When it was packed and locked, it was so light that I could
easily carry it by its handle on top. I put my long black military
cape, which I could carry over my shoulder, on it, with hat and veil and
gloves. Then I went down stairs and shortened the skirt of my best
walking-suit, an/d hung it and its jacket handy. I was ready to
fly,--if I had to,--and in case of that emergency nothing to do for
myself.
I had got all this done systematically when my little French friend--I
call her Mile. Henriette now--came to the door to say that she simply
"could not stand another day of it." She had put, she said, all the
ready money they had inside her corset, and a little box which contained
all her dead father's decorations also, and she was ready to go. She
took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things,--his cross of
the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign
orders,--her father, it seems, was an officer in the army, a great
friend of the Orleans family, and grandson of an officer of Louis XVI's
Imperial Guard. She begged me to join them in an effort to escape to
the south. I told her frankly that it seemed to me impossible, and I
felt it safer to wait until the English officers at Coutevroult notified
us that it was necessary.
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