CHAPTER XXXI.
FORTIER EXECUTES HIS THREAT.
Catherine piously closed her mother's eyes, with her hand and thenwith her lips, while Mother Clement lit the candles and arranged otherparaphernalia.
Pitou took charge of the other details. Reluctant to visit FatherFortier, with whom he stood on delicate ground, he ordered themortuary mass of the sacristan, and engaged the gravedigger and thecoffin-bearers.
Then he went over to Haramont to have his company of militia notifiedthat the wife of the Hero of the People would be buried at eleven onthe morrow. It was not an official order but an invitation. But itwas too well known what Billet had done for this Revolution which wasturning all heads and enflaming all hearts; what danger Billet was eventhen running for the sake of the masses--for this invitation not to beregarded as an order: all the volunteer soldiers promised their captainthat they would be punctual.
Pitou brought the joiner with him, who carried the coffin. He had allthe heartfelt delicacy rare in the lowborn, and hid the man and his bierin the outhouse so Catherine should not see it, and to spare her fromhearing the sound of the hammering of the nails, he entered the dwellingalone.
Catherine was still praying by the dead, which had been shrouded by twoneighbors.
Pitou suggested that she should go out for a change of air; then for thechild's sake, upon which she proposed he should take the little one. Shemust have had great confidence in Pitou to trust her boy to him for atime.
"He won't come," reported Pitou, presently. "He is crying."
She kissed her mother, took her child by the hand and walked away withPitou. The joiner carried in the coffin when she was gone.
He took her out on the road to Boursonnes, where she went half a leaguewithout saying a word to Pitou, listening to the voices of the woodlandwhich talked to her heart.
When she got home, the work was done, and she understood why Ange hadinsisted on her going out. She thanked him with an eloquent look. Sheprayed for a long while by the coffin, understanding now that she hadbut one of the two friends, left, her mother and Pitou, when Isidoredied.
"You must come away," said the peasant, "or I must go and hire a nursefor Master Isidore."
"You are right, Pitou," she said. "My God, how good Thou art to me--andhow I love you, Pitou!"
He reeled and nearly fell over backwards. He leaned up against the wall,choking, for Catherine had said that she loved him! He did not deceivehimself about the kind of love, but any kind was a great deal for him.
Finishing her prayer, she rose and went with a slow step to lean on hisshoulder. He put his arm round her to sustain her; she allowed this.Turning at the door, she breathed: "Farewell, mother!" and went forth.
Pitou stopped her at her own door. She began to understand Pitou.
"Why, Miss Catherine," he stammered, "do you not think it is a good timeto leave the farm?"
"I shall only leave when my mother shall no longer be here," shereplied.
She spoke with such firmness that he saw it was an irrevocable resolve.
"When you do go, you know you have two homes, Father Clovis' and myhouse."
Pitou's "house" was his sitting room and bedroom.
"I thank you," she replied, her smile and nod meaning that she acceptedboth offers.
She went into her room without troubling about the young man, who hadthe knack of finding some burrow.
At ten next day all the farmers for miles around flocked to the farm.The Mayor came, too. At half after ten up marched the Haramont NationalGuards, with colors tied up in black, without a man being missing.Catherine, dressed in black, with her boy in mourning, welcomed allcomers and it must be said that there was no feeling for her but ofrespect.
At eleven, some three hundred persons were gathered at the farm. Thepriest and his attendants alone were absent. Pitou knew Father Fortierand he guessed that he who had refused the sacraments to the dyingwoman, would withhold the funeral service under the pretext that she haddied unconscious. These reflections, confided to Mayor Longpre, produceda doleful impression. While they were looking at each other in silence,Maniquet, whose opinions were anti-religious, called out:
"If Abbe Fortier does not like to say mass, we will get on without it."
But it was evidently a bold act, although Voltaire and Rousseau were inthe ascendancy.
"Gentlemen," suggested the mayor, "let us proceed to Villers Cotteretswhere we will have an explanation."
The procession moved slowly past Catherine and her little boy, and wasgoing down the road, when the rear guards heard a voice behind them. Itwas a call and they turned.
A man on a horse was riding from the side of Paris.
Part of the rider's face was covered with black bandages; he waved hishat in his hand and signalled that he wanted the party to stop.
Pitou had turned like the others.
"Why, it is Billet," he said, "good! I should not like to be in FatherFortier's skin."
At the name everybody halted. He advanced rapidly and as he neared allwere able to recognize him as Pitou had done.
