CHAPTER VII
AT THE DRYAD FOUNTAIN
“We shall need disguises,” said Richelieu, as I returned his clasp with equal warmth. “Luckily, I have already had many occasions for using them, and so have a large assortment. Come with me,” and he led the way into an adjoining room, whose walls were covered with costumes. There were uniforms of many kinds, cavaliers’ suits of a dozen fashions and even the more sober garb of artisans and masons. At one end of the room was a collection of arms,—swords, poniards, pistols, arquebuses, and even shirts of mail. “Choose,” said Richelieu, with a sweep of his hand. “As for me, I shall take this suit of gray. I am known to abhor gray, and moreover it will make me invisible in the darkness.”
The reason seemed to me a good one, and I selected a suit of similar shade but much less elaborate design.
“Oh, I had near forgot!” I exclaimed, returning, as I was leaving the room. “Will you instruct one of your people to prepare against our return a small box of cement?”
“Cement?” asked Richelieu, looking at me in astonishment.
“Yes; we shall need it,” I answered.
“Very well, my friend,” he said, and without waiting to explain the use I had for it, I hurried to my apartment, where I changed my clothes, rolling my others into a bundle, which I carried down with me to Richelieu’s room five minutes later. I found him busily engaged in curling his moustache and arranging his hair.
“We have no time to lose, monsieur,” I protested.
“What the devil would you have, de Brancas?” and Richelieu threw around his neck a collar which I knew to be that of the Holy Ghost, with its eight-pointed cross, each point crowned by a ball. “A gentleman cannot go to a rendezvous looking like a bourgeois. I have ordered two horses, and I shall be ready to mount by the time they are at the door. You would better select a sword, a poniard, and a pistol, for you may have need of them before the night is over.”
I did as he suggested, and in a few minutes we were in the saddle. We crossed the river at a gallop, and without drawing rein plunged into a maze of narrow streets where I should have been utterly lost, but where Richelieu seemed quite at home. I expected every moment that my horse would break his leg in some hole in the pavement, but my companion did not slacken speed, and I pressed on behind him. I remembered that the rendezvous was in the Palais Royal gardens, and reflected without enthusiasm that this was walking into the lion’s jaws with a vengeance, but I kept my thoughts to myself, and in a moment we turned sharply to the left along a narrow street and came out at the end of a long avenue of chestnuts.
“This is the place,” said Richelieu, and we walked our horses into the shadow of the trees and dismounted. “We will tie our horses here. The fountain is not far distant, and we shall have no difficulty in regaining them should we be surprised. Ah! ’tis the hour,” he added, as ten o’clock sounded from St. Honoré. “In two hours we must be back in the Bastille. ’Tis well that the night is cold,” he continued, leading the way rapidly along the avenue, “else our task would have been more difficult, for this is a great place of resort in fine weather.”
Some distance away, through the leafless branches of the trees, I could see the lights of the Palais Royal gleaming. The moon had risen and shed a cold radiance over the gardens, beautiful even under December’s withering hand. Only under the broad branches of the chestnuts was there obscurity, and we kept carefully in the shadow.
“There is the fountain,” said Richelieu at the end of a moment, “but I see no one. Can it be that she has disappointed me? Perhaps she heard I had been imprisoned and thought I could not come. Ah, there is some one standing in the shadow. It must be she!” and he ran quickly forward.
I thought it much more likely to be a squad of the regent’s guards, but kept close at his elbow, determined to have a hand in whatever might befall. A moment later I saw two muffled figures standing near the fountain, and to these Richelieu ran.
“Ah, Charlotte!” he cried, falling on his knee before one of them, the instinct of his heart telling him which was the princess. “I protest to you that only the most cruel chance made us a moment late. I shall never cease to reproach myself for having kept you waiting.”
“And is it indeed you, M. le Duc?” asked a low voice, and I saw that Richelieu had gained possession of a hand and was covering it with kisses. “But I heard this evening that my father had sent you to the Bastille.”
“So he did,” said Richelieu, “but did you believe any prison in France strong enough to keep me from your side, Charlotte?”
“You escaped, then? But how?”
“For that we have to thank my friend here,” and Richelieu drew me forward. “Mademoiselle, allow me to present M. Jean de Brancas, a gentleman whom I have learned to trust as I would myself.”
