WHY THE POLICE AGENT CAME WITH THE CONSTABLES.
About six that morning a police-agent from the capital, accompanied by
two inferior policemen, had arrived at Villers Cotterets where they
presented themselves to the police justice, and asked him to tell them
where Farmer Billet dwelt.
Five hundred paces from the farmhouse the corporal, as the exempt's
rank was in the semi-military organization of the police of the era,
perceived a peasant working in the field, of whom he inquired about his
master.
The man pointed to a horseman a quarter of a league off.
"He won't be back till nine," he said; "there he is inspecting the
work. He comes in for breakfast, then."
"If you want to please your master, run and tell him a gentleman from
town is waiting to see him."
"Do you mean Dr. Gilbert?"
"Run and tell him, all the same."
No sooner was he notified than Billet galloped home but when he
entered the room where he expected to see his landlord under the canopy
of the large fireplace, none were there but his wife, sitting in the
middle, plucking ducks with all the care such a task demands. Catherine
was up in her room, preparing finery for Sunday, from the pleasure
girls feel in getting ready for fun.
"Who asked for me?" demanded Billet, stopping on the threshold and
looking round.
"Me," replied a flute-like voice behind him.
"Turning, the yeoman beheld the police-agent and his two myrmidons.
"How now? what do you want?" he snarled, making three steps backwards.
"Next to nothing, dear Master Billet," replied the unctuous speaker:
"we have to make a search in your premises, that is all."
"A search, hey?" repeated Billet, glancing at his gun, on hooks over
the mantelpiece. "Since we had a National Assembly," he said, "I
thought citizens were no longer exposed to proceedings which smack of
another age and style of things. What do you want with a peaceable and
loyal man?"
Policemen are alike all the world over in their never answering
questions of their victims; some bewail them while clapping on the iron
cuffs, searching them or pinioning; they are the most dangerous as they
appear to be the best. The fellow who descended on Farmer Billet was of
the hypocritical school, those who have a tear for those they overhaul,
but they never let their hands be idle to dash away the tear.
Uttering a sigh, this man waved his hand to his acolytes, who went up
to Billet. He jumped back and reached out for his musket.
But his hand was turned aside from the doubly dangerous weapon to him
who made use of it and her whose pair of slight hands was strong with
terror and mighty with entreaty.
It was Catherine who had rushed to the spot in time to save her father
from the crime of rebellion to justice.
After this first outburst, Billet made no further resistance.
The police agent ordered him to be locked up in one of the ground
floor rooms which he had noticed to be barred, though Billet, who had
the grating done, had forgotten the precaution. Catherine was placed
in a first-floor room and Mrs. Billet was shoved into the kitchen as
inoffensive. Master of the fort, the Exempt set to searching all the
furniture.
"What are you doing?" roared Billet who saw through the keyhole that
his house was turned out of windows.
"Looking, as you see, for something we cannot find," replied the police
officer.
"But you may be robbers, burglars, scoundrels!"
"Oh, you wrong us, master," rejoined the fellow through the door; "we
are honest folk like yourself--only we are in the wages of the King and
we have to obey his orders."
"His Majesty's orders," repeated the farmer: "King Louis XVI. gives
you orders to rummage my desk and turn my things upside down? When the
famine was so dreadful last year that we thought of eating our horses;
when the hail on the thirteenth of July two years back cut our wheat
to chaff--his Majesty never bothered about us. What has happened at my
farm at present for him to concern himself--never having seen or known
me?"
"You will please excuse me," said the man, opening the door a little
and warily showing a search-warrant issued by the Chief of Police but
as usual commencing with "In the King's Name"--"His Majesty has heard
about you, old fellow; though he may not personally know you, do not
kick at the honor he does you, and try to receive properly those whom
he sends in his royal name."
With a polite bow and a friendly wink, the chief policeman slammed the
door, and recommenced the ferreting.
Billet held his tongue and with folded arms, trod the room: he felt
he was in the men's power. The searching went on silently. These
men seemed fallen from the skies. No one had seen them but the
farm-hand who had pointed out the way to the farmhouse. In the yard
the watch-dogs had not barked; the leader of the expedition must be a
celebrated man in his line and not making his first arrest.
Billet heard his daughter wailing in the room overhead. He recalled her
prophetic words, for he had no doubt that the investigation was caused
by the doctor's book.
