CHAPTER X.
Showing what it is to be a day after the Fair; with sundry other matters, which the reader cannot fully comprehend without reading them.
HAVING now left the Woodman as unhappy as we could wish, and De Blenau very little better off than he was before; we must proceed with Pauline, and see what we can do for her in the same way.
It has been already said that, in the hurry of her flight, she struck her foot against a stone, and fell. This is an unpleasant accident at all times, and more especially when one is running away; but Pauline suffered it not to interrupt her flight one moment longer than necessary. Finding that some unexpected obstacle had delayed her pursuer as well as herself, she was upon her feet in a moment; and leaving him to arrange his difference with Monsieur Chatpilleur in the best way he could, she flew on towards the Rue Saint Antoine, without stopping to thank her deliverer; and, indeed, without knowing that the good aubergiste, taking a sincere interest in her fate, had, at the hour appointed, waited at the door of his auberge till he saw her enter the Bastille, and then, from some undefined feeling that all would not go right, had watched anxiously to see her safe out again.
The interest not being reciprocal, Pauline had forgot all about the aubergiste; and only seeing that some one obstructed her pursuer, she fled, as I have said before, to the Rue Saint Antoine. She passed Jacques Chatpilleur’s little auberge, without any exchange of sentiment, even with the Sanglier Gourmand, and darted by the boutique of a passementier with the same celerity. The next shop was a marchand de broderie et de dentelle, with a little passage, or cul de sac, between it and the following house, which was occupied by a brocanteur, both which trades requiring daylight in aid of their operations, were at that hour firmly closed with bolt and bar, nor shed one solitary ray to light the passenger along the streets.
Just as she had come opposite to the first of these, Pauline found some one seize her robe behind, and the next minute a large Spanish cloak was thrown over her head, while a gigantic pair of arms embracing her waist, raised her from the ground, and bore her along the street. Naturally conceiving that she was in the power of some of her pursuers from the Bastille, Pauline did not perceive, in the dreadful agitation of the moment, that she was carried in a different direction; and, giving herself up for lost, she yielded to her fate without scream or cry. Whoever it was that held her, carried her like a feather; but after striding along through several turnings, he paused, placed her on the ground, and still holding the cloak over her head with one hand, seemed to open a door with the other. The next moment he raised her again, though in a different position, and carried her up what was evidently a small winding staircase, at the top of which he again opened a door, where, even through the cloak, Pauline could perceive that they had entered some place which contained a powerful light. The moment the door was open, some one exclaimed, “It is her! Oh Jesu! yes, it is her!” in a voice which sounded so like that of her maid Louise that Pauline was more than ever bewildered. The person who had carried her, now placed her in a chair, and taking the additional security of tying the cloak over her head, communicated for a few minutes with the other person in whispers; after which Pauline fancied that some one quitted the room. The covering was then removed from her eyes, and she found herself in a small, meanly-furnished apartment, whose only occupant, besides herself, was a handsome man, of very gigantic proportions, and of that sort of daring aspect which smacked a little of the bravo. He was well dressed in a pourpoint of green lustring, braided with gold lace, slightly tarnished; the haut-de-chausses was of the same, tied down the side with red ribbons; and the cloak which he removed from Pauline’s head seemed to form a part of the dress, though he had deprived himself of it for the moment, to answer the purpose in which we have seen it employed. On the whole, he was a good-looking cavalier, though there was a certain air of lawlessness in his countenance and mien which made Pauline shrink.
“Nay, do not be afraid, Mademoiselle,” said he, with a strong Norman accent: “Point de danger, point de danger;” and he strove to reassure her to the best of his power. He possessed no great eloquence, however, at least of the kind calculated to calm a lady’s fears; and the only thing which tended to give Pauline any relief, was the manifest respect with which he addressed her, standing cap in hand, and reiterating that no harm was intended or could happen to her.
She listened without attending, too much frightened to believe his words to their full extent, and striving to gain from the objects round about some more precise knowledge of her situation. She was evidently not in the Bastille; for the door of the room, instead of offering to her view bolts and bars, of such complicated forms that, like the mousetrap, they would have puzzled the man that made them, was only fastened by a single wooden lock, the key of which, like a dog’s tongue in a hot day, kept lolling out with a negligent inclination towards the ground, very much at ease in its keyhole. The more Pauline gazed around her, the more she was bewildered; and after resolving twenty times to speak to the Norman, and as often failing in courage, she at last produced an articulate sound, which went to inquire where she was. The Norman, who had been walking up and down the room, as if waiting the arrival of some one, stopped in the midst, and making a low inclination, begged to assure Mademoiselle that she was in a place of safety.
The ice being broken, Pauline demanded, “Did not I hear the voice of my maid Louise?”
“No; it was my wife, Mademoiselle,” replied her companion drily; and recommencing his perambulations, the young lady sank back into herself. At length a tap was heard at the door, and the Norman starting forward went on the outside, closing it after him, though not completely; and of the conversation which ensued between him and some other man, Pauline could catch detached sentences, which, though they served but little to elucidate her position to herself, may be of service to the reader.