On reaching the head of the line, Billet jumped off his horse, threw thebridle on its neck, and, after saying a lusty: "Good day and thank ye,citizens!" he took his proper place which Pitou had in his absence heldto lead the mourners.
A stable boy took away the horse.
Everybody looked curiously at the farmer. He had grown thinner and muchpaler. Part of his face and around his left eye had retained the blackand blue tint of extravasated blood. His clenched teeth and frowningbrows indicated sullen rage which waited the time for a vent.
"Do you know what has happened?" inquired Pitou.
"I know all," was the reply.
As soon as Gilbert had told his patient of the state of his wife, he hadtaken a cabriolet as far as Nanteuil. As the horse could go no farther,though Billet was weak, he had mounted a post horse and with a change atLevignan, he reached his farm as we know.
In two words Mother Clement had told the story. He remounted the horseand stopped the procession which he descried on turning a wall.
Silent and moody before, the party became more so since this figure ofhate led the way.
At Villers Cotterets a waiting party fell into the line. As the cortegewent up the street, men, women and children flowed out of the dwellings,saluted Billet, who nodded, and incorporated themselves in the ranks.
It numbered five hundred when it reached the church. It was shut, asPitou had anticipated. They halted at the door.
Billet had become livid; his expression had grown more and morethreatening.
The church and the town hall adjoined. The player of the bassoon inthe holy building was also janitor at the mayor's, so that he belongedunder the secular and the clerical arm. Questioned by Mayor Longpre, heanswered that Father Fortier had forbidden any retainer of the church tolend his aid to the funeral. The mayor asked where the keys were, andwas told the beadle had them.
"Go and get the keys," said Billet to Pitou, who opened out his longcompass-like legs and, having been gone five minutes, returned to say:
"Abbe Fortier had the keys taken to his house to be sure the churchshould not be opened."
"We must go straight to the priest for them," suggested Maniquet, thepromoter of extreme measures.
"Let us go to the abbe's," cried the crowd.
"It would take too long," remarked Billet: "and when death knocks at adoor, it does not like to wait."
He looked round him. Opposite the church, a house was being built. Somecarpenters had been squaring a joist. Billet walked up and ran his armround the beam, which rested on trestles. With one effort he raised it.But he had reckoned on absent strength. Under the great burden the giantreeled and it was thought for an instant that he would fall. It was buta flash; he recovered his balance and smiled terribly; and forward hewalked, with the beam under his arm, with a firm step albeit slow.
He seemed one of those antique battering-rams with which the Caesarsovert
hrow walls.
He planted himself, with legs set apart, before the door and theformidable machine began to work. The door was oak with iron fastenings;but at the third shove, bolts, bars and lock had flown off; the oakenpanels yawned, too.
Billet let the beam drop. It took four men to carry it back to itsplace, and not easily.
"Now, mayor, have my poor wife's coffin carried to the midst of thechoir--she never did harm to anybody--and you, Pitou, collect thebeadle, the choirboys and the chanters, while I bring the priest."
Several wished to follow Billet to Father Fortier's house.
"Let me go alone," said he: "maybe what I do is serious and I shouldbear my own burden."
This was the second time that the revolutionist had come into conflictwith the son of the church, at a year's interval. Remembering what hadhappened before, a similar scene was anticipated.
The rectory door was sealed up like that of the church. Billet lookedround for some beam to be used like the other, but there was nothing ofthe sort. The only thing was a stone post, a boundary mark, with whichthe children had played so long at "over-ing" that it was loose in thesocket like an old tooth.
The farmer stepped up to it, shook it violently to enlarge its orbit,and tore it clean out. Then raising it like a Highlander "putting thestone," he hurled it at the door which flew into shivers.
At the same time as this breach was made, the upper window opened andFather Fortier appeared, calling on his parishioners with all the powerof his lungs. But the voice of the pastor fell lost, as the flock didnot care to interfere between him and the wolf.
It took Billet some time to break all the doors down between him and hisprey, but in ten minutes, more or less, that was done.
At the end of that time, loud shrieks were heard and by the abbe's mostexpressive gestures it was to be surmised that the danger was drawingnearer and nearer him.
In fact, suddenly was seen to rise behind the priest Billet's pale face,as his hand launched out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
The priest clutched the window sill; he was of proverbial strength andit would not be easy for Hercules to make him relax his grip.
Billet passed his arm around the priest as a girdle; straightenedhimself on both legs, and with a pull which would uproot an oak, he torehim away with the snapped wood between his hands.
Farmer and priest, they disappeared within the room, where in the depthswere heard the wailings of the priest, dying away like the bellowing ofa bull carried off by a lion.