“And who hopes some day to be of service to Mlle. de Valois,” I added, bowing over the hand which she graciously gave me.
“You have already been of service to me, monsieur,” she said, kindly, “in assisting M. de Richelieu to escape from prison. But I also have a companion. Come here, Louise. Gentlemen, this is my very dear friend Mlle. Louise Dacour, my trust in whom, I think, is fully attested by her being here to-night.”
We both bowed to her, and I caught a glimpse of laughing eyes and an adorable mouth, which made my heart leap.
“Let us go,” said Richelieu, offering his arm to the princess.
“But where?” she asked.
“I care not so we be together,” and as they moved away down the avenue I followed with Mlle. Dacour. The light touch of her hand on my arm filled me with an emotion which I tried in vain to analyze.
“Oh, come, M. de Brancas,” she said after a moment, in what seemed to me the sweetest voice in the world. “It is plainly to be seen that you have never been in love.”
“Never until this moment, mademoiselle, I swear to you,” I answered. “But how did you guess it?”
“No, no, you are not in love even now, I assure you, monsieur,” she laughed, “else you would not follow mademoiselle and the duke so closely.”
“It is true,” I said; “I was thoughtless,” and we walked more slowly until the two in front of us could be scarcely discerned.
“Now tell me,” said my companion, with a little gesture of command, “how did you leave the Bastille, monsieur?”
“We opened seven doors, lowered three drawbridges, and came out very easily, mademoiselle,” I answered.
“You shall not evade me,” she cried. “Tell me about it. I have already heard something of your exploits since you came to Paris, M. de Brancas,” she added, “and am anxious to hear more.”
I trembled with joy at the thought that I had, perhaps, already awakened some interest in the heart of this beautiful creature, and rapidly outlined our method of escape.
“It was magnificent!” she cried, as I finished. “Those are the kind of deeds I love to hear about,” and her sparkling eyes looked into mine. I felt that I was losing my self-control, and my heart was beating wildly.
“I did not guess the happiness that awaited me here,” I said, “nor have I ever dreamed of loveliness such as yours, mademoiselle.”
“It is evident that you have seen little of Paris, monsieur,” she retorted, glancing at me and smiling archly.
“I wish to see no more,” I cried. “Ah, mademoiselle, believe me, I may be but a simple and uncultured boor, but I mean to win for myself a place in your heart if it be possible.”
She glanced at me again, I dared think not unkindly, and I felt her hand fluttering on my arm.
“I deem you neither simple nor uncultured, M. de Brancas,” she said, after a moment. “Indeed, the stories I have heard of you have given me quite the contrary opinion. But pray where have you seen my face, that you have been able to form such an exalted opinion of it?” and she smiled at me, her eyes dancing with mischief.
“I caught but a glimpse of it by the fountain there, but a glimpse was quite enough,” I answered, stoutly. “Besides, I make bold to hope that by accident your cloak may yet slip down and reveal more of it.”
I was trembling at my own temerity.
“Ah, I like your spirit, monsieur,” she answered, gayly. “Have it as you will, then,” and at the word her cloak fell about her shoulders. Her dazzling eyes met mine, her mouth was curving in the most provoking of smiles. Some wizardry drew me towards her.
“No, no!” she said, divining my thought and holding up a little hand to keep me at a distance. “This is favor enough for one evening,” but I caught her hand and kissed it before she could draw it away. “Come, we have forgot completely our companions. We must join them.”
I had, indeed, forgotten Richelieu, and I remembered with a start that our time of freedom must be getting short. I peered anxiously through the darkness, but could see no sign of him.
“Perhaps they are at the fountain,” said Mlle. Dacour, and we hastened thither, but to no purpose. I was about to call aloud, when I heard a sudden shout and clash of arms from the direction of the Palais Royal.
“They have found him!” I cried. “He never thinks of prudence. Come, mademoiselle, let me see you to a place of safety. I must join him.”
“Oh, do not delay!” she implored. “I am perfectly safe, monsieur. Our apartments are but a step from here.”
“Impossible! I cannot leave you alone. Come,” I repeated.
She wrung her hands together as she looked at me.
“M. de Brancas, you said to me just now that you would have me think kindly of you.”
“With all my heart.”
“Would you have me believe it?”
