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.”

“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.