Taking the Bastile (12 page)

‘Long live the lieutenant of police 1’ cried the sergeants.

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‘There is no harm in crying ” Long live the lieutenant,” ‘ said Wollsfoot, ‘but every time you utter such exclamations you should do it with discernment. It is not the lieutenant who pays.’

‘Who is it. then?’

‘Some gentleman or lady friend of his, I know not which, but who desires that his or her name may not be mentioned in the business.’

‘I would wager that it is the person who wishes for the casket,’ said one of the sergeants.

‘As to that, let us be silent, said the gentleman in black; ‘what we have now to do is to make the best of our way on foot out of this neighbourhood. That damned farmer has not the appearance of being conciliatory, and as soon as he discovers that the casket is ousting, he. will despatch all his farm labourers in pursuit of us, and they are fellows who can aim a gun as truly as any of his majesty’s Swiss guards.’

This opinion was doubtless that of the majority of the party, for they all five set off at once, and, continuing to remain within the border of the forest, which concealed them from all eyes, they rapidly pursued their way. until, after walking three-quarters of a league, they came out upon the public road. This precaution was not a useless one, for Catherine had scarcely seen the gentleman in black and his two attendants disappear in pursuit of Pitou, than she called the husbandmen, wno were well aware that something strange was going on, although they were ignorant of the positive facts, to tell them to open her door for her. The labourers instantly obeyed her, and Catherine, again free, hastened to set her father at liberty. Billot appeared to be in a dream. Instead of at once rushing out of the room, he seemed to walk mistrustfully.

‘But,’ cried he, on seeing his daughter, ‘tell me, did they take the book from him?”

‘I believe so, father,’ she replied, ‘but they did not take him.’

‘VVhom do you mean?’

‘Pitou : he has escaped from them, and they are stiL running after him. They must already have got to Cayolles or Vauciennes.’

‘So much the better 1 Poor fellow I It is I who have brought this upon him.’

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‘Oh, father, do not feel uneasy about him, but think only of what we have to do t Pitou, you may rest assured, will get out of this scrape. But what disorder I good Heaven 1 only look, mother.’

‘Oh, my linen wardrobe I’ cried Madame Billot; ‘they have not even respected my linen wardrobe 1 what villains they must be I*

‘They have searched the wardrobe where the linen was kept t’ exclaimed Billot.

And he rushed towards the wardrobe, which the exeirpt, as we have before stated, had carefully closed again, and plunged his hands into piles of towels and table napkins, all confusedly huddled together.

‘Oh,’ cried he, ‘it cannot be possible I’

‘What are yon looking for, father?’ inquired Catherine.

Biilot gazed around him as if completely bewildered.

‘Searchsearch if you can see it anywhere I But no : not in that chest of drawers not in that secretary. Besides, it was there there; it was I myself who put it there. I saw It there only yesterday. It was not th book they were seeking for, the wretches, but the casket 1’

‘What casket?’ asked Catherine.

‘Why, you know well enough.’

‘What 1 Dr Gilbert’s casket?’ inquired Madame Billot, who always, in matters of transcendent importance, allowed otaers to speak and act.

‘Yes, Dr Gilbert’s casket 1’ cried Billot, plunging his fingers into his thick hair; ‘that casket wnich was so precious to him.’

‘You terrify me, my dear father,’ said Catherine.

‘ Unfortunate man that I am!’ cried Billot, with furious anger; ‘and I, who had not in the slightest imagined such a thing 1 I, who did not even for a moment think of that casket 1 Oh, what will the doctor say ? What will he think of me? That I am a traitor, a coward, a miserable wretch I*

‘ But, good Heaven 1 what did this casket contain, father?’

‘I do not know; but this I know, that I had engaged, even at the hazard of my life, to keep it safe; and I ou^ht to have allowed myself to be killed in order to defend it.’

And Billot made a gesture of such despair, that his wife and daughter started back with terror.

‘Oh, God t oh, God I are yon losing your reason, my

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poor father?’ said Catherine, bursting into tears. ‘Answer me, then 1 for the love of Heaven, answer me I*

‘Pierre, my friend,’ said Madame Billot, ‘answer your daughter answer your wife.’

‘My horse I my horse 1’ cried the fanner; ‘bring out my horse 1 ‘

‘Where are you going, father?’

