Any one but Lady Atkyns would have lost heart, but that heroic woman did not allow herself to be cast down for an instant. Amid the general mourning, she still cherished her hopes; moreover, those who had been helping her had not abandoned her. The “Little Baron” was still in Paris, awaiting orders, but the gravity of the situation had obliged him to leave the Hotel Coq-Héron, where his life was no longer in safety. Well, they had failed with the King; now they must tempt fortune, and save the Queen and her children. The lady at Ketteringham was quite sure of that. “Nothing is yet decided about the Queen’s fate” (Peltier had written to her at the end of January), “but it has been proposed at the Commune of Paris to transfer her either to the prison of La Force or of La Conciergerie.” Then Lady Atkyns had an idea. Why should she not go in person to Paris and try her chance? Probably the surveillance which had been so rigorously kept over the King would be far less severe for the Queen. And one might profit by the relative tranquillity, and manage to get into the Temple, and then--who could tell what one might not devise in the way of carrying the Queen off, or of substituting some one else for her? She never thought of all the dangers around her, and of the enormously increased difficulties in the path for a foreign lady who knew only a little French. Peltier, to whom she confided her plan, tried to dissuade her. “You will hardly have arrived before innumerable embarrassments will crop up; if you leave your hotel three times in the day, or if you see the same person thrice, you will become a suspect.” But his friend’s persistence ended by half convincing him, and he admitted that the moment was relatively favourable, and that it was well to take advantage of it, if she wished to attempt anything. Unluckily, things were moving terribly fast in Paris. There came the days of May 31 and June 2, the efforts of the sections against the Commune, civil war let loose. In the midst of this storm, Lady Atkyns feared that the whole affair might come to nought; her arrangements, moreover, were not completed. Money, which can do so much, decide so much, and which had already proved so powerful--money, perhaps, was not sufficiently forthcoming. Suddenly there is a rumour that a conspiracy to favour the Queen’s escape has been discovered. Two members of the Commune, Lepitre and Toulan, who had been won over to the cause by a Royalist, the Chevalier de Jarjays, had almost succeeded in carrying out their scheme, when the irresolution of one of them had ruined everything; nevertheless, they were denounced.[44] Public attention, which had been averted for a moment, now was fixed again upon the Temple Prison. And the days go by, and Lady Atkyns sees no chance of starting on her enterprise.