Opposite the Bouffai, the duchess felt her shoulder touched. She trembled and turned round. The person who had just taken that liberty was a worthy old woman, who, having put her basket of apples on the ground, could not replace it on her head by herself.
"My children," she said to the duchess and Mile, de Kersabiec, "help me to lift up my basket and I will give you each an apple."
Madame soon took hold of one handle and signed to her companion to take hold of the other, the basket was balanced on the good woman's head, and she went away without giving the promised reward; but the duchess stopped her by the arm—
"Well, mother, where is my apple?" she asked. The apple-seller gave her one, and Madame was eating it with an appetite sharpened by a three leagues' walk, when, lifting her head, her eyes fell on a placard bearing these three words in big letters:—
"ÉTAT DE SIÈGE"
It was the Government notice which put four of the départements of la Vendée outside the pale of common law. The duchess went up to the bill and calmly read it right through, in spite of the entreaties of Mlle. de Kersabiec, who pressed her to gain the house at which she was to be received; but Madame observed that it was too interesting a matter for her not to acquaint herself with it. At last she resumed her journey, and, a few minutes later, she reached the house where she was expected, and where she took off her muddy garments, which were preserved as a memento of the event. Soon, she left this first refuge to go to the ladies Duguigny, at No. 3 rue Haute-du-Château.
The position of the Duguigny's house was pleasant, it looked out over the château gardens and beyond to the Loire and the meadows which bordered it. They had prepared her a room with a secret hiding in it. The room was no more than a third storey attic, the secret place was a nook by the fireplace in a corner: it was reached by the back of the chimney and opened with a spring. It had been used since the first Vendéen Wars to save priests and other outlaws. M. de Ménars lived in this house with the duchess. One would have thought that, after many journeys and fatigues, on finding a quiet, safe retreat she could have taken some rest and returned to her favourite occupation of tapestry and flowerpainting, talents in which she excelled; but, after the plans she had meditated carrying out, which had, in some measure, given her more masculine tastes, those futile pursuits were no longer to her liking, and did not suffice for that active spirit.
She resumed a correspondence, which she had dropped for some time, with the Legitimists of France and abroad, the principal object of which correspondence was positively to inform them that in case of an invasive war against France, which then seemed threatening, her son should never put himself in the train of foreigners, and to ask them, if need arose, to unite their efforts to those of all other Frenchmen to repulse them. The papers found in the secret room testified to the aim and to the magnitude of the work she had set herself to do. Her letters amounted to over nine hundred in number; they were nearly all in her own handwriting, with the exception of a few by M. de Ménars. She had twenty-four different ciphers in which to correspond with the various parties in France; she wrote in cipher with remarkable ease.
One of the distractions with which she provided herself, with M. Ménars' assistance, was to paste up the whole of the grey paper which to-day forms the decoration of the attic. During the duchess's stay in Nantes, cholera made some ravages and daily she saw from her windows soldiers or inhabitants being carried to the cemetery. One night she was seized with colic and vomiting, causing the greatest anxiety to those around her. She herself was alarmed.