The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

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.

CHAPTER IX

PITOU BECOMES A TACTICIAN

OUR hero’s fall was deep. How could he go back to his friends without the arms? How, after having had so much confidence shown in him, tell them that their leader was a braggart who, in spite of his sword and helmet, had let a priest whack him in the rear?

To vaunt of carrying all before him with Father Fortier and fail so shamefully – what a fault!

To obtain the muskets, force or cunning was the means. He might steal into the school and steal out the arms. But the word “steal,” sounded badly in the rustic’s ears. There were still left some people in France who would call this the high-handed outrage of brigands.

So he recoiled before force and treachery.

His vanity was committed to the task, and prompted a fresh direction for his searches.

General Lafayette was Commander-in-chief of the National Guards of France; Haramont was in France and had a National Guards company. Consequently, General Lafayette commanded the latter force. He could not tolerate that his soldiers at Haramont should go unarmed when all his others were armed. To appeal to Lafayette, he could apply to Billet who would address Gilbert, and he the general.

Pitou wrote to Billet but as he could not read, it must be Gilbert who would have the letter placed before him.

This settled, he waited for nightfall, returned to his lodgings mysteriously and let his friends there see that he was writing at night. This was the large square note which they also saw him post next day:

“Dear and honored friend Billet:

“The Revolutionary cause gains daily hereabouts and while the aristocrats lose, the patriots advance. The Village of Haramont enrolls itself in the active service of the National Guard; but it has no arms. The means to procure them lies in those who harbor arms in quantity should be made to surrender the overplus, so that the country would be saved expense. If it pleases General Lafayette to authorize that such illegal magazines of arms should be placed at the call of the townships, proportionately to the number of men to be armed, I undertake for my part to supply the Haramont Arsenal with at least thirty guns. This is the only means to oppose a dam to the contra-Revolutionary movements of the aristocrats and enemies of the Nation.

“Your fellow-Citizen and most humble Servant,“Ange Pitou.”

When this was written the author perceived that he had omitted to speak to his correspondent of his wife and daughter. He treated him too much in the Brutus style; on the other hand, to give Billet particulars about Catherine’s love affair was to rend the father’s heart; it was also to re-open Pitou’s bleeding wounds. He stifled a sigh and appended this P. S.

“Mistress Billet and Miss Catherine and all the household are well, and beg to be remembered to Master Billet.”

Thus he entangled neither himself nor others.

The reply to this was not slow in coming. Two days subsequently, a mounted express messenger dashed into Haramont and asked for Captain Ange Pitou. His horse was white with foam. He wore the uniform of a staff-officer of the Parisian National Guards.

Judge of the effect he produced and the trouble and throbs of Pitou! He went up to the officer who smiled, and pale and trembling he took the paper he bore for him. It was a response from Billet, by the hand of Gilbert.

Billet advised Pitou to move moderately in his patriotism.

He enclosed General Lafayette’s order, countersigned by the War Minister, to arm the Haramont National Guards.

The bearer was an officer charged to see to the arming of cities on the road.

Thus ran the Order:

“All who possess more than one gun or sword are hereby bound to place the excess at the disposal of the chief officials in their cantons. The Present Measure is to be executed throughout the entire country.”

Red with joy, Pitou thanked the officer, who smiled again, and started off for the next post for changing horses.

Thus was our friend at the high tide of honor: he had received a communication from General Lafayette, and the War Minister.

This message served his schemes and plans most timely.

To see the animated faces of his fellows, their brightened eyes and eager manner; the profound respect all at once entertained for Ange Pitou, the most credulous observer must have owned that he had become an important character.

One after another the electors begged to touch the seal of the War Department.

When the crowd had tapered down to the chosen friends, Pitou said:

“Citizens, my plans have succeeded as I anticipated. I wrote to the Commander-in-chief your desire to be constituted National Guards, and your choice of me as leader. Read the address on the order brought me.”

The envelope was superscribed: “Captain Ange Pitou, Commander of the National Guards. Haramont.”

“Therefore,” continued the martial peasant, “I am known and accepted as commander by the Chief of the Army. You are recognized and approved as Soldiers of the Nation by General Lafayette and the Minister of War.”

A long cheer shook the walls of the little house which sheltered Pitou.

“I know where to get the arms,” he went on. “Select two of your number to accompany me. Let them be lusty lads, for we may have a difficulty.”

The embryo regiment chose one Claude Tellier sergeant and one Desire Maniquet lieutenant. Pitou approved.

Accompanied by the two, Captain Pitou proceeded once more to Villers Cotterets where he went straight to the mayor to be still farther supported in his demand.

On the way he was puzzled why the letter from Billet, written by Gilbert, asked no news of Sebastian.

On the way he fretted over a paragraph in the letter from Billet, written as it was by Dr. Gilbert, which read:

“Why has Pitou forgot to send news about Sebastian and why does not the boy himself write news?”

Meanwhile, Father Fortier was little aware of the storm he had aroused; and nobody was more astounded when a thunderclap came to his door. When it was opened he saw on the sill the mayor, his vice, and his secretary. Behind them appeared the cocked hats of two gendarmes, and half-a-dozen curious people behind them.

“Father Fortier,” said the mayor, “are you aware of the new decree of the Minister of War?”

“No, mayor,” said he.

“Read it, then.”

The secretary read the warrant to take extra arms from the domiciles. The schoolmaster turned pale.

“The Haramont National Guard have come for the guns.”

Fortier jumped as if he meant to fly at the guardsmen.

Judging that this was the nick for his appearance, Pitou approached, backed by his lieutenant and sergeant.

