This was the only word of love that passed between them; but there were other matters pressing for consideration. Neither of them knew the country round. Pierrot was as ignorant as themselves; and it was necessary to take Madame Brin not only into consultation but in some degree into their confidence. She was naturally a woman of strong sense; but she was wonderfully ignorant of the world beyond the Marais.
"This is a mad scheme," she said,—taking for granted all that she had heard from her cousin George, and never imagining that a corporal in the king's army could have been deceived. "You are both very young to run away and be married. Why, this boy can hardly be nineteen, and you, my child, cannot be more than fifteen; but, now you have been away so long together, it is the best thing for you. We can send for the minister to-morrow, and he can be here on Friday. But if you be Papists you will find the matter more difficult; for——"
Edward cut her short by informing her of the fact that they were both Huguenots, and at the same time attempting to undeceive her as to the purposes with which they left Rochelle. He told her briefly the principal events of the last month, and besought her to aid them in reaching at least Niort, where the number of Protestants still remaining insured them the means of ascertaining where the principal Huguenot leaders were to be found.
All this sudden intelligence threw the good lady into a deep fit of thought. "So you do not want to be married?" she said, in some bewilderment.
"Not immediately," answered Edward, with a smile he could not repress. "But I tell you, my dear lady, I do wish to be married to Lucette as soon as ever she wishes to be married to me." Lucette looked at him almost reproachfully; but he went on to say, "Her relations have of course to be consulted first; and, as I undertook to escort her safely to them, I must do so before I can even pretend to her hand."
"Well, then," said the mistress of La Caponnière, after several minutes' thought, "there is no way for you but to go boldly to Nantes. They will never suspect you there. 'Those who are nearest to the cardinal are safer from him than those who are far off,' they say. His arms are so long that they do not easily reach what is close by. You can then easily go round to Niort, and thence where you like; but go to Nantes first; go to Nantes first. It is the safest place."
This suggestion required long and much consideration; but at length it was adopted, though the minor arrangements afterward devised removed a great many of the objections which at first presented themselves. Edward was to be transformed into a young farmer of the Marais, and Lucette to appear as his sister, while Pierrot assumed the garb of one of the peasants. It took two days to procure the long-waisted, square-cut coat, and wide breeches for Master Ned, and a similar but coarser dress for Pierrot; for tailors were not plenty in the Marais, and clothing-shops were none,—so that the wardrobes of neighbors were to be ransacked. Lucette was more easily supplied with the manifold petticoats and the white cap to cover her immense luxuriance of hair. Changes of apparel, provisions of many kinds, and good wine, were stored in a boat; and, after about three weeks' residence in that wild and strange but not uninteresting district, with two stout boatmen for their guides, Lucette and her companions took their departure from La Caponnière, and entered upon a tract perhaps even more desolate and intricate than that which they quitted. By Tallemont, by La Motte Achard, and by Logé, they proceeded on the country-road, as it was called, toward Nantes, and at the end of the third day they began to approach a city the glory of which certainly has departed, but the interest of which—a melancholy interest—remains.
Before I close the chapter, however,—a chapter devoted to quiet if not dull subjects,—I may as well say a few words—a very few—upon the actual state of France, and the changes which had taken place within the last five weeks, which were not without their significance.
Every day had seen La Rochelle more and more closely hemmed in by the royal forces. Slowly, quietly, but steadily, troops had poured into the Sevres and the Aunis, and the ports in the neighborhood of the threatened city had become crowded with small armed vessels. Invested by land, the citizens of Rochelle might have felt alarm if their fine port had been also subjected to blockade; but their own powerful fleets, and the certain aid of England, made them contemn the small though numerous ships of the enemy, and they never comprehended, till too late, that the gigantic mind of their enemy was then planning a vast undertaking destined to deprive them of all the advantages of their position. Their egregious confidence was perhaps further increased by a knowledge that the court of France, and, indeed, the whole country, was fermenting with plots against the man whom they had most to dread; and it is not at all impossible that they were more or less aware that the most formidable conspiracy which had ever threatened the power of Richelieu was upon the very eve of explosion.