"Hence," proceeded the yeoman, "when the King returned to Paris from Versailles, I saw in it sheerly the return home of a father among his children. I walked with Dr. Gilbert beside the royal carriage, making a breastwork for those within it of my body, and shouting 'Long live the King!' to split the ear. This was the first journey of the King: blessings and flowers were all around him. On arriving at the City Hall it was noticed that he did not wear the white cockade of his fathers, but he had not yet donned the tricolored one. So I plucked mine from my hat and gave it him as they were roaring he must sport it, and therefore he thanked me, to the cheering of the crowd. I was wild with glee at the King wearing my own favor and I shouted Long Life to him louder than anybody.
"I was so enthusiastic about our good King that I wanted to stay in town. My harvest was ripe and cried for me; but pooh, what mattered a harvest? I was rich enough to lose one season and it was better for me to stay beside this good King to be useful, this Father of the People, this Restorer of French Liberty, as we dunces called him at the time. I lost pretty near all the harvest because I trusted it to Catherine, who had something else to look after than my wheat. Let us say no more on that score.
"Still, it was said that the King had not quite fairly agreed to the change in things, that he moved forced and constrained; that he might wear the tricolor cockade in his hat but the white one was in his heart. They were slanderers who said this; it was clearly proved that at the Guards' Banquet, the Queen put on neither the national nor the French cockade but the black one of her brother the Austrian Emperor. I own that this made my doubts revive; but as Dr. Gilbert pointed out, 'Billet, it is not the King who did this but the Queen; and the Queen being a woman, one must be indulgent towards a woman.' I believed this so deeply that, when the ruffians came from Paris to attack the Versailles Palace, though I did not hold them wholly in the wrong—it was I who ran to rouse General Lafayette—who was in the sleep of the blessed, poor dear man! and brought him on the field in time to save the Royal Family.
"On that night I saw Lady Elizabeth hug General Lafayette and the Queen give him her hand to kiss, while the King called him his friend, and I said to myself, says I: 'Upon my faith, I believe Dr. Gilbert is right. Surely, not from fear would such high folks make such a show of gratitude, and they would not play a lie if they did not share this hero's opinions, howsoever useful he may be at this pinch to them all.' Again I pitied the poor Queen, who had only been rash, and the poor King, only feeble; but I let them go back to Paris without me—I had better to do at Versailles. You know what, Count Charny!"
The Lifeguardsman uttered a sigh recalling the death of his brother Valence.
"I heard that this second trip to the town was not as merry as the former," continued Billet; "instead of blessings, curses were showered down; instead of shouts of Long Live! those of Death to the lot! instead of bouquets under the horses hoofs and carriage wheels, dead men's heads carried on spear-points. I don't know, not being there, as I stayed at Versailles. Still I left the farm without a master, but pshaw! I was rich enough to lose another harvest after that of '89! But, one fine morning, Pitou arrived to announce that I was on the brink of losing something dearer which no father is rich enough to lose: his daughter!"
Charny started, but the other only looked at him fixedly as he went on:
"I must tell you, lord, that a league off from us, at Boursonne, lives a noble family of mighty lords, terribly rich. Three brothers were the family. When they were boys and used to come over to Villers Cotterets, the two younger of the three were wont to stop on my place, doing me the honor to say that they never drank sweeter milk than my cows gave, or eaten finer bread than my wife made, and, from time to time they would add—I believing they just said it in payment of my good cheer—ass that I was! that they had never seen a prettier lass than my Catherine. Lord bless you, I thanked them for drinking the milk, and eating the bread, and finding my child so pretty into the bargain! What would you? as I believed in the King, though he is half a German by the mother's side, I might believe in noblemen who were wholly French.
"So, when the youngest of all, Valence, who had been away from our parts for a long time, was killed at Versailles, before the Queen's door, on the October Riot night, bravely doing his duty as a nobleman, what a blow that was to me! His brother saw me on my knees before the body, shedding almost as many tears as he shed blood—his eldest brother, I mean, who never came to my house, not because he was too proud, I will do him that fair play, but because he was sent to foreign parts while young. I think I can still see him in the damp courtyard, where I carried the poor young fellow in my arms so that he should not be hacked to pieces, like his comrades, whose blood so dyed me that I was almost as reddened as yourself, Lord Charny. He was a pretty boy, whom I still see riding to school on his little dappled pony, with a basket on his arm—and thinking of him thus, I think I can mourn him like yourself, my lord. But I think of the other, and I weep no more," said Billet.
"The other? what do you mean." cried the count.