: Alexandre Dumas
: The Hero of the People A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
: OTB eBook publishing
: 9783965375284
: 1
: CHF 1.80
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 199
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Synopsis: The French Revolution had begun by the Taking of the Bastile by the people of Paris on the Fourteenth of July, 1789, but it seemed to have reached the high tide by King Louis XVI, with his Queen Marie Antoinette and others of the Royal Family, leaving Versailles, after some sanguinary rioting, for the Capital, Paris. But those who think, in such lulls of popular tempests, that all the mischief has blown over, make a mistake. Behind the men who make the first onset, are those who planned it and who wait for the rush to be made and, then, while others are tried or satisfied, glide into the crowds to stir them up. Mysterious agents of secret, fatal passions, they push on the movement from where it paused, and having urged it to its farthest limit, those who opened the way are horrified, at awakening to see that others attained the end. At the doorway of a wine saloon at Sevres by the bridge, over the Seine, a man was standing who had played the main part, though unseen, in the riots which compelled the Royal Family to renounce an attempt to escape out of the kingdom like many of their sycophants, and go from Versailles Palace to the Tuileries. This man was in the prime of life: he was dressed like a workingman, wearing velveteen breeches shielded by a leather apron with pockets such as shinglers wear to carry nails in, or blacksmith-farriers or locksmiths. His stockings were grey, and his shoes had brass buckles; on his head was a fur cap like a grenadier’s cut in half or what is called nowadays an artillerist’s busby. Grey locks came straggling from under its hair and mingled with shaggy eyebrows; they shaded large bulging eyes, keen and sharp, quick, with such rapid changes that it was hard to tell their true color. His nose was rather thick than medium, the lips full, the teeth white, and his complexion sunburnt.

CHAPTER II.

THE THREE ODDITIES.


THE locksmith lifted his tumbler to his eye’s level, admired the liquor with pleasure, and said after sipping it with gratification:

“Bless you, yes, plenty of locksmiths at Paris.”

He drank a few drops more.

“Ay, and masters of the craft.” He drank again. “Yes, but there is a difference between them.”

“Hang me,” said the other, “but I believe you are like St. Eloi, our patron saint, master among the master-workmen.”

“Are you one of us?”

“Akin, my boy: I am a gunsmith. All smiths are brothers. This is a sample of my work.”

The locksmith took the gun from the speaker’s hands, examined it with attention, clicked the hammers and approved with a nod of the sharp action of the lock: but spying the name on the plate, he said:

“Leclere? this won’t do, friend, for Leclere is scanty thirty, and we are both a good forty, without meaning to hurt your feelings.”

“Quite true, I am not Leclere, but it is the same thing, only a little more so. For I am his master.”

“Oh, capital!” chuckled the locksmith; “it is the same as my saying ‘I am not the King but I am the same thing, only more so, as I am his master.'”

“Oho,” said the other rising and burlesquing the military salute, “have I the honor of addressing Master Gamain, the King of Locksmiths?”

“Himself in person, and delighted if he can do anything for you,” replied Gamain, enchanted at the effect his name had produced.

“The devil! I had no idea I was talking to one of the high flyers in our line,” said the other. “A man so well considered.”

“Of such consequence, do you mean?”

“Well, maybe I have not used the right word, but then I am only a poor smith, and you are the master smith for the master of France. I say,” he went on in another tone, “it can’t be always funny to have a king for a ‘prentice, eh?”

“Why not?”

“Plain enough. You cannot eternally be wearing gloves to say to the mate on your bench: ‘Chuck us the hammer or pass the retail file along.'”

“Certainly not.”

“I suppose you have to say: ‘Please your gracious Majesty, don’t hold the drill askew.'”

“Why, that is just the charm with him, d’ye see, for he is a plain-dealer at heart. Once in the forge, when he has the anvil to the fore, and the leathern apron tied on, none would ever take him for the Son of St. Louis, as he is called.”

“Indeed you are right, it is astonishing how much he is like the next man.”

“And yet these perking courtiers are a long time seeing that.”

“It would be nothing if those close around him found that out,” said the stranger, “but those who are at a distance are beginning to get an idea of it.”

His queer laugh made Gamain look at him with marked astonishment. But he saw that he had blundered in his pretended character by making a witticism, and gave the man no time to study his sentence, for he hastened to recur to the topic by saying:

“A good thing, too; for I think it lowers a man to have to slaver him with Your Majesty here and My Noble Sire there.”

“But you do not have to call him high names. Once in the workshop we drop all that stuff. I call him Citizen, and he calls me Gamain, but I ain’t what you would call chummy with him, while heis familiar with me.”

“That is all very well; but when the dinner hour comes round I expect he se