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The House of the Combrays

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Title: The House of the Combrays

Author: G. Lenotre

Translator: Gwendolen Jackson Gilder


        
Release date: November 15, 2005 [eBook #17067]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17067

Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Paul Ereaut, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE COMBRAYS ***


E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Paul Ereaut, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)



Transcribers note: A number of spelling errors and inconsistencies
                   of names have been corrected.





THE HOUSE OF THE COMBRAYS

by

G. LE NOTRE

Translated from the French by Mrs. Joseph B. Gilder







New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1902
Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead & Company
First Edition Published October, 1902




Contents

      PREFACE
   I. THE TREACHERY OF JEAN-PIERRE QUERELLE
  II. THE CAPTURE OF GEORGES CADOUDAL
 III. THE COMBRAYS
  IV. THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHÉ
   V. THE AFFAIR OF QUESNAY
  VI. THE YELLOW HORSE
 VII. MADAME ACQUET
VIII. PAYING THE PENALTY
  IX. THE FATE OF D'ACHÉ
   X. THE CHOUANS SET FREE




PREFACE

AN OLD TOWER


One evening in the winter of 1868 or 1869, my father-in-law, Moisson,
with whom I was chatting after dinner, took up a book that was lying on
the table, open at the page where I had stopped reading, and said:

"Ah! you are reading Mme. de la Chanterie?"

"Yes," I replied. "A fine book; do you know it?"

"Of course! I even know the heroine."

"Mme. de la Chanterie!"

"---- By her real name Mme. de Combray. I lived three months in her
house."

"Rue Chanoinesse?"

"No, not in the Rue Chanoinesse, where she did not live, any more than
she was the saintly woman of Balzac's novel;--but at her Château of
Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon!"

"Gracious, Moisson, tell me about it;" and without further solicitation,
Moisson told me the following story:

"My mother was a Brécourt, whose ancestor was a bastard of Gaston
d'Orleans, and she was on this account a royalist, and very proud of her
nobility. The Brécourts, who were fighting people, had never become
rich, and the Revolution ruined them completely. During the Terror my
mother married Moisson, my father, a painter and engraver, a plebeian
but also an ardent royalist, participating in all the plots for the
deliverance of the royal family. This explains the mésalliance. She
hoped, besides, that the monarchy, of whose reestablishment she had no
doubt, would recognise my father's services by ennobling him and
reviving the name of Brécourt, which was now represented only in the
female line. She always called herself Moisson de Brécourt, and bore me
a grudge for using only my father's name.

"In 1804, when I was eight years old, we were living on the island of
Saint-Louis, and I remember very well the excitement in the quarter, and
above all in our house, caused by the arrest of Georges Cadoudal. I can
see my mother anxiously sending our faithful servant for news; my father
came home less and less often; and at last, one night, he woke me up
suddenly, kissed me, kissed my mother hastily, and I can still hear the
noise of the street door closing behind him. We never saw him again!"

"Arrested?"

"No, we should have known that, but probably killed in flight, or dead
of fatigue and want, or drowned in crossing some river--like many other
fugitives, whose names I used to know. He was to have sent us news as
soon as he was in safety. After a month's waiting, my mother's despair
became alarming. She seemed mad, committed the most compromising acts,
spoke aloud and with so little reserve about Bonaparte, that each time
the bell rang, our servant and I expected to see the police.

"A very different kind of visitor appeared one fine morning. He was, he
said, the business man of Mme. de Combray, a worthy woman who lived in
her Château of Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon. She was a fervent
royalist, and had heard through common friends of my father's
disappearance, and compassionating our misfortune placed a house near
her own at the disposal of my mother, who would there find the safety
and peace that she needed, after her cruel sorrows. As my mother
hesitated, Mme. de Combray's messenger urged the benefit to my health,
the exercise and the good air indispensable at my age, and finally she
consented. Having obtained all necessary information, my mother, the
servant and I took the boat two days after, at Saint-Germain, and
arrived by sunset the same evening at Roule, near Aubevoye. A gardener
was waiting with a cart for us and our luggage. A few moments later we
entered the court of the château.

