The Hero of the People 8 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 8Another Blow
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 8
Another Blow
WilliamsEnglish
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.”
“I will never suffer anybody to utter such rank blasphemy before me,” cried the irritated schoolmaster. “You the equal of one whom nature and heaven 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 all discord, that bad subject of the King?”
“It is you who blaspheme,” retaliated the peasant: “you must have been buried for the last three months. This bad subject is the very one who most serves the King. This torch of discord is the pledge of public peace. This traitor is the best of Frenchmen.”
“Oh,” thundered the priest, “that ever I should believe that the royal authority should sink so low that a goodfornothing of this sort invokes Lafayette 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 priest triumphantly: “you bully me. The people, those who cut the throats of the royal bodyguard; who trample on the fallen, the people of your Baillys, Lafayettes and Pitous. Why do you not denounce me to the people of Villers Cotterets? Why do you not tuck up your sleeves to drag me out to hang me up to the lamppost? where is your rope--you can be the hangman.”
“You are saying odious things--you insult me,” said Pitou. “Have a care that 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 a Latinist full of barbarisms, and as a beggar who comes preaching subversive 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 I have been elected by them commander of the National Guards of Haramont.”
“National Guards at Haramont? and you, Pitou, the captain? Abomination of 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 fields as well as the life and liberties of all good citizens. That is why we have [illegible]oc me to--for the arms.”
“Arms? oh, my museum?” shrieked the schoolmaster. “You come to pillage my arsenal. The armor of the paladins on your ignoble backs. You are mad to want to arm the ragamuffins of Pitou with the swords of the Spaniards and the pikes of the Swiss.”
The priest laughed with such disdainful menace that Pitou shuddered in every 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 of the oppressors,” said Pitou, who took a backward step.
“Furnish weapons against myself and friends,” said the other, “give you guns 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. Do not expose yourself to this, good Father Fortier!”
“Mark me a martyr, eh, Nero? is that what you intend?” roared the priest, with flaring eye and much more resembling the executioner than the victim.
“No, father, I come as a peaceful envoy to----“
“Pillage my house for arms as your friends gutted the Soldiers’ Home at Paris.”
“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 recognized the scourge as an old acquaintance, “you must not violate the rights of man!”
“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 he had backed through the hall, the infuriated schoolmaster let him have a terrible lash where his backplate would have to be unusually long to defend him. Whatever the courage of the conqueror of the Bastile, he could not help emitting a shriek of pain as he bounded out among the crowd expecting him.
At the yell, neighbors ran forth from their dwellings and to the profound general astonishment all beheld the young man flying with all swiftness under his helmet and with his sabre, while Father Fortier stood on the doorstep, brandishing his whip like the Exterminating Angel waves his sword.
