Night fell, an hour passed, and two women in the conduct of a man who hurried them across the bridge were put into a chaise that there awaited them and drove off. Fersen knew that mission also. These were the two waiting-women of the queen, going on ahead through the night to the second posting-station at Claye upon the eastern road. A little while later--it was eleven o’clock, or a little past--a woman came to him leading two children, two girls, it seemed, one old enough [Illustration: “VIVE LE ROI! VIVE LA NATION!” A Cartoon of 1789 _To face p. 55_ ] to walk alone, the other whom she held by the hand. It was Mme. de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children. The elder girl was the princess Royal. The young child, disguised as her sister, was the Dauphin, the little heir to the throne. Many were going in and out of the palace at that moment. This small group in sombre clothing attracted no one’s eye in the half-light. The children were put into the cab, the woman followed, and Fersen, with the most cabman-like way in the world, climbed slowly up to his box and drove at a very quiet pace westward along the quay that flanks the Tuileries gardens. He came to the great open place which to-day is called the Place de la Concorde, where the half-finished bridge had only just lost its last workman with the end of the day; he turned to the right across its paving and up the unfinished Rue Royale until he came to the narrow Rue St. Honoré, where again he turned his shabby team to the right and drove as leisurely eastward. There is a place, now rebuilt out of all recognition, the ways broadened, all the houses modern, where a street still called by the name of “Ladder Street” (the Rue de l’Echelle) comes into the Rue St. Honoré. It is a very short street leading toward the palace. Between the Tuileries and those few yards of way there stood in those days a number of great houses, the homes of certain nobles who had been about the court, and in the midst of their confused carved fronts was an archway that led to the royal stables, and by a narrow lane to the courtyard of the palace itself. In that Street of the Ladder Fersen halted, drawing his cab up toward the curb. The long detour over which he had purposely lingered had taken him nearly three-quarters of an hour; it was near twelve. He got down from the box, went to the carriage window, and said a word or two, bidding the woman and the two children wait in patience. Then he paced up and down the rough paving as midnight deepened, sauntering in the fashion of cabmen that await a fare.