sight. It
is four hours beyond the time, and still no Berline. In all
Village-streets, Royalist Captains go lounging, looking often
Paris-ward; with face of unconcern, with heart full of black care:
rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafes
and dramshops. (Declaration du Sieur La Gache du Regiment Royal-Dragoons
in Choiseul, pp. 125-39.) Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline;
dawn on us, thou Sun-chariot of a new Berline, with the destinies of
France!

It was of His Majesty's ordering, this military array of Escorts: a
thing solacing the Royal imagination with a look of security and rescue;
yet, in reality, creating only alarm, and where there was otherwise no
danger, danger without end. For each Patriot, in these Post-villages,
asks naturally: This clatter of cavalry, and marching and lounging of
troops, what means it? To escort a Treasure? Why escort, when no Patriot
will steal from the Nation; or where is your Treasure?--There has been
such marching and counter-marching: for it is another fatality, that
certain of these Military Escorts came out so early as yesterday; the
Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day first appointed,
which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw good to alter. And
now consider the suspicious nature of Patriotism; suspicious, above
all, of Bouille the Aristocrat; and how the sour doubting humour has had
leave to accumulate and exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours!

At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat and Duke
Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men. They lounged
long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould; lounged and loitered till our
National Volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of doubt, 'demanded
three hundred fusils of their Townhall,' and got them. At which same
moment too, as it chanced, our Captain Dandoins was just coming in, from
Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the Village. A fresh troop;
alarming enough; though happily they are only Dragoons and French! So
that Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast;
till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found
resting-place. Resting-place, as on burning marle. For the rumour of him
flies abroad; and men run to and fro in fright and anger: Chalons sends
forth exploratory pickets, coming from Sainte-Menehould, on that. What
is it, ye whiskered Hussars, men of foreign guttural speech;