His plan was, apparently, simplicity itself; he would voyage abroad with Marie-Elizabeth to Constantinople and would there sell her into slavery or the harem of some wealthy Turk; her beauty would command a substantial price that would reimburse her betrayer for the expenses of his undertaking, and besides he could return in safety to give out that she was dead, and to claim her entire property as her disconsolate widower, her father having recently died. Having arrived at this decision, he informed his wife that she was to accompany him on a journey that he was obliged to make to some far-distant baths for the sake of his health; and Marie-Elizabeth, ever trustful of his designs, and of his surpassing love for her, consented at once, albeit her husband did not enlighten her as to their actual destination. From Paris they travelled to Lyons and thence to Beauvoisin. From the latter place they went over into Savoy, which they crossed in the direction of Genoa, Marie-Elizabeth being compelled to traverse the Alps, as the archives tell us, “on a vicious mule with an old pack-saddle.” But from the moment of their departure from Paris a change had come over the spirit of the doomed woman; ever since then, when Defrêne had forbidden her to bid farewell to her beloved mother and her relatives, Marie-Elizabeth had been weighed down with forebodings of evil. And on reaching the seaport of Genoa these forebodings seemed to acquire the most sinister confirmation in a hint of danger conveyed to her by a good and compassionate man, Pierre Pilette, a wagoner who had acted as their guide over the passes into Italy. This man told Marie-Elizabeth that, having gone with the Marquis (to interpret for him, presumably) to visit certain merchants of Genoa, Defrêne had made anxious inquiries for some vessel that should take him to Constantinople; further, that Defrêne had tried to obtain from them letters of credit on some merchant in that city, but that it had not been possible for them to accommodate him, although they had cashed all such letters upon themselves as he had brought with him from France.