The cab stopped at the place indicated. At the same moment another fiacre came up. The driver of the Empress’s cab was given five francs, and when he had disappeared the two ladies engaged the other vehicle. “Avenue de l’Impératrice, 57!” said the Empress. (It was to put the first cabman off the track that the Empress had told him to go to the Boulevard Haussmann.)
At No. 57, Avenue de l’Impératrice lived Mr. Evans, the Court dentist. They rang the bell, and a valet opened the door. “Monsieur is not at home,” said the man; “what do you want?” Then, surprised at the tenue of the ladies, the servant seemed to be about to shut the door in their faces, but the Empress, rousing herself, said: “We are two Americans. Mr. Evans made an appointment with us here at three o’clock.”
They were shown into a room, where they waited an hour. Then Mr. Evans came in. He had returned from the Tuileries, where he had vainly searched for the Empress.
Upon Mr. Evans’s return the servant told him that two ladies, very oddly attired, were waiting to see him, and the dentist at once guessed who they were. “Ah, yes,” he remarked, “they have come to bother me again. We must try to get them across the Atlantic as soon as possible.”
He had previously arranged how the Empress was to escape. While two of his best horses were being harnessed, the Empress and Mme. Lebreton wrapped themselves in some plaid shawls which they found in Mrs. Evans’s wardrobe. Then they were driven off in Mr. Evans’s carriage. They stopped first at Evreux to change horses, which had been telegraphed for in advance; next, at Trouville. Nobody imagined that it could be the Empress of the French who was travelling in this fashion. Happier than Louis XVI. at Varennes, the Empress was not recognized anywhere, not even at the hotel at Trouville, to which Mr. Evans conducted her.
When the Empress and Mme. Lebreton were comfortably installed at the hotel, Mr. Evans hurried off to the harbour, where he found two yachts moored. Sir John Burgoyne, the owner of one of the vessels, when first asked by Mr. Evans if he would take two ladies to England, refused, but relented when, under a pledge of secrecy, he learnt that it was a question of saving the Empress.