How we recovered from the confusion I do not know, but Gaspard joined
me at the top of the stairs, bringing with him a page of his own age,
the little Chevalier de Mericour, whom he entreated me to take with
us. All the other boys had relations close at hand; but this child's
mother was dead, and his father and brothers with the army. Being
really a cousin of Harry Merrycourt's, he had always seemed like a
relation, and he was Gaspard's chief friend, so I was very willing to
give him a seat in the carriage, which came from somewhere, and into
which the mattress was squeezed by some means or other. Off we set,
but no woman of any rank would accompany me, for they said I had the
courage of an Amazon to attempt to make my way through the mob that
was howling in the streets.
It certainly was somewhat terrible when we came out into the street
thronged with people carrying lanterns and torches, and tried to make
our way step by step. We had not gone far before a big man, a
butcher I should think, held up a torch to the window, and seeing my
son's long fair hair, shouted, 'The King! the King! Here is the
Queen carrying the King and the Duke of Anjou!'
The whole mob seemed to surge round us, shrieking, screaming, and
yelling; some trying to turn the horses, others insisting that we
should alight. No one heard my assurances that we were no such
personages, that this was Mademoiselle's carriage, and that the Queen
was gone long ago; and, what was more fortunate, their ears did not
catch young Mericour's denunciations of them as vile canaille.
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