The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

"Go and get the keys," said Billet to Pitou, who opened out his long compass-like legs and, having been gone five minutes, returned to say:

"Abbé Fortier had the keys taken to his house to be sure the church should not be opened."

"We must go straight to the priest for them," suggested Maniquet, the promoter of extreme measures.

"Let us go to the abbé's," cried the crowd.

"It would take too long," remarked Billet: "and when death knocks at a door, it does not like to wait."

He looked round him. Opposite the church, a house was being built. Some carpenters had been squaring a joist. Billet walked up and ran his arm round the beam, which rested on trestles. With one effort he raised it. But he had reckoned on absent strength. Under the great burden the giant reeled and it was thought for an instant that he would fall. It was but a flash; he recovered his balance and smiled terribly; and forward he walked, with the beam under his arm, with a firm step albeit slow.

He seemed one of those antique battering-rams with which the Caesars overthrow walls.

He planted himself, with legs set apart, before the door and the formidable machine began to work. The door was oak with iron fastenings; but at the third shove, bolts, bars and lock had flown off; the oaken panels yawned, too.

Billet let the beam drop. It took four men to carry it back to its place, and not easily.

"Now, mayor, have my poor wife's coffin carried to the midst of the choir – she never did harm to anybody – and you, Pitou, collect the beadle, the choirboys and the chanters, while I bring the priest."

Several wished to follow Billet to Father Fortier's house.

"Let me go alone," said he: "maybe what I do is serious and I should bear my own burden."

This was the second time that the revolutionist had come into conflict with the son of the church, at a year's interval. Remembering what had happened before, a similar scene was anticipated.

The rectory door was sealed up like that of the church. Billet looked round for some beam to be used like the other, but there was nothing of the sort. The only thing was a stone post, a boundary mark, with which the children had played so long at "over-ing" that it was loose in the socket like an old tooth.

The farmer stepped up to it, shook it violently to enlarge its orbit, and tore it clean out. Then raising it like a Highlander "putting the stone," he hurled it at the door which flew into shivers.

At the same time as this breach was made, the upper window opened and Father Fortier appeared, calling on his parishioners with all the power of his lungs. But the voice of the pastor fell lost, as the flock did not care to interfere between him and the wolf.

It took Billet some time to break all the doors down between him and his prey, but in ten minutes, more or less, that was done.

At the end of that time, loud shrieks were heard and by the abbé's most expressive gestures it was to be surmised that the danger was drawing nearer and nearer him.

In fact, suddenly was seen to rise behind the priest Billet's pale face, as his hand launched out and grabbed him by the shoulder.

The priest clutched the window sill; he was of proverbial strength and it would not be easy for Hercules to make him relax his grip.

Billet passed his arm around the priest as a girdle; straightened himself on both legs, and with a pull which would uproot an oak, he tore him away with the snapped wood between his hands.

Farmer and priest, they disappeared within the room, where in the depths were heard the wailings of the priest, dying away like the bellowing of a bull carried off by a lion.

In the meanwhile, Pitou had gathered up the trembling church staff, who hastened to don the vestments, light the candles and incense and prepare all things for the death mass.

Billet was seen coming, dragging the priest with him at as smart a pace, though he still made resistance, as if he were alone.

This was not a man, but one of the forces of nature: something like a torrent or an avalanche; nothing human could withstand him and it took an element to combat with him.

About a hundred steps from the church, the poor abbé ceased to kick, completely overpowered.

All stood aside to let the pair go by.

The abbé cast a frightened glance on the door, shivered like a pane of glass and seeing all his men at their stands whom he had forbidden to enter the place, he shook his head like one who acknowledges that some resistless power weighed on the church's ministers if not on itself.

He entered the sacristy and came forth in his robes, with the sacrament in his hand.

But as he was mounting the altar Billet stretched out his hand.

"Enough, you faulty servant of God," he thundered: "I only attempted to check your pride, that is all: but I want it known that a sainted woman like my wife can dispense with the prayers of a hateful and fanatical priest like you."

As a loud murmur rose under the vaulted ceiling of the fane, he said:

"If this be sacrilege, let it fall on my head."

Turning to the crowd he added: "Citizens, to the cemetery!"

"To the cemetery," cried the concourse which filled not the church alone but the square in front.

The four bearers passed their muskets under the bier lifting the body and as they had come without ecclesiastical pomp, such as religion has devised to accompany man to the grave, they went forth. Billet conducted the mourners, with six hundred persons following the remains, to the burial-ground, situated at the end of a lane near Aunt Angelique's house.

The cemetery-gates were closed but Billet respected the dead; he sent for the gravedigger who had the key, and Pitou brought it with two spades.

Fortier had proscribed the dead as unfit for consecrated ground, which the gravedigger had been ordered not to break for her.

At this last evidence of the priest's hatred for the farmer, a shiver of menace ran through the gathering: if Billet had had a little of the gall which the Tartuffes hold, to the amazement of Boileau, he had but a word to say and the Abbé Fortier would have had that satisfaction of martyrdom for which he had howled on the day when he refused to say mass on the Altar of the Country.

But Billet's wrath was that of the people and the lion; he did not retrace his steps to tear.

He thanked Pitou with a nod, took the key, opened the gates, passed the coffin in, and following it, was followed by the procession, recruited by all that could walk.

Arrived where the grave had been marked out before the sexton had the order not to open the earth, Billet held out his hand to Pitou for one of the spades.

Thereupon, with uncovered head, Pitou and Billet, amid the citizens bareheaded likewise, under the devouring July sun dug the resting-place for this poor creature who, pious and resigned throughout life, would have been greatly astonished in her lifetime if told what a sensation her death would cause.

The task lasted an hour without either worker thinking of being relieved. Meanwhile rope was sought for and was ready.

It was still Billet and Pitou who lowered the coffin into the pit. They did all so naturally that nobody thought of offering help. It would have been a sacrilege to have stayed them from carrying out all to the end. Only at the first clods falling on the coffin, Billet ran his hand over his eyes and Pitou his sleeve. Then they resolutely shoveled the earth in. When they had finished, Billet flung the spade far from him and gripped Pitou by the hand.

"God is my witness," said he, "that I hold in hand all the simple and grandest virtues on earth: charity, devotion, abnegation, brotherhood – and that I dedicate my life to these virtues." He held out his hand over the grave, saying: "God be again my witness that I swear eternal war against the King who tried to have me murdered; to the nobles who defamed my daughter; to the priests who refused sepulture to my wife!"

Turning towards the spectators full of sympathy with this adjuration, he said:

"Brothers, a new assembly is to be convoked in place of the traitors now in session; select me to represent you in this new parliament, and you will see how I keep my oath."

A shout of universal adhesion hailed this suggestion, and at once over his wife's grave, terrible altar, worthy of the dread vow, the candidature of Billet was proposed, seconded and carried. After this, he thanked his fellow citizens for their sympathy in his affliction, his friendship and his hatred, and each, citizen, countryman, peasant and forester, went home, carrying in heart that spirit of revolutionary propaganda to which in their blindness the most deadly weapons were afforded by those who were to be destroyed by them – priests, nobles and King!

How Billet kept his oath, with other circumstances which are linked with his return to Paris in the new Legislative Assembly, will be recorded in the sequel entitled "THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY."