What boots it?  Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and all the Varennes Officiality are with the King; and the King can give no order, form no opinion; but sits there, as he has ever done, like clay on potter’s wheel; perhaps the absurdest of all pitiable and pardonable clay-figures that now circle under the Moon.  He will go on, next morning, and take the National Guard with him; Sausse permitting!  Hapless Queen:  with her two children laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven, with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them; imperial Marie-Antoinette near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse, amid candle-boxes and treacle-barrels,—­in vain!  There are Three-thousand National Guards got in; before long they will count Ten-thousand; tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or far faster.

Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse, and—­fled towards his Father.  Thitherward also rides, in an almost hysterically desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot, Choiseul’s Orderly; swimming dark rivers, our Bridge being blocked; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at his heels. (Rapport de M. Aubriot Choiseul, p. 150-7.) Through the village of Dun, he, galloping still on, scatters the alarm; at Dun, brave Captain Deslons and his Escort of a Hundred, saddle and ride.  Deslons too gets into Varennes; leaving his Hundred outside, at the tree-barricade; offers to cut King Louis out, if he will order it:  but unfortunately “the work will prove hot;” whereupon King Louis has “no orders to give.” (Extrait d’un Rapport de M. Deslons, Choiseul, p. 164-7.)

And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop; and can do nothing, having gallopped:  National Guards stream in like the gathering of ravens:  your exploding Thunder-chain, falling Avalanche, or what else we liken it to, does play, with a vengeance,—­up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself. (Bouille, ii. 74-6.) Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he saddles Royal Allemand; speaks fire-words, kindling heart and eyes; distributes twenty-five gold-louis a company:—­Ride, Royal-Allemand, long-famed:  no Tuileries Charge and Necker-Orleans Bust-Procession; a very King made captive, and world all to win!—­Such is the Night deserving to be named of Spurs.

At six o’clock two things have happened.  Lafayette’s Aide-de-camp, Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier, on that old Herb-merchant’s route, quickened during the last stages, has got to Varennes; where the Ten thousand now furiously demand, with fury of panic terror, that Royalty shall forthwith return Paris-ward, that there be not infinite bloodshed.  Also, on the other side, ‘English Tom,’ Choiseul’s jokei, flying with that Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun; the adamantine brow flushed with dark thunder; thunderous rattle of Royal Allemand at his heels.  English Tom answers as he can the brief question, How it is at Varennes?—­then asks in turn what he, English Tom, with M. de Choiseul’s horses, is