Therefore, even in this midnight flight they must burden themselves with his litter. A Duke, a Marshal of France, in favour at Court, and lord of a fourth of Languedoc, he had but to say the word, and Vlaye was saved--for this time at any rate. The Duke need but give some orders, speak to some in power, call on some of those to whom his will was law, and his _protege_ would not fall for lack of means. Up to this point indeed, after a fashion which the Abbess did not understand--for the man had fallen from the clouds--he was ranged against her friend. But if he could be put into Vlaye's hands, or fairly or foully led to take Vlaye's side, then the Captain of Vlaye would be saved. And if she could effect this, would be saved by her. By her! The sweetness of such a revenge only a woman can understand. Her lover had fancied the Rochechouart's influence necessary to his safety, and to gain that influence he had been ready to repudiate his love. What a sweet savour of triumph if she--she whom he was ready to abandon--could save him by this greater influence, and in the act show him that a mightier than he was at her feet! She had heard stories of the Duke's character, which promised well for her schemes. At the time of her short sojourn at Court, he had but lately left his cloister, drawn forth by the tragical death of his brother. He was then entering upon that career of extravagance, eccentricity, and vice which, along with his reputation for eloquence and for strange fits of repentance, astonished even the dissolute circles of the Court. His name and his fame were in all mouths; a man quick to love, quick to hate, report had it; a man in whom remorse followed sharp on sin, and sin on remorse. A man easy to win, she supposed, if a woman were beautiful and knew how to go about it. Ay, if she knew; but there was the difficulty. For he was no common man, no man of narrow experience, and the ordinary bait of beauty might not by itself avail. The Abbess, high as her opinion of her charm stood, perceived this. She recognised that in the circle; in which he had moved of late beauty was plentiful, and she bent her wits to the point. After that she might have been riding in daylight, for all she saw of her surroundings. She passed through the ford and in her deep thinking saw it not. The long, dark hill on her left, and the low woods on her right with their strange night noises, and their teeming evidences of that tragedy of death which fills the world, did not exist for her. The gleam of the star-lit river caught her eye, but failed to reach her brain. And if she fell back slowly and gradually until she found herself but a few paces before the litter and its convoy, it was not by design only, but in obedience to a subtle attraction at work within her.