"Mme. de Combray received us in a large room overlooking the Seine. She
had one of her sons with her, and two intimate friends, who welcomed my
mother with the consideration due to the widow of one who had served the
good cause. Supper was served; I was drooping with sleep, and the only
remembrance I have of this meal is the voice of my mother, passionate
and excitable as ever. Next morning, after breakfast, the gardener
appeared with his cart, to take us to the house we were to occupy; the
road was so steep and rough that my mother preferred to go on foot,
leading her horse by the bridle. We were in a thick wood, climbing all
the time, and surprised at having to go so far and so high to reach the
habitation that had been offered to us near the château. We came to a
clearing in the wood, and the gardener cried, 'Here we are!' and pointed
to our dwelling. 'Oh!' cried my mother, 'it is a donjon!' It was an old
round tower, surmounted by a platform and with no opening but the door
and some loop-holes that served as windows.

"The situation itself was not displeasing. A plateau cleared in the
woods, surrounded by large trees with a vista towards the Seine, and a
fine view extending some distance. The gardener had a little hut near
by, and there was a small kitchen-garden for our use. In fact one would
have been easily satisfied with this solitude, after the misfortunes of
the Isle Saint-Louis, if the tower had been less forbidding. To enter it
one had to cross a little moat, over which were thrown two planks, which
served as a bridge. By means of a cord and pulley this could be drawn up
from the inside, against the entrance door, thus making it doubly
secure. 'And this is the drawbridge!' said my mother, mockingly.

"The ground floor consisted of a circular chamber, with a table, chairs,
a sideboard, etc. Opposite the door, in an embrasure of the wall, about
two yards in thickness, a barred window lighted this room, which was to
serve as sitting-room, kitchen and dining-room at the same time; but
lighted it so imperfectly that to see plainly even in the daytime one
had to leave the door open. On one side was the fireplace, and on the
other the wooden staircase that led to the upper floors; under the
staircase was a trap-door firmly closed by a large lock.

"'It is the cellar,' said the gardener, 'but it is dangerous, as it is
full of rubbish. I have a place where you can keep your drink.' 'And our
food?' said the servant.

"The gardener explained that he often went down to the château in his
cart and that the cook would have every facility for doing her marketing
at Aubevoye. As for my mother, Mme. de Combray, thinking that the
journey up and down hill would be too much for her, would send a donkey
which would do for her to ride when we went to the château in the
afternoon or evening. On the first floor were two rooms separated by a
partition; one for my mother and me, the other for the servant, both
lighted only by loop-holes. It was cold and sinister.

"'This is a prison!' cried my mother.

"The gardener remarked that we should only sleep there; and seeing my
mother about to go up to the next floor, he stopped her, indicating the
dilapidated condition of the stairs. 'This floor is abandoned,' he said;
'the platform above is in a very bad state, and the staircase
impracticable and dangerous. Mme. de Combray begs that you will never go
above the first landing, for fear of an accident.' After which he went
to get our luggage.

"My mother then gave way to her feelings. It was a mockery to lodge us
in this rat-hole. She talked of going straight back to Paris; but our
servant was so happy at having no longer to fear the police; I had found
so much pleasure gathering flowers in the wood and running after
butterflies; my mother herself enjoyed the great calm and silence so
much that the decision was put off till the next day. And the next day
we renounced all idea of going.

"Our life for the next two months was untroubled. We were at the longest
days of the year. Once a week we were invited to supper at the château,
and we came home through the woods at night in perfect security.
Sometimes in the afternoon my mother went to visit Mme. de Combray, and
always found her playing at cards or tric-trac with friends staying at
the château or passing through, but oftenest with a stout man, her
lawyer. No existence could be more commonplace or peaceful. Although
they talked politics freely (but with more restraint than my mother),
she told me later that she never for one moment suspected that she was
in a nest of conspirators. Once or twice only Mme. de Combray, touched
by the sincerity and ardour of her loyalty, seemed to be on the point of
confiding in her. She even forgot herself so far as to say:--'Oh! if you
were not so hot-headed, one would tell you certain things!'--but as if
already regretting that she had said so much, she stopped abruptly.

