the parties and fetes which lent wings to the
hours at the Little Trianon, and chivalrous admiration of her person and
character induced him to consecrate himself with the most passionate
devotion to her cause. Three soldiers of the body-guard, Valorg,
Monstrei, and Maldan, were also received into confidence, and
unhesitatingly engaged in an enterprise in which success was extremely
problematical, and failure was certain death. They, disguised as
servants, were to mount behind the carriages, and protect the royal
family at all risks.

The night of the 20th of June at length arrived, and the hearts of the
royal inmates of the Tuileries throbbed violently as the hour approached
which was to decide their destiny. At the hour of eleven, according to
their custom, they took leave of those friends who were in the habit
of paying their respects to them at that time, and dismissed their
attendants as if to retire to their beds. As soon as they were alone,
they hastily, and with trembling hands, dressed themselves in the
disguises which had been prepared for their journey, and by different
doors and at different times left the palace. It was the dark hour of
midnight. The lights glimmered feebly from the lamps, but still there
was the bustle of crowds coming and going in those ever-busy streets.
The queen, in her traveling dress, leaning upon the arm of one of the
body-guard, and leading her little daughter Maria Theresa by the hand,
passed out at a door in the rear of the palace, and hastened through the
Place du Carrousel, and, losing her way, crossed the Seine by the Pont
Royal, and wandered for some time through the darkest and most obscure
streets before she found the two hackney-coaches which were waiting for
them at the Quai des Theatins. The king left the palace in a similar
manner, leading his son Louis by the hand. He also lost his way in the
unfrequented streets through which it was necessary for him to pass. The
queen waited for half an hour in the most intense anxiety before the
king arrived. At last, however, all were assembled, and, entering the
hackney-coaches, the Count de Fersen, disguised as a coachman, leaped up
on the box, and the wheels rattled over the pavements of the city as the
royal family fled in this obscurity from their palace and their throne.
The emotions excited in the bosoms of the illustrious fugitives were too
intense, and the perils to which they were exposed too dreadful, to
allow of any co