Ange Pitou

by Alexandre Dumas

  Bailly was deliberating with the electors and Lafayette.

  Billot had his eyes fixed upon Berthier.

  Lafayette was rapidly taking the votes of the electors; after which, addressing the prisoner, who was beginning to slumber:—

  "Sir," said he, "be pleased to get ready."

  Berthier heaved a sigh; then, raising himself on his elbow:—

  "Ready for what?" he inquired.

  "These gentlemen have decided that you are to be transferred to the Abbaye."

  "To the Abbaye? Well, be it so," said the intendant. "But," continued he, looking at the confused electors, whose confusion he readily comprehended,—"but, one way or the other, let us finish this."

  And an explosion of anger and furious impatience long restrained burst forth from the square.

  "No, gentlemen, no," exclaimed Lafayette; "we cannot allow him to depart at this moment."

  Bailly's kind heart and undaunted courage impelled him to come to a sudden resolution. He went down into the square with two of the electors, and ordered silence.

  The people knew as well as he did what he was about to say; but as they were fully bent on committing another crime, they would not even listen to a reproach; and as Bailly was opening his lips to speak, a deafening clamor arose from the mob, drowning his voice before a single word could be heard.

  Bailly, seeing that it would be impossible for him to proffer even a syllable, returned into the Hôtel de Ville pursued by cries of "Berthier! Berthier!"

  But other cries resounded in the midst of those,—cries similar to those shrill notes which suddenly are heard in the choruses of demons by Weber or by Meyerbeer,—and these were, "To the lamp-post! to the lamp-post!"

  On seeing Bailly come back pale and disheartened, Lafayette rushed out in his turn. He is young; he is ardent; he is beloved. That which the old man could not effect, his popularity being but of yesterday, he, Lafayette—he, the friend of Washington and of Necker,—would undoubtedly obtain at the first word.

  But in vain was it that the people's general threw himself into the most furious groups. In vain did he speak in the name of justice and humanity. In vain was it that recognizing, or feigning to recognize, certain leaders of the people, did he supplicate them, grasping their hands, and endeavoring to allay their fury.

  Not one of his words was listened to; not one or his gestures was understood; not one of the tears he shed was seen.

  Repulsed step by step, he threw himself upon his knees on the front steps of the Hôtel de Ville, conjuring these tigers, whom he called his fellow-citizens, not to dishonor the nation, not to dishonor themselves, not to elevate to the rank of martyrs guilty men, to whom the law would award a degrading death, which degradation was a portion of their punishment.

  As he persisted in his entreaties, he was at last personally threatened in his turn; but he defied all threats. Some of these furious wretches drew their knives, and raised them as if to strike.

  He bared his breast to their blows, and their weapons were instantly lowered.

  But if they thus threatened Lafayette, the threat was still more serious to Berthier.

  Lafayette, thus overcome, re-entered the Hôtel de Ville as Bailly had done.

  The electors had all seen Lafayette vainly contending against the tempest. Their last rampart was overthrown.

  They decided that the guard of the Hôtel de Ville should at once conduct Berthier to the Abbaye.

  It was sending Berthier to certain death.

  "Come, then," said Berthier, when this decision was announced.

  And eying all these men with withering contempt, he took his station in the centre of the guards, after having thanked Bailly and Lafayette for their exertions, and in his turn, held out his hand to Billot.

  Bailly turned away his face to conceal his tears, Lafayette to conceal his indignation.

  Berthier descended the staircase with the same firm step with which he had ascended it.

  At the moment that he appeared on the front steps, a furious howl assailed him, making even the stone step on which he had placed his foot tremble beneath him.

  But he, disdainful and impassible, looked at all those flashing eyes calmly and unflinchingly, and shrugging his shoulders, pronounced these words:—

  "What a fantastic people? What is there to make them howl thus?"

  He had scarcely uttered these words, when he was seized upon by the foremost of the mob. They had rushed on to the front steps and clutched him, though surrounded by his guards. Their iron hands dragged him along. He lost his footing, and fell into the arms of his enemies, who in a second dispersed his escort.

  Then an irresistible tide impelled the prisoner over the same path, stained with blood, which Foulon had been dragged over only two hours before.

  A man was already seated astride the fatal lamp, holding a rope in his hand.

