Unlocking the door, they traversed a dark, damp passage. Pushing open a side door, they entered a small room, totally unfurnished, the light being admitted through a half-open shutter.
“Please to stay here a few minutes, monsieur,” said Jean Plessis; “I will get madame up from the vaults into another room, where she usually stays when I am in the house to watch. When I am absent, she and her daughter keep below; their place of concealment would not be easily discovered.”
“Poor lady!” said William Thornton; “what a state for one of her rank to live in. But are there not many Royalist families in the town not forced to live in such a state of concealment?”
“Yes,” said Jean Plessis, “but there is only one Duchesse of Coulancourt. Collet de Herbois would give ten thousand francs for her head. There are many of his spies here, who will soon track me. There will be more blood spilt here than even in Lyons.”
He then departed.
“That is very odd,” thought the midshipman. “With a magnificent British and Spanish fleet before the town, surely, if the Admiral pleases, he could take the town and fort at any time, and drive these horrid Republicans into the sea.”
William Thornton was a young reasoner; he did not know that there were wheels within wheels in politics; that, with the finest fleet in the world, it was sometimes the policy of ministers to do nothing with it. As it turned out, however, the fleet did get possession of the fort and the town, but only to abandon it and its wretched inhabitants afterwards, to one of the most fearful massacres on record.
Our hero remained waiting for the return of Jean Plessis, wondering in his heart how the unfortunate Duchesse de Coulancourt and her daughter could dwell in so desolate and unwholesome a place.
In less than half-an-hour the Frenchman returned, saying:—
“I am sorry to have kept you, young gentleman, in so dismal a chamber; but madame is now ready to receive you. Please to follow me.”