The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE MOTHER'S BLESSING

It was six o'clock in the afternoon, broad day, when Catherine arrived home.

Had Isidore been alive and she were coming to visit her mother in health, she would have got down from the stage at the end of the village and slipped round upon her father's farm, without going through. But a widow and a mother, she did not give a thought to rustic jests; she alighted without fear; it seemed to her that scorn and insult ought to be warded off from her by her child and her sorrow, the dark and the bright angel.

At the first she was not recognized; she was so pale and so changed that she did not seem the same woman; and what set her apart from her class was the lofty air which she had already caught from community with an elegant man.

One person knew her again but not till she had passed by.

This was Pitou's aunt Angelique. She was gossiping at the townhouse door with some cronies about the oath required of the clergy, declaring that she had heard Father Fortier say that he would never vow allegiance to the Revolution, preferring to submit to martyrdom than bend his head to the democratic yoke.

"Bless us and save us!" she broke forth, in the midst of her speech, "if here ain't Billet's daughter and her fondling a-stepping down off the coach."

"Catherine?" cried several voices.

"Yes, but look at her running away, down the lane."

Aunt Angelique was making a mistake: Catherine was not running away and she took the sideway simply because she was in haste to see her mother.

At the cry the children scampered after her, and as she was fond of them always, and more than ever at present, she gave them some small change with which they returned.

"What is that?" asked the gossips.

"It is Miss Catherine; she asked how her mother was and when we said the doctor says she is good for a week yet, she thanked us and gave us some money."

"Hem! then, she seems to have taken her pigs to a good market in Paris," sneered Angelique, "to be able to give silver to the urchins who run at her heels."

She did not like Catherine because the latter was young and sweet and Angelique was old and sour; Catherine was tall and well made while the other was short and limped. Besides, when Angelique turned her nephew Ange out of doors, it was on Billet's farm that he took refuge.

Again, it was Billet who had lugged Father Fortier out of his rectory to say the mass for the country on the day of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

All these were ample reasons for Angelique to hate Catherine, joined to her natural asperity, in particular, and the Billet's in general. And when she hated it was thorough, as becomes a prude and a devotee.

She ran to the priest's to tell him and his sister the fresh scandal of Billet's daughter returning home with her child.

"Indeed," said Fortier, "I should have thought she would drop it into the box at the Foundling Hospital."

"The proper thing to do, for then the thing would not have to blush for his mother."

"That is a new point from which to regard that institution! But what has she come after here?"

"It looks as if to see her mother, who might not have been living still."

"Stay, a woman who does not come to confess, methinks?" said the abbé, with a wicked smile.

"Oh, that is not her fault!" said the old maid, "but she has had softening of the brain lately; up to the time when her daughter threw this grief upon her, she was a pious soul who feared God and paid for two chairs when she came to church, one to sit in, the other to put her feet upon."

"But how many chairs did her husband pay for, Billet, the Hero of the Mobs, the Conqueror of the Bastile?" cried the priest, his little eyes sparkling with spite.

"I do not know," returned Angelique simply, "for he never comes to church, while his good wife – "

"Very well, we will settle accounts with him on the day of his good wife's funeral."

In the meantime Catherine continued her way, one long series of memories of him who was no more, unless his arms were around the little boy whom she carried on her bosom.

What would the neighbors say of her shame and dishonor? So handsome a boy would be a shame and disgrace to a peasant!

But she entered the farm without fear though rapidly.

A huge dog barked as she came up, but suddenly recognizing his young mistress, he neared her to the stretch of his chain, and stood up with his forepaws in the air to utter little joyous yelps.

At the dog's barking a man ran out to see the cause.

"Miss Catherine," he exclaimed.

"Father Clovis," she said.

"Welcome, dear young mistress – the house much needs you, by heaven!"

"And my poor mother?"

"Sorry to say she is just the same, neither worse nor better – she is dying out like an oilless lamp, poor dear!"

"Where is she?"

"In her own room."

"Alone?"

"No, no, no! I would not have allowed that. You must excuse me, Miss Catherine, coming out as the master here, but your having stopped at my house before you went to town made me one of the family, I thought, in a manner of speaking, and I was very fond of you and poor Master Isidore."

"So you know?" said Catherine, wiping away her tears.

