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

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER VIII.

  ANOTHER BLOW.

  As everybody in his village would be abed by ten o'clock, Pitou was gladto find accommodation at the inn, where he slept till seven in themorning. At that hour everybody had risen.

  On leaving the Dolphin Tavern, he noticed that his sword and casque wonuniversal 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 fewprophets have mean and acrimonious aunts who bake fowls in rice for themto eat up the whole at a sitting. Besides, the brazen helmet and theheavy dragoon's sabre recommended Pitou to his fellow-villager'sattention.

  Hence, some of the Villers Cotterets folk, who had escorted him abouttheir town, were constrained to accompany him to his village ofHaramont. This caused the inhabitants of the latter to appreciate theirfellow-villager at his true worth.

  The fact is, the ground was prepared for the seed. He had flittedthrough their midst before so rapidly that it was a wonder he left anytrace of memory: but they were impressed and they were glad of hissecond appearance. They overwhelmed him with tokens of consideration,begged him to lay aside his armor, and pitch his tent under the fourlime trees shading the village green.

  Pitou yielded all the more readily as it was his intention to take upresidence here and he accepted the offer of a room which a bellicosevillager let him have furnished. Settling the terms, the rent _perannum_ being but six livres, the price of two fowls baked in rice, Angetook possession, treated those who had accompanied him to mugs of ciderall 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 speechifyinginexhaustibly; there was a space between him and General Lafayette asthere is between Paris and Haramont, mentally speaking.

  He began by saying that he came back to the hamlet as into the bosom ofhis only family. This was a touching allusion to his orphanage for thewomen to hear.

  Then he related that he and Farmer Billet had gone to Paris on hearingthat Dr. Gilbert had been arrested and because a casket Gilbert hadentrusted to his farmer had been stolen from him by the myrmidons of theKing under false pretences. Billet and he had rescued the doctor fromthe Bastile by attacking it, with a few Parisians at their back. At theend of his story his helmet was as grand as the cupola of anobservatory.

  He ascribed the outbreak to the privileges of the nobility and clergyand 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 exampleof revolted Paris.

  The Revolution was proclaimed in the village.

  All echoed the cry of "To arms!" but the only arms in the place werethose 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 tothe 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 thefirearms. Next day, therefore, he armed himself and departed for FatherFortier's academy.

  He knocked at the garden door loud enough to be heard there, and yetmodestly enough not to be heard in the house.

  He did it to tranquilize his conscience, and was surprised to see thedoor 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 inhis father's letter to impart.

  "Billet wishes you to remind him to Pitou and tell him not to upset themen, and things on the farm."

  "Me? a lot I have to do with the farm," muttered the young man: "theadvice 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 intothe garden. Pitou composed his face for the encounter with his formermaster.

  Fortier had been almoner of the old hunting-box in the woods and as suchwas keeper of the lumber-room. Among the effects of the huntingestablishment of the Duke of Orleans were old weapons and particularlysome fifty musketoons, brought home from the Ouessant battle by PrinceJoseph Philip, which he had given to the township. Not knowing what todo with them, the section selectmen left them under charge of theschoolmaster.

  The old gentleman was clad in clerical black, with his cat-o'-nine tailsthrust 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 onthe 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 theabbe out of temper.

  "Hello! why do you call me a Revolutionist? do you think I have turnedthe 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 sayit in Latin for I have improved in that tongue since I quitted yourschool. Those whom I frequent and at whom you sneer, talk it like theirown and they would think the way you taught it to be faulty."

  "My Latin faulty?" repeated the pedagogue, visibly wounded by theex-pupil's manner. "How comes it that you never spoke up in this stylewhen you were under my--whip--that is, roof?"

  "Because you brutalized me then," responded Pitou: "your despotismtrampled on my wits, and liberty could not lay hold of my speech. Youtreated me like a fool, whereas all men are equal."

  "I will never suffer anybody to utter such rank blasphemy before me,"cried the irritated schoolmaster. "You the equal of one whom nature andheaven have taken sixty years to form? never!"