  But another man had clung to Berthier, and this man was dealing out with fury and delirium blows and imprecations on the brutal executioners.

  He continually cried:—

  "You shall not have him! You shall not kill him!"

  This man was Billot, whom despair had driven mad, and as strong as twenty men.

  To some he shrieked:—

  "I am one of the conquerors of the Bastille!"

  And some of those who recognized him became less furious in their attack.

  To others he said:—

  "Let him be fairly tried. I will be responsible for him. If he is allowed to escape, you shall hang me in his stead."

  Poor Billot! poor worthy man! The whirlwind swept him away,—him and Berthier,—as the water-spout carries away a feather or a straw in its vast spirals.

  He moved on without perceiving anything. He had reached the fatal spot.

  The thunderbolt is less swift.

  Berthier, who had been dragged along backwards,—Berthier, whom they had raised up, seeing that they stopped, raised his eyes and perceived the infamous, degrading halter swinging above his head.

  By an effort as violent as it was unexpected, he tore himself from the grasp of those who held him, snatched a musket from the hands of a National Guard, and inflicted several wounds on his self-appointed executioners with his bayonet.

  But in a second a thousand blows were aimed at him from behind. He fell, and a thousand other blows from the ruffians who encircled him rained down upon him.

  Billot had disappeared beneath the feet of the assassins.

  Berthier had not time to suffer. His life's blood and his soul rushed at once from his body through a thousand gaping wounds.

  Then Billot was witness to a spectacle more hideous than he had yet seen. He saw a fiend plunge his hand into the open breast of the corpse, and tear out the still smoking heart.

  Then, sticking this heart, on the point of his sabre, he held it above the heads of the shouting mob, which opened before him as he advanced, carried it into the Hôtel de Ville, and laid it on the table of the grand council, where the electors held their sessions.

  Billot, that man of iron nerve, could not support this frightful sight; he fell fainting against a post at about ten paces from the fatal lantern.

  Lafayette, on seeing this infamous insult offered to his authority,—offered to the Revolution which he directed, or rather which he had believed he should direct,—Lafayette broke his sword, and threw it at the faces of the assassins.

  Pitou ran to pick up the farmer, and carried him off in his arms, whispering into his ear:—

  "Billot! Father Billot! take care; if they see that you are fainting, they will take you for his accomplice, and will kill you too. That would be a pity—so good a patriot!"

  And thereupon he dragged him towards the river, concealing him as well as he was able from the inquisitive looks of some zealous patriots who were murmuring.

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  Chapter XIII

  Billot begins to perceive that all is not Roses in Revolutions

  BILLOT, who, conjoin
tly with Pitou, had been engaged in all the glorious libations, began to perceive that the cup was becoming bitter.

  When he had completely recovered his senses, from the refreshing breezes on the river's banks:—

  "Monsieur Billot," said Pitou to him, "I long for Villers-Cotterets, do not you?"

  These words, like the refreshing balm of calmness and virtue, aroused the farmer, whose vigor returned to him, and he pushed through the crowd, to get away at once from the scene of butchery.

  "Come," said he to Pitou, "you are right."

  And he at once determined on going to find Gilbert, who was residing at Versailles, but who, without having revisited the queen after the journey of the king to Paris, had become the right hand of Necker, who had been reappointed minister, and was endeavoring to organize prosperity by generalizing poverty.

  Pitou had as usual followed Billot.

  Both of them were admitted into the study in which the doctor was writing.

  "Doctor," said Billot, "I am going to return to my farm."

  "And why so?" inquired Gilbert.

  "Because I hate Paris."

  "Ah, yes! I understand," coldly observed Gilbert; "you are tired."

  "Worn out."

  "You no longer like the Revolution?"

  "I should like to see it ended."

  Gilbert smiled sorrowfully.

  "It is only now beginning," he rejoined.

  "Oh!" exclaimed Billot.

  "That astonishes you, Billot?" asked Gilbert.

  "What astonishes me the most is your perfect coolness."

  "My friend," said Gilbert to him, "do you know whence my coolness proceeds?"

  "It can only proceed from a firm conviction."

  "Precisely so."

  "And what is that conviction?"

  "Guess."

  "That all will end well."