Nine o'clock struck, and Billet could count his hired men returning
for their morning meal from the fields. This made him comprehend that,
in case of conflict, he could have numbers of not law on his side.
This made the blood boil in his veins. He had not the temper to bear
inaction any longer and grasping the door he gave it such a shaking by
the handle that with such another he would send the lock flying.
The police opened it at once and confronted the farmer, threatening and
upright before the house turned inside out.
"But, to make it short, what are you looking for?" roared the caged
lion: "Tell me, or by the Lord Harry of Navarre, I swear I'll thump it
out of you."
The flocking in of the farm lads had not escaped the corporal's alert
eye; he reckoned them and was convinced that, in case of a tussel, he
could not crow on the battlefield.
With more honeyed politeness than before, he sneaked up to the speaker
and said as he bowed to the ground:
"I am going to tell you, Master Billet, though it goes dead against the
rules and regulations. We are looking for a subversive publication, and
incendiary pamphlet put on the back list by the Royal Censors."
"A book in the house of a farmer who cannot read?"
"What is there amazing in that, when you are friend of the author and
he sent you a copy?"
"I am not the friend of Dr. Gilbert but his humble servant," replied
the other. "To be his friend would be too great an honor for a poor
farmer like me."
This unreflected reply, in which Billet betrayed himself by confessing
that he not only knew the author, which was natural being his landlord,
but the book--assured victory to the officer of the law. This man drew
himself up to his full height, with his most benignant air, and smiling
as he tapped Billet on the shoulder, so that he seemed to cleave his
head in twain, he said:
"You have let the cat out of the bag. You have been the first to name
Gilbert, whose name we kept back out of discretion."
"That's so," muttered the farmer. "Look here, I will not merely own up
but--will you stop pulling things about if I tell you where the book
is?"
"Why, certainly," said the chief making a sign to his associates; "for
the book is the object of the search. Only," he added with a sly grin,
"don't allow you have one copy when you have a dozen."
"I swear, I have only the one."
"We are obliged to get that down to a certainty by the most minute
search, Master Billet. Have five minute's farther patience. We are only
poor servants of justice, under orders from those above us, and you
will not oppose honorable men doing their duty--for there are such in
all walks of life."
He had found the flaw in the armor: he knew how to talk Billet over.
"Go on, but be done quickly," he said, turning his back on them.
The man closed the door softly and still more quietly turned the key:
which made Billet snap his fingers: sure that he could burst the door
off its hinges if he had to do it.
On his part the policeman waved his fellows to the work. All three in a
trice went through the papers, books and linen. Suddenly, at the bottom
of an open clothespress, they perceived a small oak casket clamped with
iron. The corporal pounced on it as a vulture on its prey. By the mere
view, by his scent, by the place where it was stored, he had divined
what he sought, for he quickly hid the box under his tattered mantle
and beckoned to his bravoes that he had accomplished the errand.
At that very moment Billet had come to the end of his patience.
"I tell you that you cannot find what you are looking for unless I tell
you," he called out. "There is no need to 'make hay' with my things. I
am not a conspirator, confound you! Come, get this into your noddles.
Answer, or, by all the blue moons, I will go to Paris and complain to
the King, to the Assembly and to the people."
At this time the King was still spoken of before the people.
"Yes, dear Master Billet, we hear you, and we are ready to bow to your
excellent reasons. Come, let us know where the book is, and, as we are
now convinced that you have only the single copy, we will seize that
and get away. There it is in a nutshell."
"Well, the book is in the hands of a lad to whom I entrusted it this
morning to carry it to a friend's," said Billet.
"What is the name of this honest lad?" queried the man in black
coaxingly.
"Ange Pitou; he is a poor orphan whom I housed from charity, and who
does not know the nature of the book."
"I thank you, dear Master Billet," said the corporal, throwing the
linen into the hole in the wall and closing the lid. "And where may
this nice boy be, prithee?"
"I fancy I saw him as I came in, under the arbor by the Spanish
climbing beans. Go and take the book away but do not hurt him."
"Hurt? oh, Master, you do not know us to think we would hurt a fly."
They advanced in the indicated direction, where they had the adventure
with Pitou already described. Catherine had heard enough in the words
about the doctor, the book, and the search-warrant, to save the
innocent holder of the treasonable pamphlet.
