But when they were gone, when they had thus been hardly allowed to go, the captain of the little troop of cavalry, sounding the boot and saddle, lit the flame. The militia were summoned by drummers throughout the streets, the German soldiers, mutinous with hunger after their long wait and supported in their mutiny by the town folk, failed to obey. The town council met, arrested, and examined the captain in command, and after one hour of increasing vehemence this decision was taken, which changed the story of France and of the world, “That the fugitives should be followed and detained.” And the two men chosen for this task of life or death--for should they fail, it was certainly death upon the return of the armies--were Drouet, the young postmaster, and Guillaume, both ex-cavalrymen and both men knowing, as they had need to know, the darkness of Argonne that night. Both were men of great courage. The odds against them were heavy. Of eighteen miles their quarry had a start of seven. Further, they thought, as did all to whom the plan had not been given, that the king’s flight would be by the main Metz road. They knew nothing of his goal at Montmédy and of the turn-off toward Varennes which he would take at Clermont. They did not know that Varennes meant for him safety and for themselves immediate defeat. They rode furiously up the road, and as they neared Clermont, nine miles on, having found in all those nine miles no sign of lights before them, in the pass where the great woods come close on each side and through which the road, the railway, and the stream run side by side to-day, Drouet heard voices in the darkness. He knew them for his own servants. [Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL FAMILY IN PARIS, JUNE 25, 1791 _To face p. 82_ ] He learned in one breathless question and answer that the coach had turned off the Metz road after the relay down toward the north and Varennes. He had to decide in the thick darkness, and at once, between following by the highway and cutting through the woods. He had the soldier in him, and he decided. He would take the chance of the woods, though he had eleven miles to go, and only an hour to ride it in. If he did merit anything of fate, he would come in ahead of his prey; and if he failed, he failed.