Their arms glistened occasionally with the pale reflection of the stars.
Pitou, whose nocturnal excursions in the woods had accustomed him to see clearly in the dark,—Pitou pointed out to his master pieces of artillery, which had sunk up to the axles in the middle of the muddy plain. “Oh! oh!” cried Billot, “there is something new up yonder, then! Let make haste! Let us make haste! Let us make haste!”
“Yes, yes; there is a fire out yonder,” said Pitou, who had raised himself on Margot’s back. “Look!—look! Do you not see the sparks?”
Margot stopped. Billot jumped off her back, and approaching a group of soldiers in blue and yellow uniform, who were bivouacking under the trees by the road-side, “Comrades,” said he to them, “can you tell me what there is going on at Paris?”
But the soldiers merely replied to him by oaths, which they uttered in the German language.
“What the devil is it they say? ” inquired Billot, addressing Pitou.
“It is not Latin, dear Monsieur Billot,” replied Pitou, trembling; “and that is all I can tell you.”
Billot reflected, and looked again.
“Simpleton that I was,” said he, “to attempt to question these Kaiserliks.”
And in his curiosity he remained motionless in the middle of the road.
An officer went up to him.
“Bass on your roat,” said he; “bass on quickly.”
“Your pardon, Captain,” replied Billot; “but I am going to Paris.”
“Vell, mein Gott; vot den?”
“And as I see that you are drawn up across the road,
I fear that we cannot get through the barriers.”
“You can get drough.”
And Billot remounted his mare and went on. But it was only to fall in the midst of the Bercheur
Hussars, who encumbered the street of La Villette.
This time he had to deal with his own countrymen.
He questioned them with more success. “Sir,” said he, “what has there happened at Paris, if you please?”
“That your headstrong Parisians,” replied the hussar, “will have their Necker; and they are firing musket-shots at us, as if we had anything to do with the matter!”
“Have Necker!” exclaimed Billot. “They have lost him, then?”
“Assuredly, since the king has dismissed him.”
“The king has dismissed Monsieur Necker!” exclaimed Billot, with the stupefaction of a devotee calling out against a sacrilege: “the king has dismissed that great man?”
“Oh, in faith he has, my worthy sir; and more than that, this great man is now on his road to Brussels.”
“Well, then, in that case we shall see some fun,” cried Billot, in a tremendous voice, without caring for the danger he was incurring by thus preaching insurrection in the midst of twelve or fifteen hundred royalist sabres.
And he again mounted Margot, spurring her on with cruel violence, until he reached the barrier.
As he advanced, he perceived that the fire was increasing and becoming redder. A long column of flame ascended from the barrier towards the sky.
It was the barrier itself that was burning.
A howling, furious mob, in which there were many women, who, as usual, threatened and vociferated more loudly than the men, were feeding the fire with pieces of wainscoting, and chairs and tables, and other articles of furniture belonging to the clerks employed to collect the city dues.1
Upon the road were Hungarian and German regiments, who, leaning upon their grounded arms, were looking on with vacant eyes at this scene of devastation.
Billot did not allow this rampart of flames to arrest his progress. He spurred on Margot through the fire. Margot rushed through the flaming ruins; but when she had reached the inner side of the barrier she was obliged to stop, being met by a crowd of people coming from the centre of the city, towards the suburbs. Some of them were singing, others shouting, “To arms!”
Billot had the appearance of being what he really was, a good farmer coming to Paris on his own affairs. Perhaps he cried out rather too loudly, “Make room! make room!” but Pitou repeated the words so politely, “Room if you please; let us pass!” that the one was a corrective of the other. No one had any interest in preventing Billot from going to his affairs, and he was allowed to pass.