The great point, however, was to enable the Count to make his exit from the prison, and it was at this that the heart of Jerome Riquet failed. His was one of those far-seeing geniuses that never forget, in any situation, to obtain, from the circumstances of the present, any thing which may be, however remotely, advantageous in the future. Upon this principle he had acted in his conference with the King, and without any definite and immediate object but that of obtaining pardon for himself for past offences, he had induced the monarch, we must remember, to give him a document, of which he now proposed to take advantage. By a chemical process, very easily effected, he completely took out the ink in those parts of the document where his own name was written, and then, with slow and minute labour, substituted the name of his master in the place, imitating, even to the slightest stroke, the writing of the King. The date underwent the same change to suit his purpose, so that a complete pardon, in what appeared the undoubted hand of the King himself, was prepared for the Count de Morseiul.
This step having been taken, Riquet contemplated his work with pride, but fear, and the matter remained there for the whole day: but by the next morning he had become habituated to daring; and, resolved to make the document complete, he spent eight hours in forging, underneath, an order, in due form, for the Count's liberation; and the most practised eye could have scarcely found any difference between the lines there written and those of the King himself. In all probability, if Riquet could have obtained a scrap of Louvois' writing he would have added the countersign of the minister, but, as that was not to be had, he again laid the paper by, and was seized with some degree of panic at what he had done.
He had brought up, however, from Poitou, his lord's intendant, and several others of his confidential servants and attendants, promising them, with the utmost conceit and self-confidence, to set the Count at liberty. They now pressed him to fulfil his design, and while he hesitated, with some degree of tremour, the note which the old English officer had conveyed to him was put into his hands, and decided him at once. He entrusted the forged order to a person whom he could fully rely upon to deliver it at the gates of the Bastille, stationed his relays upon the road, and prepared every thing for his master's escape.
Such was the account which he gave to his young lord, as he sat in the château of Angerville, and though he did not exactly express all that he had heard in regard to Clémence de Marly and the Chevalier d'Evran, he told quite enough to renew feelings in the bosom of the Count which he had struggled against long and eagerly.
"Who were the men," demanded the Count, "that followed me on horseback?"
"Both of them, Sir," replied the man, "were persons who would have delayed any pursuit of you at the peril of their own lives. One of them was your own man, Martin, whom you saved from being hung for a spy, by the night attack you made upon the Prince of Orange's quarters. The other, Sir, was poor Paul Virlay, who came up with the intendant of his own accord, with his heart well nigh broken, and with all the courage of despair about him."
"Poor Paul Virlay!" exclaimed the Count--"his heart well nigh broken! Why, what has happened to him, Jerome? I left him in health and in happiness."
"Ay, Sir," replied the man, "but things have changed since then. Two hellish priests--I've a great mind to become a Huguenot myself--got hold of his little girl, and got her to say, or at least swore that she said, she would renounce her father's religion. He was furious; and her mother, who had been ill for some days, grew worse, and took to her bed. The girl said she never had said so; the priests said she had, and brought a witness; and they seized her in her father's own house, and carried her away to a convent. He was out when it happened, and when he came back he found his wife dying and his child gone. The mother died two days after; and Paul, poor fellow, whose brain was quite turned, was away for three days with his large sledgehammer with him, which nobody but himself could wield. Every body said that he was gone to seek after the priests, to dash their brains out with the hammer, but they heard of it, and escaped out of the province; and at the end of three days he came back quite calm and cool, but every body saw that his heart was broken. I saw him at Morseiul, poor fellow, and I have seldom seen so terrible a sight. The mayor, who has turned Catholic, you know, Sir, asked him if he had gone after the priests, to which he said 'No;' but every one thinks that he did."
While Riquet was telling this tale the Count had placed his hands before his eyes, and it was evident that he trembled violently, moved by terrible and strongly conflicting feelings, the fiery struggle of which might well have such an influence on his corporeal frame. He rose from his seat slowly, however, when the man had done, and walked up and down the room more than once with a stern heavy step. At length, turning to Riquet again, he demanded,
"And in what state is the province?"