o be; whom also her Majesty could
not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen, and may the Heavens turn it
well!

Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the sleeping
Hamlet of Bondy; Chaise with Waiting-women; horses all ready, and
postillions with their churn-boots, impatient in the dewy dawn. Brief
harnessing done, the postillions with their churn-boots vault into the
saddles; brandish circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his
jarvie-surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu; royal hands
wave speechless in expressible response; Baroness de Korff's Berline,
with the Royalty of France, bounds off: for ever, as it proved. Deft
Fersen dashes obliquely Northward, through the country, towards Bougret;
gains Bougret, finds his German Coachman and chariot waiting there;
cracks off, and drives undiscovered into unknown space. A deft active
man, we say; what he undertook to do is nimbly and successfully done.

A so the Royalty of France is actually fled? This precious night, the
shortest of the year, it flies and drives! Baroness de Korff is, at
bottom, Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children: she who came
hooded with the two hooded little ones; little Dauphin; little Madame
Royale, known long afterwards as Duchess d'Angouleme. Baroness de
Korff's Waiting-maid is the Queen in gypsy-hat. The royal Individual in
round hat and peruke, he is Valet, for the time being. That other hooded
Dame, styled Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had
sworn, long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death
should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously,
through the Wood of Bondy:--over a Rubicon in their own and France's
History.

Great; though the future is all vague! If we reach Bouille? If we do
not reach him? O Louis! and this all round thee is the great slumbering
Earth (and overhead, the great watchful Heaven); the slumbering Wood
of Bondy,--where Longhaired Childeric Donothing was struck through with
iron; (Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p. 36.) not unreasonably. These
peaked stone-towers are Raincy; towers of wicked d'Orleans. All slumbers
save the multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow
of an Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding,
seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great North-East
sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn: from dewy branch, birds here
and there, with