This text is so pithy and fragmentary as to be nearly unreadable, and makes use of many curious word substitutions-“gun” written as “England stick” and so on. Much of its bulk consists of tedious lists of names, regiments, places, et cetera, which are of course staples of espionage, but of little interest now that the war has begun and everything become fluid. Some of it, however, is personal narrative that she apparently set down in crewel when she was bored. This material solves the riddle of how she got from St. Cloud to Nijmegen. I have taken the liberty of translating it into a more elevated style and redacting it into a coherent, if episodic narrative, which is copied out below for your majesty’s pleasure. From place to place I have inserted a note supplying additional information about the Countess’s activities which I have gleaned from other sources in the meantime. At the end, I have attached a postscript as well as a note from d’Avaux.

If I had to read romances for long stretches at a time, I should find them tiresome; but I only read three or four pages in the mornings and evenings when I sit (by your leave) on my close-stool, and then it is neither fatiguing nor dull.

–Liselotte in a letter to Sophie,

1 May 1704

Dear reader,

There is no way for me to guess whether this scrap of linen will, on purpose or through some calamity, be destroyed; or be made into a cushion; or, by some turn of events, fall under the scrutiny of some clever person and be decyphered, years or centuries from now. Though the fabric is new, clean, and dry as I sew these words into it, I cannot but expect that by the time anyone reads them, it will have become streaked with rain or tears, mottled and mildewed from age and damp, perhaps stained with smoke or blood. In any event I congratulate you, whoever you may be and in whatever era you may live, for having been clever enough to read this.

Some would argue that a spy should not keep a written account of her actions lest it fall into the wrong hands. I would answer that it is my duty to find out detailed information, and supply it to my lord, and if I do not learn more than I can recite from memory, then I have not been very industrious.

On 16 August 1688, I met Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, duchesse d’Orleans, who is known to the French Court as Madame or La Palatine, and to her loved ones in Germany as the Knight of the Rustling Leaves, at the gate of a stable on her estate at St. Cloud on the Seine, just downstream of Paris. She ordered her favorite hunting-horse brought out and saddled, while I went from stall to stall and selected a mount that would be suitable for riding bareback; that being the outward purpose of the expedition. Together we rode off into the woods that line the bank of the Seine for some miles in the neighborhood of the chateau. We were accompanied by two young men from Hanover. Liselotte maintains close relations with her family in that part of the world, and from time to time some nephew or cousin will be sent out to join her household for a time, and be “finished” in the society of Versailles. The personal stories of these boys are not devoid of interest, but, reader, they do not pertain to my narration, and so I will tell you only that they were German Protestant heterosexuals, which meant that they could be trusted within the environment of St. Cloud, if only because they were utterly isolated.

In a quiet backwater of the Seine, shielded from view by overhanging trees, a small flat-bottomed boat was waiting. I climbed aboard and burrowed under a tangle of fishing-nets. The boatman shoved off and poled the craft out into the main stream of the river, where we shortly made rendezvous with a larger vessel making its way upstream. I have been on it ever since. We have already passed up through the middle of Paris, keeping to the north side of the Ile de la Cite. Just outside the city, at the confluence of the rivers Seine and Marne, we took the left fork, and began to travel up the latter.

For several days we have been working our languid way up the Marne. Yesterday we passed through Meaux, and (as I believed) left it many miles behind us, but today we came again close enough to hear its church-bells. This is because of the preposterous looping of the river, which turns in on itself like the arguments of Father Edouard de Gex. This vessel is what they call a chaland, a long, narrow, cheaply made box with but a single square sail that is hoisted whenever the wind happens to come from astern. But most of the time the mast is used only as a hitching-place for tow-ropes by which the chaland is pulled against the current by animals on the banks.

My captain and protector is Monsieur LeBrun, who must live in mortal terror of Madame, for whenever I venture near the gunwale or do anything else the least bit dangerous he begins to sweat, and holds his head in his hands as if it were in danger of falling off. Mostly I sit on a keg of salt near the stern and watch France go by, and observe traffic on the river. I wear the clothes of a boy and keep my hair under my hat, which is sufficient to hide my sex from men on other boats and on the riverbank. If anyone hails me, I smile and say nothing, and after a few moments they falter and take me for an imbecile, perhaps a son of M. LeBrun who has been hit on the head. The lack of activity suits me, for I have been menstruating most of the time I’ve been on the chaland, and am in fact sitting on a pile of rags.

It is obvious that this countryside produces abundant fodder. In a few weeks’ time the barley will be ripe and then it will be easy to march an army through here. If an invasion of the Palatinate is being planned, the armies will come from the north (for they are stationed along the Dutch border) and the food will come from here; so there is nothing for a spy to look for, except, perhaps, shipments of certain military stocks. The armies would carry many of their own supplies with them, but it would not be unreasonable to expect that certain items, such as gunpowder, and especially lead, might be shipped up the river from arsenals in the vicinity of Paris. For to move a ton of lead in wagons requires teams of oxen, and many more wagon-loads of fodder, but to move the same cargo in the bilge of a chaland is easy. So I peer at the chalands making their way upriver and wonder what is stored down in their holds. To outward appearances they are all carrying the same sort of cargo as the chaland of M. LeBrun, viz. salted fish, salt, wine, apples, and other goods that originated closer to where the Seine empties into the sea.

Sitting still day after day has its advantages. I am trying to view my surroundings through the eye of a Natural Philosopher. A few days ago I was gazing at another chaland making its way up-stream about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. One of the boatmen needed to reach a lashing on the mast that was too high for him. So he gripped the rim of a large barrel that was standing upright on the deck, tipped it back towards himself, and rolled it over to where he wanted it, then climbed up onto its end. From the way he managed this huge object and from the sound that it made under his feet, I could tell that it must be empty. Nothing terribly unusual in and of itself, since empty barrels are commonly shipped from place to place. But it made me wonder whether there was any outward sign by which I could distinguish between a chaland loaded as M. LeBrun’s is, and one that had a few tons of musket-balls in the bilge with empty barrels above to disguise the true nature of its cargo from spies?