There is no darkness in the North at this season, but a twilight which, if there are clouds, fades from the grey of evening to the grey of dawn; he had sat, cold, crouching in the stern of his boat, throughout all the hours of the day, and now this grey twilight was upon him. In the midst of it he saw far up-stream a white rock from which, as it seemed to him, some phosphorescence glowed unnaturally, and in the midst of that light, upon a ledge of the stone, was the ring. He took it, as at a command; then at last he dared look up at the masthead. He saw the hand, now whole, relax and change and disappear, and he felt the boat go free, turn and drift down-stream.
When he was back upon the quays of Stockholm, all his body trembling with a fast of twenty-four hours and with the cold of the morning, his neighbours as they caught the mooring-rope asked questions of him. He answered them with meaningless songs, and then, as the vision returned, with pointings and terror. He was mad.
They took him off to the Bethel beyond the stream. On the Knights’ Island, within the church of Riddenholm, the Squires who had deserted Fersen upon the day before were at that moment gathered round the coffin to do honour to his burial; and upon the pall they noticed (some curious, some indifferent) the broad band of yellowish gold and the unknown stone.
When it came to the burial, the grave-diggers dared not put it into earth as they should have done; they gave it to his family. With them it still remains, to do evil and disturb his sleep.
From Bondy the great carriage went forward under the growing light of the day. At Claye a cabriolet with the Queen’s waiting-women joined and followed the berline. That increasing light forbade the family to sleep; they settled in comfort upon the broad and padded seats of white velvet, leaning back into them, and every word they said revealed the enlarging confidence of their souls. The King felt himself already upon horseback; the Queen and the Duchess repeated the rôles they were to play on whatever little public occasions the rapid journey might involve them in. The Duchess as Madame Korff, in whose name the transport had been made out; the Queen as her governess—and so forth. They went rapidly in that mixed landscape of wood and market-garden and half-continuous village which still marks the confines of Paris and of the influence of Paris. Now they were in the open country, with Paris quite forgotten, now in a district with a dialect of its own—sure test of honesty and of freedom. The country-sides were awake, the mowers were in the field; the road was down among the narrow pastures of the Marne, and at last in Meaux, where for the first time they halted for a relay.
So near to Paris, the wealthy equipage and its suite attracted no curiosity, while prudence still restrained the travellers from showing themselves in the market square, fatigued as they may already have been by a continuous travelling of now over five hours—for it was past six and the town was astir by the time the berline and the cabriolet had rumbled in. To this concurrence of good accidents the neighbourhood of the capital added another element, for the posting station of Meaux was so used to the continual passage of considerable travellers (how many of the emigrants had it not re-harnessed!) that not only was the whole place incurious, but also the relay was rapidly effected. It was not a quarter of an hour before they were off again upon the Chalons road.
Sketch Map of the Road from
PARIS to VARENNES
June 21st. 1791
By the route they had chosen, which had the advantage that it was somewhat shorter and, what was of even more importance, less frequented than the main way through Chateau Thierry and Epernay, the distance before them to Chalons, the next large town, was somewhat over seventy miles. It would fill the whole morning and more. They fell to talking to one another with some little anxiety as to what might happen when Chalons, with its considerable population, its newspaper and its activity, was reached. But their immunity at Meaux, the advent of a pleasing, shaded and tolerable day, the remote country-sides through which they passed after branching off the main road at La Ferté, dulled their fears, or rather exorcised them. They fell to eating—a sort of picnic without plates, cutting their meat upon their bread, and drinking their wine from a cup passed round. No sunlight fell upon the green blind of the off-side window to fatigue their eyes; no reflections of excessive heat as the morning rose shone from the road upon the white velvet of the cushions: they were in comfort and at ease.