ted her friends not to abandon her, delineating the great risks
she had run. It was all in vain. No general uprising could be
secured. There were a few despairing conflicts, but the feeble bands
of the insurgents rapidly melted away before the concentration of the
Government troops.

Still, the duchess herself escaped capture. Accompanied by a single
guide, and apparently insensible to hardship or peril, she wandered
through the woods, often sleeping in the open air, and occasionally
carried upon the shoulders of her attendant through the marshes.

"On one occasion," writes Alison, "when the pursuit was hottest, she
found shelter in a ditch covered with bushes, while the soldiers in
pursuit of her searched in vain, and probed with their bayonets every
thicket in the wood with which it was environed. The variety, the
fatigue, the dangers of her life, had inexpressible charms for a
person of her ardent and romantic disposition. She often said, 'Don't
speak to me of suffering. I was never so happy at Naples or Paris as
now.'"[AL]

[Footnote AL: Alison.]

She took great pleasure in a variety of disguises. Sometimes, in the
picturesque costume of a peasant-girl, with coarse wooden shoes on
her little feet, she would enter a town filled with Royalist troops,
and converse gayly with the gendarmes who guarded the gates. The
coasts of France were so watched by Governmental vessels as to render
her escape by water almost impossible. She consequently decided to
seek a retreat in Nantes, a city in which she had so few adherents
that no one would suspect her taking refuge there.

In the disguise of a peasant-girl, with one female companion, she
entered the city, and was concealed by a few friends who perilled
their lives in so doing. For several months she eluded all the
efforts of the Government to find her. In the mean time, the
partisans of the duchess were pursued and punished with the most
terrible severity. No mercy was shown them. The duchess, from her
retreat, kept up a lively correspondence with her friends, still
hoping that fortune might turn in her favor. Pleading in behalf of
these men, she wrote as follows to her aunt, the queen:

"Whatever consequences may result for me, from the position
in which I have placed myself while fulfilling my duties as
a mother, I will never speak to you, madame, of my own
interests. But brave men have become involved in danger for
my son's sake, and I can