wood of Bondy; and thus set
pursuers upon their track. Besides the eight horses wanted for the two
carriages, there were more for the three body-guards, mounted and
dressed as couriers, but knowing nothing about courier's business, as
the people along the road must have found out, while watching the
changing of eleven horses at the different stages. Then the berlin
wanted some repairs, and this detained them at Etoges: and the king
would get out, and walk up the hills, and they had to wait for him: so
that though they gave double money to the drivers to get on fast, they
had gone only sixty-nine miles by ten at night. This slowness ruined
everything.

The Duke de Choiseul, Count Fersen's friend, had left Paris ten hours
before the royal family, and was waiting, with a party of hussars, at a
village, some way beyond Chalons. If the party had kept their time,
they would have met their guard, and, finding more and more soldiers all
along the road, would have been safe. There would have been no time for
the attention of the country people to be fixed on the gathering of
military in the neighbourhood. The Duke de Choiseul's pretence for his
party was that they were to guard a treasure that was expected. The
"treasure" did not arrive; the soldiers lounged about; and it was all
their officers could do to keep them out of public-houses, where they
would be questioned and made suspicious;--for, of course, they knew
nothing of the meaning of their errand. It was a great misfortune, too,
that the queen had changed her mind about the day, when it was too late
to warn some of the officers; and they, supposing the party to have set
off on the 19th, were now in great dismay; and their soldiers were
lounging about twenty-four hours sooner than they should have been. The
village politicians did not like what they saw. They began to say to
one another that no treasure ought to be leaving the kingdom. Any
treasure which had to be guarded by soldiers must be public treasure,
belonging to the people, which no one had any right to carry away. Some
of these rang the alarm-bell of their parish church; and from several
places, parties of the national soldiery went out to explore the roads,
and met parties of the national soldiery from other places. They agreed
that there must be something wrong. At Saint Menehould, the National
Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood
armed: the same Saint Menehould