The carriage rolled across the Place Louis XV and out on to the
Cours la Reine at last. Along that beautiful, tree-bordered avenue
between the Champs Elysees and the Seine, almost empty at this hour
of the day, they made better speed, leaving now a cloud of dust
behind them.
But fast to danger-point as was the speed, to the women in that
carriage it was too slow. As they reached the barrier at the end
of the Cours, nine o'clock was striking in the city behind them,
and every stroke of it seemed to sound a note of doom.
Yet here at the barrier the regulations compelled a momentary halt.
Aline enquired of the sergeant-in-charge how long it was since a
cabriolet such as she described had gone that way. She was answered
that some twenty minutes ago a vehicle had passed the barrier
containing the deputy M. le Chapelier and the Paladin of the Third
Estate, M. Moreau. The sergeant was very well informed. He could
make a shrewd guess, he said, with a grin, of the business that took
M. Moreau that way so early in the day.
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