The old count without a word slipped away, entered his carriage, and had himself driven to the Morainville hotel, where there was that evening a grand ball. Tarrying in the ante-chamber, he had my mother called. She came with alacrity, and when she knew the object of the count's visit she sent me to get a great white burnoose, enveloped me in it, and putting my hand into the count's said to me:
"You have but to show yourself to secure the carriage." But the count promised to bring me back himself.
Oh, how glad my dear Madelaine was to see me! With what joy she kissed me! But she has recounted this little scene to you, as you, Françoise, have told me.
A month after the departure of the De la Houssayes, my wedding was celebrated at Notre Dame. It was a grand occasion. The king was present with all the court. As my husband was in the king's service, the queen wished me to become one of her ladies of honor.
Directly after my marriage I had Bastien come to me. I made him my confidential servant. He rode behind my carriage, waited upon me at table, and, in short, was my man of all work.
I was married the 16th of March, 1789, at the age of sixteen. Already the rumbling murmurs of the Revolution were making themselves heard like distant thunder. On the 13th of July the Bastille was taken and the head of the governor De Launay [was] carried through the streets.[25] My mother was frightened and proposed to leave the country. She came to find me and implored me to go with her to England, and asked Abner to accompany us. My husband refused with indignation, declaring that his place was near his king.
"And mine near my husband," said I, throwing my arms around Abner's neck.
My father, like my husband, had refused positively to leave the king, and it was decided that mamma should go alone. She began by visiting the shops, and bought stuffs, ribbons, and laces. It was I who helped her pack her trunks, which she sent in advance to Morainville. She did not dare go to get her diamonds, which were locked up in the Bank of France; that would excite suspicion, and she had to content herself with such jewelry as she had at her residence. She left in a coach with my father, saying as she embraced me that her absence would be brief, for it would be easy enough to crush the vile mob. She went down to Morainville, and there, thanks to the devotion of Guillaume Carpentier and of his sons, she was carried to England in a contrabandist vessel. As she was accustomed to luxury, she put into her trunks the plate of the château and also several valuable pictures. My father had given her sixty thousand francs and charged her to be economical.
Soon I found myself in the midst of terrible scenes that I have not the courage, my dear girls, to recount. The memory of them makes me even to-day tremble and turn pale. I will only tell you that one evening a furious populace entered our palace. I saw my husband dragged far from me by those wretches, and just as two of the monsters were about to seize me Bastien took me into his arms, and holding me tightly against his bosom leaped from a window and took to flight with all his speed.
Happy for us that it was night and that the monsters were busy pillaging the house. They did not pursue us at all, and my faithful Bastien took me to the home of his cousin Claudine Leroy. She was a worker in lace, whom, with my consent, he was to have married within the next fortnight. I had lost consciousness, but Claudine and Bastien cared for me so well that they brought me back to life, and I came to myself to learn that my father and my husband had been arrested and conveyed to the Conciergerie.