My poor dear mother!  I may seem to have spoken unkindly and undutifully about her in the course of these recollections.  She was too French, and I too English, ever to understand one another, but in these last days that we were together she compensated for all that was past.  She could not see a good and brave young life consigned to perpetual imprisonment only for being more upright than his neighbours; she did remember the gratitude she owed even to a creature comme ca, and I even believe she could not coolly see her daughter’s heart broken.  She had not even Margaret to prompt or persuade her, but she showed the letter at once to Eustace, and bade him warn his friend.  Oh, mother, I am thankful that you made me love you at last!

Eustace drove first to the office, and got his passes countersigned by the magistracy for himself and me and our servant, showing a laquais whose height and complexion fairly agreed with those of Clement Darpent.  There was no time to be lost.  In the dusk of an August evening my brother was carried to the corner of the Rue St. Antoine in my mother’s sedan.  He could not walk so far, and he did not wish to attract observation, and he reached the house on foot, cloaked, and with his hat slouched.  He found that Clement had received a note, as he believed from the Coadjutor, who always knew everything, giving the like warning that he would be excluded from the amnesty.  His hopes of serving his country were over, and he felt it so bitterly, and so grieved for it, that he scarcely thought at first of his personal safety.  It was well we had thought for him.

Eustace had brought a suit of our livery under his cloak, and he and poor Madame cut Clement’s hair as short as if he had been a Roundhead.  She had kept plenty of money in the house ever since she had feared for her son, and this they put in a belt round his waist.  Altogether, he came out not at all unlike the laquais Jacques Pierrot, whom he was to personate.  Eustace said the old lady took leave of her son with her stern Jansenist composure, which my tender-hearted Clement could not imitate.  Eustace rejoined the chairmen and came back through the dark streets, while Clement walked at some distance, and contrived to slip in after him.  My mother had in the meantime gone to the Hotel d’Aubepine and fetched poor Meg.

Cecile had just taken the turn, as they say, and it was thought she would live, but Meg could scarcely be spared from her, and seemed at first hardly to understand that our long-talked-of departure was suddenly coming to pass.  It was well that she had so much to occupy her, for there was no one save her son, whom she loved like that brother of ours, and she would not, or could not, realise that she was seeing him for the last time.