It was near three o’clock when they reached the first posting-house at Bondy, three miles from the boundary of the city, and just outside the wall and railings of the park in that place. The guardsman Valory, who was outrider, had been there for an hour. The six horses for the carriage were awaiting it, as also the two horses which he and the third guardsman, Malden were to ride, to the next stage. As they unharnessed Fersen’s steaming beasts, Fersen himself, as coachman coming down from the box, waited a moment until the fresh team was in and the postillions mounted. Then he looked in at the window of the coach, and taking off his hat to the queen, he said, “Good-bye, Madame de Korff,” and under the growing light would no longer linger. He was off at once by the by-lane to the Brussels road beyond. He and those whom he had so worked to save were to meet at Montmédy. The postillions urged on their mounts, the short whips cracked, and they were gone. Fersen saw the great mass go swaying up the road, dark against the growing dawn, and went off lonely upon his separate flight to the north. As for the travellers, touched by that effect of morning which all feel, by the unnatural exhilaration of those strained hours of no sleep, and of a release apparently begun, they broke into making plans for their disguise, reassuring themselves with every mile that passed and feeling the first sense of relief that they had known for two tortured years. The sleepy little boy who was their fortune and the heir was set more comfortably back against the white cushions in his girl’s clothes that he might rest. The five others, wakeful and eager, pretended to learn their rôles. Mme. de Tourzel was to be the mistress; the queen, the governess Rochet; the Princess Elizabeth, a [Illustration: MADAME ELISABETH From a photograph by Braun, Clément & Co., New York, of a painting by Mme. Vigée Lebrun, in the possession of Mme. la Marquise du Blaisdel _To face p. 63_ ] companion; and the king a steward under the name of Durand. There was almost a spirit of comedy in the coach. The king talked of his new liberty and of riding, perhaps of the autumn hunting that he loved; and they conversed also of the nature of their journey, where--and upon this perhaps they were more guarded--there might be peril, especially as they passed through the one considerable town of Châlons; but also of how, not two hours beyond that place, at Somme-Vesle, a posting-house in the midst of Champagne, they would meet the first troop of their chain of mounted escorts thrust out from the army, and how with these they would henceforward be safe.