eparations for
flight, aided by the distracted Countess.

The latter realized with a pang that the hegira meant farewell,
perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louise
from this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the Higher
Power! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in the
distant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him.
Pray God Louise might be saved--, yes! and her foster-sister
Henrietta, beloved of the Chevalier--Henriette whom her husband had
branded by unjust accusation....

The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of the
runaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches and
trampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed to
make their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousands
of emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers,
awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on French
soil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....

That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey--home of the Vaudrey and
Linieres family and fortune--was given up to sack and pillage. Enraged
that the objects of his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Not
ordered a general demolition.

Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars of
old wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen and
pantries catered to the mob's gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves in
the Countess's costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and painted
with the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.

Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and
sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job--unfortunately for
him, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.

He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out in
stolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes and
eyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the most
alarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the new
vamp's answering smiles when--

"Ker-plunk!"

--Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face that
caused him to see innumerable little stars.

Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolved
to devote his strict attention to the bottle....

CHAPTER XIX

KNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE

The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred aga