of Champagne and of Lorraine, where the Great Road runs, the agitation is considerable.  For all along, from this Pont-de-Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at Post-villages and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do lounge waiting:  a train or chain of Military Escorts; at the Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille:  an electric thunder-chain; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his hand—­for wise purposes!  Brave Bouille has done what man could; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons:  it waits but for the new Korff Berline; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of military fire.  They lie and lounge there, we say, these fierce Troopers; from Montmedi and Stenai, through Clermont, Sainte-Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all Post-villages; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns:  they loiter impatient ‘till the Treasure arrive.’

Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille:  perhaps the first day of a new glorious life; surely the last day of the old!  Also, and indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your young full-blooded Captains:  your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul, Engineer Goguelat, and the like; entrusted with the secret!—­Alas, the day bends ever more westward; and no Korff Berline comes to sight.  It is four hours beyond the time, and still no Berline.  In all Village-streets, Royalist Captains go lounging, looking often Paris-ward; with face of unconcern, with heart full of black care:  rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafes and dramshops. (Declaration du Sieur La Gache du Regiment Royal-Dragoons in Choiseul, pp. 125-39.) Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline; dawn on us, thou Sun-chariot of a new Berline, with the destinies of France!

It was of His Majesty’s ordering, this military array of Escorts:  a thing solacing the Royal imagination with a look of security and rescue; yet, in reality, creating only alarm, and where there was otherwise no danger, danger without end.  For each Patriot, in these Post-villages, asks naturally:  This clatter of cavalry, and marching and lounging of troops, what means it?  To escort a Treasure?  Why escort, when no Patriot will steal from the Nation; or where is your Treasure?—­There has been such marching and counter-marching:  for it is another fatality, that certain of these Military Escorts came out so early as yesterday; the Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day first appointed, which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw good to alter.  And now consider the suspicious nature of Patriotism; suspicious, above all, of Bouille the Aristocrat; and how the sour doubting humour has had leave to accumulate and exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours!