Fersen, who loved the Queen and whom the Queen loved, had stood in the centre of the plot, had seen all the conspirators, and brought to its climax everything. He was now to risk his life. The great travelling-carriage, called a berline (which easily held three people upon either side), was waiting in its shed in the stables of the house he had hired, as the summer solstice-a date fatal to the Bourbons—approached. Fersen himself in disguise was to drive them, disguised also, from their palace by night in a cab to where that travelling-coach awaited them. Their passports were ready; the children’s governess, the Duchess of Tourzel, was to play the part of the chief personage and to be called the Baroness of Korff. The Queen was to be the governess of her children, the King her valet, his sister a maid; the children were to be Madame de Korff’s children, and the Dauphin was dressed as a girl and called by a girl’s name.

There are a few square yards in Paris which should be famous in history. Here Joan of Arc fell in her failure to force the western gate of the city. Here to-day is the hotel called the Hôtel de Normandie, frequented by foreigners, and opposite is a money-changer’s booth. Here the Rue St. Honoré crosses the Rue de l’Echelle. There^[21] at midnight of the 20th of June, Fersen, dressed as a coachman, was waiting with his cab to drive them to the travelling-coach which awaited them at the eastern boundary of the city. He had already visited the palace to make all sure. His disguise was good, his acting excellent. His love compelled him. He took snuff with the other cabbies. He waited resignedly. The lights went out, midnight approached, and first one, then another of certain beings approached him down the dark alley that led from the courtyards of the palace. The King came, and the royal children, their governess, and the King’s sister. Last of all, and after some delay, the Queen. All of them had escaped safely from what was the chief barrier around them all—the Militia Guard. When they were well in their cab, Fersen, that devoted man, drove them in a leisurely manner to the gates of the city, found the berline drawn up on the high road, and with it two Gentlemen of the Guard who had come, disguised in old yellow liveries, to act as postillions, while a third had ridden on to the post-house. Fersen had the berline driven by his servants, himself upon the box, and so reached, in that earliest of all dawns of the year, the first post and relay, the suburban post-house of Bondy.

There was light in the North. He saw before him at that hour the free road to the frontier; the country and the simple minds of subjects; the happy past returning; the end at last of all that Parisian fever, and the chastisement perhaps of all that Parisian violence—at any rate, the solution of the whole affair. His friend was free.

The King had but to reach the garrisons of the east and Austria would move, the last of the regular French armies would advance: now that the royal person was no more in danger from such a march, the march on Paris would begin.

But it was the summer solstice, a moment ill-omened to the Bourbons.