“Dear Cousin,” wrote my lady at Knockowen, “I hear there is a chance of getting a letter to you by the messenger who is to carry back Lord Edward’s petition on behalf of the poor Marquis Sillery. Your nephew, Captain Lestrange, told us of his trouble when he was here in the summer, and gave us to understand there was little to be hoped for. If Sillery perish, your position in Paris will be painful indeed. I would fain send you the money you ask for, but Maurice keeps me so low in funds that I cannot even pay for my own clothes. I trust, however, your nephew may bring you some relief, as he spoke of going to Paris this autumn on a secret mission for the English Government. Affairs with us are very bad, and, indeed, Maurice succeeds so ill in winning the confidence of either party, loyalist or rebel, that he talks of sending me and Kit over to you till times are better here. Take the threat for what it is worth, for I should be as sorry as you would, and I hear Paris is a dreadful place to be in now. But you know Maurice. Kit is well, but all our troubles prey on her spirits. I suspect if your nephew were in Paris, she would be easier reconciled to our threatened pilgrimage than I. Between ourselves, my dear cousin, as Maurice now holds all the mortgages for your Irish estates, it would be well to keep in with him, even if the price be a visit from your affectionate cousin,—
“Alice Gorman.”
“P.S.—I forget if you are still in the Quai Necker, but am told Lord Edward’s messenger will know where to deliver this.”
Such was my lady’s letter, and you may guess if it did not set the blood tingling in my veins, and make Paris seem a very different place from what it was an hour before.
I carefully read and re-read the letter till I had it by heart, and then as carefully tore it into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the wind. The one sentence referring to Captain Lestrange’s visit as an agent for the British Government was (little as I yet knew of the state of affairs in Paris) enough to hurry the innocent folk to whom it was addressed to the guillotine. What if my little lady and her mother were by this time in this terrible city and liable to the same fate?
I spent that afternoon wandering along the river on both banks, seeking for the Quai Necker, but nothing of that name could I find. The names were mostly new, and in honour of some person or place illustrious in the Revolution. At last, in despair, I was giving up the quest, when on an old book-stall I lit upon a plan of Paris dated ten years ago.
The bouquineur, a sour fellow whose trade had evidently suffered in recent months, would by no means allow me to look at it till I had paid the five sous he demanded, which I was glad enough to do. And after a very little study I found the Quai Necker marked down near the cathedral; and having carefully noted its bearings, I carried my map to a stall higher up, where I sold it for eight sous, thus making one of the most profitable bargains I ever struck.
Before dark, and while all Paris was ringing with the news that the twenty-two unfortunate Girondists were to be executed next morning, I found myself standing in a shabby passage beside the river, under the shadow of the great cathedral of Notre Dame.