Taking the Bastile (46 page)

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rampart was overthrown. They decided that the guard of the Hotel 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 eyeing 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. 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 perron, 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 I 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. Their iron hands dragged him along. He lost hi* 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.

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. 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

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point of his sabre, he held it above the heads of the shouting mob, which opened before him as he advanced, and he carried it into the H6tel 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 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, carried him off in his arms, whispering into his ear : ‘Billot 1 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 1’

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.

BILLOT BEGINS TO PERCEIVE THAT ALL IS NOT ROSES IN REVOLUTIONS

BILLOT, who, conjointly with Pitou, had be6n engaged in all the glorious liberations, 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 regret Villers-Cotterets dp not you?’

‘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 htving 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 endeavouring to organise property by generalising poverty. Pitou had, as usual, iol lowed 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.’

‘You no longer like the revolution?’

‘I should like to see it ended.’

3 o 4 TAKING THE BASTILLE

Gilbert smiled sorrowfully.

‘It is only now beginning,’ he rejoined.

‘What astonishes me the most is your perfect coolness. 1

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

‘ It can only proceed from a firm conviction.’

‘Guess what that conviction is.’

‘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.’

‘Let us hear,’ said Billot ‘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 ground, at Father Billot’s feet.

‘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.’

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; they are figures, and which are at once the salvation and ruin of France. 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.

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

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‘Perfectly just !’ heroically replied Billot. ‘Well, be it so it will b 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?’

‘They will resist I’ 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.

‘The majority is there to make known its will.’

‘Then there would be aggression.’

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

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

‘The nobles do not pay in proportion to their income,’ replied Billot. ‘Thus I, a farmer, pay more than twice the amount of taxes paid by my neighbours, tha three brothers 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 Greve.

‘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 aie?’

‘That is true.’

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

‘Oh ! that I deny.’

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 ecclesi-

jofl TAKING THE BASTILLE

astics, whom you accuse of egotism, are just beginning to be seized with that fever of patriotism which is about to make the tour of Franco. 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; aad after him, the rest will jump it

‘What is the meaning of that, Monsieur Gilbert r

‘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 dove-cote lords their pigeons.’

‘Oh,’ cried Billot, suddenly catching the idea, ‘that will be splendid liberty indeed I*

‘Well, then; and after that, when shall we all bo free, what shall wo do next ?’

‘The deuce I’ cried Billot, somewhat embarrassed; ‘what shall bo done next? Why, the people united, embracing each other, forming themselves into one mass to ensure their general prosperity that cannot bo a subject to render you gloomy, Monsieur Gilbert?’

The latter shrugged his shoulders.

‘Then,’ said Billot, questioning in hie 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, wo have given liberty to the new world.’

‘You t and Frenchmen, too I That is magnificent.’

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

‘ Pooh 1 the money is spent; the bill is paid said Billot joyously. ‘A little gold, a great deaf of blood, and the debt is liquidated

‘Blind enthusiast 1’ said Gilbert, ‘who sees not in this dawning in the west the germ of ruin to us all I Alas I why do I accuse them, when I did not see more dearly than they ? The having given liberty to the new world, I fear, I fear greatly, was totally ruining the old one

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

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‘A new world,’ repeated Gilbert; ‘that it to Bay, 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 civilisation, 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 I But when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when we see in the old order of things that w 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 1 it is a task which will make all those shudder who can see behind the horizon. I am far-sighted, Billot, and I shudder.’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Billot, with his sound good sense; ‘you accused me, a short time since, of hating the revolution, and now you are making it execrable to me.’

‘But have I told yon that I renounce it? I shall, however, persevere,’ continued Gilbert, ‘for, although I see the obstacle, I can perceive the end, and that end is splendid, Billot. It is not only the liberty of France that I am dreaming of, but it is the liberty of the whole world; it is not physical equality, but it is equality before the laws equality of rights : it is not the fraternity of our own citizens, but fraternity between all nations. I may be losing my own soul, my body may perhaps perish in the struggle,’ continued Gilbert, in a melancholy tone,

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‘but it matters not; we are all soldiers, Father Billot, Forward, then I and over the heaps of our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy now present is the advanced guard.’

‘I do not really know why you despair. Monsieur Gilbert. Is it because an unfortunate man was this day murdered on the Place de Greve?’

‘ And why were you then so much horrified ? Go, then, Billot, and cut throats also.’

‘Oh I what are you now saying, Monsieur Gilbert?’

‘Zounds 1 a man should be consistent. You came here, all pale, all trembling you, who are so brave, so strong and you said to me. ” I am tired out.” I laughed in your face, Billot; and now that I explain to you why you were pale, why you were worn out, it is you who laugh at me in turn.’

‘ Speak I speak 1 but first of all give me the hope that I shall return cured, consoled, to my fields.’

‘Your fields I Listen to me, Billot all our hope is there. The country a sleeping revolution, which wakes up once in a thousand years, and gives royalty the vertigo every time it awakens the country will wake up in its turn, when the day shall come for purchasing or conquering those wrongly acquired territories of which you just now spoke, and with which the nobility and clergy are gorged, even to choking. But to urge on the country to a harvest of ideas, it will be necessary to urge on the countrymen to the conquest of the soil. Man, by becoming a proprietor, becomes free; and in becoming free, he becomes a better man. To us, then, privileged labourers, to whom God has consented that the veil of the future shall be raised, to us, then, the fearful work, which after giving liberty to the people, shall give them the property of the soil. Here, Billot, will be a good work, and a sorry recompense, perhaps; but an active, powerful work, full of joys and vexations, of glory and calumny. The country is still lulled in a dull impotent slumber, but it awaits only to be awakened by our summons, and that new dawn shall be our work. When once the country is awakened, the sanguinary portion of our labours will be terminated, and its peacable labours, the labours of the country will commence.’