“Oh, oh!” cried a loud, joyous voice, “it is to be hoped that we shall not cut off heads.”
“No,” gravely replied Pitou; “if we have only firmness enough to reject the gold of Messieurs Pitt, father and son. But we were talking of guns; let us not wander from the question, as Monsieur Bailly says. How many men have we in Haramont capable of bearing arms? Have you counted them?”
“Yes.”
“And how many are you?”
“We are thirty-two.”
“Then there are twenty-eight muskets deficient?”
“Which we shall never get,” said the stout man with the good-humored face.
“Ah,” said Pitou, “it is necessary to know that, my friend Boniface.”
“And how is it necessary to know?”
“Yes, I say it is necessary to know, because I know.”
“What do you know?”
“I know where they are to be procured.”
“To be procured?”
“Yes; the people of Paris had no arms either. Well, Monsieur Marat, a very learned doctor, but very ugly, told the people of Paris where arms were to be found; the people of Paris went where Monsieur Marat told them, and there they found them.”
“And where did Marat tell them to go?” inquired Désiré Maniquet.
“He told them to go to the Invalides.”
“Yes; but we have no Invalides at Haramont.”
“But I know a place in which there are more than a hundred guns,” said Pitou.
“And where is that?”
“In one of the rooms of the Abbé Fortier’s college.”
“The Abbé Fortier has a hundred guns He wishes, then, to arm his singing boys, the beggarly black cap!” cried Claude Tellier.
Pitou had not a deep-seated affection for the Abbé Fortier; however, this violent outburst against his former professor profoundly wounded him.
“Claude!” cried he, “Claude!”
“Well, what now?”
“I did not say that the guns belong to the Abbé Fortier.”
“If they are in his house, they belong to him.”
“That position is a false one. I am in the house of Bastien Godinet, and yet the house of Bastien Godinet does not belong to me.”
“That is true,” said Bastien, replying without giving Pitou occasion to appeal to him directly.
“The guns, therefore, do not belong to the Abbé Fortier,” continued Pitou.
“Whose are they, then?”
“They belong to the township.”
“If they belong to the township, how does it happen that they are in the Abbé Fortier’s house?”
“They are in the Abbé Fortier’s house, because the house in which the Abbé Fortier lives belongs to the township, which gives it to him rent free because he says Mass and teaches the children of poor citizens gratis. Now, since the Abbé Fortier’s house belongs to the township, the township has a right to reserve a room in the house that belongs to it, in which to put its muskets,—ah!”
“That is true,” said the auditors; “the township has the right.”
“Well, then, let us see; how are we to get hold of these guns,—tell us that?”
The question somewhat embarrassed Pitou, who scratched his ear.
“Yes, tell us quickly,” cried another voice, “for we must go to our work.”
Pitou breathed again; the last speaker had opened to him a door for escape.
“Work!” exclaimed Pitou. “You speak of arming yourselves for the defence of the country, and you think of work!”
And Pitou accompanied his words with a laugh, so ironical and so contemptuous that the Haramontese looked at one another, and felt humiliated.
“We would not mind sacrificing a few days more, should it be absolutely necessary,” said the other, “to gain our liberty.”
“To gain our liberty,” cried Pitou, “it will be necessary to sacrifice more than a day; we must sacrifice all our days.”
“Then,” said Boniface, “when people are working for liberty they are resting.”
“Boniface,” replied Pitou, with the air of Lafayette when irritated, “those will never know how to be free who do not know how to trample their prejudices under foot.”
“As to myself,” said Boniface, “I ask nothing better than not to work; but what is to be done, then, with regard to eating?”
“Do people eat?” cried Pitou, disdainfully.
“At Haramont they do so yet. Do they no longer eat at Paris?”