"
"All is not lost!" cried Marie, "it cannot be! Alphonse," she said
after a pause, "there is hope."
At this moment they distinctly heard the owl's cry, and Francine
entered from the dressing-room.
"Pierre has come!" she said with a joy that was like delirium.
The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with
that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw
her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped
hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then
took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The
young man seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together,
perceived the means by which the girl expected him to escape the
vigilance of the soldiers.
"I can't get through there," he said, examining the bull's-eye window.
At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse
voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, "Make haste, general,
those rascally Blues are stirring."
"Oh! one more kiss," said a trembling voice beside him.
The marquis, whose feet were already on the liberating ladder, though
he was not wholly through the window, felt his neck clasped with a
despairing pressure. Seeing that his wife had put on his clothes, he
tried to detain her; but she tore herself roughly from his arms and he
was forced to descend.
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