Page:A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys.pdf/33

 liveried guards on the rumble, climbed slowly up to the summit of the Argonne ridge. There were about 400 feet to climb, and it was some four miles to the crest. After that came the little village of Islettes in a hollow, and then a stretch of four miles to the town of Clermont in the valley of the river Aire. There the royal road must turn at right angles down the Aire to Varennes, which lay nine miles off, a flat straight road in the valley bottom. Drouet and Guillaume had the last two horses left in Ste. Menehould, and the berline had an hour's start of them. They believed that the King was going to Metz, and that what was before them was a stern chase on the highroad.

The berline reached Clermont about twenty minutes to ten. At Clermont there were royal troops, and Drouet had no notion how to deal with them; he hoped somehow on his side. but to raise the people in the town The occupants of the berline had now lost all their high hopes of the morning. that they were late and that somehow They realized their plans were miscarrying, and they were in a fever to get past Varennes into the protection of Bouillé's army. It took a quarter of an hour to change horses at Clermont, and then about ten o'clock the Metz road was