X.

The king’s carriage rolled on the road to Chalons, and relays of eight horses were ordered at each post-house:  this number of horses, the remarkable size and build of the berlin, the number of travellers who occupied the interior, the three body guards, whose livery formed a strange contrast to their physiognomy and martial appearance, the Bourbonian features of Louis XVI. seated in a corner of the carriage, and which was totally out of character with the role of valet de chambre the king had taken on himself,—­all these circumstances were calculated to excite distrust and suspicion, and to compromise the safety of the royal family.  But their passport removed all objections,—­it was perfectly formal, and in these terms:  “De par le roi.  Mandons de laisser passer Madame la baronne de Korf, se rendant a Franckfort avec ses deux enfants, une femme de chambre, un valet de chambre, et trois domestiques.”  And lower down, “Le Ministre des Affaires etrangeres, MONTMORIN.”

This foreign name, the title of German Baroness, the proverbial wealth of the bankers of Frankfort, to whom the people were accustomed to attribute everything that was singular and bizarre, had been most admirably combined by the Count de Fersen, to account for anything strange or remarkable in the appearance of the royal equipages; nothing, however, excited attention, and they arrived without interruption at Montmirail, a little town between Meaux and Chalons:  there some necessary repairs to the berlin detained them an hour; this delay, during which the king’s flight might be discovered, and couriers despatched to give information to all the country, threw them into the greatest alarm.

However the carriage was soon repaired, and they once more started on their journey, ignorant that this hour’s delay would ultimately cost the lives of four out of five persons who composed the royal family.

They were full of security and confidence; the success with which they had escaped from the palace, the manner in which they had left Paris, the punctuality with which the relays were furnished, the loneliness of the roads, the absence of anything like suspicion or vigilance in the towns they had passed through, the dangers they had left behind them, the security they were so fast approaching, each turn of the wheel bringing them nearer M. de Bouille and his faithful troops; the beauty of the scene and the time, doubly beautiful to their eyes, that for two years had looked on nought save the seditious mob that daily filled the courts of the Tuileries, or the glittering bayonets of the armed populace beneath their windows,—­all this seemed to them as if Providence had at last taken pity on them, that the fervent and touching prayers of the babes that slept in their arms, and of the angelic Madame Elizabeth had at last vanquished the fate that had so long pursued them.