Fiction > Serialisations > London, 1896-1897 - St. Ives > Volume 13

THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XXXV.
IN PARIS : ALAIN PLAYS HIS LAST CARD.
ON March ioth, at sunset, the Shawmut passed the Pointe de Grave fort
and entered the mouth of the Gironde, and at eleven o'clock next
morning dropped anchor a little below Blaye, under the guns of the
Regains, 74. We were just in time, a British fleet being daily expected there, to
co-operate with the Due d'Angouleme and Count Lynch, who was then preparing
to pull the tricolour from his shoulder and betray Bordeaux to Beresford, or, if
you prefer it, to the Bourbon. News of his purpose had already travelled down
to Blaye ; and therefore no sooner were my feet once more on the soil of my
beloved France than I turned them towards Libourne, or rather, Fronsac ; and,
the morning after my arrival there, started for the capital.
But so desperately were the joints of travel dislocated (the war having deplenished
the country alike of cattle and able-bodied drivers), and so frequent were the
breakdowns by the way, that I might as expeditiously have trudged it. It cost
me fifteen good days to reach Orleans ; and at Etampes (which I reached on the
morning of the 30th) the driver of the tottering diligence flatly declined to proceed.
The Cossacks and Prussians were at the gates of Paris. " Last night we could
see the fires of their bivouacs. If Monsieur listens he can hear the firing." The
Empress had fled from the Tuileries. " Whither ? " The driver, the aubergiste,
the disinterested crowd, shrugged their shoulders. " To Rambouillet probably. God
knew what was happening, or would happen." The Emperor was at Troyes, or at
Sens, or else as near as Fontainebleau : nobody knew for certain which. But the
fugitives from Paris had been pouring in for days ; and not a cart or four-footed
beast was to be hired for love or money, though I hunted Etampes for hours.
At length, and at nightfall, I ran against a bow-kneed grey mare, and a cabriolet
de place which, by its label, belonged to Paris ; the pair wandering the street under
Copyright 1897 m the United States of America by A. T. QuUler Couch.
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