After a brief night's rest, spent comfortably enough in a tiny chamber smelling sweetly of wax and citronella, Marianne found herself as day was breaking seated on the driver's seat of a big wagon full of cabbages beside a taciturn fellow who did not utter as much as ten words in the whole course of the journey. They lumbered away peacefully along the road to Paris, far too peacefully, indeed, for Marianne, who nearly died of impatience a hundred times during the interminable drive.
Luckily, it was not raining. The weather was cold but dry. The way was flat and monotonous but Marianne did not succeed in imitating her companion, who dozed a good part of the time, much to the annoyance of his passenger. Whenever she saw his big head nodding, it was all Marianne could do to restrain herself from seizing the reins and setting the whole equipage galloping madly down the endless highway, at the risk of losing all the cabbages. But that would have been a poor return to her friends for all their kindness, so she possessed herself in patience.
All the same, when the spires of Paris appeared at last through the autumnal mists she very nearly shouted for joy and when the wagon reached the village of La Villette and crossed over the site of the unfinished canal of St Denis she had to stop herself jumping down from her seat and running ahead, but she knew it was best to keep up the pretence to the end.
The powerful smell emanating from the city's refuse dump, near which they were obliged to pass, seemed to jerk the driver out of his doze. He opened first one eye, then the second, then turned his head to look at Marianne, but so slowly that Marianne wondered if he were animated by some form of very slow clockwork.
'Tha coozen t'laundress,' he asked 'wheer dost a live? T'mester said t'set thee doon reet by, but ahm f't'market.'
Marianne had had plenty of time on that endless drive to think about what she meant to do when she eventually reached Paris. A return to Crawfurd's house was out of the question and it could prove equally perilous to make for her own. At this point it had occurred to her that by now Fortunée Hamelin might have returned home from Aix-la-Chapelle. The summer season there was over, surely she would be back in her beloved Paris… unless she had sacrificed that love in favour of her other ruling passion for Casimir de Montrond who was officially under open arrest in the Flemish town of Anvers. If that proved to be the case, Marianne decided, she would wait until it was quite dark and then try and slip quietly into her own house in the rue de Lille. So she answered the man: 'She lives quite near the Barrière des Porcherons.' The yokel's dull eye brightened fleetingly: 'T'beant mooch aht't'road. Ah'll set thee doon thar than.' Upon which decisive utterance he appeared to fall asleep again, while ahead of them, by the side of a broad expanse of fresh water, there loomed up Ledoux's elegant rotunda and the guingettes with their red trellises of the Barrière de la Villette.
Safe in her disguise, Marianne did not flinch when the guards made their routine check. Then they were off again, following the wall of the Fermiers Généraux as far as the Barrière de la Chapelle, after which the wagon turned into the Faubourg St Denis. When Marianne's destination was reached they parted without a word spoken and she set out, shaking uncontrollably with the excitement of finding herself in Paris once more, to run to the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne as if her very life depended on it.
It was something of an ordeal because the streets led steeply uphill all the way to the village of Montmartre. To make running easier she had taken off the heavy sabots, which were too big for her and chafed her unaccustomed feet. Consequently, by the time she came to the white house which always in the past offered her such a warm welcome, she was barefoot, red-faced, tousled and panting, but her only fear was that she might find the shutters closed and the house wearing the dismal, unfriendly look common to all houses when the people who live there are away. No, the shutters were open, the chimneys smoking and a vase of flowers could be seen through the hall window.
But when Marianne entered the gate and made to cross the courtyard to the front door, she saw the gatekeeper come running out after her as fast as a pair of very short legs would carry him, holding his arms out wide as if to block her path. With a sinking heart she saw that he was a new man, one she had not seen before.
'Here! You there, girl! Where d'you think you're going?'
Marianne stopped and waited for him, so that he all but cannoned into her.
'To see Madame Hamelin,' she said coolly. 'She is expecting me.'
'Madame does not receive persons of your kind. Besides, she's not at home. Be off with you!'
He was pulling at her arm, trying to drag her away but Marianne shook him off:
'If she is not at home, then fetch Jonas to me. I suppose he is at home?'
'Fetch him to such a hussy as you? Tell me what name I should say if you want me to go, then.'
Marianne hesitated fractionally, but Jonas was a friend and he was used to seeing her in unexpected guises:
'Say: Mademoiselle Marianne.'
'Marianne what?'
'Never you mind. Go and bring him to me at once and take care Jonas is not angry with you for keeping me waiting.'
The gatekeeper departed unwillingly for the house, mumbling under his breath as he went various uncomplimentary things about brazen hussies forcing their way into honest folks' houses. Not many seconds later, Jonas, Fortunée's major-domo, literally burst out of the glazed front door, his good-humoured black face split in two by an enormous smile of welcome:
'Mademoiselle Ma'anne! Mademoiselle Ma'anne! It is you!… Come you inside dis minute! My lord, but what you doin' dressed like dat?'
Marianne laughed, feeling her spirits revive miraculously at the warmth of this familiar welcome. Here, at last, she had found a safe harbour.
'Poor Jonas! Nine times out of ten I seem to arrive on the doorstep looking like a complete ragamuffin. Madame is out?'
'Yes, but she's coming back soon. You come inside and rest yourself while you wait.'
Dismissing the gatekeeper with an imperious wave of his hand, Jonas led Marianne straight into the house, telling her as they went of the anxiety his mistress had been in on her account since her return from Aix.
'She thinks you' dead! When Monseigneur de Benevento tell her you disappeared, I thought she would run mad, I give you my word… Listen! Here she comes now.'
In fact, hardly had Jonas shut the door before Fortunée's brougham entered the courtyard, described a perfect circle round the fountain and drew up at the foot of the steps. Fortunée got out but she looked very grave and Marianne saw that for the first time since she had known her, her friend was dressed in a plain walking dress of a severe dark purple colour. Also unusual for her was an almost total absence of paint on her face and as her veil was drawn up, Marianne could see by her red eyes that she had been crying. But already Jonas had hurried out to her, calling:
'Madame Fortunée! Mademoiselle Ma'anne is here! See!'
Madame Hamelin looked up and a light of joy sprang into her lack-lustre eyes. Without a word she ran up the steps and flung herself into her friend's arms, hugging her and crying at the same time. Marianne had never seen the light-hearted Creole in such a state and while she returned the embrace with equal fervour she pleaded in an undertone: