Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
[symbol-Pointing Hand] is an image of a hand pointing
its index finger to the right
TAKING THE BASTILE
* * * * * *
PRICE, 25 CENTS. No. 79.
=THE SUNSET SERIES.=
By Subscription, per Year, Nine Dollars. February 12, 1894.
Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter.
Copyright 1891, by J. S. OGILVIE.
* * * * * *
Taking The Bastile.
by
ALEX. DUMAS.
New York:
J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company,
57 Rose Street.
* * * * * *
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* * * * * *
TAKING THE BASTILE;
Or, Pitou The Peasant.
A Historical Story of the Great French Revolution.
by
ALEX. DUMAS.
Author of
"The Three Musketeers," "Balsamo the Magician," "Monte Cristo,"
"The Mesmerist's Victim," "The Queen's Necklace,"
"Chicot the Jester," etc.
New and Original Translation from the Latest Paris Edition.
By Henry Llewellyn Williams.
New York:
J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company,
57 Rose Street.
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1892, by A.E.Smith &
Co, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE SON OF GILBERT.
CHAPTER II. ANGE PITOU.
CHAPTER III. A REVOLUTIONARY FARMER.
CHAPTER IV. LONG LEGS ARE GOOD FOR RUNNING, IF NOT FOR DANCING.
CHAPTER V. WHY THE POLICE AGENT CAME WITH THE CONSTABLES.
CHAPTER VI. ON THE ROAD.
CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST BLOOD.
CHAPTER VIII. PITOU DISCOVERS HE IS BRAVE.
CHAPTER IX. "TO THE BASTILE!"
CHAPTER X. BLOWING HOT AND COLD.
CHAPTER XI. THE PRISON GOVERNOR.
CHAPTER XII. STORMING THE BASTILE.
CHAPTER XIII. DOWN IN THE DUNGEONS.
CHAPTER XIV. THE TRIANGLE OF LIBERTY.
CHAPTER XV. THE YOUNG VISIONARY.
CHAPTER XVI. THE PHYSICIAN FOR THE STATE.
CHAPTER XVII. THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE QUEEN AT BAY.
CHAPTER XIX. THE QUEEN'S FAVOURITE.
CHAPTER XX. THE TRIO OF LOVE.
CHAPTER XXI. THE QUEEN AND HER MASTER.
CHAPTER XXII. THE PRIVATE COUNCIL.
CHAPTER XXIII. WHY THE QUEEN WAITED.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE ARMY OF WOMEN.
CHAPTER XXV. THE NIGHT OF HORRORS.
CHAPTER XXVI. BILLET'S SORROW.
TAKING THE BASTILE.
CHAPTER I.
THE SON OF GILBERT.
It was a winter night, and the ground around Paris was covered with
snow, although the flakes had ceased to fall since some hours.
Spite of the cold and the darkness, a young man, wrapped in a mantle so
voluminous as to hide a babe in his arms, strode over the white fields
out of the town of Villers Cotterets, in the woods, eighteen leagues
from the capital, which he had reached by the stage-coach, towards a
hamlet called Haramont. His assured step seemed to indicate that he had
previously gone this road.
Soon above him streaked the leafless boughs upon the grey sky. The
sharp air, the odor of the oaks, the icicles and beads on the tips of
branches, all appealed to the poetry in the wanderer.
Through the clumps he looked for the village spire and the blue smoke
of the chimneys, filtering from the cottages through the natural
trellis of the limbs.
It was dawn when he crossed a brook, bordered with yellow cress and
frozen vines, and at the first hovel asked for the laborer's boy to
take him to Madeline Pitou's home.
Mute and attentive, not so dull as most of their kind, the children
sprang up and staring at the stranger, led him by the hand to a rather
large and good-looking cottage, on the bank of the rivulet running by
most of the dwellings.
A plank served as a bridge.
"There," said one of the guides nodding his head towards it.
Gilbert gave them a coin, which made their eyes open still more
widely, and crossed the board to the door which he pushed open, while
the children, taking one another's hand, started with all their might
at the handsome gentleman in a brown cloth coat, buckled shoes and
large cloak, who wanted to find Madeline Pitou.
Apart from them, Gilbert, for such was the young man's name, simply so
for he had no other, saw no living things: Haramont was the deserted
village he was seeking.
As soon as the door was open, his sight was struck by a scene full of
charm, for almost anybody, and particularly for a young philosopher
like our roamer.
A robust peasant woman was suckling a baby, while another child, a
sturdy boy of four or five, was saying a prayer in a loud voice.
In the chimney corner, near a window or rather a hole in the wall
in which was stuck a pane of glass, another woman, going on for
thirty-five or six, was spinning, with a stool under her feet, and a
fat poodle on an end of this stool.
Catching sight of the visitor the dog barked in a civil and hospitable
manner just to show that he had not been caught napping. The praying
boy turned, cutting the devotional phrase in two, and both females
uttered an exclamation between joy and surprise.
"I greet you, good mother Madeline," said Gilbert with a smile.
"The gentleman has my name," she cried out with a start.
"As you notice; but please do not interrupt me. Instead of one babe at
the breast, you are to have the pair."
In the rude country-made crib he laid his burden, a little boy.
"What a pretty darling!" ejaculated the spinner.
"Quite a dear, yes, Aunt Angelique," said Madeline.
"Your sister?" inquired the visitor, pointing to the spinner who was
also a spinster.
"No my man's sister."
"Yes, my auntie, my aunt 'Gelique," mumbled the boy, striking into the
talk without being asked.
"Be quiet, Ange," rebuked his mother: "you are interrupting the
gentleman."
"My business is very plain, good woman. The child you see is son
of one of my master's farmers, the farmer being ruined. My master,
his godfather, wants him brought up in the country to become a good
workman, hale, and with good manners. Will you undertake this rearing?"
"But, master?----"
"Born yesterday and never nursed," went on Gilbert. "Besides, this is
the nursling which Master Niquet, the lawyer at Villers Cotterets,
spoke to you about."
Madeline instantly seized the babe and supplied it with the nourishment
it craved with a generous impetuosity deeply affecting the young man.
"I have not been misled," said he: "you are a good woman. In my
master's name, I confide the child to you. I see that he will fare well
here, and I trust he will bring into this cabin a dream of happiness
together with his own. How much does Master Niquet pay you for his
children?"
"Twelve livres a-month, sir: but he is rich, and he adds a few pieces
for sugar and toys."
"Mother Madeline," replied Gilbert proudly, "this child will bring you
twenty livres a-month, or two hundred and forty a-year."
"Lord bless us! I thank you kindly, master," said the peasant.
"And here is the first year's money down on the nail," went on Gilbert,
placing ten fine gold coins on the table, which made the two women open
their eyes and little Ange Pitou stretch out his devastating hand.
"But if the little thing should not live?" queried the nurse timidly.
"It would be a great blow--such a misfortune as seldom happens,"
responded the gentleman; "Here is the hire settled--are you satisfied?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Let us now pass to the future payments."
"Then we are to keep the child?"
"Probably, and be parents to it," said Gilbert, in a stifled voice and
losing color.
"Dear, dear, is he an outcast?"
Gilbert had not expected such feeling and questions: but he recovered
from the emotion.
"I did not tell you the whole truth," he said; "the poor father died on
the shock of hearing that his wife gave up her life in bearing him the
child."
The women wrung their hands with sympathy.
"So that the child can reckon on no love from his parents," continued
Gilbert, breathing painfully.
At this point in tramped Daddy Pitou with a calm and jolly manner.
His was one of those round and honest characters, overflowing with
health and good will, such as Greuze paints in his natural domestic
pictures. A few words showed him how matters stood. Out of good nature
he understood things--even those beyond his comprehension.
Gilbert made it clear that the keep-money would be paid until the boy
was a man and able to live alone with his mind and arm.
"All right," said Pitou, "I rather think we shall take to the kid,
though he is a tiny creature."
"Look at that," said the women together, "he thinks it a little dear
just like us."
"I should like you to come over to Master Niquet's where I will leave
the money required so that you may be content and the child happy."
Gilbert took leave of the women and bent over the cradle in which the
new-comer had ousted the rightful heir. He wore a sombre air.
"You look little like me," he muttered, "for you have the aspect of
your proud mother, the aristocratic Andrea, daughter of Baron Taverney."
The trait broke his heart: he pressed his nails into his flesh to keep
down the tears flowing from his aching breast. He left a kiss timid
and tremulous on the babe's fresh cheek and tottered out. He gave
half a louis to little Ange, who was stumbling between his legs, and
shook hands with the women who thought it an honor. So many emotions
oppressed the father of eighteen years that little more would have
prostrated him. Pale and nervous, his brain was spinning.
"Let us be off," he said to Pitou, waiting on the sill.
"Master!" called out Madeline from the threshold: "his name--what did
you say his name is?"
"Call him Gilbert," replied the young man with manly pride.
The business at the notary's was quickly done. Money was banked for
the child's keep and bringing up as became a farmhand's offspring.
For fifteen years education and training was to be given him, and the
balance was to be devoted to fitting him in a trade or buying a plot of
land. At his eighteenth year some two thousand livres were to be paid
the nurse and her husband, who would have the other sum yearly from the
intermediary.
As a reward Niquet was to have the interest of the funds.
Ten years passed and the Pitou woman, who had lost her husband while
Ange was hardly able to remember him, felt herself dying. Three years
before she had seen Gilbert, returned a man of twenty-seven, stiff,
dogmatic of speech, cold at the outset. But his mask of ice thawed when
he saw his son again, hearty, smiling and strong, brought up as he had
planned. He shook the good widow's hand and said:
"Rely on me if ever in need."
He took the child away, went to see the tomb of Rousseau the
philosopher, musician and poet, and returned to Villers Cotterets.
Seduced by the good air and the praise of the Abbe Fortier's school
for youth, he left Gilbert at that institution. He had thought highly
of the tutor's philosophical mien; for philosophy was a great power at
this revolutionary period and had glided into the bosom of the Church.
He left him his address and departed for Paris.
Ange Pitou's mother knew these particulars.
At her dying hour she remembered the pledge of Gilbert to be the friend
at need. It was a bright light. No doubt Providence had brought him to
Haramont to provide poor Pitou with more than he lost in losing life
and family.
Not able to write, she sent for the parish priest, who wrote a letter
for her, and this was given to Abbe Fortier to be sent off by the post.
It was time, for she died next day.