"One night, when my mother could not sleep, her attention was attracted
by a dull noise down-stairs, as if some one were shutting a trap-door
clumsily. She lay awake all night uneasily, listening, but in vain. Next
morning we found the room down-stairs in its usual condition; but my
mother would not admit that she had been dreaming, and the same day
spoke to Mme. de Combray, who joked her about it, and sent her to the
gardener. The latter said he had made the noise. Passing the tower he
had imagined that the door was not firmly closed, and had pushed against
it to make sure. The incident did not occur again; but several days
later there was a new, and this time more serious, alarm.

"I had noticed on top of the tower a blackbird's nest, which could
easily be reached from the platform, but, faithful to orders, I had
never gone up there. This time, however, the temptation was too strong.
I watched until my mother and the servant were in our little garden, and
then climbed nimbly up to take the nest. On the landing of the second
floor, curious to get a peep at the uninhabited rooms, I pushed open the
door, and saw distinctly behind the glass door in the partition that
separated the two rooms, a green curtain drawn quickly. In a great
fright I rushed down-stairs head over heels, and ran into the garden,
calling my mother and shouting, 'There is some one up-stairs in the
room!' She did not believe it and scolded me. As I insisted she followed
me up-stairs with the servant. From the landing my mother cried, 'Is any
one there?' Silence. She pushed open the glass door. No one to be
seen--only a folding-bed, unmade. She touched it; it was warm! Some one
had been there, asleep,--dressed, no doubt. Where was he? On the
platform? We went up. No one was there! He had no doubt escaped when I
ran to the garden!

"We went down again quickly and our servant called the gardener. He had
disappeared. We saddled the donkey, and my mother went hurry-scurry to
the château. She found the lawyer at the eternal tric-trac with Mme. de
Combray, who frowned at the first word, not even interrupting her game.

"'More dreams! The room is unoccupied! No one sleeps there!'

"'But the curtain!'

"'Well, what of the curtain? Your child made a draught by opening the
door, and the curtain swung.'

"'But the bed, still warm!'

"'The gardener has some cats that must have been lying there, and ran
away when the door was opened, and that's all about it!'

"'And yet--'

"'Well, have you found this ghost?'

"'No.'

"'Well then?' And she shook her dice rather roughly without paying any
more attention to my mother, who after exchanging a curt good-night with
the Marquise, returned to the tower, so little convinced of the presence
of the cats that she took two screw-rings from one of our boxes, fixed
them on to the trap-door, closed them with a padlock, took the key and
said, 'Now we will see if any one comes in that way.' And for greater
security she decided to lift the drawbridge after supper. We all three
took hold of the rope that moved with difficulty on the rusty pulley. It
was hard; we made three attempts. At last it moved, the bridge shook,
lifted, came right up. It was done! And that evening, beside my bed, my
mother said:

"'We will not grow old in her Bastille!'

"Which was true, for eight days later we were awakened in the middle of
the night by a terrible hubbub on the ground floor. From our landing we
heard several voices, swearing and raging under the trap-door which they
were trying to raise, to which the padlock offered but feeble
resistance, for a strong push broke it off and the door opened with a
great noise. My mother and the servant rushed to the bureau, pushed and
dragged it to the door, whilst some men came out of the cellar, walked
to the door, grumbling, opened it, saw the drawbridge up, unfastened the
rope and let it fall down with a loud bang, and then the voices grew
fainter till they disappeared in the wood. But go to sleep after all
that! We stayed there waiting for the dawn, and though all danger was
over, not daring to speak aloud!

"At last the day broke. We moved the bureau, and my mother, brave as
ever, went down first, carrying a candle. The yawning trap-door exposed
the black hole of a cellar, the entrance door was wide open and the
bridge down. We called the gardener, who did not answer, and whose hut
was empty. My mother did not wait till afternoon this time, but jumped
on her donkey and went down to the château.

"Mme. de Combray was dressing. She expected my mother and knew her
object in coming so well that without waiting for her to tell her story,
she flew out like most people, who, having no good reason to give,
resort to angry words, and cried as soon as she entered the room:

"'You are mad; mad enough to be shut up! You take my house for a resort
of bandits and counterfeiters! I am sorry enough that I ever brought you
here!'

