Once bitten with the fever she had played nightly and for increasingly high stakes, so that at the end of 1777 she had lost £21,000 in excess of her income, and had been obliged to ask her husband to pay her debts. The sum was insignificant compared with those that the royal mistresses had thrown away at the tables in the past; but her gambling losses had been made much of by her enemies. It was this which, when the French Treasury had become near bankrupt, had caused the people to accuse her of having emptied it and christen her with the opprobrious name of "Madame Deficit".
Since the birth of her children her character had changed. She had longed for them for so many years in vain that when at last they came they absorbed her interest to the exclusion of all other pleasures. She had given up frequenting the gay entertainments given by the younger set at her Court, reduced her lavish expenditure on clothes, and both her stakes at the gambling tables and the frequency with which she played.
But she still enjoyed a game and naturally continued to hold her official card-parties as a part of the Court ceremonial; so that on this evening Roger, finding himself deserted and knowing that her reception was unlikely to be over before ten o'clock, decided to go early to bed.
He hoped that sleep would soon banish his anxieties, but in that he was disappointed, and he found his wakeful mind playing round the Spanish girl with whom he had talked that afternoon. Although she was not strictly beautiful he admitted to himself that she possessed a certain subtle attraction, and after some thought he decided that it lay largely in her voice. It was peculiarly soft and melodious, and her slightly broken French with its Spanish accent added to its fascination. Perhaps too her nationality played a part, for Spain, shut away as it was from the rest of Europe by the barrier of the Pyrenees, was still almost unknown territory, which endowed it with a glamour all its own. Very few foreigners ever visited it, but travellers' tales described it as a land of dazzling sunshine where great sterile deserts were interspersed with areas of vines, olives and orange blossom, and in which the most degrading poverty existed cheek by jowl with fabulous riches. He hoped that one day his travels would take him there, so that he would be able to witness the fiestas and bullfights for which the country was renowned.
Having got so far in his musings, he made another effort to get to sleep, but again it was not to be. A heavy knocking came on the sitting-room door. It was followed by footsteps inside the room, then a sharp knock on the door of his bedroom. He had hardly called out "Entrez" when it was opened, and by the fight from outside he recognized one of his previous night's visitors. It was M. de Besenval, the Commander of the King's Swiss Guards.
"I regret to disturb you, Chevalier," said de Besenval, in his heavy Germanic voice, "but I bear orders from Her Majesty. I must ask you to get up, dress, and accompany me."
The fact that it was de Besenval who had come to fetch him immediately confirmed Roger's fears that he might be condemned unheard and sent to eat his heart out in a fortress. He felt certain that had the Queen decided to give him a chance to justify himself she would not have used the Colonel of the Guards, but de Vaudreuil, or some other of her gentlemen, to bring him to her.
With a low-voiced assent he got out of bed; and, as he began to dress, determined to put as good face as he could on his misfortune.
De Besenval went back into the sitting-room and Roger rejoined him there some seven minutes later. On entering the room he saw that the Colonel was accompanied by two stolid-looking German-Swiss privates, who were standing rigidly to attention, facing inwards on either side of the door. At the sight of them Roger's last faint hope vanished, but he smiled at de Besenval and made him a graceful bow before placing himself between the two soldiers.
The Colonel gave an order, on which the little party left the room and began to march with measured tread down the corridor. De Besenval brought up the rear, and he had evidently given his men their instructions beforehand, as they continued on in silence past the first stairway, round the inner curve of the Oval court and along a gallery that gave on to the royal reception-rooms.
As the Queen's card-party was just breaking up a number of ladies and gentlemen were leaving them to return to their own apartments. All of them looked at Roger as he passed with sympathy, and here and there among them one of the men he had met bowed to him with respect.
Having been brought round to this side of the Palace gave Roger a sudden flicker of new hope that he was, after all, to be taken before the Queen; but almost as soon as it had arisen it was quenched. His escort turned away from the tall gilded double doors and led him down the staircase opposite to them. Outside the entrance a two-horse carriage stood waiting; one of the soldiers got on the box beside the coachman, the other scrambled on to the boot; de Besenval ushered Roger into the carriage, got in beside him and pulled down the blinds. Then they set off.
After they had proceeded for a few minutes in silence, Roger said: "Is it permitted to ask, Monsieur le Baron, whither you are conducting me?"
"I regret, Monsieur," the elderly Swiss replied, "but except in so far as my duty requires I am under orders not to talk with you."
Left to his own speculations Roger considered all the odds were that he was being taken to Paris, and that as prisoners of gentle birth there were nearly always confined in the Bastille, that was his most probable destination. If so, they had a journey of some forty miles before them, so would not arrive in the capital until the small hours of the morning.
Now that he was under guard again the parole he had given to de Vaudreuil was no longer valid, so he took swift stock of his chances of escape. His only opportunity would be when they changed horses, as it was certain they would do a number of times on the road. Since de Besenval had not locked either of the carriage doors, should he get out of one to stretch his legs when they halted, there would be nothing to stop his prisoner slipping out of the other. But from the second the prisoner put his foot to the ground he would be in acute danger—as the two Swiss on the box and the boot were both armed with muskets, and it was a hundred to one that they would shoot if he attempted to make a bolt for it.
Having weighed the pros and cons Roger decided that, even if the opportunity occurred, to present himself as a target for two musket-balls fired at close range was too great a risk to take, so he had better resign himself to captivity, at least for the time being.
After he had settled himself more comfortably in his corner of the carriage the rhythm of its wheels and the horses' hoofs began to make him drowsy. For the better part of two days he had been subject to acute anxiety and the sudden, if temporary, cessation of wondering what was about to happen to himself had its reaction. The sleep that he had sought in vain an hour before now kindly enveloped him.
He awoke with a start. The carriage had stopped and he felt certain that he had not been asleep for long. De Besenval was getting out and said over his shoulder: "Be pleased to follow me, Monsieur."
As Roger stumbled from the carriage he saw they had not drawn up before a post-house; and no ostler was at work unbuckling the traces of the horses. The carriage had halted in a broad, tree-lined avenue and, to Roger's amazement, to one end of it he caught a glimpse of the south facade of the Palace of Fontainebleau outlined by the rising moon. Suddenly it impinged upon his still drowsy brain that for the past half-hour they must have been driving away from the Palace only to return to its immediate vicinity in secret by a circuitous route.