six: but a man of spirit would have seen how many they were before he
yielded. It is true he did not know that Bouille was in bed, and his
hussars drinking in the village: but a man of spirit would have trusted
that help would rise up, or have done without it in such an extremity,
rather than yield. Instead of this, what did the king do? He heard
what his enemies had to say.

One of the six was Monsieur Sauce, a grocer who lived in the
market-place, and a magistrate. He said, in the name of his party,
that, whether the travellers were the Baroness de Korff and suite, or of
a higher rank still, it would be better that they should alight, and
remain at his house till morning.

With what a bursting heart must the queen have seen the king quietly
doing as he was bid! For twenty-one years she had suffered what a high
spirit must suffer in being closely united with a companion who has
none; but the agony of this moment must have exceeded all former trials
of the kind. She, the woman and the wife, must obey, to her own
destruction, and that of all who belonged to her. She said little; but
there was afterwards a visible sign of what she must have endured. In
this one night, her beautiful hair turned white, as if forty years had
at once fallen upon her head.

The king stepped out of the coach, and the ladies followed him. They
took each an arm of Monsieur Sauce, and walked across the market-place
to his shop, the king following, with a child holding either hand. It
was strange confusion for little Louis. This was the third night that
he had spent out of his bed. He had been asleep,--the whole party had
been asleep in the coach; and now this disputing, and the flare of the
lanterns, and the presenting the muskets, and the having to get out and
walk, must have been perplexing and terrifying to the poor little
fellow. There was much noise round about. The alarm-bell was clanging;
there were lights in all the windows: men poured out of the houses,
half-dressed, and rolled barrels, and laid felled trees across the road,
that no help might arrive on the king's behalf.

And what did the king do next? He asked for something to eat!
"Something to eat" was always a great object with him; and he seemed to
find comfort under all trials in his good appetite. He sat now in an
upper story of Monsieur Sauce's house, eating bread and cheese and
drinking Burgundy,--declaring that this bottle of Burgundy was the best
he ever