[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY AT VARENNES, JUNE 22, 1791 _To face p. 71_ ] touched them again. This time it was with a stronger gesture than when, four hours before, the postboy at Viels-Maisons had looked askance and known them for what they were. Here lived one Lagny with certain married and unmarried daughters, and with him, by just one coincidence, his son-in-law from miles away, Vallet by name, who for that one day was there. That son-in-law had been to Paris the year before for the Revolutionary feast upon the Champ-de-Mars. He had there stared at the king, and when the Berline stopped at his father-in-law’s door, and while yet the relay was waiting to be harnessed, he recognized his sovereign. Now it happened--so the doom of the king willed it--that all the small household, father and daughter and son-in-law, were Royalists of the old kind. They made obeisance openly; the king and the queen accepted that homage with delight, and at parting gave them gifts which still remain in testimony to the truth of this tale. Vallet insisted upon driving them himself,--with what consequences we shall see,--and what was more, this spontaneous little scene of enthusiasm added by some few minutes again--perhaps a quarter, perhaps half an hour--to the delay. The royal children had gone in to rest a little from the heat and from their fatigue. When they came out and the coach started, the postmaster and his daughters openly acknowledged their Royal guests before the servants of the farm and the postboys around. Vallet himself rode upon the leaders--they whipped off before three o’clock--proud to be driving his king and filled with zeal. But his zeal was indiscreet. Twice he let the horses fall. Once his off wheel caught the parapet of a bridge. At least twice the traces broke, and time, now so heavily against them, turned still more heavily against them in the necessity of finding ropes and of mending. There must have been one more hour lost somewhere in that stage of the road.