not trust his men; and
Leopold did not stir. The basis of the scheme had crumbled. Whether
within the frontier or beyond it, success implied an Austrian
invasion. Bouille's plan, from its inception, had no other meaning;
and it was executed under conditions which placed Lewis more
completely in the hands of the calculating emperor. It became more and
more apparent that his destination was not the camp of Montmedy, but
the abbey of Orval in Luxemburg. The men of St. Menehould who resolved
to prevent his escape acted on vague suspicion, but we cannot say
that, as Frenchmen, they acted wrongly. They had no certainty, and no
authority; but while they deliberated a pursuing horseman rode into
the town, bringing what they wanted. An officer of the National Guard,
Baillon, had got away from Paris early in the day, with orders from
Bailly and Lafayette, and took the right road. He was delayed for two
hours by an encounter with M. de Briges, one of the king's men, whom
he succeeded in arresting. To save time he sent forward a fresh rider,
on a fresh horse, to stop the fugitives; and this messenger from
Chalons brought the news to St. Menehould, not long after the coach
had rolled away.

When Drouet started on the ride that made his fortune, he knew that it
was the king, and that Paris did not mean him to escape. An hour had
been lost, and he met his postboys returning from Clermont. From them
he learnt that the courier had given the word Varennes, and not
Verdun. By a short cut, through the woods, he arrived just in time.
Meantime St. Menehould was seething; the commanding officer was put
under arrest, and his troops were prevented from mounting. One man,
Lagache, warned by the daughter of his host that the treasure for the
army chest had evaporated and the truth was out, sprung on his horse
and opened a way through the crowd with a pistol in each hand.

Drouet told the story to the National Assembly more to his own
advantage, claiming to have recognised the queen whom he had seen at
Paris, and the king by his likeness on an _assignat_. On a later day
he declined all direct responsibility, and said that he followed the
coach in consequence of orders forwarded from Chalons, not on his own
initiative or conjecture. When he gave the second version he was a
prisoner among the Austrians, and the questioner before whom he stood
was Fersen. At such a moment even a man of Drouet's fortitude might
well have stretched a point in the end