“What do you want with him?”
“To deliver to him this paper.”
“From whom is it?”
“From Marat, the physician.”
“From Marat! you know Marat!” exclaimed the man.
“I have just left him.”
“Where?”
“At the Hôtel de Ville.”
“What is he doing?”
“He has gone to arm twenty thousand men at the Invalides.”
“In that case, give me that paper. I am Gonchon.” Billot drew back a step.
“You are Gonchon?” cried he.
“My friends,” said the man in rags, “here is one who does not know me, and who is asking whether it is true that I am Gonchon.”
The crowd burst into a loud laugh. It appeared to all these men that it was impossible that any one could be so ignorant as not to know their favorite orator.
“Long live Gonchon!” cried two or three thousand voices.
“Take it,” said Billot, handing the paper to him.
“Friends,” cried Gonchon, after having read it, and laying his hand on Billot’s shoulder, “this is a brother. Marat recommends him. We can therefore rely upon him. What is your name” said he to the farmer.
“My name is Billot.”
“And mine,” rejoined Gonchon, “is Hache, and between us both I trust we shall be able to do something.”2
The crowd smiled at this sanguinary jest.
“Yes, yes, we shall soon do something,” cried they.
“Well! what are we going to do?” asked several voices.
“Why, zounds!” cried Gonchon, “we are going to take the Bastille.”
“This is as it should be,” cried Billot; “that is what I call speaking. Listen to me, brave Gonchon. How many men have you to back you?”
“Thirty thousand, or somewhere near that.”
“Thirty thousand men you have at your disposal, twenty thousand will soon be here from the Invalides, and ten thousand are already here; why, ’tis more than enough to insure our success, or we shall never succeed at all.”
“We shall succeed,” replied Gonchon.
“I believe so. Well, then, call together your thirty thousand men. I, in the mean time, will go to the governor, and summon him to surrender. If he surrenders,
so much the better; we shall avoid much bloodshed. If he will not surrender, the blood that will be spilled will fall upon his head; and in these days, blood that is spilled in an unjust cause brings down misfortunes with it. Ask the Germans if it be not so.”
“How long do you expect to remain with the governor?” asked Gonchon.
“As long as I possibly can, until the Bastille is completely invested. If it be possible, when I come out again, the attack will begin.”
“’tis understood.”
“You do not mistrust me?” said Billot to Gonchon, holding out his hand to him.
“Who, I?” replied Gonchon, with a smile of disdain, at the same time pressing the hand of the stout farmer, and with a strength that could not have been expected from his emaciated appearance; “I mistrust you! and for what reason, pray? If it were my will, upon a word, a sign given by me, I could have you pounded like glass, even were you sheltered by those formidable towers, which to—morrow will no longer exist,—were you protected by these soldiers, who this evening will have espoused our party or will have ceased to exist. Go, then, and rely on Gonchon as he relies on Billot.”
Billot was convinced, and walked towards the entrance of the Bastille, while the strange person with whom he had been conversing darted down the faubourg, amid shouts, repeated a thousand times, of—”Long live Gonchon! Long live the Mirabeau of the people!”
“I do not know what the Mirabeau of the nobles may be,” said Pitou to Billot, “but I think our Mirabeau a hideously ugly personage.”
1Some time afterwards, Monsieur de Lafayette also made the observation that blue and red were likewise the colors of the House of Orleans and added to them a third color, white, saying to those who received it from him, “I give you a cockade that will make the tour of the whole world.”
2Billot, in French, means block,—the block on which criminals heads are struck off. Hache means axe.—TRANSLATOR.
Chapter XVI
The Bastille and it’s Governor