"'And I that I ever came!'

"'Very well, then--go!'

"'I am going to-morrow. I came to tell you so.'

"'A safe return to you!' On which Mme. de Combray turned her back, and
my mother retraced her steps to the tower in a state of exasperation,
fully determined to take the boat for Paris without further delay.

"Early next morning we made ready. The gardener was at the door with his
cart, coming and going for our luggage, while the servant put the soup
on the table. My mother took only two or three spoonfuls and I did the
same, as I hate soup. The servant alone emptied her plate! We went down
to Roule where the gardener had scarcely left us when the servant was
seized with frightful vomiting. My mother and I were also slightly
nauseated, but the poor girl retained nothing, happily for her, for we
returned to Paris convinced that the gardener, being left alone for a
moment, had thrown some poison into the soup."

"And did nothing happen afterwards?"

"Nothing."

"And you heard nothing more from Tournebut?"

"Nothing, until 1808, when we learned that the mail had been attacked
and robbed near Falaise by a band of armed men commanded by Mme. de
Combray's daughter, Mme. Acquet de Férolles, disguised as a hussar!
Then, that Mme. Acquet had been arrested as well as her lover (Le
Chevalier), her husband, her mother, her lawyer and servants and those
of Mme. de Combray at Tournebut; and finally that Mme. de Combray had
been condemned to imprisonment and the pillory, Mme. Acquet, her lover,
the lawyer (Lefebre) and several others, to death."

"And the husband?"

"Released; he was a spy."

"Was your mother called as a witness?"

"No, happily, they knew nothing about us. Besides, what would she have
said?"

"Nothing, except that the people who frightened you so much, must surely
have belonged to the band; that they had forced the trap-door, after a
nocturnal expedition, on which they had been pursued as far as a
subterranean entrance, which without doubt led to the cellar."

After we had chatted a while on this subject Moisson wished me
good-night, and I took up Balzac's chef d'oeuvre and resumed my
reading. But I only read a few lines; my imagination was wandering
elsewhere. It was a long distance from Balzac's idealism to the realism
of Moisson, which awakened in me memories of the stories and melodramas
of Ducray-Duminil, of Guilbert de Pixérecourt--"Alexis, ou la Maisonette
dans les Bois," "Victor, ou l'Enfant de la Forêt,"--and many others of
the same date and style so much discredited nowadays. And I thought that
what caused the discredit now, accounted for their vogue formerly; that
they had a substratum of truth under a mass of absurdity; that these
stories of brigands in their traditional haunts, forests, caverns and
subterranean passages, charmed by their likelihood the readers of those
times to whom an attack on a coach by highwaymen with blackened faces
was as natural an occurrence as a railway accident is to us, and that in
what seems pure extravaganza to us they only saw a scarcely exaggerated
picture of things that were continually happening under their eyes. In
the reports published by M. Félix Rocquain we can learn the state of
France during the Directory and the early years of the Commune. The
roads, abandoned since 1792, were worn into such deep ruts, that to
avoid them the waggoners made long circuits in ploughed land, and the
post-chaises would slip and sink into the muddy bogs from which it was
impossible to drag them except with oxen. At every step through the
country one came to a deserted hamlet, a roofless house, a burned farm,
a château in ruins. Under the indifferent eyes of a police that cared
only for politics, and of gendarmes recruited in such a fashion that a
criminal often recognised an old comrade in the one who arrested him,
bands of vagabonds and scamps of all kinds had been formed; deserters,
refractories, fugitives from the pretended revolutionary army, and
terrorists without employment, "the scum," said François de Nantes, "of
the Revolution and the war; 'lanterneurs' of '91, 'guillotineurs' of
'93, 'sabreurs' of the year III, 'assommeurs' of the year IV,
'fusilleurs' of the year V." All this canaille lived only by rapine and
murder, camped in the forests, ruins and deserted quarries like that at
Gueudreville, an underground passage one hundred feet long by thirty
broad, the headquarters of the band of Orgères, a thoroughly organised
company of bandits--chiefs, subchiefs, storekeepers, spies, couriers,
barbers, surgeons, dressmakers, cooks, preceptors for the "gosses," and
curé!

