‘I see no better refuge for the instant than your château at Offemont.’
‘Offemont!’ exclaimed Marie; ‘it is twenty leagues from Paris; and in this dreadful weather we should perish on the route.’
‘It must be attempted,’ said Philippe; ‘you say your horses are there; and if we can once reach them, your means of getting to the frontier will be comparatively easy. We must brave everything. Your enemies I know to be numerous in Paris, and you cannot tell what charges they might bring against you when in their power, which it would be next to impossible to refute. Come, come!’
He took her by the hand and led her to the door, the servant following them closely, and receiving from the Marchioness a number of hurried directions and commissions, which it was next to impossible she could remember. As he quitted the room, with some forethought Philippe blew out the candles and collected the pieces; for the night would be long and dark; there were seven or eight hours of obscurity yet before them. When they got to the court where the horse and tumbrel were, the former evidently in no hurry to depart, young Glazer fastened the lantern he had borrowed from the guard to the side of the vehicle, and then assisted the Marchioness to mount and take her seat upon some straw.
‘It is a rude carriage, madame,’ he said; ‘but the journey would be less pleasant if it was going to the Place de Grêve.’
Marie shuddered as he spoke; but it was unobserved in the obscurity. As soon as she was seated, Philippe drew a coarse awning over some bent sticks which spanned the interior, and making this tight all round, prepared to start.
‘Stop!’ he exclaimed, as if struck by a sudden thought; ‘it will be as well to see all clear before us.’
And he advanced to the porte-cochère that opened into the street, when to his dismay he perceived the lighted cressets of the Guet Royal coming down the Rue Neuve St. Paul. In an instant he closed the door and barred it; and turning to Françoise, exclaimed—
‘Go up to the window of your mistress’s room, which looks into the road, and when the guard comes, say she is from home.’
‘There is a court which leads from the stables to the Rue St. Antoine,’ said the Marchioness from the vehicle. ‘You can get out that way.’