“Zounds! that was perfectly natural, for he had been twelve hours on horseback, and for twenty-four hours he had not been in bed.”
“By leading him to the palace,” continued Gilbert, “and by bringing him at once into the midst of the assassins, and crying: ‘Stop, wretches, here is the avenger!'”
“Well, now, that is really true; I did all that.”
“Well, then, Billot, you see that this is a great compensation. If you did not prevent this young man being assassinated, you have perhaps prevented the assassination of the king, the queen, and the two children. Ungrateful man! and you ask to leave the service of the country at the very moment when the country recompenses you.”
“But who will ever know what I have done, since I myself even had no idea of it?”
“You and I, Billot; and is not that enough?”
Billot reflected for a moment, then, holding out his rough hand to the doctor:—
“I declare you are right, Monsieur Gilbert,” said he; “but you know that a man is but a weak, egotistical, inconstant creature. There is but you, Monsieur Gilbert, who are firm, generous, and constant. What is it that has made you so?”
“Misfortune,” said Gilbert, with a smile, in which there was more sorrow than in a sob.
“That is singular,” said Billot; “I had thought that misfortune made men wicked.”
“The weak,—yes.”
“Then if I should be unfortunate, I should become wicked.”
“You may perhaps be unfortunate; but you will never become wicked, Billot.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I will answer for you.”
“In that case—” said Billot, sighing.
“In that case—” repeated Gilbert.
“Why, I will remain with you; but more than once I know I shall again be vacillating.”
“And every time it happens, Billot, I shall be near you to sustain your firmness.”
“Well, again I say, so be it,” sighed the farmer.
Then, casting a last look on the body of the Baron George de Charny, which the servants were about to remove on a bier:—
“It matters not!” said Billot; “he was a handsome boy, that little George de Charny, on his little gray pony, with a basket on his left arm and his purse in his right hand.”
Chapter XXVII
Departure, Journey, and Arrival of Pitou and Sebastien Gilbert
WE have seen, under circumstances long anterior to those we have now related, the departure of Pitou and Sebastien Gilbert.
Our intention being, for the present, to abandon the principal personages of our history, to follow the two young travellers, we hope that our readers will allow us to enter into some details relating to their departure from Paris, their journey, and their arrival at Villers-Cotterets, where Pitou felt certain that they were both greatly missed.
Gilbert had commissioned Pitou to go to the College Louis-le-Grand and to bring Sebastien to him. For this purpose they put Pitou into a hackney-coach, and as they had confided Sebastien to Pitou, they confided Pitou to the care of the coachman.
In about an hour the coach brought back Pitou; Pitou brought back Sebastien.
Gilbert and Billot were waiting for them in an apartment which they had taken in the Rue St. Honoré, a little above the Church of the Assumption.
Gilbert explained to his son that he was to set out the same evening with Pitou, and asked him whether he would not be well pleased to return to the great woods he so much loved.
“Yes. Father,” replied the boy, “provided that you will come to see me at Villers-Cotterets, or that you allow me to come to see you at Paris.”
“You may be easy on that score, my child,” replied Gilbert, kissing his son’s forehead; “you know that now I shall never be happy when away from you.”
As to Pitou, he colored with delight at the idea of setting out the same evening.
He turned pale with happiness when Gilbert placed both Sebastien’s hands within one of Pitou’s, and in the other ten double louis, of the value of forty-eight livres each.
A long series of instructions, almost all regarding the health of his companion, were given by the doctor to Pitou, to which he religiously listened.