Taking the Bastile

"Are you going to take him away?" asked the head teacher, alarmed by the sight of two armed men one of whom, the speaker, was covered with blood.

The boy was also looking at them without recognizing his foster-brother who had grown out of all reason since he left him and was farther disguised by the martial harness.

"Take away Dr. Gilbert's son into that infernal rumpus?" said the yeoman: "Expose him to some ugly blow? oh, dear, no."

"You see, you mad fellow, Sebastian, that your friends do not approve of your attempt," said the principal. "For these gentlemen do appear to be your friends. Aid me, gentlemen, and ye, my children, obey me, when I command, and entreat."

"Keep my mates if you will," replied young Gilbert with a firmness marvellous at his age: "but I must go forth. I am not in the position of these; my father has been arrested and is imprisoned – he is in the tyrant's power."

"Yes, yes," shouted the boys; "Sebastian is right; they have locked up his father, and as the people are opening the prisons, they must set his father free."

"Eh? have they arrested Dr. Gilbert?" roared the farmer, shaking the gates: "Death of my life! little Catherine was right."

"Yes, they have taken away my father," continued little Gilbert, "and that is why I want to get a gun and fight till I deliver my father."

This plan was hailed by a hundred shrill voices: "Yes, give us weapons – let us fight."

At this, the mob outside the gates ran at them to give the scholars passage. The principal threw himself on his knees to supplicate both parties, crying:

"Friends, friends, spare tender youth!"

"Spare them? of course we will," said an old soldier: "they will be just the chaps to form a cadet corps with."

"But they are a sacred deposit entrusted to me by their parents," continued the head teacher; "I owe my life to them, so, in heaven's name, do not take away my lambs."

Hooting from both sides of the wall killed his doleful entreaties.

Billet stepped forward, and interposed between the soldiers and the mob and the schoolboys.

"The old gentleman is right," he said. "The youngsters are a sacred trust. Let men go and fight and get knocked over, that is their duty, but children are the seed for the future."

A disapproving murmur was heard.

"Who grumbles?" demanded the farmer; "I am sure it is not a father. Now, I am a father; I have had two men killed in my arms this last night; it is their blood on my breast – see!"

He showed the stains to the assemblage with a grand gesture electrifying all.

"Yesterday, I was fighting at the Palais Royale and in the Tuileries Garden," resumed the farmer; "and this lad fought by my side; but then he has no father or mother: and besides he is almost a man grown."

Pitou looked proud.

"I shall be fighting again to-day; but I do not want anybody to say the Parisians could not thrash the enemy until they brought the children to help them."

"The man's right," chorussed the soldiers and women. "No children in the fighting. Keep them in."

"Oh, thank you, sir," said the head master to Billet, trying to shake hands with him through the bars.

"And above all take good care of Gilbert," said the latter.

"Keep me in? I tell you they shall not," cried the boy, livid with anger as he struggled in the grasp of the school servants.

"Let me go in, and I undertake to quiet him."

The crowd divided and let the farmer and Pitou go into the schoolyard. Already three or four French Guards and a dozen other soldiers instinctively stood sentry at the gates and prevented the young insurgents from bolting out.

Billet went straight up to Sebastian and taking his fine white hands in his large, horny ones, said:

"Sebastian, do you not know Farmer Billet, who farms your father's own land?"

"Yes, sir, I know you now."

"And this lad with me?"

"It must be Ange Pitou."

Pitou threw himself on the other's neck, blubbering with joy.

"If they have taken away your father, I will bring him back. I, and the rest of us. Why not? yesterday we had a turn-up with the Austrians and we saw the flat of their backs."

"In token of which here is a cartridge-box one of them has no farther use for," added Ange.

"Will we not liberate his father?" cried Billet to the mob, who shouted an assent.

"But my father is in the Bastile," said Sebastian, shaking his head in melancholy. "None can take the Bastile." "What were you going to do then, had you got out?"

"I should have gone under the Bastile walls and when my father was out walking on the ramparts, where they tell me the prisoners come for an airing, I should have shown myself to him."

"But if the sentinels shot you when they caught you making signs to a prisoner?"

"I should have died under my father's eyes."

