Bodyguard Couriers, in
their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering; loyal but stupid;
unacquainted with all things. Stoppages occur; and breakages to be
repaired at Etoges. King Louis too will dismount, will walk up hills,
and enjoy the blessed sunshine:--with eleven horses and double drink
money, and all furtherances of Nature and Art, it will be found that
Royalty, flying for life, accomplishes Sixty-nine miles in Twenty-two
incessant hours. Slow Royalty! And yet not a minute of these hours but
is precious: on minutes hang the destinies of Royalty now.

Readers, therefore, can judge in what humour Duke de Choiseul might
stand waiting, in the Village of Pont-de-Sommevelle, some leagues beyond
Chalons, hour after hour, now when the day bends visibly westward.
Choiseul drove out of Paris, in all privity, ten hours before their
Majesties' fixed time; his Hussars, led by Engineer Goguelat, are here
duly, come 'to escort a Treasure that is expected:' but, hour after
hour, is no Baroness de Korff's Berline. Indeed, over all that
North-east Region, on the skirts of Champagne and of Lorraine, where the
Great Road runs, the agitation is considerable. For all along, from this
Pont-de-Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at Post-villages
and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do lounge waiting: a train or
chain of Military Escorts; at the Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille:
an electric thunder-chain; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father
Jove, holds in his hand--for wise purposes! Brave Bouille has done
what man could; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military
Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons: it waits but for the new
Korff Berline; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off
in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say,
these fierce Troopers; from Montmedi and Stenai, through Clermont,
Sainte-Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all Post-villages;
for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns: they loiter impatient
'till the Treasure arrive.'

Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille: perhaps the first day of
a new glorious life; surely the last day of the old! Also, and
indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your young
full-blooded Captains: your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul,
Engineer Goguelat, and the like; entrusted with the secret!--Alas, the
day bends ever more westward; and no Korff Berline comes to