And this brigandage was rampant everywhere. There was so little safety
in the Midi from Marseilles to Toulon and Toulouse that one could not
travel without an escort. In the Var, the Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse,
from Digne and Draguignan, to Avignon and Aix, one had to pay ransom. A
placard placed along the roads informed the traveller that unless he
paid a hundred francs in advance, he risked being killed. The receipt
given to the driver served as a passport. Theft by violence was so much
the custom that certain villages in the Lower Alps were openly known as
the abode of those who had no other occupation. On the banks of the
Rhône travellers were charitably warned not to put up at certain
solitary inns for fear of not reappearing therefrom. On the Italian
frontier they were the "barbets"; in the North the "garroteurs"; in the
Ardèche the "bande noire"; in the Centre the "Chiffoniers"; in Artois,
Picardie, the Somme, Seine-Inférieure, the Chartrain country, the
Orléanais, Loire-Inférieure, Orne, Sarthe, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine,
etc., and Ile-de-France to the very gates of Paris, but above all in
Calvados, Finistère and La Manche where royalism served as their flag,
the "chauffeurs" and the bands of "Grands Gars" and "Coupe et Tranche,"
which under pretence of being Chouans attacked farms or isolated
dwellings, and inspired such terror that if one of them were arrested
neither witness nor jury could be found to condemn him. Politics
evidently had nothing to do with these exploits; it was a private war.
And the Chouans professed to wage it only against the government. So
long as they limited themselves to fighting the gendarmes or national
guards in bands of five or six hundred, to invading defenceless places
in order to cut down the trees of liberty, burn the municipal papers,
and pillage the coffers of the receivers and school-teachers--(the State
funds having the right to return to their legitimate owner, the King),
they could be distinguished from professional malefactors. But when they
stopped coaches, extorted ransom from travellers and shot constitutional
priests and purchasers of the national property, the distinction became
too subtle. There was no longer any room for it in the year VIII and IX
when, vigorous measures having almost cleared the country of the bands
of "chauffeurs" and other bandits who infested it, the greater number of
those who had escaped being shot or guillotined joined what remained of
the royalist army, last refuge of brigandage.

In such a time Moisson's adventure was not at all extraordinary. We can
only accuse it of being too simple. It was the mildest scene of a huge
melodrama in which he and his mother had played the part of supers. But
slight as was the episode, it had all the attraction of the unknown for
me. Of Tournebut and its owners I knew nothing. Who, in reality, was
this Mme. de Combray, sanctified by Balzac? A fanatic, or an
intriguer?--And her daughter Mme. Acquet? A heroine or a lunatic?--and
the lover? A hero or an adventurer?--And the husband, the lawyer and the
friends of the house? Mme. Acquet more than all piqued my curiosity. The
daughter of a good house disguised as a hussar to stop the mail like
Choppart! This was not at all commonplace! Was she young and pretty?
Moisson knew nothing about it; he had never seen her or her lover or
husband, Mme. de Combray having quarrelled with all of them.

I was most anxious to learn more, but to do that it would be necessary
to consult the report of the trial in the record office at Rouen. I
never had time. I mentioned it to M. Gustave Bord, to Frédéric Masson
and M. de la Sicotière, and thought no more about it even after the
interesting article published in the _Temps_, by M. Ernest Daudet, until
walking one day with Lenôtre in the little that is left of old Paris of
the Cité, the house in the Rue Chanoinesse, where Balzac lodged Mme. de
la Chanterie, reminded me of Moisson, whose adventure I narrated to
Lenôtre, at that time finishing his "Conspiration de la Rouërie." That
was sufficient to give him the idea of studying the records of the
affair of 1807, which no one had consulted before him. A short time
after he told me that the tower of Tournebut was still in existence, and
that he was anxious for us to visit it, the son-in-law of the owner of
the Château of Aubevoye, M. Constantin, having kindly offered to conduct
us.