Since the double errand of the police was fulfilled, the commander of
the expedition was only too glad of the excuse to get far away. So he
bounded on his men by his voice and example till they ran him into the
woods. Then they came to a halt in the bushes. In the chase they were
joined by two more policeman who had hidden on the farm with orders not
to run up unless called.
"Faith, it is a good job the lad did not have the box instead of the
book," said the organizer of the attack, "we would be obliged to take
post-horses to catch up with him. Hang me if he is a man at all so much
as a deer."
"But you have the prize, eh, Master Wolfstep?" said one of the
subordinates.
"Certainly, comrade, for here it is," answered the police agent, to
whom the nickname had been given for his sidelong "lope" or wolfish
tread and its lightness.
"Then we are entitled to the promised reward, eh?"
"Ay, and here you are," said the captain of the squad, distributing
gold pieces among them with no preference for those who had actively
prosecuted the search and the others.
"Long live the Chief!" called out the men.
"There is no harm in your cheering the Chief," said Wolfstep: "but it
is not he who cashes up this trip. It is some friend of his, lady or
gentleman, who wants to keep in the background."
"I wager that he or she wants that little box bad," suggested one of
the hirelings.
"Rigoulet, my friend," said the leader, "I have always certified that
you are a chap full of keenness; but while we wait for the gift to win
its reward, we had better be on the move. That confounded countryman
does not look easily cooled down, and when he perceives the casket is
missing, he may set his farm boys on our track; and they are poachers
capable of keeling us over with a shot as surely as the best Swiss
marksmen in his Majesty's forces."
This advice was that of the majority, for the five men kept on along
the forest skirts out of sight till they reached the highroad.
This was no useless precaution for Catherine had no sooner seen the
party disappear in pursuit of Pitou than, full of confidence in the
last one's agility, who would lead them a pretty chase, she called on
the farm-men to open the door.
They knew something unusual was going on but not exactly what.
They ran in to set her free and she liberated her father.
Billet seemed in a dream. Instead of rushing out of the room, he walked
forth warily, and acted as if not liking to stay in any one place and
yet hated to look on the furniture and cupboards disturbed by the posse.
"They have got the book, anyway?" he questioned.
"I believe they took that, dad, but not Pitou, who cut away? If they
are sticking to him, they will all be over at Cayelles or Vauciennes by
this time."
"Capital! Poor lad, he owes all this harrying to me."
"Oh, father, do not bother about him but look to ourselves. Be easy
about Pitou getting out of his scrape. But what a state of disorder!
look at this, mother!"
"They are low blackguards," said Mother Billet: "they have not even
respected my linen press."
"What, tumbled over the linen?" said Billet, springing towards the
cavity which the corporal had carefully closed but into which, opening
it, he plunged both arms deeply. "It is not possible!"
"What are you looking for, father?" asked the girl as her father looked
about him bewildered.
"Look, look if you can see it anywhere: the casket! that is what the
villains were raking for."
"Dr. Gilbert's casket?" inquired Mrs. Billet, who commonly let others
do the talking and work in critical times.
"Yes, that most precious casket," responded the farmer thrusting his
hands into his mop of hair.
"You frighten me, father," said Catherine.
"Wretch that I am," cried the man, in rage, "and fool never to suspect
that. I never thought about the casket. Oh, what will the doctor say?
What will he think? That I am a betrayer, a coward, a worthless fellow!"
"Oh, heavens, what was in it, dad?"
"I don't know; but I answered for it to the doctor on my life and I
ought to have been killed defending it."
He made so threatening a gesture against himself that the women
recoiled in terror.
"My horse, bring me my horse," roared the madman. "I must let the
doctor know--he must be apprised."
"I told Pitou to do that."
"Good! no, what's the use?--a man afoot. I must ride to Paris. Did you
not read in his letter that he was going there? My horse!"
"And will you leave us in the midst of anguish?"
"I must, my girl, I must," he said, kissing Catherine convulsively:
"the doctor said: 'If ever you lose that box, or rather if it is stolen
from you, come to warn me the instant you perceive the loss, Billet,
wherever I am. Let nothing stop you, not even the life of man.'"
"Lord, what can be in it?"
"I don't know a bit. But I do know that it was placed in my keeping,
and that I have let it be snatched away. But here is my nag. I shall
learn where the father is by his son at the college."
Kissing his wife and his daughter for the last time, the farmer
bestrode his steed and set off towards the city at full gallop.