What had happened that the King’s mind should change? For all those hours in Varennes every official had desired the continuation of the journey; all the “responsibles” had withstood the growing anger of the populace, when suddenly Radet, the gunner, had announced a capitulation, and, almost as suddenly, within the half-hour before seven, after all those dark and morning hours of delay, the King had consented to return.
What had happened was this: Two men had come with authority from the Council of Paris and from the Parliament—Bayon and Romeuf were their names; they had reached Varennes in the morning, the first exultant, the second reluctant; each came burdened with that Authority by which the French live, and both had entered the house of Sauce. The Queen had stormed, and had dashed their written message of Authority to the ground, but even the reluctant Romeuf had picked it up and laid it again reverently before her. Authority by which the French five lay now in the National Parliament. It was this which compelled the King. To this he had yielded.
The military temper of this people!
The Parliament learnt the flight of the King at about eight or nine o’clock in the morning following that midnight adventure. Bayon was commissioned to “pursue, capture, and report” in the forenoon of that day, the 21st of June. He started eleven hours behind the King. The King, driven by Fersen, had passed the barriers of Paris, as we have seen, just after midnight of the 20th.
It was close on noon when Bayon had shot like an arrow through the Porte St. Martin, galloping hell and leather along the great frontier road. Louis was at Chaintry then, fifty miles ahead. An hour after Bayon, Romeuf, who had been sent also, followed upon another trail: he was royalist and hated the job, but he obeyed orders; at last he caught the right scent from witnesses and rumour, and was thundering off with a heavy heart, but a soldier, down the same way.
Bayon rode and he rode, a ride to test his breeches. Seventy miles, eighty miles is a ride for any man. Bayon, relaying at every post and covering, in between, his fifteen miles an hour or more, galloped into Chaintry just before six in the evening, and there at Chaintry—where at mid-day Louis and Marie Antoinette had graciously revealed themselves to old Lagny—Bayon found a suspicious man, one De Briges, very evidently employed to follow and to aid the fugitives. Bayon dismounted, held that man prisoner, and dined, but not before he had sent on, by his written Authority, Lagny’s boy helter-skelter up the road to rouse Chalons beyond.
Romeuf was less speedy, but a fine rider for all that. He started, as I have said, an hour behind Bayon; he reached Chaintry (on account of missing the scent at starting) two hours behind him, when Bayon, having dined and sent forward that messenger, was already off in a carriage to Chalons following the trail. They met at Chalons—a town all informed and astir—thenceforward the two together—Bayon eager, Romeuf in despair for his friends (but discipline constrained him), drove, not rode, past the bonfire glare and howling of Ste. Menehould, all night through Argonne, till by morning they came—with their Authority—to Varennes.
But in this day and night of hard-riding Frenchmen, a third must be mentioned: Mangin, druggist and lawyer of Varennes, had galloped from Varennes at dawn, had left his horse collapsed at Clermont, had relayed and relayed, still riding, urging back to Paris to give news to the Parliament.
He passed in a flash the carriage of Bayon, careless of it; long before six he was at Ste. Menehould, changed horse, was off to Orbeval, changed horse, was off to Somme-Vesle, changed horse, was off to Chalons, riding and riding hard, nearly fifty miles and not yet eight o’clock. He eat and drank and mounted, re-horsed, and on: what skin! All the long road all day, gallop and change and gallop under the sun: twelve hours in the saddle when he came to the deep Marne, sixteen when he dashed into Bondy.... A companion who had met him rode on to share his triumph.... Mangin shook him off.... The suburbs of Paris ... the barrier—eighteen hours of it before he dismounted and staggered into the Assembly! Lord! what a ride!