Sherzad’s escape attempt and recapture

Sherzad’s escape attempt and recapture is a pursuit whose brief promise of freedom collapses into renewed captivity. Under a nearly zenithing full moon, Marie-Josèphe de la Croix, Yves de la Croix, and Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien try to get Sherzad away from the Grand Canal and the watchful M. Boursin. The escape depends on song, a wagon, and a narrow lead over the royal riders. It ends with Sherzad in a net, carried back through the mist as dawn exposes both the failure of the rescue and the damage it has done to Lucien’s standing at court.

The Escape Plan and Its Risks

Marie-Josèphe’s song supplies the plan and its instructions. She urges Sherzad to swim to the far end of the Grand Canal, far enough from M. Boursin that he will not see her climb into the wagon. Sherzad answers in song, sounding hopeful and excited, and propels herself through the canal faster than the galloping horses. The exchange makes music practical: it lets Marie-Josèphe direct Sherzad while the escape depends on concealment and speed.

The attempt is also bound up with Yves’s remorse. When Marie-Josèphe cries for him to return to the château, Yves refuses, believing that going back would leave him unable to atone for betraying Sherzad. His decision keeps him with the fugitives, but it cannot undo the earlier betrayal; his wish to repair it now carries him into danger alongside his sister and Sherzad.

At the western end of the canal, Sherzad clambers onto the bank in an agitated, clumsy rush toward the wagon. The cart-horses start, rear, and threaten to overturn the vehicle. Lucien rises to steady them, speaking softly until the powerful draft horses stop trembling and sweating. Marie-Josèphe takes responsibility for calming Sherzad. But the sea woman is frantic, still fighting as if she were in her own element. Her claw grazes Marie-Josèphe from shoulder to breast; then Sherzad slips, crashes to the ground, and gasps and moans. Marie-Josèphe kneels beside her. The scene exposes the physical peril inside a rescue driven by care: Sherzad’s desperation makes her dangerous to the people trying to help.

The Broken Wagon and the River

The fugitives continue across the river plain in the mist, with the horses laboring under the wagon. Marie-Josèphe imagines crossing the bridge, blocking it or burning it, and leaving the cavalry behind; she also considers fording the river, even if that ruins their costumes. The hope rests on reaching the bridge before the pursuers close in. At five hundred paces from it, the royal troop is still a thousand paces behind; when the bridge is only two hundred paces away, the torches trail sparks and the Carrousel headdresses wave above the wagon like threatening figures.

At fifty paces, a rock throws the wagon into the air. It crashes down, a wheel splinters, and the vehicle slews sideways. Yves grabs Marie-Josèphe and Sherzad to keep them inside as the axle screams over the road, gouging a furrow through stones and ruts. Lucien drives the ruined wagon onto the bridge, but the rising road catches the axle. The vehicle sticks, lopsided between the stone ramparts. Lucien stops the horses; one collapses to its knees and the other trembles with its head between its legs. Their exhaustion, and the wrecked wagon, turn the last stretch to safety into an exposed halt.

Marie-Josèphe and Yves labor to help Sherzad reach the crest of the bridge. Sherzad moans in anticipation and snarls in defiance, her tails scraping the stone. Lucien cannot make the choice confronting him, while the others hurry to get her to the water. At last Sherzad gives a shriek of triumph and leaps from the bridge into the river. Marie-Josèphe calls for her to swim for her life and says goodbye. Louis XIV points downstream; Monsieur gallops along the bank with his team, and the other riders follow. Sherzad has reached the water, but the royal pursuit has not ended.

Flight Through the Water and Recapture

The river is thick with the filth of animals and land-humans. Sherzad surfaces, spits in disgust, and dives again. Bruised and sore after her long imprisonment, she tires quickly, though the current helps carry her toward the distant sea. At the next bend, men and horses block the river, and a long net stretches across the current. Nearly deafened by the thick silt, Sherzad surfaces only briefly before diving to seek a way around or beneath it. She slips past plunging hooves; when she touches the horses, they scream and thrash, throwing their riders. That dangerous maneuver gives away her position. Riders jab at her with pikes and fire muskets. A shot boils the water near her, and another tears away a lock of her hair.

The net is weighted with stones to the river bottom. The current pushes Sherzad into it, and she struggles to slip beneath the mesh, but the hunters feel it strain and pull it around her, tangling her and forcing her into the shallows. There, a submerged predator attacks. Sherzad’s sharp cry travels through the water and kills the first attacker, but its mate fastens its teeth in her throat. Unable to cry out or move, she is vulnerable to a bite that could sever her spine or make her bleed to death. She goes limp amid the shouts and blows of the pikes. The men of land beat the predator away and drag her into the shallows. The net is the one thing she can still recognize for certain: the route to freedom has ended in the instrument of her capture.

Dawn and the Cost of Failure

Marie-Josèphe turns in the darkness to ask whether Sherzad escaped. Louis XIV appears through the mist, splashing out of the shallows, while Monsieur and his teammates carry Sherzad, trapped in a net and suspended on poles. Marie-Josèphe sings to her; when Sherzad struggles, the song breaks into a sob, and Sherzad wails, her eyes shining like a cat’s. The failed escape leaves their bond audible but powerless to release her.

The young Carrousel riders, exhilarated by exhaustion and conquest, spar, jostle, joke, and jeer at Lucien. Under Louis XIV’s disapproval, old friendships dissolve; Lucien recognizes the public humiliation he had seen inflicted on others and had carefully shaped his life to avoid. His efforts to protect himself from that reversal lie in ruins. The King looks across Yves, Marie-Josèphe, and the Chevalier de Lorraine before fixing his gaze on Lucien. As the sun rises, he declares, “You have all gone insane.” The rebuke closes the pursuit without restoring Sherzad’s freedom: the fugitives have failed to carry her beyond the King’s reach, and the attempt has made both her renewed captivity and Lucien’s political vulnerability visible.