men, and hastily made his way to the convent. Then, and not before,
he produced his order from the Sixty, by means of which he opened the
marquise's room. Under her bed he found a box, which he seized and
sealed; then he went back to her, and gave the order to start.

When the marquise saw the box in the hands of Desgrais, she at first
appeared stunned; quickly recovering, she claimed a paper inside it
which contained her confession. Desgrais refused, and as he turned
round for the carriage to come forward, she tried to choke herself by
swallowing a pin. One of the archers, called Claude, Rolla, perceiving
her intention, contrived to get the pin out of her mouth. After this,
Desgrais commanded that she should be doubly watched.

They stopped for supper. An archer called Antoine Barbier was present
at the meal, and watched so that no knife or fork should be put on the
table, or any instrument with which she could wound or kill herself. The
marquise, as she put her glass to her mouth as though to drink, broke a
little bit off with her teeth; but the archer saw it in time, and forced
her to put it out on her plate. Then she promised him, if he would save
her, that she would make his fortune. He asked what he would have to
do for that. She proposed that he should cut Desgrais' throat; but he
refused, saying that he was at her service in any other way. So she
asked him for pen and paper, and wrote this letter:

"DEAR THERIA,--I am in the hands of Desgrais, who is taking me by road
from Liege to Paris. Come quickly and save me."

Antoine Barbier took the letter, promising to deliver it at the right
address; but he gave it to Desgrais instead. The next day, finding that
this letter had not been pressing enough, she wrote him another, saying
that the escort was only eight men, who could be easily overcome by four
or five determined assailants, and she counted on him to strike this
bald stroke. But, uneasy when she got no answer and no result from her
letters, she despatched a third missive to Theria. In this she implored
him by his own salvation, if he were not strong enough to attack her
escort and save her, at least to kill two of the four horses by which
she was conveyed, and to profit by the moment of confusion to seize the
chest and throw it into the fire; otherwise, she declared, she was lost.
Though Theria received none of these letters, which were one by
one handed over by Barbier to Desgrais, he all the same did go