"Yes, yes, killed for the Queen's sake, like his brother. But he has left something behind him, a lovely boy, so while we mourn for the father we must smile for the son."

"Thank you, Clovis," said she, giving her hand: "but my mother?"

"I had Mother Clement the nurse to sit with her, the same who attended to you – "

"Has my mother her senses yet?" asked the girl hesitating.

"Sometimes I think so, when your name is spoken. That was the great means of stirring her, but since yesterday she has not showed any signs even when you are spoken of."

He opened the bedroom door and she could glance in.

Mother Clement was dozing in a large armchair, while her patient seemed to be asleep: she was not much changed but her complexion was like ivory in pallor.

"Mother, my dear mother," exclaimed Catherine, rushing into the room.

The dying one opened her eyes and tried to turn her head, as a gleam of intelligence sparkled in her look; but, babbling, her movement was abortive, and her arm sank inert on the head of the girl, kneeling by her side.

From the lethargy of the father and the mother had shot two opposite feelings: hate from the former, love from the latter.

The girl's arrival caused excitement on the farm, where Billet was expected, not his daughter. She related the accident to the farmer, and how he was as near death's door as his wife at home, only he was moving from it on the right side.

She went into her own room, where there were many tears evoked by the memories where she had passed in the bright dreams of childhood, and the girl's burning passions, and returned with the widow's broken heart.

At once she resumed the sway over that house in disorder which her father had delegated to her to the detriment of her mother.

Father Clovis, thanked and rewarded, retook the road to his "earth," as his hut was called.

When Dr. Raynal came next day on his tri-weekly visit, he was glad to see the girl.

He broached the great question which he had not dared debate with Billet, whether the poor woman should receive the Last Sacrament. Billet was a rabid Voltairian, while the doctor was a scientist. But he believed it his duty in such cases to warn the family of the dying and let them settle it.

Catherine was pious and attached little importance to the wrangles between her father and the priest.

But the abbé was one of the sombre school, who would have been an inquisitor in Spain. When he found the sufferer unconscious, he said that he could not give absolution to those unable to confess, and went out again.

There was no use applying elsewhere as he was monarch over this parish.

Catherine accepted the refusal as still another grief and went on with her cares as daughter and mother for eight or nine days and nights.

As she was watching by her mother, frail bark sinking deeper and deeper on Eternity's sea, the door opened, and Pitou appeared on the sill.

He came from Paris that morning. Catherine shuddered to see him, fearing that her father was dead. But his countenance, without being what you would call gay, was not that of the bearer of bad news. Indeed, Billet was mending; since a few days the doctor had answered for him: that morning he had been moved from the hospital to the doctor's house.

Pitou feared for Catherine, now. His opinion was that the moment Billet learned what he was sure to ask, how his wife was, he would start for home.

What would it be if he found Catherine there?

It was Gilbert who had therefore sent Pitou down into the country. But when Pitou expressed their fears about their meeting, Catherine declared that she would not leave her mother's pillow although her father slew her there.

Pitou groaned at such a determination but he did not combat it.

So he stayed there to intervene, if he might.

During two days and nights, Mother Billet's life seemed going, breath by breath. It was a wonder how a body lived with so little breath, but how slightly it lived!

During the night, when all animation seemed extinct, the patient awoke as it were, and she stared at Catherine, who ran to bring her boy.

The eyes were bright when she returned, a sound was heard, and the arms were held out.

Catherine fell on her knees beside the bed.

A strange phenomenon took place: Mother Billet rose on her pillow, slowly held out her arms over the girl's head and the boy, and with a mighty effort, said:

"Bless you, my children!"

She fell back, dead. Her eyes remained open, as though she longed to see her daughter from beyond the grave from not having seen enough of her before.

CHAPTER XXXI.
FORTIER EXECUTES HIS THREAT

Catherine piously closed her mother's eyes, with her hand and then with her lips, while Mother Clement lit the candles and arranged other paraphernalia.

Pitou took charge of the other details. Reluctant to visit Father Fortier, with whom he stood on delicate ground, he ordered the mortuary mass of the sacristan, and engaged the gravedigger and the coffin-bearers.

