It was three, and half-past three, and later; it was four—and still nothing appeared. The road still lay empty and silent; the posting-house became, if possible, a trifle more curious; the group of peasantry increased: the men were hustled. Why did not these foreign soldiers unsaddle? What was the urgency? Choiseul had his reply ready, his casual piece of news: “They were expecting treasure, and he was ordered to furnish an escort.” Why, then, let them trot up the road to meet it!... With every quarter of an hour the strain grew greater.
Four o’clock passed, and half-past four. It was for Choiseul to judge exactly (as it has been for how many another soldier commanding thousands where he commanded fifty) beyond what point resistance would mean disaster. From time to time a peasant crossed a distant field bearing perhaps a message to his armed peers; from time to time an ostler would ask a question of one of the Hussars and disappear, bearing perhaps a message of his own, and Choiseul thought, “If the country is raised behind me in Argonne, the King is cut off and lost!”
Among so many Germans a French soldier was easier of approach. The post-master of the place, lounging by, made up to speak to Aubriot. What he said was this: “So the King is expected to pass?... At least, the people are saying so....” He sauntered away.
It was near five. By Choiseul’s watch it was a trifle later still. The situation could no longer be borne, and the moment for retreat had come. Ten to one the King had not started after all....
As Choiseul left he saw that fresh horses were put into his travelling-carriage; he ordered into it his valet and the Queen’s hair-dresser, Leonard, whom he had brought from Paris; he gave them a note which said that it had been necessary for him to abandon Somme-Vesle, and that, moreover, he doubted if the Treasure would come that day. He himself was going to rejoin the General, and new orders must be issued on the morrow. This note was to be shown to the officer in command at Ste. Menehould, and given to the officer in command at Clermont. Thence they were to post for Montmédy. This note written and handed, open, to his valet and Leonard, Choiseul saw the carriage go; and when he had seen it well away, he turned rein, ordered his weary Germans, and bent reluctantly eastward along the road which his command had traversed that morning.
So they rode back till, at Orbeval, Choiseul took a guide, crossed Neuville Bridge and plunged into Argonne, lest by following the high road right into Ste. Menehould they might raise that alarm which at every cost it was his duty to allay.... In vain. The country was already awake: that rumour, that something in the air which no historian has ever traced, had preceded him, and a woman in Ste. Menehould had said to a soldier in a tavern that “the King would pass that way.”
In this way was the post of Somme-Vesle abandoned. It was in the neighbourhood of half-past five when the cavalry filed out and up the slight eastern slope of the road. Just hidden by the brow of hill behind them as they left the spot where they had waited it for so long, the King’s berline had begun the last climb before the descent to the post-house. Fifteen minutes economised on the Royal Family’s delays would have saved them.
The berline waited, as it had waited so often that day; the horses were changed in as humdrum a fashion. Within the carriage a doubt had fallen on the fugitives.... It was a lonely house in a lonely dip of the plain with a vast, straight, empty road rising upon either slope before it and beyond. They drove on to Orbeval, but in a mood now changed; they passed Orbeval and approached the long hill-forest of Argonne.
It was already full evening; the clouds upon the western horizon had lifted; the reddening and descending sun shone for the first time that day against the rise of the Argonne woodland ridge and upon the bare rolling folds of corn-land and of mown pasture at its base.