The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.. Dumas Alexandre
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resolved to dissipate this sadness.
"I say, Father Billet," he resumed, after preparing his stock of words as a sharpshooter makes a provision of cartridges, "who the devil could have guessed, in a year and two days, that since Miss Catherine received me on the farm, so many events should have taken place."
"Nobody," rejoined Billet whose terrible glance at the mention of Catherine had not been remarked.
"The idea of the pair of us taking the Bastile," continued he, like the sharpshooter having reloaded his gun.
"Nobody," replied the farmer mechanically.
"Plague on it, he has made up his mind not to talk," thought the younger man. "Who would think that I should become a captain and you a Federalist, and we both be taking supper under an arbor in the very spot where the old prison stood?"
"Nobody," said Billet for the third time, with a more sombre look than before.
The younger man saw that there was no inducing the other to speak but he found comfort in the thought that this ought not to alienate his right. So he continued, leaving Billet the right to speak if he chose.
"I suppose, like the Bastile, all whom we knew, have become dust, as the Scriptures foretold. To think that we stormed the Bastile, on your saying so, as if it were a chicken-house, and that here we sit where it used to be, drinking merrily! oh, the racket we kicked up that day. Talking of racket," he interrupted himself, "what is this rumpus all about?"
The uproar was caused by the passing of a man who had the rare privilege of creating noise wherever he walked: it was Mirabeau, who, with a lady on his arm, was visiting the Bastile site.
Another than he would have shrank from the cheers in which were mingled some sullen murmurs; but he was the bird of the storm and he smiled amid the thunderous tempest, while supporting the woman, who shivered under her veil at the simoon of such dreadful popularity.
Pitou jumped upon a chair and waved his cocked hat on the tip of his sword as he shouted:
"Long live Mirabeau!"
Billet let escape no token of feelings either way; he folded his arms on his burly chest and muttered in a hollow voice:
"It is said he betrays the people."
"Pooh, that has been said of all great men, from antiquity down," replied his friend.
In his excitement he only now noticed that a third chair, drawn up to their table, was occupied by a stranger who seemed about to accost them.
To be sure it was a day of fraternity, and familiarity was allowable among fellow-citizens, but Pitou, who had not finished his repast, thought it going too far. The stranger did not apologize but eyed the pair with a jeering manner apparently habitual to him.
Billet was no doubt in no mood to support being "quizzed," as the current word ran, for he turned on the new-comer; but the latter made a sign before he was addressed which drew another from Billet.
The two did not know each other, but they were brothers.
Like Billet, he was clad like one of the delegates to the Federation. But he had a change of attire which reminded Billet that so were dressed the party with Anacharsis Clootz, the German anarchist, representing Mankind.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LODGE OF THE INVISIBLES
"You do not know me, brothers," said the stranger, when Billet had nodded and Pitou smiled condescendingly, "but I know you both. You are Captain Pitou, and you, Farmer Billet. Why are you so gloomy? because, though you were the first to enter the Bastile, they have forgotten to hang at your buttonhole the medal for the Conquerors of the Bastile and to do you the honors accorded to others this day?"
"Did you really know me, brother," replied the farmer with scorn, "you would know that such trifles do not affect a heart like mine."
"Is it because you found your fields unproductive when you returned home in October?"
"I am rich – a harvest lost little worries me."
"Then, it must be," said the stranger, looking him hard in the face, "that something has happened to your daughter Catherine – "
"Silence," said the farmer, clutching the speaker's arm, "let us not speak of that matter."
"Why not if I speak in order that you may be revenged?"
"Then that is another thing – speak of it," said the other, turning pale but smiling at the same time.
Pitou thought no more of eating or drinking, but stared at their new acquaintance as at a wizard.
"But what do you understand by revenge?" went on he with a smile: "tell me. In a paltry manner, by killing one individual, as you tried to do?"
Billet blanched like a corpse: Pitou shuddered all over.
"Or by pursuing a whole class?"
"By hunting down a whole caste," said Billet, "for of such are the crimes of all his like. When I mourned before my friend Dr. Gilbert, he said: 'Poor Billet, what has befallen you has already happened to a hundred thousand fathers; what would the young noblemen have in the way of pastime if they did not steal away the poor man's daughter, and the old ones steal away the King's money?'"
"Oh, Gilbert said that, did he?"
"Do you know him?"
"I know all men," replied the stranger, smiling: "as I know you two, and Viscount Charny, Isidore, Lord of Boursonnes; as I know Catherine, the prettiest girl of the county."
"I bade you not speak her name, for she is no more – she is dead."
"Why, no, Father Billet," broke in Pitou, "for she – "
He was no doubt going to say that he saw her daily, but the farmer repeated in a voice admitting of no reply,
"She is dead."
Pitou hung his head for he understood.
"Ha, ha," said the stranger: "if I were my friend Diogenes, I should put out my lantern, for I believe I have found an honest man." Rising, he offered his arms to Billet, saying: "Brother, come and take a stroll with me, while this good fellow finishes the eatables."
"Willingly," returned Billet, "for I begin to understand to what feast you invite me. Wait for me here," he added to his friend; "I shall return."
The stranger seemed to know the gastronomical taste of Pitou for he sent by the waiter some more delicacies, which he was still discussing, while wondering, when Billet reappeared. His brow was illumined with something like pleasure.
"Anything new, Father Billet?" asked the captain.
"Only that you will start for home to-morrow while I remain."
This is what Billet remained for.
A week after, he might have been seen, in the dress of a well-to-do farmer, in Plastriere Street. Two thirds up the thoroughfare was blocked by a crowd around a ballad singer with a fiddler to accompany him, who was singing a lampoon at the characters of the day.
Billet paused only an instant to listen to the strain, in which, from the Assembly being on the site of the old Horse-training ground, the attributes of horses were given to the members, as "the Roarer," to Mirabeau, etc.
Slipping in at an alleyway at the back of the throng, he came to a low doorway, over which was scrawled in red chalk – symbols effaced each time of usage:
"L. P. D."
This was the way down into a subterranean passage. Billet could not read but he may have understood that these letters were a token, He took the underground road with boldness.
At its end a pale light glimmered, by which a seated man was reading or pretending to read a newspaper, as is the custom of the Paris janitor of an evening.
At the sound of steps he got up and with a finger touching his breast waited. Billet presented his forefinger bent and laid it like the ring of a padlock on his lips. This was probably the sign of recognition expected by the door-guard, for he opened a door on his right which was wholly invisible