About the same time M. de Thauvenay, one of the King’s most devoted courtiers, who happened to be in London, seems to have promised to use his good offices with his master on her behalf, telling him of her record and perhaps of her hopes.
Having exhausted all the means at her disposal in England, Lady Atkyns saw that she must manage her journey as best she could from her own resources, and resolved to make yet another sacrifice to this end. She had obtained a considerable loan already once upon a mortgage on her beautiful estate of Ketteringham. As this was her only source of revenue, there was no alternative to raising a further mortgage on it, and this she managed, though with greater difficulty than before. (The property was not, in fact, her own at this time, being entailed on her son Edward.)
She seems to have raised in all about £3000 in this way in 1799 and the three following years.
Some weeks before the “18th Brumaire” and Bonaparte’s coup d’état, she set out for the Continent. What exactly was her purpose? What use was she going to make of her money? It is impossible to say. To clothe her errand in the greater mystery, she decided to land in France under an assumed name, and to veil her personality under the designation of the “Little Sailor” (le petit matelot).
“I feel I must again send my good wishes for a pleasant journey to the charming ‘Little Sailor,’” some unidentified friend writes to her on September 7, “and I cannot too often beg him to bear in mind that he leaves behind him in England friends who take a deep interest in his welfare, and who will learn with pleasure that he has arrived safely at his destination, and, above all, that after fulfilling his mission he has escaped all the unpleasantness and dangers to which his truly admirable devotion and zeal will expose him. I hope one day to prove to the ‘Little Sailor’ how he has long filled me with the most genuine sentiments—sentiments which I have refrained from expressing for reasons of which the ‘Little Sailor’ will approve. I cannot say too often to the amiable ‘Little Sailor’ what pleasure I shall have in repeating to him in France—and in France preferably to elsewhere—the assurance of eternal and tender attachment that I have vowed him for ever and ever.”
It is difficult to know what the “Petit Matelot” did on arriving in Paris. It was a moment of crisis, for the Consulate was being established. Most of those who had been mixed up in the Temple affair were inaccessible, and yet it was important to get into touch with them if anything was to be ascertained about the Dauphin. It would not have done, however, to provoke suspicion, or Fouché would have been on her track.
Certain only it is that for several months she seems to have disappeared from sight. At last she was run to earth and hunted out by Fouché’s agents, and was obliged to make away to the Loire, where she had devoted friends.
The Verrière family lived in the country six miles from Saumur, in Anjou, where many nobles, fleeing from the storm, had found a safe refuge. The vicinity of the forest of Fontevrault enabled them to gain the Vendée, and thus escape the fury of the Revolutionists. Mme. Verrière had met Lady Atkyns in Paris years before, perhaps during the golden days of Versailles. Recalling their former friendliness, Lady Atkyns went to them in her trouble. The welcome they extended to her justified her hopes, and she dwelt with them for some time, until the police had lost all trace of her.
About this period, vague reports began to be spread about with reference to the imprisonment of the children of Louis XVI. in the Temple. The obscurity which had cloaked the last hours of the Dauphin was still keeping certain brains at work. And a book which was published in 1800 helped to reawaken public curiosity. In Le Cimetière de la Madeleine, a romance written by an author until then little known, Regnault-Warin deliberately questioned the alleged death of the Dauphin, and, in fact, based a story of adventure upon the supposition of his being still alive. Written in the fashion of the time, full of surprising episodes, and bristling with more or less untrustworthy anecdotes touching on the captivity of the Royal Family in the Temple, this novel had an immense success. If it came before Lady Atkyns it must have served to stimulate her anxiety to solve the problem she had so much at heart.
In the summer of 1801 Lady Atkyns appears to have addressed herself to Louis XVIII., unwarned by her failure with Monsieur. In this case also failure was to be her portion.