He took the steep bank up into the trees with Guillaume, and though the two men knew the woods well, it was miraculous that they could thus gallop through a clouded night, through paths which I, who have followed them in full day, found tortuous and confused and often overgrown. He came down with his companion into Varennes town by the lane that leads from the forest above. It was asleep save for one light where men were sitting drinking. The hour was just on eleven. They could not tell whether they had won or lost in that great race. But Drouet, full of immediate decision, roused here a house and there another, blocked the bridge that led eastward to the farther part of the town and out toward the army by dragging across it an empty wagon that lay by, and then strode up the main street of the place to find whether he had lost or won. He came upon the Berline suddenly under an arch that spanned the way from house to house, the big thing almost filling the arch, and its two round lamps, with their reflectors, shining like great eyes. He heard some altercation, and shrill above the other voices one woman’s urging the postillions. They would consent to go only a few yards farther, to cross the river. And there was Bouillé’s son and his men waiting for them. Drouet took the leader’s reins and threw him back on his haunches. He had won the race. What followed was the anticlimax and the despair: the mayor, roused and hesitating; the hussars drifting in--Choiseul and the rest--now powerless before an immense armed mob that had gathered under the new day; the gallopers arrived at last from Paris; the slow, dreadful return under the heat; and the restoration of the crown to the palace, which was henceforeward its prison. PART THREE THE STORMING OF THE TUILERIES INTRODUCTION After the failure of the flight of the royal family, it was evident to all men of foresight that the European governments, and in particular the government of the empire at the head of which were the brother and afterward the nephew of Marie Antoinette, would attempt to restrain the Revolution by force of arms. It was not equally apparent that matters would come to actual war, for many erroneously thought that the French would yield to the threat of foreign intervention. At the head of those who were guilty of this capital error was Marie Antoinette herself, who wrote to her brother in the autumn of that same year, 1791, suggesting that he should gather a large armed force upon the frontiers, and declaring that it should act as a menace and a police. She was thus principally responsible for what followed.