“I would do anything to prove it,” I cried.
“Then go.” I looked into her eyes, which were flaming with excitement, caught her hand and kissed it. It nestled in mine for a moment.
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” I said, and was off under the trees. The sounds grew louder as I approached, and it was evident that the whole palace had been aroused. Windows were thrown open, soldiers were pouring out of a room in the left wing, and near the edge of the garden five or six men had a single man surrounded. At a glance I saw the latter to be Richelieu. He had placed his back against a tree and was fencing coolly. Even as I ran I saw one of his assailants totter and fall. I kept on without a sound, reached the group, and ran a man through before they perceived they were attacked in the rear. They gave back a pace.
“Come, monsieur,” I cried, “there will be others here in a moment.”
“Ah, gentlemen,” said Richelieu, saluting with his sword in careless disregard of the thrusts aimed at him, “believe me, were there only yourselves we should not think of leaving until our argument had reached a conclusion, but as it is, I regret that we must go.” And then he added to me, in a lower tone, “Retreat towards the horses. If we can reach them we are safe.”
I heard hurrying feet from the direction of the palace and did not doubt that we should be overwhelmed unless we reached the horses quickly. Richelieu had disabled another of our opponents, so that there were only three, and these drew off and followed us more warily. I saw others hastening towards us under the trees, but we had not far to go, and soon reached the horses.
“Charge them!” I cried, for they were just out of sword reach.
Our nearest pursuers retreated before us, and in the instant of time that followed we threw ourselves into the saddle. As we dashed out into the open an overhanging branch caught my companion’s hat and tore it from his head, leaving his face fully exposed in the bright moonlight.
“’Tis Richelieu!” cried one of the men. With an oath, the duke snatched a pistol from the holster and fired. The man threw his arms above his head and fell like a log. In a flash we were out of the avenue and in the city.
There was need of haste, for once the regent should learn that Richelieu had been in the garden, he would lose no time in getting to the Bastille to find out the truth. So we put spurs to our horses and dashed on like the wind, raising a veritable cannonade of echoes. In ten minutes we were at the Hotel de Richelieu, and throwing our bridles to a lacquey, rushed up the stairs, tore off our masquerades, and drew on our old suits, and over them the suits of the two sentries.
“One moment,” I said, as Richelieu started out of the room; “we shall need money, monsieur. Have you any?”
“You are right,” cried the duke, and he ran to a secretary, opened it, and filled his pockets with pistoles. “Now we are ready. Come.”
“The cement?” I asked. “Where is it?”
“Here,” and Richelieu handed me a small package from the table. I placed it carefully in a pocket of my own suit.
“All right,” I cried, and we descended the stairs in three bounds. Richelieu led the way along the corridor down which Jacques had taken his prisoner two hours before. He paused before a door and tried to open it. It was locked on the inside.
“Who is there?” cried a voice.
“It is I, Richelieu; open quickly.” The bolt was thrown and the door opened. Inside were Jacques and two other men, while Maison-Rouge was pacing nervously up and down.
“Ah, messieurs,” he cried, “I thought you were never coming! It is near midnight.”
“We have still ten minutes,” said Richelieu, coolly, “but there is no time to lose. Come,” and he led the way towards the door. We picked up the muskets as we passed through the hall, and as the door opened we fell a pace behind Maison-Rouge, and resuming our character of simple sentries, followed him to the carriage.
“To the Bastille!” cried the governor, and in a moment we were thundering along the street.
“M. de Maison-Rouge,” said Richelieu, in a low voice, “do not be astonished if you receive an early visit from the regent.”
“From the regent? And why so?”
“My friend and I had the misfortune to encounter some of the regent’s guards this evening,” said the duke, calmly, “and I fear that I was recognized.”
“The devil!” exclaimed Maison-Rouge. “Then all is lost.”
“Not at all,” I said, quickly. “At twelve o’clock we will be sent to the roof to go on guard. We will regain our rooms and remove all traces of our flight. You, monsieur, will go directly to bed, and should you be aroused, must consume as much time as possible in putting on your clothes. Even if the regent is right at our heels, that will give us at least ten minutes, and ten minutes is more than we shall need. I think when you show him that you have us safe, he will have little more to say.”
