Conclusion.
There is but little else to record.
History has told us how, shamefaced, tired, dripping, the great,
all-powerful people of Paris quietly slunk back to their homes, even
before the first cock-crow in the villages beyond the gates, acclaimed
the pale streak of dawn.
But long before that, even before the church bells of the great city had
tolled the midnight hour, Sir Percy Blakeney and his little band of
followers had reached the little tavern which stands close to the
farthest gate of Père Lachaise.
Without a word, like six silent ghosts, they had traversed the vast
cemetery, and reached the quiet hostelry, where the sounds of the
seething revolution only came, attenuated by their passage through the
peaceful city of the dead.
English gold had easily purchased silence and good will from the
half-starved keeper of this wayside inn. A huge travelling chaise
already stood in readiness, and four good Flanders horses had been
pawing the ground impatiently for the past half hour. From the window of
the chaise old Pétronelle's face, wet with anxious tears, was peering
anxiously.
A cry of joy and surprise escaped Déroulède and Juliette, and both
turned, with a feeling akin to awe, towards the wonderful man who had
planned and carried through this bold adventure.
"Nay, my friend," said Sir Percy, speaking more especially to Déroulède;
"if you only knew how simple it all was! Gold can do so many things, and
my only merit seems to be the possession of plenty of that commodity.
You told me yourself how you had provided for old Pétronelle. Under the
most solemn assurance that she would meet her young mistress here, I got
her to leave Paris. She came out most bravely this morning in one of the
market carts. She is so obviously a woman of the people, that no one
suspected her. As for the worthy couple who keep this wayside hostel,
they have been well paid, and money soon procures a chaise and horses.
My English friends and I, we have our own passports, and one for
Mademoiselle Juliette, who must travel as an English lady, with her old
nurse, Pétronelle. There are some decent clothes in readiness for us all
in the inn. A quarter of an hour in which to don them and we must on our
way. You can use your own passport, of course; your arrest has been so
very sudden that it has not yet been cancelled, and we have an eight
hours' start of our enemies. They'll wake up to-morrow morning, begad!
and find that you have slipped through their fingers."
He spoke with easy carelessness, and that slow drawl of his, as if he
were talking airy nothings in a London drawing-room, instead of
recounting the most daring, most colossal piece of effrontery the
adventurous brain of man could conceive.
Déroulède could say nothing. His own noble heart was too full of
gratitude towards his friend to express it all in a few words.
And time, of course, was precious.
Within the prescribed quarter of an hour the little band of heroes had
doffed their grimy, ragged clothes, and now appeared dressed as
respectable bourgeois of Paris _en route_ for the country. Sir Percy
Blakeney had donned the livery of a coachman of a well-to-do house,
whilst Lord Anthony Dewhurst wore that of an English lacquey.
Five minutes later Déroulède had lifted Juliette into the travelling
chaise, and in spite of fatigue, of anxiety, and emotion, it was
immeasurable happiness to feel her arm encircling his shoulders in
perfect joy and trust.
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Hastings joined them inside the chaise;
Lord Anthony sat next to Sir Percy on the box.
And whilst the crowd of Paris was still wondering why it had stormed the
gates of the city, the escaped prisoners were borne along the muddy
roads of France at breakneck speed northward to the coast.
Sir Percy Blakeney held the reins himself. With his noble heart full of
joy, the gallant adventurer himself drove his friends to safety.
They had an eight hours' start, and The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel
had done its work thoroughly: well provided with passports, and with
relays awaiting them at every station of fifty miles or so, the journey,
though wearisome was free from further adventure.
At Le Havre the little party embarked on board Sir Percy Blakeney's
yacht the _Daydream,_ where they met Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie.
The two ladies, acting under the instructions of Sir Percy, had as
originally arranged, pursued their journey northwards, to the populous
seaport town.
Anne Mie's first meeting with Juliette was intensely pathetic. The poor
little cripple had spent the last few days in an agony of remorse,
whilst the heavy travelling chaise bore her farther and farther away
from Paris.
She thought Juliette dead, and Paul a prey to despair, and her tender
soul ached when she remembered that it was she who had given the final
deadly stab to the heart of the man she loved.
Hers was the nature born to abnegation: aye! and one destined to find
bliss therein. And when one glance in Paul Déroulède's face told her
that she was forgiven, her cup of joy at seeing him happy beside his
beloved, was unalloyed with any bitterness.
<tb>
It was in the beautiful, rosy dawn of one of the last days of that
memorable Fructidor, when Juliette and Paul Déroulède, standing on the
deck of the _Daydream,_ saw the shores of France gradually receding from
their view.
Déroulède's arm was round his beloved, her golden hair, fanned by the
breeze, brushed lightly against his cheek.
"Madonna!" he murmured.
She turned her head to him. It was the first time that they were quite
alone, the first time that all thought of danger had become a mere
dream.
What had the future in store for them, in that beautiful, strange land
to which the graceful yacht was swiftly bearing them?
England, the land of freedom, would shelter their happiness and their
joy; and they looked out towards the North, where lay, still hidden in
the arms of the distant horizon, the white cliffs of Albion, whilst the
mist even now was wrapping in its obliterating embrace the shores of the
land where they had both suffered, where they had both learned to love.
He took her in his arms.
"My wife!" he whispered.
The rosy light touched her golden hair; he raised her face to his, and
soul met soul in one long, passionate kiss.