France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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