But even in these few hours there had been time for treason. The policeman had revealed the message to the authorities. The faces Michonis saw at the gate of the prison by the sentry’s lamp when he came up that Monday night were not those he expected or knew. His plot was already in the hands of the Government and he was lost.
Within, the Queen waited in an agony of silence for the sound of her deliverers; the hours of the morning drew on and the summer dawn of the Tuesday broadened; no steps had sounded on the stones of the passage: everything had failed.
Her deliverer suffered. She herself was closely examined and transferred to another cell where she must wait under more rigid compulsion for the end.
No other human fortune[[41]] came to Marie Antoinette from that day until, seven weeks later, she died.
[41]. I reject the story of her Communion.
West and a little north of Maubeuge, but twenty miles away, the watchers a month and more before had heard the ceaseless guns round Valenciennes. Then had come the silence of the surrender. Now they heard much nearer, west and a little to the south, the loud fury of a new and neighbouring bombardment as the shot poured into Le Quesnoy. Soon, as they knew, those guns would be trained on their own walls. Little Le Quesnoy was the last of the line but one, and they, in Maubeuge, the last of all. The Monday, the first Monday in September, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday, the Friday, all that week the garrison of Maubeuge listened to the endless sound which never faltered by day or by night, and they still wondered how long it might endure: there were but 6000 in the little place and their doom was so certain that their endurance seemed quite vain. Sunday and the guns never paused or weakened; the second Monday came and they still raged—but on the ninth day when the marvel seemed to have grown permanent, on the Tuesday (it was the day that the Queen was thrust into her second and more rigorous imprisonment) again—as with Valenciennes—the ominous silence came: Le Quesnoy was treating, and Maubeuge now made ready for its end.
The free troops to the south and east (two poor divisions) moved doubtfully towards the entrenched camp of the fortress—knowing well that they must in a few days be contained: there was no food: there were not even muskets for them all.
Around them by detachments the French forces were being eaten up. The little garrison of Cambrai had marched out to relieve its neighbour—6000 men, three-quarters of the infantry regulars, three squadrons, and a battery of guns. The Hungarians rode through that battery before it could unlimber, refused to accept surrender, broke the line and hacked and killed until a remnant got off at a run under the guns of Bouchain. Declaye, their general, survived: he was in Paris within forty-eight hours, tried within another forty-eight, and on the morrow beheaded.
For a fortnight these contemptuous successes on the fringe of Coburg’s army continued, and the main force meanwhile was gathering supplies, calling in detachments, organising train, and making all ready for the last and decisive blow that should shatter Maubeuge. In Maubeuge they hurriedly and confusedly prepared: such grain as they could gather from neighbouring farms was seized, many of “the useless and the suspect” were expelled, the able-bodied civilians were set to dig, to entrench, and to complain, and over all this work was a man worthy of the place and the occasion, for, on a high morning, the 15th of September, but a day or two after the surrender of Le Quesnoy, there had galloped into Maubeuge a representative of the Parliament well chosen by the Terror to superintend such an issue: he rode straight in the long stirrups of the cavalry with harsh, eccentric, and powerful clean face; a young man, dark and short and square: it was Drouet.