“These rogues,” cried the abbe, passing from white to red, “these scums!”

The mayor was a neutral who wanted things to go on quietly; he had no wish to quarrel with the altar or the guard-house; the invectives only called forth his hearty laugh.

“You hear how the reverend gentleman treats the Haramont National Guards,” he said to Pitou and his officers.

“Because he knew us when boys and does not think we have grown up,” said Ange, with melancholy mildness.

“But we have become men,” roughly said Maniquet, holding out towards the priest his hand, maimed by a gun going off prematurely while he was poaching on a nobleman’s warren. Needless to say he was determined the nobility should pay for this accident.

“Serpents,” said the schoolmaster in irritation.

“Who will sting if trodden on,” retorted Sergeant Claude, joining in.

In these threats the mayor saw the extent of the Revolution and the priest martyrdom.

“We want some of the arms here,” said the former, to conciliate everybody.

“They are not mine but belong to the Duke of Orleans,” was the reply.

“Granted,” said Pitou, “but that does not prevent us asking for them all the same.”

“I will write to the prince,” said the pedagogue loftily.

“You forget that the delay will avail nothing,” interposed the mayor; “the duke is for the people and would reply that they ought to be given not only the muskets but the old cannon.”

This probability painfully struck the priest who groaned in Latin: “I am surrounded by foes.”

“Quite true, but these are merely political enemies,” observed Pitou; “we hate in you only the bad patriot.”

“Absurd and dangerous fool,” returned the priest, in excitement which gave him eloquence of a kind, “which is of us the better lover of his country, I who wish to keep cruel weapons in the shade, or you demanding them for civil strife and discord? which is the true son, I who seek palms to decorate our common mother, or you who hunt for the steel to rend her bosom?”

The mayor turned aside his head to hide his emotion, making a slight nod as much as to say: “That is very neatly put.” The deputy mayor, like another Tarquin, was cropping the flowers with his cane. Ange was set back, which caused his two companions to frown.

Sebastian, a Spartan child, was impassible. Going up to Pitou he asked him what was the to-do.

“An order signed by General Lafayette, and written by my father?” he repeated when briefly informed. “Why is there any hesitation in obeying it?”

He revealed the indomitable spirit of the two races creating him in his dilated pupils, and the rigidity of his brow.

The priest shuddered to hear the words and lowered his crest.

“This is rebellion,” continued Sebastian; “beware, sir!”

“Thou, also?” cried the schoolmaster, draping himself in his gown after the manner of Caesar.

“And I,” said Pitou, comprehending that his post was at stake. “Do you style me a traitor, because I came to you with the olive branch in my hand to ask the arms, and am forced this day to wrench them from you under support of the authorities? Well, I would rather appear as a traitor to my duties than give a favoring hand to the Anti-Revolution. The Country forever and above all! hand over the arms, or we will use ours!”

The mayor nodded on the sly to Pitou as he had to the priest to signify: “You have said that finely.”

The speech had thunderstricken the priest and electrified the hearers. The mayor slipped away, and the deputy would have liked to follow his example, but the absence of the two principal functionaries would look bad. He therefore followed the secretary, who led the gendarmes along to the museum, guided by Pitou who, instructed in the place was also instructed on the place of deposit.

Like a lion cub, Sebastian bounded with the patriots. The schoolmaster fell half dead on a chair.

The invaders wanted to pillage everything, but Pitou only selected thirty-three muskets, with an extra one, a rifle, for himself, together with a straight sword, which he girded on.

The others, made up into two bundles, were carried by the joyous pair of officers in spite of the weight, past the disconsolate priest.

They were distributed to the Haramontese that evening, and in presenting a gun to each, Pitou said, like the Spartan mother giving out the buckler: “Come home with it, or go to sleep on it!”

Thus was the little place set in a ferment by Pitou’s act. The delight was great to own a gun where firearms had been forbidden lest the lords’ game should be injured and where the long oppression of the gamekeepers had infused a mania for hunting.

But Pitou did not participate in the glee. The soldiers had weapons but not only was their captain ignorant how to drill them but to handle them in file or squad.

During the night his taxed brain suggested the remedy.

He remembered an old friend, also an old soldier, who had lost a leg at the Battle of Fontenoy; the Duke of Orleans gave him the privilege to live in the woods, and kill either a hare or a rabbit a-day. He was a dead shot and on the proceeds of his shooting under this license he fared very well.

His manual of arms might be musty but then Pitou could procure from Paris the new Drill-book of the National Guards, and correct what was obsolete by the newest tactics.

He called on old Clovis at a lucky moment as the old hunter was saddened by his gun having burst. He welcomed the present of the rifle which Ange brought him and eagerly embraced the opportunity of paying him in kindness by teaching him the drill.

Each day Pitou repeated to his soldiery what he had learnt overnight from the hunter, and he became more popular, the admired of men, children and the aged. Even women were quieted when his lusty voice thundered: “Heads up – eyes right! bear yourselves nobly! look at me!” for Pitou looked noble.

As soon as the manoeuvres became complicated, Pitou went over to a large town where he studied the troops on the parade grounds, and picked up more in a day from practice than from the books in three months.

Thus two months passed by, in fatigue, toil and feverish excitement.

Pitou was still unhappy in love, but he was satiated with glory. He had run about so much, so moved his limbs, and whetted his mind, that you may be astonished that he should long to appease or comfort his heart. But he was thinking of that.

CHAPTER X

THE LOVER’S PARTING

MANY times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.

Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.

What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.

He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.

All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to despair.