Then he went over to Haramont to have his company of militia notified that the wife of the Hero of the People would be buried at eleven on the morrow. It was not an official order but an invitation. But it was too well known what Billet had done for this Revolution which was turning all heads and enflaming all hearts; what danger Billet was even then running for the sake of the masses – for this invitation not to be regarded as an order: all the volunteer soldiers promised their captain that they would be punctual.

Pitou brought the joiner with him, who carried the coffin. He had all the heartfelt delicacy rare in the lowborn, and hid the man and his bier in the outhouse so Catherine should not see it, and to spare her from hearing the sound of the hammering of the nails, he entered the dwelling alone.

Catherine was still praying by the dead, which had been shrouded by two neighbors.

Pitou suggested that she should go out for a change of air; then for the child's sake, upon which she proposed he should take the little one. She must have had great confidence in Pitou to trust her boy to him for a time.

"He won't come," reported Pitou, presently. "He is crying."

She kissed her mother, took her child by the hand and walked away with Pitou. The joiner carried in the coffin when she was gone.

He took her out on the road to Boursonnes, where she went half a league without saying a word to Pitou, listening to the voices of the woodland which talked to her heart.

When she got home, the work was done, and she understood why Ange had insisted on her going out. She thanked him with an eloquent look. She prayed for a long while by the coffin, understanding now that she had but one of the two friends, left, her mother and Pitou, when Isidore died.

"You must come away," said the peasant, "or I must go and hire a nurse for Master Isidore."

"You are right, Pitou," she said. "My God, how good Thou art to me – and how I love you, Pitou!"

He reeled and nearly fell over backwards. He leaned up against the wall, choking, for Catherine had said that she loved him! He did not deceive himself about the kind of love, but any kind was a great deal for him.

Finishing her prayer, she rose and went with a slow step to lean on his shoulder. He put his arm round her to sustain her; she allowed this. Turning at the door, she breathed: "Farewell, mother!" and went forth.

Pitou stopped her at her own door. She began to understand Pitou.

"Why, Miss Catherine," he stammered, "do you not think it is a good time to leave the farm?"

"I shall only leave when my mother shall no longer be here," she replied.

She spoke with such firmness that he saw it was an irrevocable resolve.

"When you do go, you know you have two homes, Father Clovis' and my house."

Pitou's "house" was his sitting room and bedroom.

"I thank you," she replied, her smile and nod meaning that she accepted both offers.

She went into her room without troubling about the young man, who had the knack of finding some burrow.

At ten next day all the farmers for miles around flocked to the farm. The Mayor came, too. At half after ten up marched the Haramont National Guards, with colors tied up in black, without a man being missing. Catherine, dressed in black, with her boy in mourning, welcomed all comers and it must be said that there was no feeling for her but of respect.

At eleven, some three hundred persons were gathered at the farm. The priest and his attendants alone were absent. Pitou knew Father Fortier and he guessed that he who had refused the sacraments to the dying woman, would withhold the funeral service under the pretext that she had died unconscious. These reflections, confided to Mayor Longpre, produced a doleful impression. While they were looking at each other in silence, Maniquet, whose opinions were anti-religious, called out:

"If Abbé Fortier does not like to say mass, we will get on without it."

But it was evidently a bold act, although Voltaire and Rousseau were in the ascendancy.

"Gentlemen," suggested the mayor, "let us proceed to Villers Cotterets where we will have an explanation."

The procession moved slowly past Catherine and her little boy, and was going down the road, when the rear guards heard a voice behind them. It was a call and they turned.

A man on a horse was riding from the side of Paris.

Part of the rider's face was covered with black bandages; he waved his hat in his hand and signalled that he wanted the party to stop.

Pitou had turned like the others.

"Why, it is Billet," he said, "good! I should not like to be in Father Fortier's skin."

At the name everybody halted. He advanced rapidly and as he neared all were able to recognize him as Pitou had done.

On reaching the head of the line, Billet jumped off his horse, threw the bridle on its neck, and, after saying a lusty: "Good day and thank ye, citizens!" he took his proper place which Pitou had in his absence held to lead the mourners.

A stable boy took away the horse.

Everybody looked curiously at the farmer. He had grown thinner and much paler. Part of his face and around his left eye had retained the black and blue tint of extravasated blood. His clenched teeth and frowning brows indicated sullen rage which waited the time for a vent.

