She did not wait to ask who wrote the letters; she did not listen to her faithful Préfontaine, who assured her that there was no danger and begged her to be calm.
La Grande Mademoiselle, appalled, beside herself, unmindful of her glory and her dignity, crying out wild orders to the people who blocked her way, fled from Paris in a hired coach driven by a common coachman. She did not breathe freely until the scene of her triumphs lay far behind her, and even then, the appearance of a cavalier, however peaceable, caused her new terror; she prayed, she trembled; a more piteous retreat was never made!
But the adventures of the route distracted her thoughts. She was masked, travelling as "Mme. Dupré," a woman of an inferior order. She dined with her fellow-travellers in public rooms, talked freely with common people, and faced life on an equality with the canaille. For a royal personage such experience had savour. One day in the kitchen of an inn a monk talked to her long and earnestly of the events of the day and of Mademoiselle, the niece of Louis XIII., and her high feats. "Yes!" said the priest, "she is a brave girl; a brave girl indeed! She is a girl who could carry a spear as easily as she could wear a mask!"
Mademoiselle's journey ended at the château of a friend, who welcomed her and concealed her with romantic satisfaction; being as sentimental as the shepherdesses of Astrée, it pleased the chatelaine to fancy that her guest was in peril of death and that a price was set upon her head. She surrounded Mademoiselle with impenetrable mystery. A few tried friends fetched and carried the heroine's correspondence with Condé. Condé implored her to join the legion on the frontier; he wrote to her: "I offer you my places and my army. M. de Lorraine offers you his quarters and his army, and Fuensaldagne[164] offers you the same."
Mademoiselle was wise enough to refuse their offers; but she was homeless; she knew that she must make some decisive move; she could not remain in hiding, like the princess of a romance. Monsieur was at Blois, but he was fully determined that she should not live with him.
When Préfontaine begged him not to refuse his daughter a father's protection, he answered furiously: "I will not receive her! If she comes here I will drive her back!"
Mademoiselle determined to face her destiny. She was alone; they who loved her had no right to protect her. She had a château at Saint Fargeau, and she looked upon it as a refuge.
Again the heroine took the road, and she had hardly set foot upon the highway when the King's messenger halted her and delivered a letter from his royal master.
Louis XIV. guaranteed her "all surety and freedom in any place in which she might elect to live." Mademoiselle, who had trembled with fear when the King's messenger appeared, read her letter with vexation; she had revelled in the thought that the Court was languishing in ignorance of her whereabouts.
She had gone fast and far and accomplished twenty leagues without a halt, when such a fit of terror seized her that she hid her head. Had she been in Paris, the courtiers would have called her seizure "one of the attacks of Monsieur." It was an ungovernable panic; despite the King's warrant she thought that the royal army was at her heels, and that the walls of a dungeon confronted her. Her attendants could not calm her. The heroine was dead and a despairing, half-distracted woman entered the Château of Saint Fargeau. She said of her arrival: