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He then opened the packet amidst a profound silence, and read the letters of the municipal authorities at Varennes and of St. Menehould brought by M. Mangin, surgeon, at Varennes. The Assembly then nominated three commissioners out of the members to bring the king back to Paris.
The story of the young king Louis the Seventeenth, which is now to be told, is a standing lesson to all who may imagine that to be a prince is to be happier than other people. Louis the Seventeenth was born in 1785. He was the second son of the princess who passed through Saint Menehould from Vienna, after her marriage.
When his train had taken their station at the entrance of Saint Menehould, there had been a few cries of "Long live the Count our lord!" but they were a mere whisper compared with the acclamation which greeted the Dauphiness. The royal carriage was open almost all round, so that the Princess was conspicuously visible. She was full as beautiful as any of the gazers had expected.
On the 14th Clerfayt, with the Austrians, forced one of the passes, and turned the French left. At nightfall, Dumouriez evacuated his Thermopylæ more expeditiously than became a rival Leonidas, and established himself across the great road to Châlons, opposite the southern defile of the Argonne, which extends between Clermont and St. Ménehould, where Drouet rode in pursuit of the king.
At Saint Menehould, the National Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood armed: the same Saint Menehould where the former arrival of the queen as dauphiness had been awaited in a far different temper. In short, the hussars had to ride away, and leave the "treasure" to take its chance.
How much there was we were soon to know. We left Sainte Menehould at about eleven, and before twelve o'clock we were nearing a large village on a ridge from which the land swept away to right and left in ample reaches.
The 21st of June, at seven in the evening, two carriages and eleven horses arrived at Sainte Menehould, and I recognised the king and queen; but, fearful of being deceived, I resolved to ascertain the truth of this by arriving at Varennes, by a bye-road, before the carriages.
That the linen should be ready by the morning was indeed indispensable, as the Dauphiness might arrive at any hour of the next day: but to stand at the wash-tub at midnight! it was terrible to think of. However terrible, there was no help for it. Every housewife in Saint Menehould had soldiers quartered upon her house, and her hands therefore full, instead of being able to wash for another.
Spain and France form an alliance against the British. Spanish squadron destroyed by the British. St Anthony's Day. St. Cloud, visit of the dauphin and dauphiness to; purchased for the queen. St Huruge, Marquis de. St. Priest, Count de. St. Targeau, M. de. St Menehould, the king recognized at, while escaping from France. Staël, Baroness de, at the opening of the States; and the queen's last days.
Their broad blond faces were meaningless, guarded, but neither defiant nor unhappy: they seemed none too sorry for their fate. Our pass from the General Head-quarters carried us to Sainte Menehould on the edge of the Argonne, where we had to apply to the Head-quarters of the division for a farther extension.
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