How was it this did not attract the soldiers in waiting?
At about nine in the evening, Count Jules Bouille—not his brother Louis whom we have seen in locksmith's dress—and Lieut. Raigecourt, with their hussars, were at the Monarch inn door, when they heard a carriage coming. But it was the cab containing the Queen's hairdresser. He was very frightened.
He revealed his personality.
"The King got out of Paris last evening," he said: "but it does not look as if he could keep on; I have warned Colonel Damas who has called in his outposts; the dragoon regiment mutinied; at Clermont there was a riot—I have had great trouble to get through. I have the Queen's diamonds and my brother's hat and coat, and you must give me a horse to help me on the road."
"Master Leonard," said Bouille, who wanted to set the hairdresser down a peg, "the horses here are for the King's service and nobody else can use them."
"But as I tell you that there is little likelihood of the King coming along——"
"But still he may, and he would hold me to task for letting you have them."
"What, do you imagine that the King would blame you for giving me his horses when it is to help me out of a fix?"
The young noble could not help smiling. Leonard was comic in the big hat and misfit coat, and he was glad to get rid of him by begging the landlord to find a horse for the cab.
Bouille and his brother-officer went through the town and saw nothing on the farther side; they began to believe that the King, eight or ten hours belated, would never come. It was eleven when they returned to the inn. They had sent out an orderly before this, who had reported to Damas, as we have seen.