Pitou threw himself on the other's neck, blubbering with joy.
"If they have taken away your father, I will bring him back. I, and the rest of us. Why not? yesterday we had a turn-up with the Austrians and we saw the flat of their backs."
"In token of which here is a cartridge-box one of them has no farther use for," added Ange.
"Will we not liberate his father?" cried Billet to the mob, who shouted an assent.
"But my father is in the Bastile," said Sebastian, shaking his head in melancholy. "None can take the Bastile." "What were you going to do then, had you got out?"
"I should have gone under the Bastile walls and when my father was out walking on the ramparts, where they tell me the prisoners come for an airing, I should have shown myself to him."
"But if the sentinels shot you when they caught you making signs to a prisoner?"
"I should have died under my father's eyes."
"Death of all the devils, you are a bad boy. To want to get killed under your father's eyes! To make him die of grief in his cell when he has nobody but you to live for, and one he loves so well. Plainly you have no good heart, Sebastian."
"A bad heart," whimpered Pitou as Billet repulsed the boy.