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of a thousand,― Count Fersen, for the Reader sees it is thou, - drive!

Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen: crack! crack! the Glass Coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is Fersen on the right road? Northeastward, to the Barrier of Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither were we bound and lo, he drives right Northward! The royal Individual, in round hat and peruke, sits astonished; but right or wrong, there is no remedy. Crack, crack, we go incessant, through the slumbering City. Seldom, since Paris rose out of mud, or the Longhaired Kings went in Bullock Carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of you, close by, stretched out horizontal, dormant; and we alive and quaking! Crack, crack, through the Rue de Grammont; across the Boulevard; up the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, these windows, all silent, of Number 42, were Mirabeau's. Toward the Barrier, not of Saint-Martin, but of Clichy on the utmost North! Patience, ye royal Individuals; Fersen understands what he is about. Passing up the Rue de Clichy, he alights for one moment at Madame Sullivan's "Did Count Fersen's Coachman get the Baroness de Korff's new Berline?" "Gone with it an hour and half ago," grumbles responsive the drowsy Porter. "C'est bien." Yes, it is well; though had not such hour and half been lost, it were still better. Forth therefore, O Fersen, fast, by the Barrier de Clichy; then Eastward along the Outer Boulevard, what horses and whipcord can do!

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Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night. Sleeping Paris is now all on the right hand of him; silent except for some snoring hum: and now he is Eastward as far as the Barrier de Saint-Martin: looking earnestly for Baroness de Korff's Berline. This Heaven's Berline he at length does descry, drawn up with its six horses, his own German Coachman waiting on the box. Right, thou good German: now haste, whither thou knowest ?- and as for us of the Glass Coach, haste too; O haste; much time is already lost! The august Glass Coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The Glass Coach itself is turned adrift, its head toward the City; to wander whither it lists,and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new hammercloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts forward toward Bondy. There a third and final Bodyguard Courier of ours ought surely to be, with

post horses ready ordered. There likewise ought that purchased Chaise, with the two Waiting Maids and their bandboxes, to be; whom also her Majesty could not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen, and may the Heavens turn it well!

Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the sleeping Hamlet of Bondy; Chaise with Waiting Women; horses all ready, and postilions with their churn boots, impatient in the dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the postilions with their churn boots vault into the saddles; brandish circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his jarvey surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu; royal hands wave speechless inexpressible response; Baroness de Korff's Berline, with the Royalty of France, bounds off: forever, as it proved. Deft Fersen dashes obliquely Northward, through the country, toward Bougret; gains Bougret, finds his German Coachman and chariot waiting there; cracks off, and drives undiscovered into unknown space. A deft active man, we say ; what he undertook to do is nimbly and successfully done.

And so the Royalty of France is actually fled? This precious night, the shortest of the year, it flies, and drives! Baroness de Korff is, at bottom, Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children: she who came hooded with the two hooded little ones; little Dauphin; little Madame Royale, known long afterwards as Duchesse d'Angoulême. Baroness de Korff's Waiting Maid is the Queen in gypsy hat. The royal Individual in round hat and peruke, he is Valet for the time being. The other hooded Dame, styled Traveling Companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn, long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy: -over a Rubicon in their own and France's History.

Great; though the future is all vague! If we reach Bouillé ? If we do not reach him? O Louis! and this all round thee is the great slumbering Earth (and overhead, the great watchful Heaven); the slumbering Wood of Bondy, where Long-haired Childeric Donothing was struck through with iron; not unreasonably, in a world like ours. These peaked stone towers are Raincy; towers of wicket D'Orléans. All slumbers save the multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an Herb Merchant, with his ass and

early greens, toilsomely plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great Northeast sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn: from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute the coming Sun. Stars fade out, and Galaxies; Street Lamps of the City of God. The Universe, O my brothers, is flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the GREAT HIGH KING. Thou, poor King Louis, farest nevertheless, as mortals do, toward Orient lands of Hope; and the Tuileries with its Levees, and France and the Earth itself, is but a larger kind of dog hutch, — occasionally going rabid.

THE RETURN.

So, then, our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has executed itself. Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal ultimatum, it has rushed forward in its terrors: verily to some purpose. How many Royalist Plots and Projects, one after another, cunningly devised, that were to explode like powder mines and thunderclaps; not one solitary Plot of which has issued otherwise! Powder mine of a Séance Royale on the 23d of June, 1789, which exploded as we then said, "through the touchhole"; which next, your war god Broglie having reloaded it, brought a Bastille about your ears. Then came fervent Opera Repast, with flourishing of sabers, and o Richard, O my King; which aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of Women, and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Théroigne. Valor profits not; neither has fortune smiled on fanfaronade. The Bouillé Armament ends as the Broglie one has done. Man after man spends himself in this cause, only to work it quicker ruin; it seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth and Heaven.

On the 6th of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by Demoiselle Théroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal Progress and Entrance into Paris, such as man had never witnessed; we prophesied him Two more such; and accordingly another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now coming to pass. Théroigne will not escort here; neither does Mirabeau now "sit in one of the accompanying carriages. Mirabeau lies dead, in the Pantheon of Great Men. Théroigne lies living, in dark Austrian Prison; having gone to Liège, professionally, and been seized there. Bemurmured now by

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the hoarse-flowing Danube: the light of her Patriot Supper Parties gone quite out; so lies Théroigne : she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and return. And France lieshow Fleeting Time shears down the great and the little; and in two years alters many things.

But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Royal Procession, though much altered; to be witnessed also by its hundreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris Patriots; the Royal Berline is returning. Not till Saturday for the Royal Berline travels by slow stages; amid such loud-voiced confluent sea of National Guards, sixty thousand as they count; amid such tumult of all people. Three National Assembly Commissioners, famed Barnave, famed Pétion, generally respectable Latour-Maubourg, have gone to meet it; of whom the two former ride in the Berline itself beside Majesty, day after day. Latour, as a mere respectability, and man of whom all men speak well, can ride in the rear, with Dame de Tourzel and the Soubrettes.

So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hundreds of thousands is again drawn up: not now dancing the tricolor joy dance of hope; nor as yet dancing in fury dance of hate and revenge: but in silence, with vague look of conjecture, and curiosity mostly scientific. A Saint-Antoine Placard has given notice this morning that "whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, whosoever applauds him shall be hanged." Behold then, at last, that wonderful New Berline; encircled by blue National sea with fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent assembled hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop bound with ropes; Pétion, Barnave, their Majesties, with sister Elizabeth, and the children of France, are within.

Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the bioad phlegmatic face of his Majesty; who keeps declaring to the successive Official persons, what is evident, "Eh bien, me voilà (Well, here you have me);" and what is not evident, "I do assure you I did not mean to pass the frontiers; " speeches natural for that poor Royal Man; which Decency would veil. Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn; natural for that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent gazing people comparable, Mercier thinks, to some Procession du Roi de Basoche; or say, Procession of King Crispin, with

his Dukes of Sutormania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed that this is not comic: ah no, it is comico-tragic; with bound Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it; most fantastic, yet most miserably real. Miserablest flebile ludibrium of a Pickle-herring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in most ungorgeous pall, through many streets in the dusty summer evening; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace, toward its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure.

Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers; will at least massacre them. But our august Assembly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue; and the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, "all dusty," is already there, in the National Hall; making brief discreet address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey, this Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic; and has gained the Queen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be trusted. Very different from heavy Pétion; who, if Campan speak truth, ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his wineglass, in the Royal Berline; flung out his chicken bones past the nose of Royalty itself; and, on the King's saying, "France cannot be a Republic," answered, "No, it is not ripe yet." Barnave is henceforth a Queen's adviser, if advice could profit and her Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for Barnave, and that, in a day of retribution and Royal triumph, Barnave shall not be executed.

On Monday night Royalty went; on Saturday evening it returns: so much, within one short week, has Royalty accomplished for itself. The Pickle-herring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuileries Palace, toward "pain strong and hard." Watched, fettered and humbled, as Royalty never was. Watched even in its sleeping apartments and inmost recesses: for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen's curtains; nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little !

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments germinate a set of rebellious paper leaves, named

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