He did not know that Choiseul had specially commissioned M. de Beautrellis to take this letter, written immediately after the presentation, to its destination, nor the special urgency and secrecy necessary to the business, and with which Choiseul had impressed the servant. Nor would he have had time to think of these things had he known, for he was now catching up with the crowd of Parisians who had returned on foot from Versailles, and his eyes and ears and tongue were fully occupied in avoiding stragglers and warning them out of his way.
At the Octroi of Paris he was stopped by the soldiers for a moment, but he had no difficulty in passing them, despite the fact that he was in full court dress, without spurs, and riding a guard’s horse. He was M. de Rochefort, known to all of them, and this was doubtless one of his many freaks. Then, with the streets of Paris before him, he struck straight for his home in the Rue de Longueville.
Burning as he was to keep his appointment, he knew the vital necessity of money and a change of clothes. Though he had outwitted d’Estouteville, he was still pursued. Choiseul would ransack Paris for him, and failing to find him there—France. He guessed Camus’s part in the business, he guessed that his action in killing Choiseul’s villainous agent had been traced to him, and worse than that, he guessed that the part he had played in disclosing the plan which Camus had put before him to Madame Dubarry was now perfectly well known to Choiseul.
Choiseul would never forgive him for that.
It was absolutely necessary for him to leave France for a time till things blew over, or Choiseul was out of power. Of course in a just age, he might have stood up to the business of the killing, called Javotte as a witness to the facts of the case, and received the thanks of society, not its condemnation; but in the age of the Lettre de Cachet and of Power without mercy, flight was the only safe course, and this child of his age knew his age, and none better.
It was two o’clock when he reached the Rue de la Harpe, adjoining the Rue de Longueville. Here he left the horse tied to a post for anyone to find who might, and taking the letter from his saddle-bag, repaired to his apartments. He let himself in with his private key, and without disturbing his valet changed his clothes, took all the money he could find, some three thousand francs in gold, tore up and burned a few letters and left the house, closing the door gently behind him.
A nice position, truly, for the man who had sworn never to touch politics, alone in the streets of Paris at half-past two in the morning, with only a few thousand francs in his possession and the whole of France at his heels.
But Rochefort, now that he was in the midst of the storm he had always avoided, did not stop to think of the fury of the wind. So far from cursing his folly and his position, he found some satisfaction in it. It seemed to him that he had never lived so vividly before.
It was only a few minutes’ walk from the Rue de Longueville to the Rue St. Dominic, where Mademoiselle Fontrailles lived; one had to go through the Rue de la Harpe, and as he entered that street he saw the horse, which he had left tied to a post, being led away by a man.