Page:A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys.pdf/32

 outside their doors. There was a handful of French dragoons under Captain Dandoins in the place, sent by Bouillé, and at the door of the post-house stood one Jean Baptiste Drouet who had once been a dragoon in the Condé regiment. He was a dark, loutish fellow, saturnine of face, still young, very strong, active and resolute. He was a fervent patriot, too, and that afternoon he had heard strange rumours coming from the west. As he saw the cabriolet enter with its moun tain of bonnet boxes, and then the huge berline with its yellow-liveried guards, he realized that something out of the common was happening. were up to King and berline did Aisne, and The green blinds let in the evening air, and the faces of both King and Queen were plain to the onlookers. The berline did not halt, but rumbled over the bridge of up into the high woods. But Drouet had seen enough to make the thing clear to him. King and Queen were in flight; The they were going to wards Metz!

The ex-dragoon was a man of strong resolution and quick action. The drums were beat; Dandoins and his troop were arrested and disarmed, and with an other old dragoon of Condé, one Guillaume, an inn keeper, Drouet set off hell-for-leather on the trail.

The great coach with its eleven horses and its yellow-