‘To let the doctor know. The doctor must be informed of this.’

‘But where will you find him?’

‘At Paris. Did you not read in the letter he wrote to us that he was going to Paris? He must be there by this time. I will go to Paris. My horse 1 my horse I’

‘And you will leave us thus, my dear father? You will leave us in such a moment as this ? You will leave us full of anxiety and anguish ?’

‘It must be so, my child; it must be so,’ said the fanner, taking his daughter’s face between his hands and convulsively fixing hia lips upon it. ‘If ever you should lose this casket,” said the doctor to me, or rather, should it ever be surreptitiously taken from you, the instant you discover the robbery, set off at once. Billot, and inform me of it, wherever I may be. Let nothing stop you.” ‘

‘ Good Lord I what can this casket contain ? ‘

‘Of that I know nothing; all that I know is, that it was placed under my care, and that I have allowed it to be taken from me. Ah, here is my horse I From the son, who is at college, I shall learn where to find the father.’

And kissing his wife and daughter for the last time, the farmer jumped into his saddle, and galloped across the country, in the direction of the high road to Paris.

LBT us return to Pitou. Pitou was urged onwards by the two most powerful stimulants known in this great world Fear and Love. These two stimulants combined had such an effect upon him that Pitou did not merely run : Pitou absolutely flew. It is true, as we have already said, that M. Wolfsfoot’s agents, delighted at having possession of their booty, cared not a tig as to what became

8o TAKING THE BASTILLE

of Pitou; but Pitou knew not this. Ceasing to be pursued by the reality, he continued to be pursued by the shadows. As to the black-clothed gentleman, they had that confidence in themselves which renders human beings lazy.

‘Run I run!’ cried they, thrusting their hands into their pockets, and making the reward which M. Wolfsfoot had given them jingle in them : ‘run, good fellow, run; we can always find you again, should we want you.’

When he had, by scientifically altering his course, and turning and twisting as do the wild denizens of the forest, to throw the hounds off the scent, when he had doubled and turned so as to form such a maze that Nimrod himself would not have been able to unravel it, he at once made up his mind as to his route, and taking a shaip turn to the right, went in a direct line to the high road which leads from Villers-Cotterets to Paris, near the heath of Gondreville. An hour after his departure from the farm be was on the king’s highway. He had run about four leagues and a half during that hour, as much as any rider could expect from an active horse, going a good round trot.

Pitou, now feeling somewhat reassured, threw himself down on the grassy bank of the roadside, wiped with his sleeve his broad red face, and thus luxuriously reclining, he yielded himself up to the voluptuousness of perspiring in tranquillity. But the sweet emanations from the clover and marjoram could not make Pitou forget the pickled pork made by Madame Billot, and the quarter of a six-pound loaf which Catherine allotted to him at every meal that is to say, three times a day. Pitou said to himself philosophically that Mademoiselle Catherine was the most generous princess in the woild, and that Father Billot’s farm was the most sumptuous paJace iu the universe, and then sighed heavily But sighing is not so disagreeable an operation to a man who stands in need of taking breath, after a violent race. Pitou breathed more freely when sighing, and he felt his ideas, which for a time had been much confused and agitated, return to him gradually with his breath.

‘Why is it,’ reasoned he with himself, ‘that so many extraordinary events have happened to me in so short a space of time? Why should I have met with more accidents within the last three days than during the whole course of my previous life?

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‘It is because I dreamt of a cat that wanted to fly at me,’ continued Pitou.

‘Yes,’ added he, after a moment’s reflection, ‘but this is not the logic of my venerable friend the Abbi Fortier. It is not because I dreamed of an irritated cat that all these adventures have happened to me. Dreams are only given to a man as a sort of warning, and that is why an author said ” Thou hast been dreaming, beware 1 Cave somniasti I “

‘Somniasti,’ said Pitou doubtingly, and with somewhat of alarm, ‘am I then again committing a barbarism ? Oh 1 no : I am only making an elision : it was somniavisti which I should have said, in grammatical language.

‘It is astonishing,’ cried Pitou, considering himself admiringly, ‘how well I understand Latin since I no longer study it.’