"Do you know what has happened?" inquired Pitou.

"I know all," was the reply.

As soon as Gilbert had told his patient of the state of his wife, he had taken a cabriolet as far as Nanteuil. As the horse could go no farther, though Billet was weak, he had mounted a post horse and with a change at Levignan, he reached his farm as we know.

In two words Mother Clement had told the story. He remounted the horse and stopped the procession which he descried on turning a wall.

Silent and moody before, the party became more so since this figure of hate led the way.

At Villers Cotterets a waiting party fell into the line. As the cortege went up the street, men, women and children flowed out of the dwellings, saluted Billet, who nodded, and incorporated themselves in the ranks.

It numbered five hundred when it reached the church. It was shut, as Pitou had anticipated. They halted at the door.

Billet had become livid; his expression had grown more and more threatening.

The church and the town hall adjoined. The player of the bassoon in the holy building was also janitor at the mayor's, so that he belonged under the secular and the clerical arm. Questioned by Mayor Longpre, he answered that Father Fortier had forbidden any retainer of the church to lend his aid to the funeral. The mayor asked where the keys were, and was told the beadle had them.

"Go and get the keys," said Billet to Pitou, who opened out his long compass-like legs and, having been gone five minutes, returned to say:

"Abbé Fortier had the keys taken to his house to be sure the church should not be opened."

"We must go straight to the priest for them," suggested Maniquet, the promoter of extreme measures.

"Let us go to the abbé's," cried the crowd.

"It would take too long," remarked Billet: "and when death knocks at a door, it does not like to wait."

He looked round him. Opposite the church, a house was being built. Some carpenters had been squaring a joist. Billet walked up and ran his arm round the beam, which rested on trestles. With one effort he raised it. But he had reckoned on absent strength. Under the great burden the giant reeled and it was thought for an instant that he would fall. It was but a flash; he recovered his balance and smiled terribly; and forward he walked, with the beam under his arm, with a firm step albeit slow.

He seemed one of those antique battering-rams with which the Caesars overthrow walls.

He planted himself, with legs set apart, before the door and the formidable machine began to work. The door was oak with iron fastenings; but at the third shove, bolts, bars and lock had flown off; the oaken panels yawned, too.

Billet let the beam drop. It took four men to carry it back to its place, and not easily.

"Now, mayor, have my poor wife's coffin carried to the midst of the choir – she never did harm to anybody – and you, Pitou, collect the beadle, the choirboys and the chanters, while I bring the priest."

Several wished to follow Billet to Father Fortier's house.

"Let me go alone," said he: "maybe what I do is serious and I should bear my own burden."

This was the second time that the revolutionist had come into conflict with the son of the church, at a year's interval. Remembering what had happened before, a similar scene was anticipated.

The rectory door was sealed up like that of the church. Billet looked round for some beam to be used like the other, but there was nothing of the sort. The only thing was a stone post, a boundary mark, with which the children had played so long at "over-ing" that it was loose in the socket like an old tooth.

The farmer stepped up to it, shook it violently to enlarge its orbit, and tore it clean out. Then raising it like a Highlander "putting the stone," he hurled it at the door which flew into shivers.

At the same time as this breach was made, the upper window opened and Father Fortier appeared, calling on his parishioners with all the power of his lungs. But the voice of the pastor fell lost, as the flock did not care to interfere between him and the wolf.

It took Billet some time to break all the doors down between him and his prey, but in ten minutes, more or less, that was done.

At the end of that time, loud shrieks were heard and by the abbé's most expressive gestures it was to be surmised that the danger was drawing nearer and nearer him.

In fact, suddenly was seen to rise behind the priest Billet's pale face, as his hand launched out and grabbed him by the shoulder.

The priest clutched the window sill; he was of proverbial strength and it would not be easy for Hercules to make him relax his grip.

Billet passed his arm around the priest as a girdle; straightened himself on both legs, and with a pull which would uproot an oak, he tore him away with the snapped wood between his hands.

Farmer and priest, they disappeared within the room, where in the depths were heard the wailings of the priest, dying away like the bellowing of a bull carried off by a lion.

In the meanwhile, Pitou had gathered up the trembling church staff, who hastened to don the vestments, light the candles and incense and prepare all things for the death mass.