In the meanwhile, Pitou had gathered up the trembling church staff, whohastened to don the vestments, light the candles and incense and prepareall things for the death mass.
Billet was seen coming, dragging the priest with him at as smart a pace,though he still made resistance, as if he were alone.
This was not a man, but one of the forces of nature: something like atorrent or an avalanche; nothing human could withstand him and it tookan element to combat with him.
About a hundred steps from the church, the poor abbe ceased to kick,completely overpowered.
All stood aside to let the pair go by.
The abbe cast a frightened glance on the door, shivered like a pane ofglass and seeing all his men at their stands whom he had forbidden toenter the place, he shook his head like one who acknowledges that someresistless power weighed on the church's ministers if not on itself.
He entered the sacristy and came forth in his robes, with the sacramentin his hand.
But as he was mounting the altar Billet stretched out his hand.
"Enough, you faulty servant of God," he thundered: "I only attempted tocheck your pride, that is all: but I want it known that a sainted womanlike my wife can dispense with the prayers of a hateful and fanaticalpriest like you."
As a loud murmur rose under the vaulted ceiling of the fane, he said:
"If this be sacrilege, let it fall on my head."
Turning to the crowd he added: "Citizens, to the cemetery!"
"To the cemetery," cried the concourse which filled not the church alonebut the square in front.
The four bearers passed their muskets under the bier lifting the bodyand as they had come without ecclesiastical pomp, such as religion hasdevised to accompany man to the grave, they went forth. Billet conductedthe mourners, with six hundred persons following the remains, to theburial-ground, situated at the end of a lane near Aunt Angelique'shouse.
The cemetery-gates were closed but Billet respected the dead; he sentfor the gravedigger who had the key, and Pitou brought it with twospades.
Fortier had proscribed the dead as unfit for consecrated ground, whichthe gravedigger had been ordered not to break for her.
At this last evidence of the priest's hatred for the farmer, a shiverof menace ran through the gathering: if Billet had had a little of thegall which the Tartuffes hold, to the amazement of Boileau, he had buta word to say and the Abbe Fortier would have had that satisfaction ofmartyrdom for which he had howled on the day when he refused to say masson the Altar of the Country.
But Billet's wrath was that of the people and the lion; he did notretrace his steps to tear.
He thanked Pitou with a nod, took the key, opened the gates, passed thecoffin in, and following it, was followed by the procession, recruitedby all that could walk.
Arrived where the grave had been marked out before the sexton had theorder not to open the earth, Billet held out his hand to Pitou for oneof the spades.
Thereupon, with uncovered head, Pitou and Billet, amid the citizensbareheaded likewise, under the devouring July sun dug the resting-placefor this poor creature who, pious and resigned throughout life, wouldhave been greatly astonished in her lifetime if told what a sensationher death would cause.
The task lasted an hour without either worker thinking of beingrelieved. Meanwhile rope was sought for and was ready.
It was still Billet and Pitou who lowered the coffin into the pit. Theydid all so naturally that nobody thought of offering help. It would havebeen a sacrilege to have stayed them from carrying out all to the end.Only at the first clods falling on the coffin, Billet ran his hand overhis eyes and Pitou his sleeve. Then they resolutely shoveled the earthin. When they had finished, Billet flung the spade far from him andgripped Pitou by the hand.
"God is my witness," said he, "that I hold in hand all the simpleand grandest virtues on earth: charity, devotion, abnegation,brotherhood--and that I dedicate my life to these virtues." He held outhis hand over the grave, saying: "God be again my witness that I sweareternal war against the King who tried to have me murdered; to thenobles who defamed my daughter; to the priests who refused sepulture tomy wife!"
Turning towards the spectators full of sympathy with this adjuration, hesaid:
"Brothers, a new assembly is to be convoked in place of the traitors nowin session; select me to represent you in this new parliament, and youwill see how I keep my oath."
A shout of universal adhesion hailed this suggestion, and at onceover his wife's grave, terrible altar, worthy of the dread vow, thecandidature of Billet was proposed, seconded and carried. After this,he thanked his fellow citizens for their sympathy in his affliction,his friendship and his hatred, and each, citizen, countryman, peasantand forester, went home, carrying in heart that spirit of revolutionarypropaganda to which in their blindness the most deadly weapons wereafforded by those who were to be destroyed by them--priests, nobles andKing!
How Billet kept his oath, with other circumstances which are linked withhis return to Paris in the new Legislative Assembly, will be recorded inthe sequel entitled "THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY."
The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family. Page 31