They were late. They were already a full hour behind that time-table which men who understood the essentials of order as the king had never understood them had laid down for their guidance. But the pace was brisk, the road was passing swiftly by, and the accident of such trifling unpunctuality so early in their adventure did not oppress them. There was no one with them accustomed to command or to understand the all-importance of exactitude in any military affair. That little company, if we think of it, was an isolated thing and most imperfect for such a task: three women bred to a court and to the habits of leisure or of successive pleasures; two children; the unwilled, heavy king and husband, who never did or could decide, and whose judgment was slow to the point of disease. Beyond these were only the three guardsmen, almost servants. At Claye, the next relay, they found the queen’s two waiting-women, who, abandoned for hours, had awaited them in their chaise, and were bewildered, wondering if they were lost. From Claye onward, the sun having now risen, though hidden behind the level roof of clouds and the day fully begun, they passed through fields without villages, with scarcely a house, where the peasants in the eager work of the high summer were already abroad. The fourfold rank of great trees which dignified the road went by in monotonous procession. The quick change of horses at Meaux raised their hopes still higher, and as they opened their picnic-bags, bringing out bread and meat and wine to break their fast, they spoke in jests, increasingly secure. To Malden riding by the carriage door, the queen beckoned, and offered wine and food, and she told him familiarly of how the king had laughed roundly, saying that Lafayette, the master of the militia in Paris, and officially the guardian of the court, would be woundily puzzled that day. So much for that fresh early morning when all was well. The wide royal road, full of the Roman inheritance, breasts beyond Meaux a sharp, high, wooded hill, and the drag up that hill was long and slow. Upon its farther side, on to the Marne again, goes a sharp pitch, down which the shrieking brakes created an equal delay. It was fully eight o’clock when they had come along the riverside to the lovely valley of the Sellot, winding between its wooded guardian hills to join the greater river. There two roads part, each leading equally to Châlons and to the east; the main one still follows the Marne, but the second, somewhat shorter, cuts across the plateau to the south of the river, which few, even in the travelling of to-day, know, and which those who had planned the flight had chosen on account of its few towns and villages and less frequented inns. Yet it was precisely in this chosen stretch of thirty miles, by this less-frequented of the two roads to Châlons, that their evil was to come upon them.