“Well, then, _mon petit Dame_, find me some one to go with me.” “I do not know any one,” she answered, crying in her excitement. “My dear little Sarah give up such an idea, I beseech you.” But by this time it was a fixed idea with me, and I was very determined about it. I went downstairs, packed my trunk, and then returned to Madame Guérard. I had wrapped up a pewter fork in paper, and this I threw against one of the panes of glass in a skylight window opposite. The window was opened abruptly, and the sleepy, angry face of a young woman appeared. I made a trumpet of my two hands and called out: “Caroline, will you start with me at once for Spain?” The bewildered expression on the woman’s face showed that she had not comprehended, but she replied at once, “I am coming, Mademoiselle.” She then closed her window, and ten minutes later Caroline was tapping at the door. Madame Guérard had sunk down aghast in an arm-chair. M. Guérard had asked several times from his bedroom what was going on. “Sarah is here,” his wife had replied. “I will tell you later on.” Caroline did dressmaking by the day at Madame Guérard’s, and she had offered her services to me as lady’s maid. She was agreeable and rather daring, and she now accepted my offer at once. But as it would not do to arouse the suspicions of the concierge, it was decided that I should take her dresses in my trunk, and that she should put her linen into a bag to be lent by _mon petit Dame_. Poor dear Madame Guérard had given in. She was quite conquered, and soon began to help in my preparations, which certainly did not take me long. But I did not know how to get to Spain. “You go through Bordeaux,” said Madame Guérard. “Oh no,” exclaimed Caroline; “my brother-in-law is a skipper, and he often goes to Spain by Marseilles.” I had saved nine hundred francs, and Madame Guérard lent me six hundred. It was perfectly mad, but I felt ready to conquer the universe, and nothing would have induced me to abandon my plan. Then, too, it seemed to me as though I had been wishing to see Spain for a long time. I had got it into my head that my Fate willed it, that I must obey my star, and a hundred other ideas, each one more foolish than the other, strengthened me in my plan. I was destined to act in this way, I thought.