She pointed with her free hand to the bedchamber immediately above.
“Your old room up there awaits you,” she remarked kindly. “As soon as you have recovered strength a bit, I have no doubt the old sewing job will be yours too!”
... Jacques-Forget-Not and his men arrived too late at the Prefect’s palace for complete vengeance on the de Vaudreys.
Around the historic Fourteenth of July, there was a pell-mell exodus of aristocrats from the city. A panic-stricken servant brought the Count de Linieres tidings of the people’s victory.
“Fly, monsieur! Fly, madame!” he cried. “The troops are overthrown, the Bastille surrounded, before nightfall the mob will surely attack here and try to kill your excellencies. Fly, I implore you!”
Other messengers confirmed the news, and thus it happened that the erstwhile proud and arrogant Minister of Police who but yesterday had ruled France was reduced to making the most hurried preparations for flight, aided by the distracted Countess.
The latter realized with a pang that the 121 hegira meant farewell, perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louise from this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the Higher Power! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in the distant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him. Pray God Louise might be saved––, yes! and her foster-sister Henrietta, beloved of the Chevalier––Henriette whom her husband had branded by unjust accusation....
The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of the runaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches and trampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed to make their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousands of emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers, awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on French soil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....
That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey––home of the Vaudrey and Linieres family and fortune––was given up to sack and pillage. Enraged that the objects of 122 his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Not ordered a general demolition.