"Death of all the devils, you are a bad boy. To want to get killed under your father's eyes! To make him die of grief in his cell when he has nobody but you to live for, and one he loves so well. Plainly you have no good heart, Sebastian."

"A bad heart," whimpered Pitou as Billet repulsed the boy.

While the boy was musing sadly, the farmer admired the noble face, white and pearly; the fiery eye, fine and ironical mouth, eagle nose and vigorous chin, revealing nobility of race and of spirit.

"You say your father has been put in the Bastile? why?" he inquired.

"Because he is a friend of Washington and Lafayette; has fought with the sword for the Independence of America; and with the pen for France; is known in the Two Worlds as a hater of tyranny: because he has cursed this Bastile where others were suffering – and now he is there himself."

"How long since?"

"He was arrested the moment he landed at Havre; at least at Lillebonne, for he wrote me a letter from the port."

"Don't be cross, my boy: but let me have the points. I swear to deliver your father from the Bastile or leave my bones at the foot of its walls."

Sebastian saw that the former spoke from the bottom of his heart and he replied:

"He had time at Lillebonne to scribble these words in pencil in a book:

"'Sebastian: I am taken to the Bastile. Patience, Hope and Labor. 7th July, 1789. P. S. – I am arrested for Liberty's cause. I have a son at Louis-the-Great College, Paris. The finder of this book is begged to bear this note on to my son Sebastian Gilbert, in the name of humanity.'"

"And the book?" inquired Billet, breathless with emotion.

"He put a gold piece in the book, tied a string round it, and threw it out of the window. The Parish Priest found it and picked out a sturdy fellow among his flock, to whom he said:

"'Leave twelve francs with your family who are without bread. With the other twelve go carry this book to Paris, to a poor boy whose father has been taken away from him because he loves the people too well.' The young man got in yesterday at noon: he handed me the book and thus I knew of the arrest."

"Good, this makes me friends with the priests again!" exclaimed Billet. "A pity they are not all built on this pattern. What about the peasant?"

"He went back last evening, hoping to carry his family the five francs he had saved on the journey."

"How handsome of him," said Billet. "Oh, the people are good for something, boy."

"Now, you know all: you promised if I told you, to restore me my father."

"I said I should or get killed. Now show me that book."

The boy drew from his pocket a copy of Rousseau's "Social Contract."

Billet kissed where the doctor's hand had traced the appeal.

"Now, be calm," he said: "I am going to fetch your father from the Bastile."

"Madman," said the principal, grasping his hands; "how will you get at a prisoner of state?"

"By taking the Bastile," replied the farmer.

Some guardsmen laughed and the merriment became general.

"Hold on," said Billet, casting his blazing glance around him. "What is this Bogey's Castle, anyhow?"

"Only stones," said a soldier.

"And iron," said another.

"And fire," concluded a third. "Mind you do not burn your fingers, my hero."

"Yes, he'll get burnt," cried the crowd.

"What," roared the peasant, "have you got no pickaxes, you Parisians, that you are afraid of stone walls? no bullets for you to shrink from steel? no powder when they fire on you? You must be cowards, then, dastards; machines fit for slavery. A thousand demons! Is there no man with a heart who will come with me and Pitou to have a go at this Bastile of the King? I am Billet, farmer in the Ile-de-France section, and I am going to knock at that door. Come on!"

Billet had risen to the summit of sublime audacity. The enflamed and quivering multitude around him shouted:

"Down with the Bastile!"

Sebastian wished to cling to Billet, but he gently put him aside.

"Your father bade you hope and have patience while you worked. Well, we are going to work, too – only the other name for our work is slaying and destroying."

The youth did not say a word, but hiding his face in his hands he went off into spasms which compelled them to take him into the sick ward.

"On, to the Bastile!" called out Billet.

"To the Bastile," echoed Pitou.

"To the Bastile," thundered three thousand persons, a cry which was to become that of the entire population of Paris.

CHAPTER X.

BLOWING HOT AND COLD

It was on the morning of the fourteenth of July that Billet opened oratorical fire against the monument which had for five centuries weighed like an incubus on the breast of France – a rock of Sisyphus. Less confident than the Titan in her power, France had never thought to throw it off.

