In the course of their talk, Walter related to Gabriel some of the conversations he had held with the refugees at Salem, and observed that a great proportion of the American people, though ready to sympathize with any nation desirous of self-government, were struck with horror at the cruelties of which they had heard, and the wholesale massacres perpetrated, especially by the execution of the king and queen.
The peasant leaped to his feet; his eyes shot fire, his lips were drawn apart, and his face assumed an expression so demoniacal as to leave upon the minds of the boys no doubt of the part he had taken in these terrible scenes.
"Execution of a king!" he hissed between his teeth: "what better is the blood of a king than that of any other creature God has made?"
Controlling himself, he said more calmly,—
"Young citizens, you have been deceived. You have heard but one story—that of the aristocrats, of the oppressors. Listen now to that of the oppressed—to me, Gabriel Quesnard, a peasant born and bred on the soil of France, as were all my ancestors. I am not about to relate to you the cruelties practised in the days of my forefathers, when a noble has been known to kill a peasant, that he might warm his feet by thrusting them into his body on a cold day."
"Horrible!" exclaimed both the boys in a breath. "Was that ever done?"
"Indeed, and it would be difficult to tell what cruelties were not practised; neither shall I speak of such things as the peasants being compelled to beat the water in the marshes with poles to keep the frogs from croaking, when the wife of their lord was sick, lest they should disturb her. But I shall tell you of those miseries, which are of yesterday, which myself, my neighbors, and children of your ages, have endured. Let me tell you of the 'lettres de cachet,'—issued by the king you pity so much,—by which a person was seized, perhaps in the street, and, without any form of trial, hurried to the Bastile, while his friends could only guess what had become of him. Any one who had money enough could buy one.
"When we levelled that accursed dungeon, we found citizens who had grown gray there, unconscious of crime and utterly ignorant of what they were accused.
"In the spring the peasant is trying to get in his seed to raise bread for his family. He, perhaps,—by some inadvertent word, wrung from him by the bitterness of oppression,—has given offence to the intendant; the subdélégué comes along and says, 'Go do your corvée' (compulsory labor) at such a place. The poor man must loose his cattle from the plough, and work on the roads; or perhaps, in the midst of harvest, must leave his grain to spoil, and go and carry convicts to the galleys, haul ship-timber to the navy-yard, or supplies to some garrison, while the soldiers prick his cattle with their swords, and insult their driver. More than three hundred peasants, who owned their land, were made beggars by the filling up of one valley in Lorraine. Every peasant was compelled to buy, and pay a tax on, seven pounds of salt a year, whether he used it or not.
"The capitaineries—"