And he pointed to Pitou, who looked proudly around him.
“To-day,” continued Billot, “I shall fight again; but let no one say to me, ‘The Parisians were not strong enough to contend against the foreign soldiers, and they called children to their aid.'”
“Yes, yes,” resounded on every side, proceeding from women in the crowd, and several of the soldiers; “he is right, children: go into the college; go into the college.”
“Oh, thanks, thanks, sir!” murmured the principal of the college, endeavoring to catch hold of Billot’s hand through the bars of the gate.
“And, above all, take special care of Sebastien; keep him safe,” said the latter.
“Keep me! I say, on the contrary, that I will not be kept here,” cried the boy, livid with anger, and struggling with the college servants, who were dragging him away.
“Let me in,” said Billot. “I will engage to quiet him.”
The crowd made way for him to pass; the farmer dragged Pitou after him, and entered the courtyard of the college.
Already three or four of the French Guards, and about ten men, placed themselves as sentinels at the gate, and prevented the egress of the young insurgents.
Billot went straight up to young Sebastien, and taking between his huge and horny palms the small white hands of the child—
“Sebastien,” he said, “do you not recognize me?”
“No.”
“I am old Billot, your father’s farmer.”
“I know you now, sir.”
“And this lad,” rejoined Billot, pointing to his companion, “do you know him?”
“Ange Pitou,” said the boy.
“Yes, Sebastien; it is I—it is I.”
And Pitou, weeping with joy, threw his arms round the neck of his foster-brother and former schoolfellow.
“Well,” said the boy, whose brow still remained scowling, “what is now to be done?”
“What?” cried Billot. “Why, if they have taken your father from you, I will restore him to you. Do you understand?”
“You?”
“Yes, I—I, and all those who are out yonder with me. What the devil! Yesterday, we had to deal with the Austrians, and we saw their cartridge-boxes.”
“In proof of which, I have one of them,” said Pitou.
“Shall we not release his father?” cried Billot, addressing the crowd.
“Yes! yes!” roared the crowd. “We will release him.”
Sebastien shook his head.
“My father is in the Bastille,” said he in a despairing tone.
“And what then?” cried Billot.
“The Bastille cannot be taken,” replied the child.
“Then what was it you wished to do, if such is your conviction?”
“I wished to go to the open space before the castle. There will be fighting there, and my father might have seen me through the bars of his window.”
“Impossible!”
“Impossible? And why should I not do so? One day, when I was walking out with all the boys here, I saw the head of a prisoner. If I could have seen my father as I saw that prisoner, I should have recognized him, and I would have called out to him, ‘Do not be unhappy, Father, I love you!'”
“And if the soldiers of the Bastille should have killed you?”
“Well, then, they would have killed me under the eyes of my father.”
“The death of all the devils!” exclaimed Billot. “You are a wicked lad to think of getting yourself killed in your father’s sight, and make him die of grief, in a cage,—he who has only you in the world, he who loves you so tenderly Decidedly, you have a bad heart, Gilbert.”
And the farmer pushed the boy from him.
“Yes, yes; a wicked heart!” howled Pitou, bursting into tears.
Sebastien did not reply.
And, while he was meditating in gloomy silence, Billot was admiring his beautifully pale face, his flashing eyes, his ironical expressive mouth, his well-shaped nose, and his strongly developed chin, all of which gave testimony at once of his nobility of soul and nobility of race.
“You say that your father is in the Bastille,” said the farmer, at length breaking the silence.
“Yes.”
“And for what?”
“Because my father is the friend of Lafayette and Washington; because my father has fought with his sword for the independence of America, and with his pen for the liberty of France; because my father is well known in both worlds as the detester of tyranny; because he has called down curses on the Bastille, in which so many have suffered; therefore have they sent him there!”