way to Nantes, and found shelter in the house of two Mlles de Guigny, No. 3 Rue haute du Château. This house is directly opposite the main entrance to the castle. Doubtless she thought that no one would suppose that she had had the audacity to take refuge under the very eyes of the préfet. There she might have remained had she not been betrayed by a Jew, named Deutz, who had been in her confidence.[1] Moreover, the ladies had received their dinner from a neighbouring traiteur, who observed that at the table there were usually placed three chairs and covers. Accordingly a party of gendarmes was sent to search the house. They explored it from the attics to the cellars, but could not find the Duchess, and would have departed, but for the positive insistence of the treacherous Jew that the lady certainly was somewhere in the house. Accordingly some of the gendarmes remained to watch, posted in a garret, and there they tarried a whole day around a fire that they had lighted, when on a sudden they were startled by kicks against the iron fire-back, and to their surprise, out scrambled four persons, the Duchess, a lady companion, and two gentlemen, who had spent sixteen hours in a secret hole, entered through an opening behind the fire-back, only 20 inches wide. The petticoat of the Duchess had been converted to tinder, and she was much blistered by the heat. This was on November 7, 1832.
The open fire-place, behind which she had been concealed, is built in the corner of a very small room with a tiled floor. The cachette forms the angle at the back. This recess is scarcely large enough for a man to stand up in with any degree of comfort, and the access to it is through a low iron frame, resembling the door of an oven, and is so contracted as to seem impassable save for a small child. How any man of ordinary height and size could have squeezed himself through, and maintained himself upright in this place along with three other persons, and two of them women, is indeed a marvel. When the whole party had succeeded in securing their retreat, and getting themselves shut
- ↑ This Jew, Hyacinth Simon Deutz, received 300,000 francs from Thiers for his betrayal of the Duchess. He retired to Algiers, changed his name, married, and had a family. In order to obtain the Duchess's confidence he had had recourse to the basest deception, even to pretending to become a Christian and Catholic. For a minute and most interesting account of the adventures of the Duchess, see Souvenirs d'un Legitimiste, Haus, Hof und Staats-Geschichten, by Julius Ebersberg, Prag 1869, vol. 2, p. 80 et seq.
