The Duke de Choiseul, Count Fersen's friend, had left Paris ten hours before the royal family, and was waiting, with a party of hussars, at a village, some way beyond Chalons. If the party had kept their time, they would have met their guard, and, finding more and more soldiers all along the road, would have been safe. There would have been no time for the attention of the country people to be fixed on the gathering of military in the neighbourhood. The Duke de Choiseul's pretence for his party was that they were to guard a treasure that was expected. The "treasure" did not arrive; the soldiers lounged about; and it was all their officers could do to keep them out of public-houses, where they would be questioned and made suspicious;--for, of course, they knew nothing of the meaning of their errand. It was a great misfortune, too, that the queen had changed her mind about the day, when it was too late to warn some of the officers; and they, supposing the party to have set off on the 19th, were now in great dismay; and their soldiers were lounging about twenty-four hours sooner than they should have been. The village politicians did not like what they saw. They began to say to one another that no treasure ought to be leaving the kingdom. Any treasure which had to be guarded by soldiers must be public treasure, belonging to the people, which no one had any right to carry away. Some of these rang the alarm-bell of their parish church; and from several places, parties of the national soldiery went out to explore the roads, and met parties of the national soldiery from other places. They agreed that there must be something wrong. At Saint Menehould, the National Volunteers demanded three hundred muskets from the town-hall, and stood armed: the same Saint Menehould where the former arrival of the queen as dauphiness had been awaited in a far different temper. In short, the hussars had to ride away, and leave the "treasure" to take its chance. Thus all was confusion, expectation, and alarm along the road, for hours before the berlin appeared: the very road by which the queen had entered France, amidst cheers of welcome, in her bridal days! It appeared afterwards that it was the king's wish to have these soldiers in waiting along the road, while his advisers thought it would be better to keep up the story of the Baroness de Korff till the party actually drew near Montmedy. As it turned out, the king not only lost his desired security, but, by his and the queen's management together, the whole region beyond Chalons was in an uproar before they entered it. Meantime, the party had travelled only sixty-nine of their two hundred miles in twenty-two hours; and little Louis must have been sadly tired before they had gone nearly half-way.