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Precisely the same arrangement is to be found at Varennes hard by in artificial caves still employed as stables, and some as dwellings for families. In the park is shown the cave in which the Duke of Beaufort, the Roi des Halles, was concealed when he escaped from the prison of Vincennes.
Across the stream lay Chateauguay and Longueuil, the patrimony of the Le Moynes; likewise the seigneuries of Varennes, Vercheres, Contrecoeur, St Ours, and Sorel. All of these were among the so-termed military seigneuries, having been originally given to retired officers of the Carignan regiment.
With them were two men of humbler position, who must have been even more welcome to Madame Royale, De Malden, who had acted as courier to Louis XVI. during the flight to Varennes, and Turgi, who had waited on the Princesses in the Temple.
He at once reported to the magistrates what he had seen, and with their sanction rode forward to the next town, Clermont, hoping to be able to collect a force sufficient to stop the royal carriage on its arrival there. But the king traveled so fast that he had quit Clermont before Drouet reached it, and he even arrived at Varennes before his pursuer.
It was half past seven o'clock of a cold, dark, and gloomy night, when the royal family, exhausted with twenty-four hours of incessant anxiety and fatigue, arrived at the few straggling houses in the outskirts of the village of Varennes. They there confidently expected to find an escort and a relay of horses provided by their careful friend, M. Bouillé.
And so he hired him a cabriolet, and drove in all haste to the house of Billaud Varennes, the Deputy, from whom he sought to obtain one of the two signatures still needed by his order of release. He was disappointed at learning that Varennes was not at home though, had he been able to peep an hour or so into the future, he would have offered up thanks to Heaven for that same Deputy's absence.
The two parties were not long before they began to differ, after their common victory. The revolutionary tribunal was an especial object of general horror. On the 11th Thermidor it was suspended; but Billaud- Varennes, in the same sitting, had the decree of suspension rescinded.
Unfortunately, the members of the present assembly could not form part of the succeeding one; this had been decided before the flight to Varennes. In this important question, the assembly had been drawn away by the rivalry of some, the disinterestedness of others, the desire for anarchy on the part of the aristocrats, and of domination on that of the republicans.
Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on a chance! And yet this was not a chance. Drouet was the means of the king's destruction: if he had not recognised the monarch from his resemblance with his portrait on the assignats if he had not rode with all speed, and reached Varennes before the carriages, in two hours more the king and his family must have been saved.
"No for two reasons: he is an incendiary but no soldier; and they cannot trust him in case of success. A secret meeting of the heads of the party was held two days since, to decide on a leader of the sections. It was difficult, and had nearly been finished by the dagger. Billaud de Varennes, Vanquelin, St Angely, and Danton, were successively proposed. Robespierre objected to them all.
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