The fact of the horses having fallen one after the other, without any apparent reason, seemed to the Queen a presage of evil to come.
As yet, however, they had escaped the consequences of recognition.
The man who witnessed the arrival of the berlin had ran to the Mayor’s house; but that official was a Royalist. However, the witness swore that he recognised the King and the other members of the royal family; so the Mayor, driven into his last entrenchment, was forced to proceed forthwith to the Rue St. Jacques; but, happily, when he arrived there, he found that the carriage had started some five minutes before.
Passing through the gates of the city, and noticing the ardor with which the postilion urged on their steeds, the Queen, and Madame Elizabeth gave vent each to the same cry:—“We are saved!”
But at that very moment a man, arisen, as it were, suddenly from the very bosom of the earth, passed on horseback to the door of the carriage, and said, “Your measures are badly taken! You will be stopped!”
It was never known who this man was.
By good luck, they were distant only four leagues from Pont-de-Somme-Vesles, where M. de Choiseul was awaiting them with his forty hussars.
Perhaps they should have sent M. de Valory to the rear, in order to prevent this.
But the last warning had increased the Queen’s terrors, and she would not part with one of her defenders.
They incited the postilions to greater speed.