Taking the Bastile. Dumas Alexandre
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Billet, glancing at his gun, on hooks over the mantelpiece. "Since we had a National Assembly," he said, "I thought citizens were no longer exposed to proceedings which smack of another age and style of things. What do you want with a peaceable and loyal man?"
Policemen are alike all the world over in their never answering questions of their victims; some bewail them while clapping on the iron cuffs, searching them or pinioning; they are the most dangerous as they appear to be the best. The fellow who descended on Farmer Billet was of the hypocritical school, those who have a tear for those they overhaul, but they never let their hands be idle to dash away the tear.
Uttering a sigh, this man waved his hand to his acolytes, who went up to Billet. He jumped back and reached out for his musket.
But his hand was turned aside from the doubly dangerous weapon to him who made use of it and her whose pair of slight hands was strong with terror and mighty with entreaty.
It was Catherine who had rushed to the spot in time to save her father from the crime of rebellion to justice.
After this first outburst, Billet made no further resistance.
The police agent ordered him to be locked up in one of the ground floor rooms which he had noticed to be barred, though Billet, who had the grating done, had forgotten the precaution. Catherine was placed in a first-floor room and Mrs. Billet was shoved into the kitchen as inoffensive. Master of the fort, the Exempt set to searching all the furniture.
"What are you doing?" roared Billet who saw through the keyhole that his house was turned out of windows.
"Looking, as you see, for something we cannot find," replied the police officer.
"But you may be robbers, burglars, scoundrels!"
"Oh, you wrong us, master," rejoined the fellow through the door; "we are honest folk like yourself – only we are in the wages of the King and we have to obey his orders."
"His Majesty's orders," repeated the farmer: "King Louis XVI. gives you orders to rummage my desk and turn my things upside down? When the famine was so dreadful last year that we thought of eating our horses; when the hail on the thirteenth of July two years back cut our wheat to chaff – his Majesty never bothered about us. What has happened at my farm at present for him to concern himself – never having seen or known me?"
"You will please excuse me," said the man, opening the door a little and warily showing a search-warrant issued by the Chief of Police but as usual commencing with "In the King's Name" – "His Majesty has heard about you, old fellow; though he may not personally know you, do not kick at the honor he does you, and try to receive properly those whom he sends in his royal name."
With a polite bow and a friendly wink, the chief policeman slammed the door, and recommenced the ferreting.
Billet held his tongue and with folded arms, trod the room: he felt he was in the men's power. The searching went on silently. These men seemed fallen from the skies. No one had seen them but the farm-hand who had pointed out the way to the farmhouse. In the yard the watch-dogs had not barked; the leader of the expedition must be a celebrated man in his line and not making his first arrest.
Billet heard his daughter wailing in the room overhead. He recalled her prophetic words, for he had no doubt that the investigation was caused by the doctor's book.
Nine o'clock struck, and Billet could count his hired men returning for their morning meal from the fields. This made him comprehend that, in case of conflict, he could have numbers of not law on his side. This made the blood boil in his veins. He had not the temper to bear inaction any longer and grasping the door he gave it such a shaking by the handle that with such another he would send the lock flying.
The police opened it at once and confronted the farmer, threatening and upright before the house turned inside out.
"But, to make it short, what are you looking for?" roared the caged lion: "Tell me, or by the Lord Harry of Navarre, I swear I'll thump it out of you."
The flocking in of the farm lads had not escaped the corporal's alert eye; he reckoned them and was convinced that, in case of a tussel, he could not crow on the battlefield.
With more honeyed politeness than before, he sneaked up to the speaker and said as he bowed to the ground:
"I am going to tell you, Master Billet, though it goes dead against the rules and regulations. We are looking for a subversive publication, and incendiary pamphlet put on the back list by the Royal Censors."
"A book in the house of a farmer who cannot read?"
"What is there amazing in that, when you are friend of the author and he sent you a copy?"
"I am not the friend of Dr. Gilbert but his humble servant," replied the other. "To be his friend would be too great an honor for a poor farmer like me."
This unreflected reply, in which Billet betrayed himself by confessing that he not only knew the author, which was natural being his landlord, but the book – assured victory to the officer of the law. This man drew himself up to his full height, with his most benignant air, and smiling as he tapped Billet on the shoulder, so that he seemed to cleave his head in twain, he said:
"You have let the cat out of the bag. You have been the first to name Gilbert, whose name we kept back out of discretion."
"That's so," muttered the farmer. "Look here, I will not merely own up but – will you stop pulling things about if I tell you where the book is?"
"Why, certainly," said the chief making a sign to his associates; "for the book is the object of the search. Only," he added with a sly grin, "don't allow you have one copy when you have a dozen."
"I swear, I have only the one."
"We are obliged to get that down to a certainty by the most minute search, Master Billet. Have five minute's farther patience. We are only poor servants of justice, under orders from those above us, and you will not oppose honorable men doing their duty – for there are such in all walks of life."
He had found the flaw in the armor: he knew how to talk Billet over.
"Go on, but be done quickly," he said, turning his back on them.
The man closed the door softly and still more quietly turned the key: which made Billet snap his fingers: sure that he could burst the door off its hinges if he had to do it.
On his part the policeman waved his fellows to the work. All three in a trice went through the papers, books and linen. Suddenly, at the bottom of an open clothespress, they perceived a small oak casket clamped with iron. The corporal pounced on it as a vulture on its prey. By the mere view, by his scent, by the place where it was stored, he had divined what he sought, for he quickly hid the box under his tattered mantle and beckoned to his bravoes that he had accomplished the errand.
At that very moment Billet had come to the end of his patience.
"I tell you that you cannot find what you are looking for unless I tell you," he called out. "There is no need to 'make hay' with my things. I am not a conspirator, confound you! Come, get this into your noddles. Answer, or, by all the blue moons, I will go to Paris and complain to the King, to the Assembly and to the people."
At this time the King was still spoken of before the people.
"Yes, dear Master Billet, we hear you, and we are ready to bow to your excellent reasons. Come, let us know where the book is, and, as we are now convinced that you have only the single copy, we will seize that and get away. There it is in a nutshell."
"Well, the book is in the hands of a lad to whom I entrusted it this morning to carry it to a friend's," said Billet.
"What is the name of this honest lad?" queried the man in black coaxingly.
"Ange Pitou; he is a poor orphan whom I housed from charity, and who does not know the nature of the book."
"I thank you, dear Master Billet," said the corporal, throwing the linen into the hole in the wall and closing the lid. "And where may this nice boy be, prithee?"
"I fancy I saw him as I came in, under the arbor by the Spanish climbing beans. Go and take the book away but do not hurt him."
"Hurt?