about it at a wine-shop, where they met other sailors, who had their
story to tell of a lady landed mysteriously a few hours before at a
dangerous and lonely spot a few miles away. The two accounts soon
reached the ears of the police, and Marseilles was on the alert,
when a party of young men, with their swords drawn and waving white
handkerchiefs, precipitated their enterprise, by appearing in the
streets and striving to rouse the populace. They were arrested, as
were also the passengers left on board the "Carlo Alberto,"--among
them was a lady who deceived the police into a belief that she was
the Duchesse de Bern.

Under cover of this mistake the duchess, finding that all hope
was over in the southern provinces, resolved to cross France to
La Vendée. At Massa she had had a dream. She thought the Duc de
Bern had appeared to her and said: "You will not succeed in the
South, but you will prosper in La Vendée."

She quitted the hut in which she had been concealed, made her way
on foot through a forest, lost herself, and had to sleep in the
vacant cabin of a woodcutter. The next night she passed under the
roof of a republican, who respected her sex and would not betray
her. She then reached the château of a Legitimist nobleman with
the appropriate name of M. de Bonrecueil. Thence she started in
the morning in a postchaise to cross all France along its public
roads.

She accomplished her journey in safety, and fixed May 24, 1832, as
the day for taking up arms. She made her headquarters at a Breton
farm-house, Les Meliers. She wore the costume of a boy,--a peasant
of La Vendée--and called herself Petit Pierre.