“Oh,” thundered the priest, “that ever I should believe that the royal authority should sink so low that a goodfornothing of this sort invokes Lafayette as once they called on Aristides.”
“Lucky for you the people do not hear you,” said Pitou.
“Oho, you reveal yourself now in your true colors,” said the priest triumphantly: “you bully me. The people, those who cut the throats of the royal bodyguard; who trample on the fallen, the people of your Baillys, Lafayettes and Pitous. Why do you not denounce me to the people of Villers Cotterets? Why do you not tuck up your sleeves to drag me out to hang me up to the lamppost? where is your rope—you can be the hangman.”
“You are saying odious things—you insult me,” said Pitou. “Have a care that I do not show you up to the National Assembly!”
“Show me up? I will show you up, sirrah! as a failure as a scholar, as a Latinist full of barbarisms, and as a beggar who comes preaching subversive doctrines in order to prey upon your clients.”
“I do not prey upon anybody—it is not by preying I live but by work: and as for lowering me in the eyes of my fellow-citizens, know that I have been elected by them commander of the National Guards of Haramont.”
“National Guards at Haramont? and you, Pitou, the captain? Abomination of desolation! Such gangs as you would be chief of must be robbers, footpads, bandits, and highwaymen.”
“On the contrary, they are organized to defend the home and the fields as well as the life and liberties of all good citizens. That is why we have [illegible]oc me to—for the arms.”
“Arms? oh, my museum?” shrieked the schoolmaster. “You come to pillage my arsenal. The armor of the paladins on your ignoble backs. You are mad to want to arm the ragamuffins of Pitou with the swords of the Spaniards and the pikes of the Swiss.”
The priest laughed with such disdainful menace that Pitou shuddered in every vein.