On a fine autumn morning the train left us at the station that served
the little village of Aubevoye, whose name has twice been heard in the
Courts of Justice, once in the trial of Mme. de Combray and once in that
of Mme. de Jeufosse. Those who have no taste for these sorts of
excursions cannot understand their charm. Whether it be a little
historical question to be solved, an unknown or badly authenticated fact
to be elucidated, this document hunt with its deceptions and surprises
is the most amusing kind of chase, especially in company with a delver
like Lenôtre, endowed with an admirable _flair_ that always puts him on
the right track. There was, moreover, a particular attraction in this
old forgotten tower, in which we alone were interested, and in examining
into Moisson's story!

Of the château that had been built by the Marechal de Marillac, and
considerably enlarged by Mme. de Combray, nothing, unhappily, remains
but the out-buildings, a terrace overlooking the Seine, the court of
honour turned into a lawn, an avenue of old limes and the ancient fence.
A new building replaced the old one fifty years ago. The little château,
"Gros-Mesnil," near the large one has recently been restored.

But the general effect is the same as in 1804. Seeing the great woods
that hug the outer wall so closely, one realises how well they lent
themselves to the mysterious comings and goings, to the secret councils,
to the rôle destined for it by Mme. de Combray, preparing the finest
room for the arrival of the King or the Comte d'Artois, and in both the
great and little château, arranging hiding-places, one of which alone
could accommodate forty armed men.

The tower is still there, far from the château, at the summit of a
wooded hill in the centre of a clearing, which commands the river
valley. It is a squat, massive construction, of forbidding aspect, such
as Moisson described, with thick walls, and windows so narrow that they
look more like loopholes. It seems as if it might originally have been
one of the guard-houses or watch-towers erected on the heights from
Nantes to Paris, like the tower of Montjoye whose ditch is recognisable
in the Forest of Marly, or those of Montaigu and Hennemont, whose ruins
were still visible in the last century. Some of these towers were
converted into mills or pigeon-houses. Ours, whose upper story and
pointed roof had been demolished and replaced by a platform at an
uncertain date, was flanked by a wooden mill, burnt before the
Revolution, for it is not to be found in Cassini's chart which shows
all in the region. The tower and its approaches are still known as the
"burnt mill."

There remains no trace of the excavation which was in front of the
entrance in 1804, and which must have been the last vestige of an old
moat. The threshold crossed, we are in the circular chamber; at the end
facing the door is the window, the bars of which have been taken down;
on the left a modern chimneypiece replaces the old one, and on the right
is the staircase, in good condition. The trap-door has disappeared from
under it, the cellar being abandoned as useless. On the first floor as
on the second, where the partitions have been removed, there are still
traces of them, with fragments of wall-paper. The very little daylight
that filters through the windows justifies Mme. Moisson's exclamation,
"It is a prison!" The platform, from which the view is very fine, has
been renewed, like the staircase. But from top to bottom all corresponds
with Moisson's description.

All that remained now was to find out how one could get into the cellar
from outside. We had two excellent guides; our kind host, M. Constantin,
and M. l'Abbé Drouin, the curé of Aubevoye, who knew all the local
traditions. They mentioned the "Grotto of the Hermit!" O
Ducray-Duminil!--Thou again!

The grotto is an old quarry in the side of the hill towards the Seine,
below the tower and having no apparent communication with it, but so
situated that an underground passage of a few yards would unite them.
The grotto being now almost filled up, the entrance to this passage has
disappeared. Looking at it, so innocent in appearance now under the
brush and brambles, I seemed to see some Chouan by star-light, eye and
ear alert, throw himself into it like a rabbit into its hole, and creep
through to the tower, to sleep fully dressed on the pallet on the second
floor. Evidently this tower, planned as were all Mme. de Combray's
abodes, was one of the many refuges arranged by the Chouans from the
coast of Normandy to Paris and known only to themselves.

But why was Mme. Moisson accommodated there without being taken into her
hostess's confidence? If Mme. de Combray wished to avert suspicion by
having two women and a child there, she might have told them so; and if
she thought Mme. Moisson too excitable to hear such a confession, she
should not have exposed her to nocturnal mysteries that could only tend
to increase her excitement! When Phélippeaux was questioned, during the
trial of Georges Cadoudal, about Moisson's father, who had disappeared,
he replied that he lived in the street and island of Saint-Louis near
the new bridge; that he was an engraver and manager of a button factory;
that Mme. Moisson had a servant named R. Petit-Jean, married to a
municipal guard. Was it through fear of this woman's writing
indiscreetly to her husband that Mme. de Combray remained silent? But in
any case, why the tower?

