The Englishman had little to tell of his own escape. There were so many more important arrests to be made that the overworked police of Monsieur de Maupas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler whom Colville had easily outwitted.
“And Madame St. Pierre Lawrence?” inquired the Marquis.
“Madame quitted Paris on Tuesday for England under the care of John Turner, who had business in London. He kindly offered to escort her across the Channel.”
“Then she, at all events, is safe,” said the Marquis, with a little wave of the hand indicating his satisfaction. “He is not brilliant, Monsieur Turner—so few English are—but he is solid, I think.”
“I think he is the cleverest man I know,” said Dormer Colville, thoughtfully. And before they had spoken again Loo Barebone returned.
He, like Marie, had grasped at once the serious aspect of the situation, whereas the Marquis succeeded only in reaching it with a superficial touch. He prattled of the political crisis in Paris and bade his friends rest assured that law and order must ultimately prevail. He even seemed to cherish the comforting assurance that Providence must in the end interfere on behalf of a Legitimate Succession. For this old noble was the true son of a father who had believed to the end in that King who talked grandiloquently of the works of Seneca and Tacitus while driving from the Temple to his trial, with the mob hooting and yelling imprecations into the carriage windows.
The Marquis de Gemosac found time to give a polite opinion on John Turner while the streets of Gemosac were being cleared by the cavalry from Saintes, and the Gendarmerie, burning briskly, lighted up a scene of bloodshed.
“We have raised the drawbridge a few feet,” said Barebone; “but the chains are rusted and may easily be broken by a blacksmith. It will serve to delay them a few minutes; but it is not the mob we seek to keep out, and any organised attempt to break in would succeed in half an hour. We must go, of course.”
He turned to Colville, with whom he had met and faced difficulties in the past. Colville might easily have escaped to England with Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, but he had chosen the better part. He had undertaken a long journey through disturbed France only to throw in his lot at the end of it with two pre-condemned men. Loo turned to him as to one who had proved himself capable enough in an emergency, brave in face of danger.
“We cannot stay here,” he said; “the gates will serve to give us an hour’s start, but no more. I suppose there is another way out of the château.”