And after this glorification of himself, Pitou resumed his journey. Pitou walked on very quickly, though he was much tranquillised. His pace was somewhere about two leagues an hour. The result of this was that two hours after he had recommenced his walk Pitou had got beyond Nanteuil, and was getting on towards Dammartin. Suddenly the ears of Pitou, as acute as those of an Osage Indian, were struck with the distant sound of a horse’s feet upon the paved road.

‘Oh P cried Pitou, scanning the celebrated verse of Virgil :

‘ “Quadra pedante putrem soni tu quatit ungula campum.” ‘

He looked behind him, but saw nothing. He therefore momentarily forgot the noise he had heard, to return to his reflections. Who could these men in black be who had questioned him about Dr Gilbert, who had tied his hands, who had pursued him, and whom he had at length so completely distanced ? Where could these men have sprung from, for they were altogether unknown in the district? What could they have in particular to do with Pitou “> He who had never seen them, and who, consequently, did not know them.

How hen was it, as he did not know them, that they had known him f Why had Mademoiselle Catherine told him to set ofl for Paris? and why. in order to facilitate his journey, had she given him a louis of forty-eight francs? That is to say, two hundred and forty pounds of bread,

8a TAKING THE BASTILLE

at four sous a pound. Why, it was enough to supply him with food for eighty days, or three months, if he would stint his rations somewhat. Could Mademoiselle Catherine suppose that Pitou was to remain eighty days absent from the farm ? Pitou suddenly started.

‘Oh I oh !’ he exclaimed, ‘again that hoise’s hoofs. ‘This time I am not mistaken. The noise I hear is positively that of a horse galloping. I shall see it when he gets to the top of yon hill.’

Pitou had scarcely spoken when a horse appeared at the top of a hill he had just left behind him, that is to say, at the distance of about four hundred yards from the spot on which he stood. Terror again seized on Pitou, and immediately his legs became even longer, and more intrepid than when he had made such marvellous good use of them some two hours previously. Therefore, without reflecting, without looking behind, without even endeavouring to conceal his flight, calculating on the excellence of his steel-like sinews, Pitou, with a tremendous leap, sprang across the ditch which ran by the roadside, and began a rapid course in the direction of Ennenonville. Pitou did not know anything of Ermenonville, he only saw upon the horizon the summits of some tall trees, and he said to himself : ‘If I reach those trees, which are undoubtedly on the border of some forest, I am saved.’

And he ran toward Ermenonville. On this occasion, he had to outvie a horse in running. Pitou had no longer legs, but wings. And his rapidity was increased after having run some hundred yards, for Pitou had cast a glance behind him, and had seen the horseman oblige his horse to take the same immense leap which he had taken over the ditch on the roadside.

From that moment there could be no longer a doubt in the mind of the fugitive that the horseman was, in reality, in pursuit of him, and consequently the fugitive had increased his speed, never again turning his head, for fear of losing time. What most urged him on at that moment was not the clattering on the paved road that noise was deadened by the clover and the fallow fields; what most urged him on was a sort of cry which pursued him, the last syllable of his name pronounced by the horseman, a sort of ‘hou I hou I* which appeared to be uttered angrily, and which reached him on the wings of the wind, which he was endeavouring to outstrip.

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Bat after having maintained this sharp race during ten minutes, Pitou began to feel that his chest became oppressed the blood rushed to bis head his eyes began to wander. It seemed to him that his knees became more and more developed that his loins were filling with small pebbles. From time to time he stumbled over the furrows; he who usually raised his feet so high when running, that every nail in the soles of his shoes were visible. At last, the horse, created superior to man in the art of running, gained on the biped Pitou, who, at the same time, heard the voice of the horseman, who no longer cried ‘hou I hou I’ but clearly and distinctly, ‘Pitou ! Pitou I*

All was lost. However, Pitou endeavoured to continue the race. It had became a sort of mechanical movement. Suddenly his knees failed him; he staggered and fell at full length with hia face to the ground. But, at the same time that he thus fell, he fully resolved not to get up again at all events of his own free will; and he received a lash from a horsewhip which wound round his loins. With a tremendous oath, which was not unfamiliar to his ears, a well-known voice cried out to him, ‘How now, you stupid fellow I how now, yon simpleton ! have yon sworn to founder Cadet?’