“Yes; what will they do?”
“They will resist!” 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.
“But the majority,” said Billot.
“Conclude your sentence, my friend.”
“The majority is there to make known its will.”
“Then there would be oppression.”
Billot looked at Gilbert, at first doubtingly, and then a ray of intelligence sparkled in his eye.
“Hold, Billot!” said the doctor, “I know what you are about to say to me. The nobility and the clergy possess everything, do they not?”
“That is undoubted,” replied Billot; “and therefore the convents—”
“The convents?”
“The convents overflow with riches.”
“Notum certumque,” grumbled Pitou.
“The nobles do not pay in proportion to their income. Thus I, a farmer, pay more than twice the amount of taxes paid by my neighbors, the three brothers De 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 Grève.
“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 are?”
“That is true.”
“An error, my dear friend, an error. They are even better, and I will prove it to you.”
“Oh! that, for example, I deny.”
“On account of their privileges, is it not?”
“Zounds! yes.”
“Wait a moment.”
“Oh, I can wait.”
“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 ecclesiastics, whom you accuse of egotism, are just beginning to be seized with that fever of patriotism which is about to make the tour of France. 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; and after him, the rest will jump it.”
“What is the meaning of that, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“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 dovecot lords their pigeons.”
“Oh, oh!” ejaculated Pitou, with amazement; “you think they will give up all that?”
“Oh,” cried Billot, suddenly catching the idea, “that will be splendid liberty indeed!”
“Well, then; arid after that, when we shall all be free, what shall we do next?”
“The deuce!” cried Billot, somewhat embarrassed; “what shall be done next? Why, we shall see!”
“Ah, there is the great word!” exclaimed Gilbert: “we shall see!”
He rose from his chair with a gloomy brow, and walked up and down the room for a few minutes; then, returning to the farmer, whose hand he seized with a violence which seemed almost a threat:—
“Yes,” said he, “we shall see! We shall all see,—you, as I shall; he, as you and I shall. And that is precisely what I was reflecting on just now, when you observed that composure which so much surprised you.”
“You terrify me. The people united, embracing each other, forming themselves into one mass to insure their general prosperity,—can that be a subject which renders you gloomy, Monsieur Gilbert?”
The latter shrugged his shoulders.
“Then,” said Billot, questioning in his 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, we have given liberty to the New World.”