第194章

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 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; in the name of Heaven, what is it that brings you? A Treasure?--exploratory pickets shake their heads. The hungry Peasants, however, know too well what Treasure it is:

Military seizure for rents, feudalities; which no Bailiff could make us pay! This they know;--and set to jingling their Parish-bell by way of tocsin; with rapid effect! Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride.

They mount; and this Parish tocsin happily ceases. They ride slowly Eastward, towards Sainte-Menehould; still hoping the Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them. Ah me, no Berline! And near now is that Sainte-Menehould, which expelled us in the morning, with its 'three hundred National fusils;' which looks, belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons, though only French;--which, in a word, one dare not enter the second time, under pain of explosion! With rather heavy heart, our Hussar Party strikes off to the left; through byways, through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte-Menehould and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct for the distant Village of Varennes.

It is probable they will have a rough evening-ride.

This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain, has gone off with no effect; or with worse, and your chain threatens to entangle itself!--The Great Road, however, is got hushed again into a kind of quietude, though one of the wakefullest. Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop; where Patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for news. Captains, in a state near distraction, beat the dusky highway, with a face of indifference; and no Sun-Chariot appears. Why lingers it? Incredible, that with eleven horses and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, its rate should be under the weightiest dray-rate, some three miles an hour! Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of Paris;--and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it is not at the Village-end! One's heart flutters on the verge of unutterabilities.