Pitou bowed to the ladies as well as the tight coat allowed and followed the farmer, proud to be called a man.
The gathering in the barn was numerous. Billet was highly esteemed by his hired men and they did not mind his roaring at them as long as he boarded and lodged them bounteously. So they had all hastened to come at his invitation.
Besides, at this period, the strange fever ran through France felt when a nation is going to go to work. New and strange words were current in mouths never pronouncing them. Freedom, Independence, emancipation, were heard not only among the lower classes but from the nobility in the first place, so that the popular voice was but their echo.
From the West came the light which illumined before it burnt. The sun rose in the Great Republic of America which was to be in its round a vast conflagration for France by the beams of which frightened nations were to see "Freedom" inscribed in letters of blood.
So political meetings were less rare than might be supposed. Apostles of an unknown deity sprang up from heaven knows where, and went from town to town, disseminating words of hope. Those at the head of the government found certain wheels clogged without understanding where the hindrance lay. Opposition was in all minds before it appeared in hands and limbs, but it was present, sensible, and the more menacing as it was intangible like a spectre and could be premised before it was grappled with.
Twenty and more farmers, field hands, and neighbors of Billet were in the barn.
When their friend walked in with Pitou, all heads were uncovered and all hats waved at arms-length. It was plain that these men were willing to die at the master's call.
The farmer explained that the book was by Dr. Gilbert which the young man was about to read out. The doctor was well-known in the district where he owned much land, while Billet was his principal tenant.
A cask was ready for the reader, who scrambled upon it, and began his task.
Common folks, I may almost say, people in general, listen with the most attention to words they do not clearly understand. The full sense of the pamphlet escaped the keenest wits here, and Billet's as well. But in the midst of the cloudy phrases shone the words Freedom, Independence and Equality like lightnings in the dark, and that was enough for the applause to break forth: