“Set out for Furnes” (he told them) “immediately on reading this; make no preparations; just take whatever money you may have, and do not worry about your other possessions; they will be seen to later. I invoke the aid of Heaven upon our enterprise--may we all meet that same night at Furnes. “Your friend for life, “THÉON.” At the same time, he made to his soldiers a last supreme appeal, conjuring them to respond to it, and to come back to the path of duty. “Soldiers, your King was put in irons and the news of his capture is false. Surely it is impossible that the leading regiment should fail to join him, to form his bodyguard, and to shield him from the knives of the assassins who have, of course, been sent after him. We, who bear the ensign of the General of Infantry, shall find all good Frenchmen and true patriots ... rallying round our colours. Believe me, when that happens, the Royalist party, which is very numerous, will declare itself, and when it sees that it can do so without endangering its sovereign’s life, will flaunt the white cockade. Let us, too, wear this as our symbol of France--not the colours of a regicide and factious prince, the scandal of his country and the author of all the evils which are now rending it. Your officers, your real friends, await you at Furnes, where the august brother of your Queen has given orders (as on all the frontiers) that the faithful servants of the unhappy Louis XVI. are to be received, when they arrive there on his service.... “Come there, then--meet there, renew your early oath of fidelity to the most upright of kings. But as for such as you as are infected with the maxims of the Club, such of you as think you are patriots, because you have neither faith, nor law, nor honour--such as these had better stay in their dens. Only those are adjured to come whose hearts still tell them they are Frenchmen. Long live the King!”[26] But it was too late. The hour for such an appeal had gone by. Towards five o’clock on the evening of the same day, just as the roll-call was ending in the barracks, the officers of the Colonel-Generals (and several brother-soldiers from the Viennois regiment) left the town in groups of three. They took with them the white _cornette_ of the infantry, and the flags of their regiments, which they had torn from the handles. They had not been able to make up their minds to leave their colours behind. When they had passed the ramparts some of them went to the right over the downs which run along the coast, and which the fugitives intended to use as their path to the frontier; the others struck into the open country, and crossed the canal; as soon as they were out of sight, however, they rejoined the first lot. At eight o’clock that evening the boatmen on the Furnes ferry took over two more, and these were MM. d’Averton and De La Motte.