Thérèse’s escape from Monsieur’s estate

Thérèse’s escape from Monsieur’s estate is a sudden break from captivity that turns on alertness and opportunity: when Monsieur and Dubois fall asleep, she slips away and reaches Valbois for help. The escape preserves her life, but its immediate aftermath is not safety so much as another departure, as she is sent onward with Madame Bertrand.

The opening for escape

Monsieur’s assault on Thérèse and Eulalie establishes the danger from which the escape follows. Dubois has brought the women to his house and prevents Eulalie from getting away; later, in Monsieur’s private chamber, Thérèse is both victim and witness to violence against her companion. As the two captors pause to eat, their exhaustion and drunkenness leave them asleep. Their collapse creates the opening Thérèse needs.

Flight from the house

Thérèse acts as soon as she sees the men asleep. She takes the skirt and mantle Dubois had removed, along with a candle, and heads for the stairs. With few servants in the house, she encounters only one person on the way out. She feigns alarm and tells him to hurry to his dying master, using the false emergency to reach the door without further obstruction.

Thérèse has not been allowed to see the route by which she was brought to the house and does not know the roads. She takes the first road she finds, which leads toward Grenoble. The escape therefore depends not on a planned route but on improvisation: a disguise, a quick lie, and the chance to move before her captors wake.

Valbois’s assistance

At an inn, Thérèse secretly makes her way to Valbois’s room. He wakes and scarcely recognizes her in her disordered state. She recounts what happened and says that Dubois is nearby, that she could help identify the way to her, and that Dubois has taken her clothes as well as the five louis Valbois had given her.

Valbois refuses to pursue Dubois, saying that his reasons for letting her go are the same as those Thérèse had explained the day before. Instead, he replaces the stolen money and promises two complete outfits and linen from a seamstress. His help repairs some of the immediate material damage of the escape, but does not offer Thérèse a settled refuge: he tells her she must leave that day because Madame Bertrand is expecting her, and he has persuaded Bertrand to delay her departure for a few hours.

Consequences and significance

Thérèse leaves Grenoble with Madame Bertrand in a small covered carriage drawn by one horse. Bertrand’s fifteen-month-old daughter travels with them, and Thérèse quickly forms a deep attachment to the child. The episode thus ends not with lasting security but with movement into the next leg of her journey, carrying both renewed vulnerability and a new emotional bond.

The escape reverses the immediate balance of power: the captors’ temporary incapacity lets Thérèse get beyond their reach, while Valbois’s generosity restores money and clothing that Dubois took. Yet the relief is provisional. Thérèse remains dependent on other people and must leave at once, so the scene’s reprieve becomes a passage onward rather than a final release.