he people were handing jugs of wine about among the
hussars; and when their commander came out from Monsieur Sauce's, at the
end of an hour, he found them tipsy, and declaring for the nation
against the king.

There was still one other chance--one more opportunity of choice for him
whose misfortune was that he never could make a choice. Another loyal
officer, Deslons, arrived, with a hundred horse-soldiers. He left his
hundred horse outside the barricade, entered himself, and offered to cut
out the royal party,--to rescue them by the sword, if the king would
order him to do so. "Will it be hot work?" asked the king. "Very hot,"
was the answer; and the king would give no orders.--In the bitterness of
her regrets, the queen said afterwards, at Paris, that no one who knew
what had been the king's answer to Count d'Inisdal about being carried
off, should have asked him for orders;--that the officers should have
acted without saying a word to him.

The children were asleep on a bed up-stairs, and the ladies
remonstrating with Madame Sauce, from hour to hour of this dreadful
night: and the end of it all was that it was decided by somebody that
the party were to go back to Paris, as the people in the market-place
were loudly demanding. The poor queen's doubts and fears thus ended in
despair. Weary as they all were,--after having travelled so far, and
escaped so many dangers,--and now so near the frontier, so near
Bouille's camp, so close upon the queen's own country,--they were to
pursue their weary way back to Paris,--journeying in disgrace, prisoners
in the eyes of all the people, to be plunged again into the midst of
their enemies, now enraged by their flight. It would have been easier
to a spirit like the queen's to have died, with those who belonged to
her, in one more struggle,--in one rush to the camp, than to undergo the
slow despair of a return among their enemies.

Her feelings were understood,--the case was understood,--by one of the
attendants who had travelled in the chaise,--the Dauphin's head
waiting-woman. Hoping that gaining time might afford a chance, she
threw herself on a bed, and pretended to be taken suddenly ill, and in
an agony of pain. The queen went to the bedside, and the woman squeezed
her hand, to make her understand the pretence. The queen declared that
she could not think of leaving in this state a faithful servant who had
encountered many dangers and fatigues for the sake of the fami