An Enemy to the King / From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de la Tournoire

by Robert Neilson Stephens

"How far will I be made to walk by these meddlesome archers?" I asked myself, annoyed at this interruption, and considering it an incident of ill omen. I looked ahead, to see whither my walking would lead me.

I saw another body of gendarmes, likewise lighted by torches, just emerging from a street's end, some distance in front of me. They turned and came towards me.

I stopped, feeling for an instant as if all my blood, all power of motion, had left me. "Great God!" I thought, "I am caught between two rows of teeth."

I must wait no longer to seek the boat. Would God grant that it might be near, that I might reach it before either troop should see me?

I ran to the edge of the quay and looked over into the river. Of all the boats that lay at rest there, not one in sight was unmoored, not one contained a boatman!

The two bodies of men were approaching each other. In a few seconds the two areas of torchlight would merge together. On one side were walls, frowning and impenetrable; on the other was the river.

I took off my sword and dagger, on account of their weight, and dropped them with their sheathes into the river. I started to undo the fastening of my mantle, but the knot held; my fingers became clumsy, and time pressed. So I gave up that attempt, threw away my hat, let myself over the edge of the quay, and slid quietly into the icy water. I immediately dived, and presently came to the surface at some distance from the shore. I then swam for the middle of the river. God knows what powers within me awoke to my necessity. I endured the cold, and found strength to swim in spite of the clothes that impeded my movements and added immensely to my weight.

Without looking back, I could tell, presently, from the talking on the quay that the two detachments of gendarmes had met and were standing still. Had either one descried me, there would have been loud or hurried words, but there were none. After a while, during which I continued to swim, the voices ceased, and I looked back. Two torches remained on the quay. The others were moving away, along the river. I then made a guess, which afterward was confirmed as truth. The boy sent by Marguerite had been discovered in his boat, had been taken to the guard-house, and had given such answers as led to the suspicion that he was waiting to aid the flight of some one. The captain of the Guard, thinking so to catch the person for whom the boatman waited, had sent two bodies of men out, one to occupy the spot near which the boy had been found, the other to patrol the river bank in search of questionable persons. I had arrived on the quay in the interval between the boy's capture and the arrival of the guards.

My first intention was to reach the left bank and proceed to the Abbey of St. Genevieve. But it occurred to me that, although a boat could not pass down the river, out of Paris, at night, because of the chain stretched across the river from the Tour du Coin to the Tour de Nesle, yet a swimmer might pass under or over that chain and then make, through the faubourg outside the walls, for the open country. Neither Marguerite nor I had thought of this way of leaving Paris, because of the seeming impossibility of a man's surviving a swim through the icy Seine, and a flight in wet clothes through the February night. Moreover, there was the necessity of leaving my sword behind, and the danger of being seen by the men on guard at the towers on either side of the river. But now that necessity had driven me into the river, I chose this shorter route to freedom, and swam with the current of the Seine. In front of me lay a dark mass upon the water in the middle of the river. This was the barge moored there to support the chain which stretched, from either side, across the surface of the water, up the bank and to the Tour de Nesle on the left side, and to the Tour du Coin on the right. I might pass either to the right or to the left of this barge. Naturally, I chose to avoid the side nearest the bank from which I had just fled, and to take the left side, which lay in the shadow of the frowning Tour de Nesle.

By swimming close to the left bank of the river, I might pass the boundary without diving under the chain, for the chain ascended obliquely from the water to the tower, leaving a small part of the river's surface entirely free. But this part was at the very foot of the tower, and if I tried passage there I should probably attract the attention of the guard. I was just looking ahead, to choose a spot midway between the barge and the left bank, when suddenly the blackness went from the face of things, a pale yellow light took its place, and I knew that the moon had come from behind the clouds. A moment later, I heard a cry from the right bank of the river, and knew that I was discovered. The shout came from the soldiers whom I had so narrowly eluded.