ht carriages, and have
made sure, by employing drivers and couriers who knew the respective
roads, of encountering no difficulty about meeting the relays of horses,
and of exciting no particular observation at the post-houses. These are
the arrangements which ordinary people, accustomed to business, would
have made. We shall see how the queen chose that the affair should be
managed.

During the month of March (before the attempt to go to Saint Cloud), the
queen began her preparations for her escape to another kingdom. Madame
Campan (in whom she had perfect trust, and with good reason) was in
attendance upon her during that month. The queen employed her in buying
and getting made an immense quantity of clothes. Madame Campan
remonstrated with her upon this, saying that the queen of France would
always be able to obtain linen and gowns wherever she went: but the
queen was obstinate. Though it was necessary for Madame Campan to go
out almost disguised to procure these things,--though she was obliged,
for the sake of avoiding suspicion, to order six petticoats at one shop,
and six at another, and to buy one gown in one street, and two in
another,--and though this great load of things would be sure to attract
notice, however they might be sent off, nothing could satisfy the queen
but having with her a complete and splendid wardrobe for herself and the
children; and this, after she and the king had a hundred times wondered
how it came to be told in the newspapers that so many horses were kept
saddled in their stables, and that such and such persons had paid them
visits by the back-door. After having suffered for months from spies,
the queen would not agree to the simple plan of doing nothing which
spies might not see, and tell all Paris, if they chose. As it was, it
was well-known when Madame Campan went out, where she went, and what
about, from the very day her shopping began.

Madame Campan endeavoured to use more disguise by getting her own little
boy measured for the clothes which were intended for the Dauphin; and by
asking her sister to have the Princess Royal's wardrobe made ready as if
for her daughter. But these poor expedients were seen through, as might
have been expected. How much easier and safer it would have been to
have no ordering and making at all.

These clothes were not all to go by the same coach which conveyed the
family. Most of them were sent in a trunk to one of the queen's women,
who wa