‘Madame,’ replied the lady thus addressed, with all the loyalty of eighteenth-century speech, ‘your Highness knows that it is a delight to a subject to serve such a sovereign as our gracious prince; and all that I have done is at my husband’s bidding.’
‘With such subjects, I am sure it will not be long before he regains his throne. Ah, this delightful fire! Do you know, Madame, it is snowing and hailing outside as if it were January!’
If Madame Misset felt some concern at the thought of the impending journey–if not for her own sake, at least for that of her husband, she expressed none, except on her Highness’s account. However, her Highness gaily laughed at hardship and difficulty, and was not at all depressed at having left her mother in the castle-prison. Her only fear was that she should be missed from the castle before she had got clear of Innsbruck. But matters were too well arranged for so speedy a termination of the romance. By two o’clock of the windy spring morning the travelling carriage was ready, the Tyrolese landlord and landlady little suspecting, as they sped their parting guests, that the second lady who entered it in cloak and mask was any other than that sister of the Comtesse de Cernes who had arrived four days before.
‘Oh, my good Papa Wogan!’ exclaimed the latest addition to the party of pilgrims, as they were rolled into the darkness of that wild night, ‘how delighted I am to be free again, and about to join my royal consort! I owe more than I can express to all, but most to you!’ Which she might well say, seeing that it was ‘Papa Wogan’ who had selected her as the bride of this consort to whom her devotion was so great. She chattered brightly away, with the natural vivacity of eighteen in an adventure, rejoicing in her new-found freedom however cold it might be; and the only clouded face in the carriage was that of the Comtesse de Cernes. She was anxious on account of the vivacious little man who had formerly been postillion, and who was now riding far behind the carriage with his tall companion, to keep at bay possible couriers, who might soon be hurrying to the border fortresses with news that a prisoner had escaped the vigilance of General Heister at the Castle of Innsbruck. The two gentlemen in the carriage assured her that no harm would happen to two such dashing cavaliers; but perhaps the comtesse thought that to those who are safe it is easy to talk of safety. Not that any of the party were really safe, but the cheerfulness of the young lady, whose passport was shewn at all the towns as made out for the sister of the Comtesse de Cernes, seemed to preclude the idea of peril to her companions. At Venice the mind of the comtesse was finally set at ease by the reappearance of the outriders, telling a funny unscrupulous sort of story about having fallen in on the road with a courier from Innsbruck, to whom they made themselves very agreeable, and whom they finally left hopelessly tipsy at an inn near Trent.
‘It was very wrong of you, Messieurs,’ said the escaped fugitive, ‘to make him drink so much; you ought to have tied him up somewhere. But I thank you very much for all the dangers you incurred for my sake; and I assure all of you, my good friends, that your king and queen will never forget you.’
There were no telegrams in those days; but before a week was over, all Europe, or rather all political and fashionable Europe, was talking of the escape of the Princess Clementina Sobieski, grand-daughter of the hero who repulsed the hordes of Turkey on the plains before Vienna, from her captivity at the Castle of Innsbruck, where she and her mother had–for political reasons connected with Great Britain–been placed by her cousin, the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany. It was told with indignation at the courts of London and Vienna, with laughter and admiration at those of Rome, Paris, and Madrid, how she had been carried off by a party of dashing Irish people, calling themselves noble Flemish pilgrims; and how she had left a French maid-servant in her place in the castle, and a letter to her mother apologising for her flight. The prime contriver of the adventure, it was said was that Chevalier Wogan who had been in mischief for some time past, and had made his own way with great aplomb out of Newgate.
At Venice, a singular readjustment of the dashing party took place: the vivacious outrider now appearing in the character of Captain Misset, the husband of Madame Misset, hitherto called the Comtesse de Cernes; and the tall outrider in that of Captain O’Toole, both being of the Franco-Irish regiment of Count Dillon, as was also the gallant Major Gaydon, alias the Comte de Cernes. The comtesse’s brother was now no longer related to her, but acknowledged himself to be that Charles Wogan who had really done much for the Chevalier, having fought for him, been taken prisoner for him, escaped for him, chosen his bride, and effected her liberation as cleverly as he had effected his own. In fact the Italian postillion Vezzosi was the only one of this curious group who had acted at all in propriâ personâ.
The 15th of May 1719 was a gala day in Rome, when a long string of coaches and the Prince–whom a large number of British subjects, expressing their loyalty by peculiar signs of approval, considered to be rightful king of Great Britain and Ireland–went out to conduct the fugitive young lady triumphantly into the Eternal City. She now no longer had need to use the passport which franked her as the sister of the Comtesse de Cernes, being openly and joyfully welcomed as the Princess Maria Clementina Sobieski.