"Oh, certainly I am not going to deny that you saw me unlike this," replied Billet, with a bitter smile. "I do not mind telling you, count, how this is: I was a true lover of my country, devoted to one thing and two persons: the men were the King and Dr. Gilbert—the thing, my native-land. One day the King's men—I confess that this began to set me against him," said the farmer, shaking his head, "broke into my house and stole away a casket, half by surprise, half by force, a precious trust left me by Dr. Gilbert.
"As soon as I was free I started for Paris, where I arrived on the evening of the thirteenth of July. It was right in the thick of the riot over the busts of Necker and the Duke of Orleans. Fellows were carrying them about the street, with cheers for those two, doing no harm to the King, when the royal soldiers charged upon us. I saw poor chaps, who had committed no offense but shouting for persons they had probably never seen, fall around me, some with their skulls laid open with sabre slashes, others with their breasts bored by bullets. I saw Prince Lambesq, a friend of the King, drive women and children inside the Tuileries gardens, who had shouted for nobody, and trample under his horse's hoofs an old man. This set me still more against the King.
"Next day I went to the boarding school where Dr. Gilbert's son Sebastian was kept, and learnt from the poor lad that his father was locked up in the Bastile on a King's order sued for by a lady of the court. So I said to myself, this King, whom they call kind, has moments when he errs, blunders or is ignorant, and I ought to amend one of the faults the King so makes—which I proposed to do by contributing all my power to destroying the Bastile. We managed that—not without its being a tough job, for the soldiers of the King fired on us, and killed some two hundred of us which gave me a fresh wrinkle on the kindness of the King. But in short, we took the Bastile. In one of its dungeons I found Dr. Gilbert, for whom I had risked death a hundred times, and the joy of finding him made me forget that and a lot more. Besides, he was the first to tell me that the King was kind, ignorant for the most part of the shameful deeds perpetrated in his name, and that one must not bear him a grudge but cast it on his ministers. Now, as all that Dr. Gilbert said at that time was Gospel, I believed Dr. Gilbert.
"The Bastile being captured, Dr. Gilbert safe and free, and Pitou and myself all well, I forgot the charges in the Tuileries garden, the shooting in the street, the two hundred men slain by Marshal Saxe's sackbut, which is or was a gun on the Bastile ramparts, and the imprisonment of my friend on the mere application of a court dame. But, pardon me, count," Billet interrupted himself, "all this is no concern of yours, and you cannot have asked to speak with me to hear the babble of a poor uneducated rustic—you who are both a high noble and learned gentleman."
He made a move to lay hold of the doorknob and re-enter the other room. But Charny stopped him for two reasons, the first that it might be important to learn why Billet acted thus, and again, to gain time.
"No; tell me the whole story, my dear Billet," he said; "you know the interest my poor brothers and I always bore you, and what you say engages me in a high degree."
Billet smiled bitterly at the words "My poor brothers."
"Well, then," he replied, "I will tell you all; with regret that your poor brothers—particularly Lord Isidore, are not here to hear me."
This was spoken with such singular intonation that the count repressed the feeling of grief the mention of Isidore's name had aroused in his soul, and he waved his hand for the farmer to continue, as Billet was evidently ignorant of what had happened the viscount whose presence he desired.