cushion.

  As the door was fastened, from the old lady being out gossiping, andPitou declared that an aunt should never shut out a loving nephew, hedrew his great sabre and opened the lock with it as it were an oyster,to the admiration of the boys.

  Pitou entered the familiar cottage with a bland smile, and went straightup to the cupboard where the food was kept. He used in his boyish daysto ogle the crust and the hunk of cheese with the wish to have magicalpowers to conjure them out into his mouth.

  Now he was a man: he went up to the safe, opened it, opened also hispocket-knife, and taking out a loaf, cut off a slice which might weigh afair two pounds.

  He seemed to hear Aunt Angelique snarl at him, but it was only the creakof the door hinges.

  In former times, the old fraud used to whine about poverty and palm himoff with cheap cheese and few flavors. But since he had left she got uplittle delicacies of value which lasted her a week, such as stewed beefsmothered in carrots and onions; baked mutton with potatoes as large asmelons; or calves-foot, decked with pickled shallots; or a giant omeletsprinkled with parsley or dotted with slices of fat pork of which onesufficed for a meal even when she had an appetite.

  Pitou was in luck. He lighted on a day when Aunt Angelique had cooked anold rooster in rice, so long that the bones had quitted the flesh andthe latter was almost tender. It was basking in a deep dish, blackoutside but glossy and attractive within. The coxcomb stuck up in themidst like Ceuta in Gibraltar Straits.

  Pitou had been so spoilt by the good living at Paris that he never evenreflected that he had never seen such magnificence in his relative'shouse.

  He had his hunk of bread in his right hand: he seized the baking dishin his left and held it by the grip of his thumb in the grease. But atthis moment it seemed to him that a shadow clouded the doorway.

  He turned round, grinning, for he had one of those characters which lettheir happiness be painted on their faces.

  The shadow was cast by Angelique Pitou, drier, sourer, bonier, notbonnier, and more mean than ever.

  Formerly, at this sight, Pitou would have dropped the bread and dish andfled.

  But he was altered. His helmet and sword had not more changed his aspectthan his mind was changed by frequenting the society of therevolutionary lights of the capital.

  Far from fleeing, he went up to her and opening his arms he embraced herso that his hands, holding the knife, the bread and the dish, crossedbehind her skeleton back.

  "It is poor Pitou," he said in accomplishing this act of nepotism.

  She feared that he was trying to stifle her because she had caught himred-handed in plundering her store. Literally, she did not breathefreely until she was released from this perillous clasp.

  She was horrified that he did not express any emotion over his prize andat his sitting in the best chair: previously he would have perchedhimself on the edge of a stool or the broken chair. Thus easily lodgedhe set to demolishing the baked fowl. In a few minutes the pattern ofthe dish began to appear clean at the bottom as the rocks and sand onthe seashore when the tide goes out.


  In her frightful perplexity she endeavored to scream but the ogre smiledso bewitchingly that the scream died away on her prim lips.

  She smiled, without any effect on him, and then turned to weeping. Thisannoyed the devourer a little but did not hinder his eating.

  "How good you are to weep with joy at my return," he said. "I thank you,my kind aunt."

  Evidently the Revolution had transmogrified this lad.

  Having tucked away three fourths of the bird he left a little of theIndian grain at the end of the dish, saying:

  "You are fond of rice, my dear auntie: and, besides, it is good for yourpoor teeth."

  At this attention, taken for a bitter jest, Angelique nearly suffocated.She sprang upon Pitou and snatched the lightened platter from his hand,with an oath which would not have been out of place in the mouth of anold soldier.

  "Bewailing the rooster, aunt?" he sighed.

  "The rogue--I believe he is chaffing me," cried the old prude.

  "Aunt," returned the other, rising majestically, "my intention was topay you. I have money. I will come and board with you, if you please,only I reserve the right to make up the bill of fare. As for this snack,suppose we put the lot at six cents, four of the fowl and two of bread."

  "Six? when the meat is worth eight alone and the bread four," cried thewoman.

  "But you did not buy the bird--I know the old acquaintance by his nineyears comb. I stole him for you from under his mother and by the sametoken, you flogged me because I did not steal enough corn to feed him.But I begged the grain from Miss Catherine Billet; as I procured thebird and the food, I had a lien on him, as the lawyers say. I have onlybeen eating my own property."

  "Out of this house," she gasped, almost losing her voice while she triedto pulverize him with her gaze.

  Pitou remarked with satisfaction that he could not have swallowed onegrain more of rice.

  "Aunt, you are a bad relative," he said loftily. "I wanted you to showyourself as of old, spiteful and avaricious. But I am not going to haveit said that I eat my way without paying."

  He stood on the threshold and called out with a voice which was not onlyheard by the starers without but by anybody within five hundred paces:

  "I call these honest folk for witnesses, that I have come from Parisafoot, after having taken the Bastile. I was hungered and tired, and Ihave sat down under my only relation's roof, and eaten, but my keep isthrown up at me, and I am driven away pitilessly!"

  He infused so much pathos in this exordium that the hearers began tomurmur against the old maid.

  "I want you to bear witness that she is turning from her door a poorwayfarer who has tramped nineteen leagues afoot; an honest lad, honoredwith the trust of Farmer Billet and Dr. Gilbert; who has brought MasterSebastian Gilbert here to Father Fortier's; a conqueror of the Bastile,a friend of Mayor Bailly and General Lafayette."

  The murmuring increased.

  "And I am not a beggar," he pursued, "for when I am accused of having abite of bread, I am ready to meet the score, as proof of which I plankdown this silver bit--in payment of what I have eaten at my own folk's."

  He drew a silver crown from his pocket with a flourish, and tossed it onthe table under the eyes of all, whence it bounced into the dish andburied itself in the rice. This last act finished the mercenary aunt;she hung her head under the universal reprobation displayed in aprolonged groan. Twenty arms were opened towards Pitou, who went forth,shaking the dust off his brogans, and disappeared, escorted by a mobeager to offer hospitality to a captor of the Bastile, andboon-companion of General Lafayette.