Sherzad’s Escape from Versailles and Recapture

Sherzad’s Escape from Versailles and Recapture turns an escape from captivity into a race between human solidarity and the forces that keep Sherzad imprisoned. Marie-Josèphe de la Croix, Yves de la Croix, and Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien help her leave Versailles, but the journey toward the sea ends with hunters catching her in the river. The event gives Sherzad a brief, hard-won return to the water, then shows how precarious that freedom is when her pursuers control the banks and the nets.

Causes and Stakes

Under a full moon near its zenith, Marie-Josèphe sings directions to Sherzad as she moves through the Grand Canal: she is to swim to its far end, away from M. Boursin, and avoid being seen climbing into the wagon. Sherzad answers in song, hopeful and excited, and swims faster than the galloping horses. Their escape depends on communication across the difference between water and land: Marie-Josèphe uses a song to coordinate their movements, while Sherzad can make rapid progress in the element where she is strongest.

The flight is also shaped by Yves’s sense of responsibility. Marie-Josèphe urges him to return to the chateau, but he says he cannot do so and atone for betraying Sherzad. His decision places him alongside her escape rather than safely outside it. Lucien wheels the horses around the gravel track, and the three companions attempt to move Sherzad from the canal into a wagon without drawing attention. Their immediate aim is to get her away from M. Boursin; the larger hope, as the journey continues, is to reach the sea.

From the Canal to the Wagon

At the western end of the Grand Canal, Sherzad climbs onto the bank. The transition from water to land makes her movement difficult, and her agitation frightens the draft horses. Lucien steadies them, while Marie-Josèphe climbs down to calm Sherzad. She takes Sherzad’s webbed hands and sings to show what she hopes will happen. This is not simply an exchange of instructions: Marie-Josèphe must help Sherzad understand a plan whose next steps require her to endure an unfamiliar and frightening setting.

When Sherzad becomes still, Marie-Josèphe and Yves lift her into the wagon and sit on either side of her to keep her from falling. Her skill in the water has no equivalent on land; the passage emphasizes the abrupt change in what her body can do when she leaves her element. Lucien gradually increases the horses’ pace, moving from a walk to a run without jolting the passengers from the wagon. Sherzad clutches Marie-Josèphe and kisses a scratch she has caused, expressing regret. The small gesture registers the strain of the escape without breaking the bond between them.

Lucien asks what comes next, and Marie-Josèphe answers that they must reach the sea, though she does not have a settled plan for what follows. She has only a few livres, enough, she hopes, to buy bread and fish. Her answer makes the limits of the rescue plain: getting Sherzad out of Versailles is an immediate objective, not a guarantee of safety or a prepared route to a new life.

The Bridge and the Parting

The wagon crosses the river plain toward a bridge that could allow Sherzad to escape into the water. Marie-Josèphe measures their dwindling margin in distances: the bridge is first hundreds of paces away, while the royal troop remains farther behind. Torches trail sparks in the dark, and the Carrousel headdresses moving among the pursuers appear menacing in the night. The pace of the flight is set against an increasingly exact geography of pursuit.

Near the bridge, a wheel breaks. The wagon slews sideways, and its axle catches as Lucien tries to bring it onto the rising road. The horses are spent, and the king’s riders are closing in. Marie-Josèphe and Yves labor with Lucien to help Sherzad reach the crest. The attempt has narrowed to one possibility: Sherzad must leave the wagon and return to the river. Lucien cannot make the choice for himself, while the others press on with the physical work of getting her to the bridge.

Sherzad leaps into the river. Marie-Josèphe tells her to swim for her life and says goodbye. The separation is the emotional cost of the rescue: the companions have brought Sherzad to the water, but they cannot follow her into it or ensure that she reaches the sea. Louis XIV points his riders downstream, and Monsieur gallops along the bank with the pursuing party. Louis remains with Lorraine and the young princes. Lucien faces the king, who returns his sword; Lucien is grateful to be treated as an enemy rather than as a traitor. The escape therefore separates Sherzad from her rescuers while leaving Lucien directly exposed to royal judgment.

Pursuit and Recapture

The river gives Sherzad a route away from the bridge, but not a clear passage to safety. She is bruised and tired after her long imprisonment, and the current can help only so much when the sea remains far away. Silt interferes with her ability to hear underwater. At a bend, men and horses block the river, and a long net stretches across the current. Sherzad dives to get around or beneath it, passing among the horses; their reaction gives her position away, and the riders attack with pikes and muskets.

Stones weigh the net down to the riverbed. The current pushes Sherzad against it, and the hunters draw it around her toward the shallows. She breaks the surface and gets over the net, briefly escaping the trap. On the bank, however, a spotted predator attacks and drags her from the water. Sherzad pulls it back into the river, where she uses a sharp shock carried by her voice through the water to kill it. The episode reveals that her voice can function not only as language or a means of communicating with Marie-Josèphe, but also as a powerful defense in her own element.

A second predator attacks before Sherzad can recover. Unable to move or use her voice, she goes limp amid the surrounding struggle. The men beat the animal away and drag Sherzad into the shallows; the net is the last thing she is certain of. Her return to the water has failed to bring her freedom. The river passage ends with her recaptured, exhausted and once again subject to the people who pursued her.

Significance

The event builds its reversals around the contrast between Sherzad’s capacities in water and her vulnerability on land. She can outpace horses in the canal and defend herself with her voice underwater, yet the wagon makes her dependent on others, and the nets and armed pursuit turn even the river into a contested space. Escape is not a single leap from captivity to liberty: it requires singing instructions, calming horses, enduring the wagon, reaching the bridge, and then surviving the hunters downstream.

The rescue also depends on cooperation that cannot erase the unequal dangers facing its participants. Marie-Josèphe’s song and Yves’s decision to stay help Sherzad reach the river; Lucien manages the horses and drives them toward the bridge. But the escape ends differently for each of them: Sherzad is caught in the shallows, while Lucien remains behind to face Louis XIV. By ending after the river pursuit, the episode makes recapture the decisive consequence of a plan that briefly succeeds at Versailles but cannot overcome the forces waiting beyond it.