“What can the matter be with them all?” said Pitou to himself. “I have not my helmet on.”
And he modestly retired to his own lodging, after having exchanged salutations with a few of the villagers as he passed by them.
He had scarcely shut the door of his house when he thought he heard a slight knock upon the doorpost.
Pitou was not in the habit of lighting a candle to undress by. A candle was too great a luxury for a man who paid only six livres a year for his lodgings, and who, having no books, could not read.
But it was certain that some one was knocking at his door.
He raised the latch.
Two of the young inhabitants of the village familiarly entered his abode.
“Why, Pitou, you have not a candle!” said one of them.
“No,” replied Pitou; “of what use would it be?”
“Why, that one might see.”
“Oh! I see well at night; I am a nyctalops.”
And in proof of this, he added:—
“Good-evening, Claude! Good-evening, Désiré.”
“Well!” they both cried, “here we are, Pitou!”
“This is a kind visit; what do you desire of me, my friends?”
“Come out into the light,” said Claude.
“Into the light of what? There is no moon.”
“Into the light of heaven.”
“You have, then, something to say to me?”
“Yes, we would speak with you, Ange.”
And Claude emphasized these words with a singular expression.
“Well, let us go, then,” said Pitou.
And the three went out together.
They walked on until they reached the first open space in the road, where they stopped, Ange Pitou still not knowing what they wanted of him.
“Well?” inquired Pitou, seeing that his two companions stopped.
“You see now, Ange,” said Claude, “here we are,—Désiré Maniquet and myself. We manage to lead all our companions in the country. Will you be one of us?”
“To do what?”
“Ah! that is the question. It is to—”
“To do what?” said Pitou, drawing himself up to his full height.
“To conspire!” murmured Claude, in Pitou’s ear.
“Ah, ah! as they do at Paris,” said Pitou, jeeringly.
The fact is that Pitou was fearful of the word, and indeed of the echo of the word, even in the midst of the forest.
“Come, now, explain yourself,” said Pitou to Claude, after a short pause.
“This is the case,” said the latter. “Come nearer. Désiré,—you who are a poacher to your very soul, and who know all the noises of the day and night, of the plain and of the forest,—look around and see if we have been followed; listen whether there be any one attempting to overhear us.”
Désiré gave an assenting nod, took a tolerably wide circuit round Pitou and Claude, and having peeped into every bush and listened to every murmur, returned to them.
“You may speak out,” said he; “there is no one near us.”
“My friends,” rejoined Claude, “all the townships of France, as Pitou has told us, desire to be armed, and on the footing of National Guards!”
“That is true!” said Pitou.
“Well, then, why should Haramont not be armed like the other townships?”
“You said why, only yesterday, Claude,” replied Pitou, “when I proposed my resolution that we should arm ourselves. Haramont is not armed because Haramont has no muskets!”
“Oh, as to muskets, we need not be uneasy about them, since you know where they are to be had.”
“I know! I know!” said Pitou, who saw at what Claude was aiming, and who felt the danger of the proceeding.
“Well,” continued Claude, “all the patriotic young fellows of the village have been consulting together to-day.”
“Good!”
“And there are thirty-three of us!”
“That is the third of a hundred, less one,” added Pitou.
“Do you know the manual exercise?” inquired Claude.
“Do I not?” exclaimed Pitou, who did not even know how to shoulder arms.
“Good! and do you know how to manœuvre a company?”
“I have seen General de Lafayette manœuvring forty thousand men at least ten times,” disdainfully replied Pitou.
“That is all right,” said Désiré, tired of remaining silent, and who, without intending to presume, wished to put in a word in his turn.