“Be it so; but mine has come, Doctor. I have a harvest down yonder which has rotted, fields that are lying fallow, a family whom I love ten times more dearly on seeing this dead body, whose family are weeping for him.”
“What do you mean to say, my dear Billot Do you believe, perchance, that I am going to afflict myself about you?”
“Oh, no!” replied Billot, ingenuously; “but as I suffer, I complain; and as complaining leads to nothing, I calculate on alleviating my own sufferings in my own way.”
“Which means to say that—”
“It means that I desire to return to my farm, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“Again, Billot?”
“Ah, Monsieur Gilbert, there is a voice down yonder which is calling for me.”
“Take care, Billot; that voice is advising you to desert.”
“I am not a soldier, and therefore there is no desertion, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“What you are wishing to do would be a desertion far more culpable than that of a soldier.”
“Explain that to me, Doctor.”
“How! you have come to Paris to demolish; and you would fly as soon as the building is falling.”
“Yes, that I may not crush my friends.”
“Or rather that you may not be crushed yourself.”
“Why, why!” replied Billot, “it is not forbidden that a man should think a little of himself.”
“Ah! that is a magnificent calculation, indeed; as if stones did not roll; as if in rolling they did not crush, and even at a distance, the timid men who would fly from them.”
“Oh, you are well aware that I am not a timid man, Monsieur Gilbert.”
“Then you will remain, Billot; I have occasion for you here.”
“My family also stands in need of me down yonder.”
“Billot! Billot! I thought that you had agreed with me that a man who loves his country has no family.”
“I should like to know whether you would use the same language if Sebastien lay there, as that young man lies.”
And he pointed to the dead body.
“Billot,” replied Gilbert, in a hollow tone, “the day will arrive when my son shall see me as I now see that body.”
“So much the worse for him, Doctor, if on that day he should be as calm as you are now.”
“I hope that he will be a better man than I am, Billot, and that he will be firmer still, and precisely because I shall have given him an example of firmness.”
“Then you would have the child accustom himself to see blood flowing around him, that he should in his youthful years become inured to great conflagrations, to gibbets and riots, attacks in the dark; that he should see kings threatened, queens insulted; and then, when he has become as hard as his sword-blade, and quite as cold, you would still expect that he should love, that he should respect you?”
“No, I would not have him see all that, Billot; and that is the reason for my sending him back to Villers-Cotterets, and I now almost regret having done so.”
“How! you now regret it?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you now regret?”
“Because he would this day have seen exemplified the axiom of the lion and the rat, which to him is but a fable.”
“What do you mean to say, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“I say that he would have seen a poor farmer, whom chance has brought to Paris, a brave and honest man, who can neither read nor write, who never could have believed that his life could influence, either for good or evil the high destinies which he scarcely dared to raise his eyes to; I say that he would have seen this man who had already at one time wished to leave Paris, as he again wishes it,—I say that he would have seen this man contribute efficaciously to save the life of a king, a queen, and two royal children.”
Billot stared at Gilbert with astonished eyes.
“And how so, Monsieur Gilbert?” said he.
“How so! you sublimely ignorant fellow! I will tell you how. By waking at the first noise that was made; by guessing that this noise was a tempest ready to burst upon Versailles; by running to wake up Monsieur de Lafayette,—for Monsieur de Lafayette was asleep.”