“We! friends! Allons donc!”
“Vous vous tutoyez.” [92]
“What does that prove? Do not all these brutes say tu nowadays?”
“Well, but you call yourself friends.”
“That’s true; but I don’t like him any the better for that, the wretch! Ah, I hate him! how I hate him! how I hate him! But there he is coming back, so I shall begin again!” And so he did. [93]
To escape from France was now both difficult and dangerous. The first to emigrate had been the Comte and Comtesse d’Artois and their children, the Prince de Condé, Duc de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien, Mlle. de Condé, Prince de Lambesc, Maréchaux de Broglie et de Castries, Duc de la Vauguyon, Comte de Vaudreuil, and a long string of other great names—Mailly, Bourbon-Busset, d’Aligre, de Mirepoix, all the Polignac and Polastron, the Abbé de Vermont, &c. They left at night under borrowed names. The Queen fainted when she parted from the Duchesse de Polignac, who was carried unconscious to the carriage by the Comte de Vaudreuil. [94]
The grief of the Duchesse de Polignac was aggravated by the recollection of a sinister prophecy which, although at the time it seemed incredible, was apparently being fulfilled in an alarming manner. The circumstances were as follows:—
The Comtesse d’Adhémar, who held a post in the Queen’s household, received one day a note from the Duchesse de Polignac, “Governess of the Children of France,” asking her to go with her to consult a fortune-teller of whom every one was talking. For many persons who declined to believe in God were ready and eager to put confidence in witchcraft, fortune-telling, spiritualism, or any other form of occult proceedings.
Carefully disguising themselves, they set off together—of course, at night—taking only the Duchess’s maid, Mlle. Robert, who, though devoted to her mistress, had been silly enough to persuade her to this folly, and by an old porter belonging to the palace, who knew the way.
Through many little, narrow streets they at last got out into the country, and arrived at the filthy, ruinous cottage where lived the fortune-teller. They gave her each an écu, not wishing by too lavish a payment to betray themselves, and the Comtesse d’Adhémar was the first to place her hand in the dirty, wrinkled one of the old gipsy, who, after telling her that she had had two husbands, and would have no more, added, “You are now in the service of a good mistress, who loves you; but before long she will send you away against her will, but she will no longer be free to do as she chooses.”