By a strange chance, I happened to be able to give details of M. de Polignac's journey that no one else received, and probably I, and the principal actors, are the only persons now who recollect them.
The prince was placed in the care of Thomas. When I say Thomas, my readers will know quite well to whom I refer. He was that brave and loyal friend of Bastide who, like Bastide, risked his life and sacrificed his fortune for the cause of liberty. He had promised to take the prince safe and sound to Paris, at the price of his own life if need be. From that moment, the prince could rest easy, for he knew he would either reach his destination safely with his conductor or neither of them would do so. The carriage which took the ex-minister of France to Paris started in the dark. But, although Thomas had undertaken to conduct M. de Polignac safe and sound to Paris, he had no intention whatever of letting him escape on the way thither. And this was the dialogue that took place between prisoner and conductor. Thomas, with that astonishing sang-froid which never deserted him, whether he was threatener or threatened, drew forth a dagger and pistol from his pocket and showed them to the prince.
"You see, monsieur, I have taken my precautions: if you were to try to escape, I should kill you, it's my duty. But, as I do not desire to restrict your liberty at all during our journey, nor to humiliate an unfortunate man like yourself, whom I respect, give me your word of honour that you will make no kind of attempt to escape and you shall be as free as I am."
"I give it you, monsieur," replied the prince, who believed he was safer in Thomas's hands than fleeing alone across country.
From that moment, the prince could get down from the carriage when he liked, walk up the hills on foot, and wander about at his own pleasure. The conversation, of course, was likely to turn upon one topic only, namely, the events that had just transpired, in which these two actors had each played his own part—one in the high quarters of the palace, the other in the streets. Replying to Thomas's conscientious and somewhat severe reflections upon what he looked upon as the crime of the Ordinances, which had led to the fall of Charles X. and the arrest of the prince, M. de Polignac replied, with a sigh—
"Oh, my poor Thomas, who would ever have thought things would have come to such a pass and ended in such a wreck as this?"
And once, the prince, who knew his Corneille, followed this melancholy expression with these lines:—
"Chimène, qui l'eût dit?
Rodrigue, qui l'eût cru?"
The prince sighed at the thought of the lot that awaited him, but resignedly: he wore more the expression of a Christian martyr than of a vanquished general. He interrogated Thomas as to the probable issue of the great trial that would ensue.
"Good Heavens!" replied Thomas, "the whole matter depends on the type of jury that is summoned to judge your case. If you are tried by a jury, both you and your colleagues will be condemned to death; if you are tried before the Chamber of Peers, you will be merely sentenced to imprisonment."