  Gilbert smiled still more gloomily than the first time.

  "No; on the contrary, from the conviction that all will end badly."

  Billot cried out with astonishment.

  As to Pitou, he opened his eyes to an enormous width; he thought the argument altogether illogical.

  "Let us hear," said Billot, rubbing his ear with his big hand,—"let us hear; for it seems to me that I do not rightly understand you."

  "Take a chair, Billot," said Gilbert, "and sit down close to me."

  Billot did as he was ordered.

  "Closer, closer still, that no one may hear but yourself."

  "And I, Monsieur Gilbert?" said Pitou, timidly, making a move towards the door, as if he thought the doctor wished him to withdraw.

  "Oh, no! stay here," replied the Doctor. "You are young; listen."

  Pitou opened his ears, as he had done his eyes, to their fullest extent, and seated himself on the floor at Father Billot's feet.

  This council was a singular spectacle, which was thus held in Gilbert's study, near a table heaped up with letters, documents, new pamphlets, and newspapers, and within four steps of a door which was besieged by a swarm of petitioners, or people having some grievance to complain of. These people were all kept in order by an old clerk, who was almost blind, and had lost an arm.

  "I am all attention," said Billot. "Now explain yourself, my master, and tell us how it is that all will finish badly."

  "I will tell you, Billot. Do you see what I am doing at this moment, my friend?"

  "You are writing lines."

  "But the meaning of those lines, Billot?"

  "How would you have me guess that, when you know that I cannot even read them?"

  Pitou timidly raised his head a little above the table, and cast his eyes on the paper which was lying before the doctor.

  "They are figures," said he.

  "That is true," said Gilbert; "they are figures, which are at the same time the salvation and the ruin of France."

  "Well, now!" exclaimed Billot.

  "Well, now! well, now!" repeated Pitou.

  "These figures, when they are presented to-morrow," continued the doctor, "will go to the king's palace, to the mansions of the nobility, and to the cottage of the poor man, to demand of all of them one quarter of their income."

  "Hey?" ejaculated Billot.

  "Oh, my poor Aunt Angélique!" cried Pitou; "what a wry face she will make!"

  "What say you to this, my worthy friend?" said Gilbert. "People make revolutions, do they not? Well, they must pay for them."

  "Perfectly just!" heroically replied Billot. "Well, be it so; it will be paid."

  "Oh, you are a man who is already convinced, and there is nothing to astonish me in your answers; but those who are not convinced?"

  "Those who are not so?"

  "Yes; what will they do?"

  "They will resist!" replied Billot, and in a tone which signified that he would resist energetically if he were required to pay a quarter of his income to accomplish a work which was contrary to his convictions.

  "Then there would be a conflict," said Gilbert.

  "But the majority," said Billot.

  "Conclude your sentence, my friend."

  "The majority is there to make known its will."

  "Then there would be oppression."

  Billot looked at Gilbert, at first doubtingly, and then a ray of intelligence sparkled in his eye.

  "Hold, Billot!" said the doctor, "I know what you are about to say to me. The nobility and the clergy possess everything, do they not?"

  "That is undoubted," replied Billot; "and therefore the convents—"

  "The convents?"

  "The convents overflow with riches."

  "Notum certumque," grumbled Pitou.

  "The nobles do not pay in proportion to their income. Thus I, a farmer, pay more than twice the amount of taxes paid by my neighbors, the three brothers De Charny, who have between them an income of two hundred thousand livres."

  "But, let us see," continued Gilbert. "Do you believe that the nobles and the priests are less Frenchmen than you are?"

  Pitou pricked up his ears at this proposition, which sounded somewhat heretical at the time, when patriotism was calculated by the strength of elbows on the Place de Grève.

  "You do not believe a word of it, do you, my friend? You cannot imagine that these nobles and priests, who absorb everything, and give back nothing, are as good patriots as you are?"

  "That is true."

  "An error, my dear friend, an error. They are even better, and I will prove it to you."

  "Oh! that, for example, I deny."

  "On account of their privileges, is it not?"

  "Zounds! yes."

  "Wait a moment."

  "Oh, I can wait."

  "Well, then, I certify to you, Billot, that in three days from this time the person who will have the most privileges in France will be the man who possesses nothing."

