At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men.  They lounged long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould; lounged and loitered till our National Volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of doubt, ’demanded three hundred fusils of their Townhall,’ and got them.  At which same moment too, as it chanced, our Captain Dandoins was just coming in, from Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the Village.  A fresh troop; alarming enough; though happily they are only Dragoons and French!  So that Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast; till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found resting-place.  Resting-place, as on burning marle.  For the rumour of him flies abroad; and men run to and fro in fright and anger:  Chalons sends forth exploratory pickets, coming from Sainte-Menehould, on that.  What is it, ye whiskered Hussars, men of foreign guttural speech; in the name of Heaven, what is it that brings you?  A Treasure?—­exploratory pickets shake their heads.  The hungry Peasants, however, know too well what Treasure it is:  Military seizure for rents, feudalities; which no Bailiff could make us pay!  This they know;—­and set to jingling their Parish-bell by way of tocsin; with rapid effect!  Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride.

They mount; and this Parish tocsin happily ceases.  They ride slowly Eastward, towards Sainte-Menehould; still hoping the Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them.  Ah me, no Berline!  And near now is that Sainte-Menehould, which expelled us in the morning, with its ’three hundred National fusils;’ which looks, belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons, though only French;—­which, in a word, one dare not enter the second time, under pain of explosion!  With rather heavy heart, our Hussar Party strikes off to the left; through byways, through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte-Menehould and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct for the distant Village of Varennes.  It is probable they will have a rough evening-ride.

This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain, has gone off with no effect; or with worse, and your chain threatens to entangle itself!—­The Great Road, however, is got hushed again into a kind of quietude, though one of the wakefullest.  Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop; where Patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for news.  Captains, in a state near distraction, beat the dusky highway, with a face of indifference; and no Sun-Chariot appears.  Why lingers it?  Incredible, that with eleven horses and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, its rate should be under the weightiest dray-rate, some three miles an hour!  Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of Paris;—­and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it is not at the Village-end!  One’s heart flutters on the verge of unutterabilities.