"It would be imprudent to take a carriage into the streets to-night. I shall go on horseback accompanied by one of my men; I shall go towards Great Rock and Queen's Court, till I pick up the road that runs from Courbevoie to Versailles. Then, like the wind for Versailles." Monsieur Plouernel grasped the young woman's hand and added in a voice of emotion--"God save the throne!" Victoria turned towards the door, paused a moment on the sill to make a final gesture of farewell, and left the room, musing to herself: "_In order to strike terror to the court, to make their plant miscarry, the people must take the Bastille to-morrow! No hesitation--it must be done!_" CHAPTER IX. FILIAL CONFIDENCES. The home of Monsieur Desmarais, attorney at the court of Paris, deputy of the Third Estate to the National Assembly, the same who had been beaten by the orders of the Count of Plouernel, was situated near the St. Honore Gate. There he occupied a beautiful dwelling of recent construction and decorated with taste. The day after the banquet participated in at the Plouernel mansion by the heads of the court party, Madam Desmarais and her daughter Charlotte, a charming girl of seventeen, were engaged in a sad interchange of thoughts. "Ah, my child," said Madam Desmarais, "how troubled I feel at what is going on in Paris!" As her child did not answer, the mother stopped and looked at her. The girl was plunged in deep revery. For a moment longer the girl maintained her silence. Then, her face suffused and her eyes filled with tears, she fell upon her mother's neck, buried her face in the maternal breast, and murmured in a smothered voice: "Mother, dear, for the first time in my life I have lacked confidence in you. Pardon your child!" Surprised and disturbed, Madam Desmarais pressed her daughter to her bosom, dried her tears, urged her to calm herself, and said, embracing her tenderly: "You, to lack confidence in me, Charlotte? You have a secret from me? Am I not, then, your _bestest_ friend?" "Alas, I fear I had almost forgotten it. Be indulgent toward your daughter!" "My heaven! What anguish you are putting me to! I can not believe my ears. You--to have committed a fault?" "I doubted your heart and your justice. I formed a bad judgment of my father and you, who have surrounded me with tenderness since my birth." "Finish your confidence, painful as it may be. Put an end to my uncertainty," pleaded the mother. Charlotte drew back a moment; then she proceeded in broken accents: "About six months ago, we came to live on the second story of this house, then still unfinished. Father was much taken with one of the workmen--" "You speak of John Lebrenn, the foreman of our ironsmith, Master Gervais?"