Recognizing Drouet’s voice, and thinking perhaps he might want me, I crept to his side.
At the moment that I opened a passage to him they were parleying; but M. Drouet and his friends parleyed with muskets in their hands, and the officers of hussars with their sabres on their wrists.
Between the two officers of hussars I recognised M. de Malmy on horseback, and covered with dust, like them.
It appeared as if he had guided them.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT HAPPENED AT PARIS BEFORE THE DEPARTURE.
My story would be incomplete did I not follow the royal family in their flight from the moment that they left the Palace of Tuileries, till their appearance at the top of the Rue des Réligieuses; and did I not tell you through what circumstances M. Drouet was led to make his appearance in time to change the face of events, and to give that terrible blow to the throne of the Bourbons which occasioned Louis XVI not only the loss of his crown, but of his head.
I have already told you that Mirabeau, on his death-bed, asserted that the King’s only hope rested in flight now that he was deprived of his assistance.
From that moment, Louis XVI had but one idea—to leave Paris—to leave France—to fly to a foreign land.