  "Ask General Lafayette, who has proclaimed the Rights of Man."

  "What, do you quote as an authority that traitor, that firebrand of alldiscord, that bad subject of the King?"

  "It is you who blaspheme," retaliated the peasant: "you must have beenburied for the last three months. This bad subject is the very one whomost serves the King. This torch of discord is the pledge of publicpeace. This traitor is the best of Frenchmen."

  "Oh," thundered the priest, "that ever I should believe that the royalauthority should sink so low that a goodfornothing of this sort invokesLafayette as once they called on Aristides."

  "Lucky for you the people do not hear you," said Pitou.

  "Oho, you reveal yourself now in your true colors," said the priesttriumphantly: "you bully me. The people, those who cut the throats ofthe royal bodyguard; who trample on the fallen, the people of yourBaillys, Lafayettes and Pitous. Why do you not denounce me to the peopleof Villers Cotterets? Why do you not tuck up your sleeves to drag me outto hang me up to the lamppost? where is your rope--you can be thehangman."

  "You are saying odious things--you insult me," said Pitou. "Have a carethat I do not show you up to the National Assembly!"

  "Show me up? I will show you up, sirrah! as a failure as a scholar, as aLatinist full of barbarisms, and as a beggar who comes preachingsubversive doctrines in order to prey upon your clients."

  "I do not prey upon anybody--it is not by _preying_ I live but by work:and as for lowering me in the eyes of my fellow-citizens, know that Ihave been elected by them commander of the National Guards of Haramont."

  "National Guards at Haramont? and you, Pitou, the captain? Abominationof desolation! Such gangs as you would be chief of must be robbers,footpads, bandits, and highwaymen."

  "On the contrary, they are organized to defend the home and the fieldsas well as the life and liberties of all good citizens. That is why wehave [illegible]oc me to
--for the arms."

  "Arms? oh, my museum?" shrieked the schoolmaster. "You come to pillagemy arsenal. The armor of the paladins on your ignoble backs. You are madto want to arm the ragamuffins of Pitou with the swords of the Spaniardsand the pikes of the Swiss."

  The priest laughed with such disdainful menace that Pitou shuddered inevery vein.

  "No, father, we do not want the old curiosities, but the thirty marines'guns which you have."

  "Avaunt!" said the abbe, taking a step towards the envoy.

  "And you shall have the glory of contributing to deliver the country ofthe oppressors," said Pitou, who took a backward step.

  "Furnish weapons against myself and friends," said the other, "give youguns to be fired against myself?" He plucked his scourge from his belt."Never, never!"

  He waved the whip over his head.

  "But your refusal will have a bad effect," pleaded Pitou, retreating,"you will be accused of national treason, and of being no citizen. Donot expose yourself to this, good Father Fortier!"

  "Mark me a martyr, eh, Nero? is that what you intend?" roared thepriest, with flaring eye and much more resembling the executioner thanthe victim.

  "No, father, I come as a peaceful envoy to----"

  "Pillage my house for arms as your friends gutted the Soldiers' Home atParis."

  "We received plenty of praise for that up there," said Ange.

  "And you would get plenty of strokes of the whip down here."

  "Look out," said Pitou, who had backed to the door, and who recognizedthe scourge as an old acquaintance, "you must not violate the rights ofman!"

  "You shall see about that, rascal."

  "I am protected by my sacred character as an ambassador----"

  "Are you?"

  And just as Pitou had to turn after getting the street door open, for hehad backed through the hall, the infuriated schoolmaster let him have aterrible lash where his backplate would have to be unusually long todefend him. Whatever the courage of the conqueror of the Bastile, hecould not help emitting a shriek of pain as he bounded out among thecrowd expecting him.

  At the yell, neighbors ran forth from their dwellings and to theprofound general astonishment all beheld the young man flying with allswiftness under his helmet and with his sabre, while Father Fortierstood on the doorstep, brandishing his whip like the Exterminating Angelwaves his sword.