“I trust so, at least,” murmured Maison-Rouge, “though I confess I do not understand how you will accomplish all this. Until to-night I had thought the Bastille impregnable, but you seem to have found some miraculous way of leaving your cells and entering them again.”
I smiled as I encountered his dazed glance, but I judged it best to say nothing more. A moment later we reached the prison, the gates of which opened to the governor’s coach on the instant. There was a short delay at the first drawbridge, where the sentry again peered into the coach to see that all was right. Then we were in the court, the carriage stopped and we sprang out, just as midnight pealed from the tower.
“Lieutenant Perrault,” said the governor to a man who hastened towards us and saluted, “let Bastien and Drouet here take the next watch on the parapet. To-morrow let them have a holiday to repay for this double duty.”
“Very good, monsieur,” answered the lieutenant.
“You have nothing to report?” asked the governor, sharply.
“Nothing, monsieur. Everything has gone as usual.” I breathed a sigh of relief. The prisoners in the chimneys had not, then, been discovered.
“That is all, lieutenant,” said the governor. “I am going to bed immediately. Awake me if there is need.”
We saluted and followed Perrault. I blessed the impenetrable darkness of the narrow court which rendered it impossible to recognize friend or foe, and we walked in silence across the drawbridge and up the winding staircase.
“Montjoy,” cried Perrault, opening the door which led to the roof.
“St. Denis,” two voices answered.
“Hurry up,” cried Perrault. “It’s devilishly cold up here.”
The two sentries appeared and descended the stairs. We emerged upon the roof.
“You have my sympathy, comrades,” said Perrault, and closed the door.
There was not a moment to lose. I ran to the nearest chimney, clambered to the top and felt inside. I found the prisoner’s head in an instant. Catching him by the shoulders, I dragged him to the top and lowered him to Richelieu, who awaited him below. The other prisoner was soon standing beside him.
“Messieurs,” I said to them, “we have returned, as you see, and I wish you to listen to me very carefully. There remains only one thing for us to do. That is to silence you.” I saw them shudder. “It is necessary only to decide how you are to be silenced. In short, you must either engage to keep silence or we shall be obliged to silence you once and for all. Which do you prefer, a hundred pistoles each or a blow of the poniard and a drop over the parapet?” I loosened their gags as I spoke.
“Monsieur,” said one of them, “a fool could choose. I will take the pistoles, will not you, Bastien?”
“I, also,” answered his comrade, readily, “provided no one else knows of your escape, messieurs?”
“No one knows of it. Every one thought we were you. At the end of the watch you will be relieved; you will go down. To-morrow you will have a holiday in which to spend your pistoles. If any one interrogates you, swear that no one passed this way. You will be quite safe.”
“But you, messieurs?” asked Bastien.
“We return to our cells, and everything is as it was before. Do you agree?”
“We agree,” they cried with one voice, though by the way they looked at us it was plain they thought us fools to have returned.
“Very good. Now we will unbind you, and you will go to the other side of the parapet. We will take off your uniforms and leave them here with your muskets. After we have descended, you will come and loosen the rope which you will find secured here. Let it fall, as we wish to keep it. You understand?”
“Yes, yes,” they cried. Richelieu counted out two hundred pistoles and placed them by the muskets.
“Here is the money,” he said.
I untied the ropes and the two men retreated to the other side of the roof. In a moment I had knotted the pieces of rope together, made one end secure and dropped the other over.
“I will go first,” I said. “The knots may slip,” and before the duke could protest I was over the battlement. I let myself down hand over hand until I was opposite my window, but I found the bars beyond my reach. By a supreme effort I touched the wall with my foot and pushed myself outward, and as I swung in I grasped one of the bars and pulled myself to the window-ledge. I tied the end of the rope to the bars, so that the duke could reach them without difficulty, and then slipped into the cell. He followed a moment later, and the rope was loosened from above and fell. I drew it in.
“You must get back to your cell at once,” I said, and raised the slab in the floor, slid the one below it back and crawled aside for him to pass.
“But the window?” he asked. “If they find a bar out they will know everything.”
“Leave that to me,” I answered; “I will replace it.”
The duke wrung my hand and dropped through the opening into the cell below. I replaced the slabs, concealing the rope, for which we might have further need. Then I ran to the window and forced the bar back into place. I opened the box of cement, moistened it with water from my can, and rapidly filled up the places where the old cement had been broken away, rubbing my fingers over it until convinced that it was quite smooth. It was drying rapidly and would soon set. I raised the slab again and placed the box with the remainder of the cement beneath it. I rubbed my hands on the floor and then over the new cement, until I could see by the moonlight which filtered through the bars that it was dirty as the adamant which surrounded it. Satisfied that it could not be detected without close examination, I threw myself exhausted upon the bench.
Scarcely had I done so when I heard a noise in the cell below. In an instant I was at the loosened slab.
“What is it now?” I heard Richelieu ask, in a sleepy voice, of some one who had evidently entered his cell. “Upon my word,” he continued, “’tis the regent! To what do I owe the honor of this visit, monsieur?”
“You see ’tis as I told Your Highness,” cried the voice of Maison-Rouge. “The prisoners are safe, and assuredly will not leave their cells until I get an order permitting them to do so.”
“You are playing with me, gentlemen!” thundered the regent, in a terrible voice. “Richelieu was recognized not half an hour since in the gardens of the Palais Royal.”
“Some mistake, I do not doubt,” said Richelieu, carelessly.
“A mistake, pardieu! Perhaps it was also a mistake that I met my daughter returning to her apartment? Do you deny that it was with you she had a rendezvous?”
“Oh, M. le Regent, I deny nothing,” cried Richelieu, airily. “Why should I? It is so manifestly absurd. You say I was at the Palais Royal a few minutes since. You rush here with all speed. You find me asleep in my cell. All the doors are bolted, all the drawbridges raised, every sentry at his post. I ask you, monsieur, if the Bastille is so easily left and entered? Besides, monsieur could easily interrogate the sentries.”
The regent caught at the suggestion.
“Maison-Rouge,” he said, “call that sentry in the corridor.”
The man was called.
“Has any one passed since you have been on duty?” asked the regent.
“No one but yourselves, monsieur.”
“You are certain?”
“Perfectly certain, monsieur?”
“How long have you been on duty?”
“Over three hours, monsieur.”
Here was a facer for the regent.
“Come,” I heard him exclaim, suddenly, “perhaps the other has not returned. I do not doubt that it was he who was with Richelieu.”
I was back on my bench in an instant. The door opened, and I lifted my head as from a heavy sleep. I saw Maison-Rouge on the threshold carrying a lantern, and back of him the regent. I was on my feet with a bound.
“It appears to me that your prisoners sleep with suspicious soundness, Maison-Rouge,” said the regent, pushing past him into the room. He glanced about it keenly, went to the window and shook the bars, but found nothing suspicious.
“How does it happen,” he asked, “that the window here has only single bars, while those of the floors below have double ones?”
“Good God! what would you have, monsieur?” cried Maison-Rouge. “Suppose there were no bars at all, still to escape the prisoner has a drop of ninety feet into a court-yard full of sentries, with a wall forty feet high to pass before he is free. A man would need wings to escape from here, monsieur.”
“I am beginning to think so myself,” muttered the regent. And then, turning sharply, “So you have been here all evening, Monsieur—I forget your name?”
“Jean de Brancas,” I said, bowing.
“So you have been here all evening, have you, M. de Brancas?”
“It seems to me a useless question,” I answered. “Monsieur forgets that I have been in the Bastille only since yesterday afternoon.”
“What then?”
“To consider monsieur’s question seriously would mean that he deemed it possible for a man, in the short space of six or eight hours, not only to force his way out of this formidable prison, but to force his way in again, and to leave no trace of his passage in either direction.”
“You are right,” and the regent bit his lips. “Come, Maison-Rouge,” he added, “let us go. Your prisoners are doubtless anxious to resume their slumber,” and he smiled into my eyes and turned away.
They left the cell, and I heard their footsteps die away down the corridor. A moment later Richelieu signalled me.
“They discovered nothing?” he asked, as I answered the signal.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“But how did you replace the bar in the window?”
“That was what the cement was for.”
“De Brancas, you are a genius!” exclaimed Richelieu. “But we both need sleep. Good-night, my friend.”
“Good-night,” I answered, and lay down again upon the bench. My eyes closed in sheer exhaustion despite the cold, and I dreamed that I was again walking in the Palais Royal gardens with Louise Dacour at my side and her warm little hand in mine.