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Their leader alone was bareheaded, his sheathed sword caught up in a gauntleted hand. "In the King's name, Monseigneur," he said, turning to the Dauphin with a salute which halted evenly between respect and contempt. But the Dauphin only shrank closer to Ursula de Vesc and it was La Mothe who answered. "You are from Valmy?" "By order of the King." "With despatches?"

It happened at Heidelberg, during my student days in Germany; a professor was telling us how, after the inglorious retreat of the Prussian army from Valmy, the officers, with young Goethe in their midst, were sitting round the camp fires discussing the reasons for the defeat.

"I loved him for himself and for his unhappiness," she answered simply. "But will you not return to Valmy at once? Surely death does not end all service!" "My duty and service are to the living," replied Commines shortly. "I shall remain in Amboise. The dead take no offence."

Ever since he had come in sight of Valmy an uncomfortable sense of friendlessness had haunted him with the unreasoning horror of a nightmare, and Beaufoy's welcoming smile was like the wakening into sunshine. "Dieu merci! but I am thankful you have come," he said, but speaking softly so that no sounds passed through the curtained door at his back.

Knowing the relationship which existed between Valmy and Amboise there seemed to La Mothe nothing strange in the procedure followed both at the Château and afterwards. If the King suspected he had joined the camp of the Dauphin, then arrest might have been resisted; but once upon the road, and his parole passed, there was no further need for force.

Louis Philippe had solicited from the Republic permission to serve under Dumouriez in his celebrated campaign in the Low Countries. He fought with distinguished bravery at Valmy and Jemappes as Dumouriez's aide-de-camp; but when that general was forced to desert his army and escape for his life, Louis Philippe made his escape too. He went into Switzerland, and there taught mathematics in a school.

One very dear to me trusted him, trusted his pledged word with his life, and I humbly pray God's mercy has him in its keeping, for he found none in Valmy." Sheathing his sword he sat back in the saddle and smoothed the looted paper carefully. "Go to Amboise. Arrest Monsieur Stephen La Mothe and bring him to Valmy without delay.

He therefore claimed that, if he joined Russia in a war against Napoleon, he must recover the whole of what had been Prussian Poland, with the exception of the district of Bialystock ceded at Tilsit. It seemed, then, that the Polish Question would once more exert on the European concert that dissolving influence which had weakened the Central Powers ever since the days of Valmy.

Who the deuce was La Mothe? Beaufoy neither knew nor cared. He had his first commission in his pocket, a good horse between his knees, the warm sunshine of the May morning lapping him round with all the subtle sweetness of the sweetest season of the year, and Valmy, which hipped him horribly with its gloom, was behind his back. He was almost as fully in fortune's pocket as Monsieur d'Argenton!

He only demanded that Lewis should be restored, in such manner as might seem good to France, and that the propaganda of revolution should be put an end to. That propaganda was one of the weapons by which the French checked and embarrassed the champions of European absolutism, and it was obvious that it would receive encouragement from their success at Valmy.