By sea every port and harbour were watched and guarded. If discovered, the jealous military authorities would certainly put me to death without much inquiry, as a spy; the peasantry as an invader; the local magistrates or lords, would be sure to dispose of me as both.
This was a tormenting question which even my kind little nurse Angelique could in no way answer. Indeed, she detailed so many difficulties to be overcome, and so many dangers to be dared, that there seemed a probability of my spending the term of my natural life at the chateau of Bourgneuf, unless Commodore Howe with his fleet, and His Grace of Marlborough with at least ten thousand men, paid again a special visit to Brittany, the chance of which was very slender; and a conversation, a portion of which I was compelled to overhear, between Angelique and her lover Jacquot, served still more to increase my anxiety to be gone.
He had come to announce the return of the countess in a few days, after a certain pilgrimage, in which she was to accompany Père Celestine and a train of devotees to the Hole of the Serpent, and see the silver cross of St. Suliac dipped three times in the lonely cave of La Guivre, a famous religious superstition of the Bretons.
What I overheard took place on the fourth day of my convalescence.
"So you are sulky and in a pet, Monsieur Jacquot?" said the soubrette, pouting, with her hands in the pockets of her little apron.
"Perchance I have reason to be so, Mademoiselle Angelique," replied the other, with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"You think yourself very clever, no doubt!"
"Parbleu! what if I do?"
"I have heard that when at school——"
"Bah! don't talk of our days at school. All clever men are dunces there."