I did not, of course, wait to hear any more of that abominable talk.  I sped home as fast as my old legs would carry me.  That self-same evening, as soon as it was dark, Mme. la Marquise, carrying M. le Vicomte in her arms and I carrying a pack with a few necessaries on my back, left the ancestral home of the Mortaines never to return to it again:  for within an hour of our flight a detachment of the revolutionary army made a descent upon the chateau; they ransacked it from attic to cellar, and finding nothing there to satisfy their lust of hate, they burned the stately mansion down to the ground.

We were obliged to take refuge in Lyons, at any rate for a time.  Great as was the danger inside the city, it was infinitely greater on the high roads, unless we could arrange for some vehicle to take us a considerable part of the way to the frontier, and above all for some sort of passports—­forged or otherwise—­to enable us to pass the various toll-gates on the road, where vigilance was very strict.  So we wandered through the ruined and deserted streets of the city in search of shelter, but found every charred and derelict house full of miserable tramps and destitutes like ourselves.  Half dead with fatigue, Mme. la Marquise was at last obliged to take refuge in one of these houses which was situated in the Rue des Pipots.  Every room was full to overflowing with a miserable wreckage of humanity thrown hither by the tide of anarchy and of bloodshed.  But at the top of the house we found an attic.  It was empty save for a couple of chairs, a table and a broken-down bedstead on which were a ragged mattress and pillow.

Here, monsieur, we spent over three weeks, at the end of which time M. le Vicomte fell ill, and then there followed days, monsieur, through which I would not like my worst enemy to pass.

Mme. la Marquise had only been able to carry away in her flight what ready money she happened to have in the house at the time.  Securities, property, money belonging to aristocrats had been ruthlessly confiscated by the revolutionary government in Lyons.  Our scanty resources rapidly became exhausted, and what was left had to be kept for milk and delicacies for M. le Vicomte.  I tramped through the streets in search of a doctor, but most of them had been arrested on some paltry charge or other of rebellion, whilst others had fled from the city.  There was only that infamous Laporte—­a vastly clever doctor, I knew-but as soon take a lamb to a hungry lion as the Vicomte de Mortaine to that bloodthirsty cut-throat.

Then one day our last franc went and we had nothing left.  Mme. la Marquise had not touched food for two days.  I had stood at the corner of the street, begging all the day until I was driven off by the gendarmes.  I had only obtained three sous from the passers-by.  I bought some milk and took it home for M. le Vicomte.  The following morning when I entered the larger attic I found that Mme. la Marquise had fainted from inanition.