The hour’s delay which one accident and another--the lateness of the moment in which the last of the court had left the palace, the slight time lost in peering for the Berline through the darkness at the gate, the long drag up and down the forest of Meaux--had burdened them with, was now perhaps more nearly grown to an hour and a half; but not one of that little company could guess how much this meant, or how such errors breed of themselves and add, how one strained and anxious man, watching during that Tuesday at the head of a little troop of horse in the lonely plains beyond Châlons, would be broken, and with him all their fortunes, by such incapacity. For save where it walked the hills, as heavy coaches must, the Berline went bravely enough, covering its eight miles an hour or more; and the sense of speed made up with them for the realities of time and of co-ordinated distance wherein they were incompetent indeed. Nor was that error, that growing error in exactitude, all that they had to face. [Illustration: THE END OF THE FLIGHT OF THE ROYAL FAMILY AT VARENNES _To face p. 66_ ] THE PURSUIT It was perhaps at eight o’clock in Paris that morning, at the most half an hour later, that the whole populace became alive to what had happened. The drums were beating, rallying the militia, the crowd was filling the square in front of the palace. At that moment, when strong action in pursuit of the fugitives could not be long delayed, they were only just upon this upland road leaving the Marne; they had a start of, say, forty-five miles, fifty at the most, before the first rider could surely mount and be galloping in pursuit. The carriage rolled on fairly with Valory, its outrider, on before, Malden trotting at the door, and the chaise with the queen’s two waiting-women swaying in a cloud of dust behind. It rolled on eastward through that high, little-known land of wide, hedgeless fields; it was about ten o’clock when it came down into a sort of shallow cup lower than the plain, wherein lies that little place called “Old Houses”--Viels-Maisons. Very few men, I think, of those who travel or speak of their travels know the tiny group of roofs. It has not thirty families round its church. It meant to the travellers nothing but an insignificant posting-house and a relay. But it was there that their fate first touched them, for there a chance postillion, one called Picard, glanced at their faces, and knew them for the king and queen. Like so many upon that full and dreadful day, he yielded entirely to caution. The king was still the king. There was divided authority in France; and whether reward or punishment would follow any act no man could tell on such a day as this until it was known which of the two combatants, the crown or the parliament, would rule at last. So Picard said nothing; but he had seen. Others also were to prove discreet, but a little less discreet than he.