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

"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."