“I do not intend to make that a plea,” replied Pauline, smiling in youthful confidence; “but I will borrow one of my maid’s dresses, and doubtless shall look as like a soubrette as any one. Claude directs us, here, to ask at the gate for Philip the woodman of Mantes. Now he will most likely be able to procure me admission; and if not, I can but give the message to him and be sent away again.”
“Oh, no, no!” cried the Queen, “give no messages but in the last extremity. How do we know that this Woodman might not betray us, and raise Richelieu’s suspicions still more? If you can see De Blenau, well—— I will give you a letter for him; but if not, only tell the Woodman to inform him, that I have confessed all. If that reach the tyrant’s ears, it can do no harm. Your undertaking is bold, Pauline: think you your courage will hold out?”
The boundaries between emulation and jealousy are very frail, and Madame de Beaumont, who regarded the services which Mademoiselle de Hauteford had rendered the Queen with some degree of envy, now answered for her daughter’s courage with more confidence than perhaps she felt. But Pauline’s plan yet required great arrangement, even to give it the probability of success. With a thousand eyes continually upon their actions, it was no very easy matter even to quit Chantilly without calling down that observation and inquiry which would have been fatal to their project.
To obviate this difficulty, however, it was agreed that Pauline should accompany Mademoiselle de Hauteford, whose sentence of banishment required her immediate presence in Paris, for the arrangement of her affairs. On their arrival in that city, the two ladies were to take up their abode with the old Marchioness de Senecy, one of the Queen’s most devoted adherents, and to determine their future proceedings by the information they received upon the spot.
The greatest rapidity, however, was necessary to any hope of success, and neither Pauline nor Mademoiselle de Hauteford lost any time in their preparations. The Queen’s letter to De Blenau was soon written. Pauline borrowed from her maid Louise, the full dress of a Languedoc peasant, provided herself with a considerable sum of money, that no means might be left untried, and having taken leave of her mother, whose bold counsels tended to raise her spirits and uphold her resolution, she placed herself in the chaise roulante beside Mademoiselle de Hauteford, buoyed up with youthful confidence and enthusiasm.
It was rather an anxious moment, however, as they passed the gates of the Palace, which by some accident were shut. This caused a momentary delay, and several of the Cardinal’s guard (for Richelieu assumed that of a bodyguard amongst other marks of royalty) gathered round the vehicle with the idle curiosity of an unemployed soldiery. Pauline’s heart beat fast, but the moment after she was relieved by the appearance of the old concierge, or porter, who threw open the gates, and the carriage rolled out without any question being asked. Her mind, however, was not wholly relieved till they were completely free of the town of Chantilly, and till the carriage slowly mounting the first little hill, took a slight turn to avoid a steeper ascent, showing them the towers of the chateau and the course of the road they had already passed, without any human form that could afford subject for alarm.
Pauline, seeing that they were not followed, gave herself up to meditations of the future, firmly believing that their departure had entirely escaped the observation of the Cardinal. This, however, was not the case. He had been early informed that one of the Queen’s carriages was in preparation to carry some of the ladies of honour to Paris; but concluding that it was nothing more than the effect of that sentence of banishment which he had himself pronounced against Mademoiselle de Hauteford, he suffered Pauline and her companion to depart without inquiry or obstruction; although some of the many tools of his power had shut the Palace gates, as if by accident, till his decision was known.
As the carriage rolled on, and Pauline reflected in silence upon the task she had undertaken, the bright colouring of the moment’s enthusiasm faded away; the mists in which hope had concealed the rocks and precipices around her path, no longer intercepted her view, and the whole difficulties and dangers to which she exposed herself, presented themselves one after another to her sight. But the original motives still remained in full force. Her deep romantic attachment to De Blenau, her sense of duty to the Queen, and that generosity of purpose which would have led her at any time to risk her life to save the innocent—much more the innocent and loved—of these, nothing could deprive her; and these kept up her resolution, although the very interest which her heart took in the success of her endeavour, made her magnify the dangers, and tremble at the thought of failure.
CHAPTER VII.
Which shows what they did with De Blenau in the Bastille, and what he himself did to get out of it.