When, well after four o’clock, the fugitives clattered into Châlons, the whole matter was public knowledge. Whether Vallet had spoken, or whether the news shouted across the fields had been carried by some galloper, or in whatever other way it spread, many knew it while the two carriages were halted for the next relay in the town. The little knot that gathered round the carriage knew what they were gazing at; the bolder among them murmured thanks that the king had escaped his enemies. The postmaster of Châlons knew it, the mayor knew it, and many others whose names have not been preserved, but whose words and attitudes have. None would take upon himself any responsibility in the great quarrel, and only one obscure threat reached their ears. An unknown man did say in a low voice one thing which has been recorded: at least we have it at second hand, but at good second hand, that the travellers heard during a halt a passer-by cry to them that their plans had miscarried and that sooner or later they would be held. But this general recognition at Châlons disturbed them not at all. They were now not only secure in mind, as they had been for many hours, but also within touch of certain and physical security. For at the very next relay, not two hours along the road, was not the first of those armed posts of escort waiting for them, to surround them? To form a rear-guard, which should forbid all pursuit? To roll up further posts as the carriage still went eastward? And to form at last a whole body of cavalry, leading them on to the main army beyond Varennes? At that town, not fifty miles on, was the limit beyond which lay stationed in great numbers the army of Bouillé, the General privy to the plot and ready to do all things for the king. Here, if we are to seize the last act of this disaster, we must have some picture of the scene in which it was played. The lower Champagne, “The Champagne of the Dust,” as the peasants call it, heaves in wide, low billows that barely disturb the vast sameness of its flat until the Argonne, its limit and its wall, is reached to the east. With the Argonne are great trees again, and lively waters, and the recovery of rich land. That country-side of the “Champagne Pouilleuse” is strange; it has remained for centuries thus empty to the sky, land often too poor for the plough, everywhere hungry and half deserted. The sluggish streams that make their way slowly through its shallow depressions are milk-white with the worthless chalky soil, and though now too regular plantations of stunted pines diversify it, planted in the hope of reclamation, it is of its nature a country without trees, as almost without men. Small, scattered villages hold its few people, and again and again one comes to patches as great as a rich [Illustration: DROUET, THE POSTMASTER AT VARENNES _To face p. 74_ ]