Page:A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys.pdf/34

 relinquished and the great vehicle lumbered off at its best pace down the Aire valley.

About the same moment Drouet came within a mile of Clermont. and Guillaume The night had grown very dark and cloudy, though there was somewhere a moon. They heard voices and discovered it was the postilions from Ste. Menehould turning These postilions had a story to tell. not on the Metz road. homewards. The berline was They had heard the orders given to turn northward to Varennes.

Drouet was a man of action, and in a moment his mind was made up. He must somehow get ahead of the royal carriage which was on the road in the valley below. The only chance was to cut off the corner by taking to the woody ridge of the Argonne which stretched some 300 feet above the open plain. Now along that eastern scarp of the Argonne runs a green ride which had once been a Roman road. He and his companion galloped through the brushwood till they struck the ride.

It was, as Carlyle has called it, "a night of spurs." Three parties were straining every nerve to reach Varennes: the anxious King and Queen in the great berline, jolting along the highway; the Duke de Choiseul, who had taken a short cut from Somme-Vesle,