Meantime Desgrais had learned sufficient at the ‘Ane Doré’ to convince him that the Marchioness had been there; and the discovery of the garments she had left at the hotel at once decided him. But she had again slipped through his hands, and this time without leaving a trace of her journey behind her. He immediately sent his archers round to the commissaries of police and the barriers; but no passport had been seen that night, nor were the guards aware that any one had crossed the bridge since dark, except Theria, whom they mentioned. But he knew that the Marchioness had the passage of the frontier for her object, and that Liége, as the nearest place of importance, would in all probability be the end of her journey; and consequently, leaving a portion of his men at Givet, with orders to make the strictest investigation at all the hotels and small inns in the neighbourhood, he went on the same night to Dinant, actually sleeping in that town within two hundred yards of his object.
Marie was up as soon as there was daylight enough to proceed on her journey. Twenty leagues were now all that remained between her and Liége, and these she meant to traverse before night. The rest of some hours had refreshed her, bodily and mentally, and she was once more ready to encounter any difficulties her further progress might bring forth. The exempt never heard of the departure (which he immediately knew to be that of the Marchioness), until three or four hours after she had left Dinant; and then, still at a loss to account for the manner in which she had contrived to elude the police authorities at Givet, he ordered out a carriage and horses, and started after her with all the speed his money and authority could command, leaving his archers behind—with the exception of two who accompanied him—with orders to follow him as hastily as their means would permit.
Empanne, Havelange, Nandrin—all were passed without any circumstance occurring to obstruct Marie’s flight; and the gloom of the winter’s night was closing fast about her as the carriage came within the last mile of Liége. It was here, as she looked behind her through the small window at the back of the vehicle, to see if there were any signs of pursuit on the road—which had been her sole occupation during the day—that she first perceived two gleaming lights in the distance, evidently following her. She urged on the postilions, and a turn of the road hid them from her view. Then they were again visible, and apparently nearer; directly the brow of the hill, as she descended once more, shut them out, and the next minute she saw them gaining upon her during every interval of perfect darkness. Swiftly as she was flying along the road, it was evident that the other party was more than a match for her attelage in speed; and perceiving from this that every effort was being made to come up with her, she concluded that it was Desgrais.
Lashed and goaded to madness, her horses flew on like the wind, as from the front of the carriage she promised an additional reward every instant to their riders if they brought her to Liége before the other traveller. But Desgrais—for it was he—was equally on the alert. On the first intimation that a carriage was in sight on the road before them, he had left the interior, and, clinging to the front of the voiture, was urging his own people on as earnestly as the Marchioness, until the uproar of cries and cracking whips was plainly audible to the terrified inmate of the first vehicle. Tearing uphill, until the breathless horses almost fell from being overtasked—anon racing down, with a precipitancy that threatened annihilation every instant—and then flying along the level road, so close together, that the steam from the animals in the carriage of the Marchioness was still visible in the gleam of the lamps belonging to Desgrais—did the chase continue.
At last they entered Liége, and the pursuit now became doubly exciting from the cries of the postilions as they traversed the glooming streets at a fearful pace, cracking their whips as they whirled them above their heads, and shouting in an unearthly manner to warn the passengers of their advent. A charette in the road offered a temporary check to Marie’s carriage, and Desgrais the next instant was close up to her. But nearer he could not come; for the width of the thoroughfare would not allow the two vehicles to go abreast. They were, however, coming to a broader street, and then Marie knew he would pass her. To avoid this, and gain a minute of time—for every second now was worth the price of her life—she collected some straw from the interior of her coach, and tied it into a bundle with her handkerchief; then lighting it at the lamp of the carriage, she leaned out of the window, and threw it, blazing, directly in front of the leaders of the other voiture. The horse on which the postilion was riding reared up in fright, and directly threw him; his fellow backed as well, and the wheelers coming over them, they were all thrown together in a terrible confusion before the carriage, which by its own impetus came partly on them. In an instant Desgrais leaped upon his feet—for the shock had also thrown him upon the ground—and clearing the rider from the stirrups, he cut the traces with his poniard, and getting the horse upon his legs, vaulted into the saddle, leaving the rest of his equipage to the care of the archers who were inside. The carriage of the Marchioness was not fifty yards ahead, as it turned towards the convent she had indicated to the drivers. Once more everything depended on a few seconds, and Desgrais goaded the poor animal with the point of his weapon to spur it onwards, as the horses of his intended prisoner, equally urged, kept tearing on towards the goal. At last they stopped at the door of the convent, and as its heavy bell sounded with a loud and violent peal, the exempt came up to the carriage.
He sprang from his horse, and tore down, rather than opened, the door nearest the road, and seized the Marchioness by her mantle. At that instant the gate of the convent opened, as she jumped from the carriage and entered the lodge, leaving the garment in the hand of the exempt. Desgrais rushed through the vehicle, and was about to follow her, when she seized a cross from the porch, and held it towards him with a smile of triumph, that threw an expression of demonaic beauty over her features.
‘You dare not touch me!’ she cried; ‘or you are lost, body and soul!’
With an oath, Desgrais fell back before the sacred emblem. Marie had thrown herself upon the Church, and claimed a sanctuary. An impassable barrier was between them, and the whole of his toil to arrest her had gone for nothing. The chance had been lost, in a pursuit of nearly one hundred leagues, by half a minute.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE END OF LACHAUSSÉE
Whilst all this turmoil had been going on, Paris was no less a scene of excitement; indeed, it was greater, inasmuch as it affected a larger number of persons. The awful death of Sainte-Croix, and the discoveries which had arisen from the unexpected revelation of the casket, furnished sufficient matter for conversation to all the gossips of the good city. Maître Glazer’s shop was more than ever besieged by the curious bourgeoisie, as he was supposed to be better acquainted than any one else, not even excepting the commissary of police, with the circumstances of the event. But it was remarked that Philippe preserved a perfect silence respecting the share which the Marchioness of Brinvilliers was known to have had in the transactions of the newly-discovered poisoners. He always avoided the most distant allusion to the catastrophe, and even when Maître Picard wished to push his questions very closely—half in his capacity of public functionary, half as a private gossip—the young student generally cut all his queries so very short, that Picard almost imagined he must have been one of the parties implicated.