However this may be, the exactness of Moisson's reminiscences was
proved. But the trap-door had not been forced, as he believed, by
Chouans fleeing after some nocturnal expedition. This point was already
decided by the first documents that Lenôtre had collected for this
present work. There was no expedition of the sort in the neighbourhood
of Tournebut during the summer of 1804. They would not have risked
attracting attention to the château where was hidden the only man whom
the Chouans of Normandy judged capable of succeeding Georges, and whom
they called "Le Grand Alexandre"--the Vicomte Robert d'Aché. Hunted
through Paris like all the royalists denounced by Querelle, he had
managed to escape the searchers, to go out in one of his habitual
disguises when the gates were reopened, to get to Normandy by the left
bank of the Seine and take refuge with his old friend at Tournebut,
where he lived for fourteen months under the name of Deslorières, his
presence there never being suspected by the police.

He was certainly, as well as Bonnoeil, Mme. de Combray's eldest son,
one of the three guests with whom Moisson took supper on the evening of
his arrival. The one who was always playing cards or tric-trac with the
Marquise, and whom she called her lawyer, might well have been d'Aché
himself. As to the stealthy visitors at the tower, given the presence of
d'Aché at Tournebut, it is highly probable that they were only passing
by there to confer with him, taking his orders secretly in the woods
without even appearing at the château, and then disappearing as
mysteriously as they had come.

For d'Aché in his retreat still plotted and made an effort to resume,
with the English minister, the intrigue that had just failed so
miserably, Moreau having withdrawn at the last minute. The royalist
party was less intimidated than exasperated at the deaths of the Duke
d'Enghien, Georges and Pichegru, and did not consider itself beaten even
by the proclamation of the Empire, which had not excited in the
provinces--above all in the country--the enthusiasm announced in the
official reports.

In reality it had been accepted by the majority of the population as a
government of expediency, which would provisionally secure threatened
interests, but whose duration was anything but certain. It was too
evident that the Empire was Napoleon, as the Consulate had been
Bonaparte--that everything rested on the head of one man. If an infernal
machine removed him, royalty would have a good opportunity. His life was
not the only stake; his luck itself was very hazardous. Founded on
victory, the Empire was condemned to be always victorious. War could
undo what war had done. And this uneasiness is manifest in contemporary
memoirs and correspondence. More of the courtiers of the new régime than
one imagines were as sceptical as Mme. Mère, economising her revenues
and saying to her mocking daughters, "You will perhaps be very glad of
them, some day!" In view of a possible catastrophe many of these kept
open a door for retreat towards the Bourbons, and vaguely encouraged
hopes of assistance that could only be depended on in case of their
success, but which the royalists believed in as positive and immediate.
As to the disaster which might bring it about, they hoped for its early
coming, and promised it to the impatient Chouans--the disembarkation of
an Anglo-Russian army--the rising of the West--the entrance of Louis
XVIII into his good town of Paris--and the return of the Corsican to his
island! Predictions that were not so wild after all. Ten years later it
was an accomplished fact in almost all its details. And what are ten
years in politics? Frotté, Georges, Pichegru, d'Aché, would only have
had to fold their arms. They would have seen the Empire crumble by its
own weight.

We made these reflections on returning to the château while looking at
the terrace in the setting sun, at the peaceful winding of the Seine and
the lovely autumn landscape that Mme. de Combray and d'Aché had so often
looked at, at the same place and hour, little foreseeing the sad fate
the future had in store for them.

The misfortunes of the unhappy woman--the deplorable affair of Quesnay
where the coach with state funds was attacked by Mme. Acquet's men, for
the profit of the royalist exchequer and of Le Chevalier; the
assassination of d'Aché, sold to the imperial police by La Vaubadon, his
mistress, and the cowardly Doulcet de Pontécoulant, who does not boast
of it in his "Mémoires,"--have been the themes of several tales,
romances and novels, wherein fancy plays too great a part, and whose
misinformed authors, Hippolyte Bonnelier, Comtesse de Mirabeau,
Chennevières, etc., have taken great advantage of the liberty used in
works of imagination. There is only one reproach to be made--that they
did not have the genius of Balzac. But we may criticise more severely
the so-called historical writings about Mme. de Combray, her family and
residences, and the Château of Tournebut which M. Homberg shows us
flanked by four feudal towers, and which MM. Le Prévost and Bourdon say
was demolished in 1807.