  "Then I shall be that person," said Pitou, gravely.

  "Well, yes, it will be you."

  "But how can that be?"

  "Listen to me, Billot. These nobles and these ecclesiastics, whom you accuse of egotism, are just beginning to be seized with that fever of patriotism which is about to make the tour of France. At this moment they are assembled like so many sheep on the edge of the ditch; they are deliberating. The boldest of them will be the first to leap over it; and this will happen to-morrow, perhaps to-night; and after him, the rest will jump it."

  "What is the meaning of that, Monsieur Gilbert?"

  "It means to say that, voluntarily abandoning their prerogatives, feudal lords will liberate their peasants, proprietors of estates their farms and the rents due to them, the dovecot lords their pigeons."

  "Oh, oh!" ejaculated Pitou, with amazement; "you think they will give up all that?"

  "Oh," cried Billot, suddenly catching the idea, "that will be splendid liberty indeed!"

  "Well, then; arid after that, when we shall all be free, what shall we do next?"

  "The deuce!" cried Billot, somewhat embarrassed; "what shall be done n
ext? Why, we shall see!"

  "Ah, there is the great word!" exclaimed Gilbert: "we shall see!"

  He rose from his chair with a gloomy brow, and walked up and down the room for a few minutes; then, returning to the farmer, whose hand he seized with a violence which seemed almost a threat:—

  "Yes," said he, "we shall see! We shall all see,—you, as I shall; he, as you and I shall. And that is precisely what I was reflecting on just now, when you observed that composure which so much surprised you."

  "You terrify me. The people united, embracing each other, forming themselves into one mass to insure their general prosperity,—can that be a subject which renders you gloomy, Monsieur Gilbert?"

  The latter shrugged his shoulders.

  "Then," said Billot, questioning in his turn, "what will you say of yourself if you now doubt, after having prepared everything in the Old World, by giving liberty to the New?"

  "Billot," rejoined Gilbert, "you have just, without at all suspecting it, uttered a word which is the solution of the enigma,—a word which Lafayette has uttered, and which no one, beginning with himself perhaps, fully understands. Yes, we have given liberty to the New World."

  "You! and Frenchmen, too! That is magnificent."

  "It is magnificent; but it will cost us dear," said Gilbert, sorrowfully.

  "Pooh! the money is spent; the bill is paid," said Billot, joyously. "A little gold, a great deal of blood, and the debt is liquidated."

  "Blind enthusiast!" said Gilbert, "who sees not in this dawning in the west the germ of ruin to us all! Alas! why do I accuse them, when I did not see more clearly than they? The giving liberty to the New World, I fear, I fear greatly, is to prove the total ruin of the old one."

  "Rerum novus nascitur ordo!" exclaimed Pitou, with great Revolutionary self-possession.

  "Silence, child!" said Gilbert.

  "Was it, then, more difficult to overcome the English than it is now to quiet the French?" asked Billot.

  "A new world," repeated Gilbert; "that is to say, a vast open space, a clear table to work upon,—no laws, but no abuses; no ideas, but no prejudices. In France, thirty thousand square leagues of territory for thirty millions of people; that is to say, should the space be equally divided, scarcely room for a cradle or a grave for each. Out yonder, in America, two hundred thousand square leagues for three millions of persons; frontiers which are ideal, for they border on the desert, which is to say, immensity. In those two hundred thousand leagues, navigable rivers, having a course of a thousand leagues; virgin forests, of which God alone knows the limits,—that is to say, all the elements of life, of civilization, and of a brilliant future. Oh, how easy it is, Billot, when a man is called Lafayette, and is accustomed to wield a sword when a man is called Washington, and is accustomed to reflect deeply,—how easy is it to combat against walls of wood, of earth, of stone, of human flesh! But when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when we see in the old order of things that we are obliged to attack walls of bygone, crumbling ideas, and behind the ruins even of these walls, that crowds of people and of interests still take refuge; when, after having found the idea, we find that in order to make the people adopt it, it will be necessary, perhaps, to decimate that people, from the old who remember, down to the child who has still to learn; from the recollection which is the monument, down to the instinct which is the germ of it,-then, oh, then, Billot! it is a task which will make all those shudder who can see behind the horizon. I am far-sighted, Billot, and I shudder."