"Oho, M. le Duc de Raguse, is this your game?" said Grant, as he tore the letter into the smallest bits, and buried them in a hole. "Let me see if I cannot make a Highland head worth a pair of French heels."
Arrived at Bayonne, Lieutenant Armand presented him to the governor and bade him adieu. Then Grant confidently requested, in the usual way, to be furnished with a passport for Verdun, the greatest military prison in France. This the governor at once granted him, little suspecting that he meant to commence an escape the moment he left the garrison. Aware that, guarded as all the avenues from Bayonne and the Pyrenean passes were by French troops of every kind, flight towards Spain was impossible, he resolved to make the attempt in the opposite, and consequently less to be suspected, direction. The moment he left the governor's quarters, Grant quietly put the passport in the fire, and repairing to the suburb of St. Esprit, which, from time immemorial has been the quarter of the Portuguese Jews, he sold his silver epaulettes and richly-laced Highland uniform, to a dealer in old garments, and received in lieu the plain fragged surtout, forage cap, and sabre of a French staff-officer; he stuck the cross of the Legion of Honour at his button-hole, and after promenading along the superb quay, after repairing boldly to the "Eagle of France," an hotel in the Place de Grammont, he ordered an omelette and a bottle of vin ordinaire with all the air of a Garde Imperiale and sat down to dinner.
Inquiring of the waiter "if there were any officers in the house about to proceed to Paris?" he was told that "M. le General Souham was about to leave that very night." Grant procured a card, and writing thereon Captain O'Reilly, Imperial Service, sent it up, and was at once introduced to old Souham, who was just about to start, and was in the act of buckling on his sabre.
"Captain O'Reilly," said he, frowning at the name, and glancing round for a French Army List, but fortunately none was at hand.
"Of what regiment?"
"Lacy's disbanded battalion of the Irish Brigade."
"Ah! And in what can I serve you, monsieur?"
"Allowing me to join your party about to proceed to Paris."
"You do me infinite honour, M. O'Reilly."
"Thanks, general."