Billet was seen coming, dragging the priest with him at as smart a pace, though he still made resistance, as if he were alone.

This was not a man, but one of the forces of nature: something like a torrent or an avalanche; nothing human could withstand him and it took an element to combat with him.

About a hundred steps from the church, the poor abbé ceased to kick, completely overpowered.

All stood aside to let the pair go by.

The abbé cast a frightened glance on the door, shivered like a pane of glass and seeing all his men at their stands whom he had forbidden to enter the place, he shook his head like one who acknowledges that some resistless power weighed on the church's ministers if not on itself.

He entered the sacristy and came forth in his robes, with the sacrament in his hand.

But as he was mounting the altar Billet stretched out his hand.

"Enough, you faulty servant of God," he thundered: "I only attempted to check your pride, that is all: but I want it known that a sainted woman like my wife can dispense with the prayers of a hateful and fanatical priest like you."

As a loud murmur rose under the vaulted ceiling of the fane, he said:

"If this be sacrilege, let it fall on my head."

Turning to the crowd he added: "Citizens, to the cemetery!"

"To the cemetery," cried the concourse which filled not the church alone but the square in front.

The four bearers passed their muskets under the bier lifting the body and as they had come without ecclesiastical pomp, such as religion has devised to accompany man to the grave, they went forth. Billet conducted the mourners, with six hundred persons following the remains, to the burial-ground, situated at the end of a lane near Aunt Angelique's house.

The cemetery-gates were closed but Billet respected the dead; he sent for the gravedigger who had the key, and Pitou brought it with two spades.

Fortier had proscribed the dead as unfit for consecrated ground, which the gravedigger had been ordered not to break for her.

At this last evidence of the priest's hatred for the farmer, a shiver of menace ran through the gathering: if Billet had had a little of the gall which the Tartuffes hold, to the amazement of Boileau, he had but a word to say and the Abbé Fortier would have had that satisfaction of martyrdom for which he had howled on the day when he refused to say mass on the Altar of the Country.

But Billet's wrath was that of the people and the lion; he did not retrace his steps to tear.

He thanked Pitou with a nod, took the key, opened the gates, passed the coffin in, and following it, was followed by the procession, recruited by all that could walk.

Arrived where the grave had been marked out before the sexton had the order not to open the earth, Billet held out his hand to Pitou for one of the spades.

Thereupon, with uncovered head, Pitou and Billet, amid the citizens bareheaded likewise, under the devouring July sun dug the resting-place for this poor creature who, pious and resigned throughout life, would have been greatly astonished in her lifetime if told what a sensation her death would cause.

The task lasted an hour without either worker thinking of being relieved. Meanwhile rope was sought for and was ready.

It was still Billet and Pitou who lowered the coffin into the pit. They did all so naturally that nobody thought of offering help. It would have been a sacrilege to have stayed them from carrying out all to the end. Only at the first clods falling on the coffin, Billet ran his hand over his eyes and Pitou his sleeve. Then they resolutely shoveled the earth in. When they had finished, Billet flung the spade far from him and gripped Pitou by the hand.

"God is my witness," said he, "that I hold in hand all the simple and grandest virtues on earth: charity, devotion, abnegation, brotherhood – and that I dedicate my life to these virtues." He held out his hand over the grave, saying: "God be again my witness that I swear eternal war against the King who tried to have me murdered; to the nobles who defamed my daughter; to the priests who refused sepulture to my wife!"

Turning towards the spectators full of sympathy with this adjuration, he said:

"Brothers, a new assembly is to be convoked in place of the traitors now in session; select me to represent you in this new parliament, and you will see how I keep my oath."

A shout of universal adhesion hailed this suggestion, and at once over his wife's grave, terrible altar, worthy of the dread vow, the candidature of Billet was proposed, seconded and carried. After this, he thanked his fellow citizens for their sympathy in his affliction, his friendship and his hatred, and each, citizen, countryman, peasant and forester, went home, carrying in heart that spirit of revolutionary propaganda to which in their blindness the most deadly weapons were afforded by those who were to be destroyed by them – priests, nobles and King!

How Billet kept his oath, with other circumstances which are linked with his return to Paris in the new Legislative Assembly, will be recorded in the sequel entitled "THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY."