Then he told me what I had little guessed, that we had been driven round and round, and were really only in the Faubourg St. Medand, in the Priory of the Benedictines, giving title and revenue to the Abbe St. Leu, which had contained no monks ever since the time of the Huguenots.  He could go into Paris and return again before his turn to change guard was likely to come.

Should I send him, or should I thus only lose a protector?  He so far reassured me that he said his comrades were, like himself, resolved not to proceed to extremities with the widow of their captain—­above all in a chapel.  They would take care not to exert all their strength, and if they could, without breach of discipline, they would defend me.

I decided.  I knew not where my sister might be searching, or if she might not be likewise a prisoner; so I directed him first to the house of M. Darpent, who was more likely to know what to do than Sir Francis Ommaney.  Besides, the Rue des Marmousets, where stood Maison Darpent, was not far off.

I heard a great clock strike four, five, six, seven, eight o’clock, and by and by there was a parley.  M. de Lamont opened the door of the chapel, and as I shuddered and kept my arm on my patroness, he implored me to believe that no injury was intended to me—­the queen of his thoughts, or some such nonsense—­I might understand that by the presence of my brother-in-law.  He only besought me not to hurt my precious health, but to leave the cold chapel for a room that had been prepared for me, and where I should find food.

‘No,’ I said; ‘nothing should induce me to leave my protectress.’

At least, then, he conjured me to accept food and wine, if I took it where I was.  I hastily considered the matter.  There was nothing I dreaded so much as being drugged; and yet, on the other hand, the becoming faint for want of nourishment might be equally dangerous, and I had taken nothing that day except a cup of milk before we set out from home; and it was now a matter of time.

I told him, therefore, that I would accept nothing but a piece of bread and some pure water, if it were brought me where I was.

‘Ah, Madame! you insult me by your distrust,’ he cried.

‘I have no reason to trust you,’ I said, with a frigidity that I hoped would take from him all inclination for a nearer connection; but he only smote his forehead as if it had been a drum, and complained of my cruelty and obduracy.  ’Surely I had been nurtured by tigresses,’ he said, quoting the last pastoral comedy he had seen.

He sent M. d’Aubepine to conduct some servant with a tray of various meats and drinks; I took nothing but some bread and water, my brother-in-law trying to argue with me.  This was a mistake on their part, for I was more angry with him than with his friend, in whom there was a certain element of extravagant passion, less contemptible than d’Aubepine’s betrayal of Phillipe de Bellaise’s widow merely