"I heard him say by the waterside," she repeated.
So he let her drag him through three courtyards, separated by thick walls and with chains at each opening, which should have been guarded by sentinels. They had to scramble through the gaps and clamber over the chains. Not one of the watchers had the idea of saying anything to them. How could they believe that a buxom woman in such dress as a housemaid would wear and climbing over the chains on the arm of a strapping young chap in livery, was the Queen of the French?
On arriving at the water's edge they found it deserted.
"He must mean the other side of the river," said the crazed Queen.
Isidore wanted to return but he said as if in a vertigo:
"No, no, there it is!"
She drew him upon the Royal Bridge which they crossed to find the other shore as blank as the nigher one.
"Let us look up this street," said she.
She forced Isidore to go up the Ferry Street a little. At the end of a hundred paces she owned she was wrong, but she stopped, panting; her powers almost fled her.
"Now, take me where you will," she said.