"Isn't she jolly?" exclaimed Roy, when the door closed behind her. "She has told me lots of things while you were asleep. Only think, her father and mother were both guillotined! Both of them had their heads cut off. And they hadn't done one single thing to make them deserve it. They were awfully good and kind to everybody, she says. And she was only a little girl then; and when they were dead, somebody took her away to England, and she was there three or four years. And then she came back to France, and she lives with some people at a place called Verdun. She says they give her a home, and she works for them. And she would like to go to England again some day."
But Lucille de St. Roques had not told Roy her more recent sorrow. She let it out to Captain Ivor a day or two later. Only one year before this date she had become engaged to young Théodore de Bertrand, son of the old couple downstairs, and three months later he had been drawn for the conscription. No use to plead that he was practically an only son, since the second son, Jacques, was a ne'er-do-weel, who had taken himself off nobody knew whither. More soldiers were wanted by the First Consul for his schemes of foreign conquest, and young De Bertrand had to go. Scarcely four months after his departure news came that he had been shot in a sortie in the Low Countries. Large tears filled Lucille's eyes, and dropped slowly.
"Ah! So many more!" she said. "Thousands—thousands—called upon to be slain for nothing! Not for their country, but for the ambition of one bad man. It makes no difference, monsieur, that they love not the usurper. My Théodore was of the Royalist party, yet he had to go. And the poor old father and mother—they are left without one son in their old age!"
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE THREATENED INVASION
THERE is a good deal of variety in the different accounts as to the number of British subjects who actually suffered arrest in French dominions on the breaking out of the war. Some estimates amount to as high a figure as ten thousand; but these seem to have made no allowance for the rapid homeward rush just at the last. Other estimates give only a few hundreds, belonging chiefly to the upper ranks of society.
But indeed all classes were included. Not only officers in the Army and Navy, but lawyers, doctors, clergymen, men of rank, men of business, artisans, English residents abroad, all alike had the notice of arrest served upon them. All alike were either thrown into prison, or, if gentlemen, were ordered immediately to constitute themselves prisoners of war upon parole, with the alternative of becoming prisoners of war in strict confinement.
The mass of those détenus who were allowed to be upon their parole had to go to Fontainebleau; and thither Colonel and Mrs. Baron betook themselves. On the score of danger to others from infection, a slight delay was permitted to Ivor, still in charge of Roy.
The question had at once arisen whether Mrs. Baron should not be sent to England with her boy as soon as he should be fit to travel. Women were, at least in theory, free to go where they would, provided only that they could obtain passports. But Mrs. Baron refused to consider any such proposal. She could not and would not be separated from her husband. "Of course I shall go with him to Fontainebleau," she said decisively. "It cannot be for long. Roy must come to us there. It only means leaving his schooling for a quarter of a year. He will not be strong enough for work at present; and something is sure to be arranged soon. Then we shall all go home together."
The general opinion among friends in England was that Roy would certainly be sent across the Channel so soon as possible. Yet there were some who doubted. Mrs. Baron was known to be a mother perhaps more fond than wise; and it seemed conceivable that she might decline to part with him.