The Bastile was the seal of feudalism on the brow of Paris.

The King was accounted too good to order people to be beheaded; but he sent people into the Bastile. Once there a man was forgotten, isolated, sequestered, buried alive, annihilated. He stayed there till the monarch remembered him, and kings have so many new matters to think of that they often forget the old ones.

There were twenty other Bastiles in France, the name being general for prison, so that, to this day, the tramp on the dusty road speaks of the "Steel," without perhaps knowing that the title of ignominy referred to the great French Statesprison.

The fortress by the St. Antoine Gate was the Bastile pre-eminently. It was alone worth all the others.

Some of the prisoners were perhaps great criminals; but others like Latude had done nothing to merit thirty years' captivity.

He had fallen in love with Lady Pompadour, the King's mistress, and wrote her a note which caused his imprisonment for a life-time.

It was not for nothing that the Bastile was hated by the people.

It was hated like a living thing – a monster like the dragoons who defy a people till a champion rises, like Billet, to show them how to attack it.

Hence one may comprehend Sebastian's hopeless grief at his father being incarcerated in the Bastile.

Hence Billet's belief that he would never be liberated but by being plucked forth.

Hence the popular transport may be felt when the shout rose of "Down with the Bastile!"

But it was, as the soldiers said, an insane project to think of capturing the King's Prison-Castle.

The Bastile had a garrison, artillery and provisions. The walls were fifteen feet thick at the top and forty at the base.

The governor was Count Launay, who had thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder in the magazine, and had promised in case of annoyance to blow up the fort and with it all that part of Paris.

Nevertheless Billet marched forward, but he did not have to do any shouting.

Liking his martial mien, the multitude felt he was one of their kind, and commenting on his words and bearing, it followed him, increasing like the flowing tide.

When Billet came out on St. Michel's quay, he had behind him more than three thousand men, armed with hatchets, cutlasses, pikes and guns.

All were shouting: "On, to the Bastile!"

Billet was making the reflections which his knowledge of the stronghold warranted, and the vapor of his enthusiasm faded gradually.

He saw clearly that the enterprise was sublime though insane.

That was easy to understand by the awed expression of those to whom he had first broached the project of taking the Bastile.

But he was only the more fortified in his resolve. But he understood that he had to answer to these mothers and fathers, girls and children, for the lives of those whom he was leading, and that he was bound to take all the precautions possible.

He commenced by collecting his followers at the City Hall.

He appointed lieutenants to control the flock – of wolves.

"Let me see," said Billet to himself; "there is more than one power in France. There are two – the head of the chief city, for one, and may be another yet."

He entered the City Hall, asking for the Chief civic magistrate. It was the Traders' Provost Flesselles.

"My lord de Flesselles," he repeated; "a noble and no friend of the people?"

"Oh, no, he is a sensible man."

Billet went up the stairs into the ante-chamber where he met an usher, who came up to him to see what he wanted.

"Speech with Lord Flesselles," replied Billet.

"Can't sir," answered the man. "He is completing the list for the militia which the City is to raise."

"Capital!" rejoined Billet; "I am also organizing a militia, and as I have three thousand men ready under arms, I am worth a Flesselles who is only going to get his together. Let me speak with him, and right off. If you like, just look out of the window at my soldiers."

One rapid glance on the waterside was enough for the servant who hastened to notify the Traders' Provost, to whom, as emphasis to his message, he pointed out the army.

This sight inspired respect in the provost for the man commanding them: he left the council and came into the ante-room. Perceiving Billet, he smiled at guessing the kind of man he must be.

"Were you wanting me?" he challenged.

"If you are Provost Flesselles," responded Billet.

"Yes; how can I serve you? please, be quick, for I am very busy."

"How many powers do you acknowledge in France, my Lord Provost?" queried Billet.

"Hem, that is just how one looks at it," replied the politician. "If you ask Bailly the Mayor he will say 'The National Assembly.' If Lord Dreux, he would say only one – 'the King.'"

"And which is yours between the two?"

"Neither one, but the nation, at present," rejoined Flesselles, playing with his ruffles.

"Ah, the nation," repeated the farmer.

"Those gentlemen waiting below there with the wood-choppers and carving-knives; the nation, all the world to me."

"You may be right and there was no mistake in their warranting you to me as a knowing man."

"Which of the three powers do you belong to?" inquired the trimmer, bowing.

"Faith, when there is a question for the Grand Spirit and the angels, I apply to the Fountain – head."

"You mean the King? What for?"

"To ask for the release of Dr. Gilbert who is in the Bastile."

"He is one of those pamhleteers I believe," said the aristocratic one saucily.

"A lover of mankind."

"That is all one. My dear M. Billet, I believe you have little chances of obtaining such a favor from the King. If he put the doctor in his Bastile, he had reasons for it."

"All right," returned Billet; "he shall offer his reasons and I will match them with mine?"

"My dear sir, the King is so busy that he will not receive you."

"Oh, if he will not let me in, I shall walk in without his leave or licence."

"But you will find Lord Dreux Breze at the door who will put you away from it. It is true he failed to do that with the National Assembly in a body; but that failure will only the more put him on his mettle and he will take his revenge out of you."

"Then I will apply to the National Assembly."

"The way to Versailles is cut off."

"I will have my three thousand men with me.

"Have a care, my dear fellow, for you will meet on the road four or five thousand Swiss soldiers and two or three thousand Austrians who will make mincemeat of your forces; in a twinkling you will be swallowed."

"What the deuse am I to do, then?"

"Do what you like: but rid me of your three thousand tatterdemalions who are cracking the flagstones with thumps of their halberds, and smoking. In the vaults are seven or eight thousand pounds of gunpowder and a spark may send us all flying to the Eternal Throne."

"In that case, turning this over in my mind," said the farmer, "I will not trouble the King or the Assembly, but call in the nation and take the Bastile myself."

"With what?"

"With the powder you have kindly told me is stored in your cellar."

"You don't tell me that?" sneered Flesselles.

"That is the very thing. The cellar keys, my lord."

"Hello, you are joking," faltered the gentleman.

"I never joke," returned Billet, grasping the provost by the collar with both hands. "Let me have the keys or I shall sling you out to my tatterdemalions who know how to pick pockets."

Flesselles turned pale as death. His lips and teeth closed so convulsively but his voice did not alter in tone from the ironical one adopted.

"To tell you the truth, sir, you do me assistance in ridding me of this combustible," he said; "So I will hand you over the keys as you desire. Only do not forget that I am your first magistrate, and that if you are so unfortunate as to handle me roughly before others as you have done, catching me privately in an unguarded time, you will be hanged within the hour by the city guards. Do you persist in removing this powder?"

"I do, and will divide it out myself right away."

"Let us have this clear, then: I have business here for an other quarter of an hour and if it makes no difference to you, I should prefer the distribution to go on during my absence. It has been foretold me that I should die of a violent death, but I own to having a deep repugnance to being blown into the air."

"You shall have the time but do me a favor in return. Come to this window, that I may make you popular."

"Much obliged: in what manner?"

"You shall see. Friends," he called out, as the two stood at the window, "you want to take the Bastile?"

"Ay, ay," replied the thousands of voices.

"But we want powder? now, here is the provost who gives us all there is in the City Hall cellars. Thank him, boys!"

"Long live the provost – Flesselles forever!" roared the mob.

"Now, my lord; there is no need for me to collar you before the crowd or when alone," said Billet: "for if you do not give the powder, the people – or the nation as you call it – will tear you to pieces."

"Here are the keys: your way of asking for anything allows no refusing."

"This encourages me," said Billet, who was meditating.

"Hang it all, have you more to ask?"

"Yes; if you know Governor Launay."

"Of the Bastile? he is a friend of mine."

"In that case, you cannot wish evil to befall him. To prevent that, ask him to give up the prison to me or at least the prisoner Gilbert."

"You cannot hope that I have any such influence?"

"That is my lookout – all I want is an introduction to him."

"My dear M. Billet, I must warn you that if you enter the Bastile, it will be alone, and it is likely that you will never come out again. Still I will give you a passport into the Bastile, on one condition, that you do not ask me another for the moon. I have no acquaintances lunatics."

"Flesselles," shrilled a harsh voice behind the speaker, "if you continue to wear two faces – one laughing with the aristocrats and the other smiling on the people, you will be signing your own passport in a day or two to the other world whence none return."

"Who speak thus?" cried the provost, turning to the ill-favored man who interrupted.

"I, Marat."

"The surgeon Marat, the philosopher," said Billet.

"Yes, the same Marat," continued Flesselles; "who as a medical man ought to attend to the insane; he will have his hands full in France at this moment."

"Provost Flesselles," replied the sombre surgeon, "this honest citizen asks a passport to Governor Launay. I would point out that you are not only keeping him waiting but three thousand other honest citizens."

"Very well; he shall have it."

Going to a table, he passed his hand over his forehead before writing with the other a few rapid lines in ink.

"Here is your introduction," he said, presenting it to the countryman.

"I do not know how to read," said Billet.

"Give it to me and I will do so," said Marat; and he saw that the pass was couched in these words:

"Governor: We, Provost of Traders of Paris, send you M. Billet to confer on the welfare of the city.

14th July, 1789.

Flesselles.

"All right, let me have it," said Billet.

"Oh, you think it good enough?" sneered Marat; "Wait for the provost to add a postscript, which will improve it."

He went over to the provost, who was leaning one closed hand on the table and regarding with a scornful air not only the two men who were the jaws of a vice which enclosed him, but a third, whose breeches were torn, standing before the doorway, with a musketoon in his fist.

This was Pitou who followed his friend and was ready to execute any order of his.

"I suggest the following postscript to improve the paper," said Marat.

"Speak."

Marat laid the paper again on the table and pointing with his crooked finger to the place for the addendum, he dictated:

"Citizen Billet being under flag of truce, I confide his life to your honor."

Flesselles looked at the cunning face as if he had a strongest desire to smash it with a blow than do what he was counselled.

"Do you hesitate?" demanded the surgeon.

"No, for at the most, you only ask what is fair," replied the other, writing as proposed.

"Still, gentlemen, I want you to bear in mind that I do not answer for the envoy's safety."

"But I will," said Marat, taking the paper from his hands: "for your liberty is here to answer for his – your head will guarantee his. There is your pass, my brave Billet."

Flesselles called for his coach and said loudly:

"I suppose, my friends, you are asking nothing more?"

"No," replied the two together.

"Am I to let him pass?" asked Pitou.

"My young friend," said the gentleman, "I should like to observe that you are rather too insufficiently clad to stand guard at my door. If you feel constrained to do it, at least sling your cartridge-box round and stand with your back to the wall."

"Am I to let him go?" asked Pitou again, looking at the speaker as if he did not relish the jest.

"Yes," Billet said.

"Perhaps you are wrong to let him go," said Marat as Pitou stepped aside; "he was a good hostage to hold: but in any case, be he where he may, I can lay hands on him, never fear."

"Labrie," said Flesselles to his valet, as he got into his carriage, "they are going to serve out the powder. If the City Hall goes up in an explosion I should like to be well out of the reach of splinters. Tell the coachman to whip up smartly."

The vehicle rolled under the covered way and came out on the square before some thousands of spectators. The Provost feared that his departure might be misinterpreted and taken for a flight. So he leaned out of the window and said loudly:

"Drive to the National Assembly!"

This earned him a cheer. Up on the balcony, outside, Marat and Billet heard the order.

"My head to his, that he is not going to the Assembly but to the King," commented the surgeon.

"Had he not better be stopped?" said the farmer.

"No," replied the other with a hideous grin. "Be easy: go where he may, and however quickly, we shall travel more quickly than he. Now, let us get out that powder!"

"Out with the powder," said Billet.

Flesselles was right in saying there were eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in the vaults.

Marat and Billet walked in the first with a lantern which they hung to a beam. Pitou mounted guard at the door.

The powder was in twenty-pound kegs; men were stationed in a line and the kegs were passed out, hand to hand. There was a brief confusion as it was not known what was the amount and some feared they could not get any if they did not scramble for it. But Billet had selected his lieutenants on his own model, with leg-of-mutton fists, and the distribution went on with much order.