'Be silent and be wary, for that you are suspected at Paris is but too evident.'
I threw myself upon a fauteuil to unravel and consider the difficulties of my new position, while the Viscount visited the poor victim of all these wars and politics to announce her intended removal to Paris and to the Bastille. Her first emotions were anger and alarm, then grief and shame at the idea of being immured in that atrocious prison; and she burst into a flood of tears.
'I have but my old advice to offer,' said Dundrennan, as he rejoined me; 'marry her, and trust the sequel to Providence and the heels of a good horse.'
'So be if, then, Viscount; I love her too dearly to surrender her again. I have twice lost her, I may say—once I deemed for ever. You alone know this secret, Dundrennan, and must befriend us.'
'You heard De Brissac's mysterious hints about Richelieu and the gossips of Paris.'
'True!' said I, stamping my foot; 'bear with me like a friend—advise me like a brother.'
'My advice is already given—marry and levant from Lutzelstein, leaving De Brissac to return to Paris from a bootless errand. Twenty leagues from Seltz, on the Baden side of the Rhine, my cousin, Marmaduke Maxwell, commands an imperial garrison at Lieben-Zell; I will give you letters to him. Once with him you will be safe, for he will put you and your bride on the way to Flanders, from the coast of which you can easily obtain shipping for Scotland.'
'And if once again I place my foot on the Galloway hills, I may defy alike the Emperor and Duke Charles. I have run enough about the world, and seen enough of bloodshed. Yes, yes,' I added, with a glow of joy, 'I will go home once more to the glen where my forefathers sleep under the shadow of the old village spire.'
While Dundrennan went in search of Father Colville to talk with him on the crisis of our affairs—for as a Scottish peer he had great influence with the priest—I repaired, with an anxious heart, to the presence of Marie Louise.