Mme. d'Abrantès, with her usual veracity, describes the luxurious
furniture and huge lamps in the "labyrinths of Tournebut, of which one
must, as it were, have a plan, so as not to lose one's way." She shows
us Le Chevalier, crucifix in hand, haranguing the assailants in the wood
of Quesnay (although he was in Paris that day to prove an alibi), and
gravely adds, "I know some one who was in the coach and who alone
survived, the seven other travellers having been massacred and their
bodies left on the road." Now there was neither coach nor travellers,
and no one was killed!

M. de la Sicotière's mistakes are still stranger. At the time that he
was preparing his great work on "Frotté and the Norman Insurrections,"
he learned from M. Gustave Bord that I had some special facts concerning
Mme. de Combray, and wrote to ask me about them. I sent him a résumé of
Moisson's story, and asked him to verify its correctness. And on that he
went finely astray.

Mme. de Combray had two residences besides her house at Rouen; one at
Aubevoye, where she had lived for a long while, the other thirty leagues
away, at Donnay, in the department of Orne, where she no longer went, as
her son-in-law had settled himself there. Two towers have the same name
of Tournebut; the one at Aubevoye is ours; the other, some distance from
Donnay, did not belong to Mme. de Combray.

Convinced solely by the assertions of MM. Le Prévost and Bourdon that in
1804 the Château of Aubevoye and its tower no longer existed, and that
Mme. de Combray occupied Donnay at that date, M. de la Sicotière
naturally mistook one Tournebut for the other, did not understand a
single word of Moisson's story, which he treated as a chimera, and in
his book acknowledges my communications in this disdainful note:

     "Confusion has arisen in many minds between the two Tournebuts, so
     different, however, and at such a distance from each other, and has
     given birth to many strange and romantic legends; inaccessible
     retreats arranged for outlaws and bandits in the old tower,
     nocturnal apparitions, innocent victims paying with their lives the
     misfortune of having surprised the secrets of these terrible
     guests...."

It is pleasant to see M. de la Sicotière point out the confusion he
alone experienced. But there is better to come! Here is a writer who
gives us in two large volumes the history of Norman Chouannerie. There
is little else spoken of in his book than disguises, false names, false
papers, ambushes, kidnappings, attacks on coaches, subterranean
passages, prisons, escapes, child spies and female captains! He states
himself that the affair of the Forest of Quesnay was "tragic, strange
and mysterious!" And at the same time he condemns as "strange" and
"romantic" the simplest of all these adventures--that of Moisson! He
scoffs at his hiding-places in the roofs of the old château, and it is
precisely in the roofs of the old château that the police found the
famous refuge which could hold forty men with ease. He calls the
retreats arranged for the outlaws and bandits "legendary," at the same
time that he gives two pages to the enumeration of the holes, vaults,
wells, pits, grottoes and caverns in which these same bandits and
outlaws found safety! So that M. de la Sicotière seems to be laughing at
himself!

I should reproach myself if I did not mention, as a curiosity,
the biography of M. and Mme. de Combray, united in one person in
the "Dictionaire Historique" (!!!) of Larousse. It is unique of
its kind. Names, places and facts are all wrong. And the crowning
absurdity is that, borne out by these fancies, fragments are given
of the supposed Mémoires that Félicie (!) de Combray wrote after the
Restoration--forgetting that she was guillotined under the Empire!

With M. Ernest Daudet we return to history. No one had seriously studied
the crime of Quesnay before him. Some years ago he gave the correct
story of it in _Le Temps_ and we could not complain of its being only
what he meant it to be--a faithful and rapid résumé. Besides, M. Daudet
had only at his disposal the portfolios 8,170, 8,171, and 8,172 of the
Series F7 of the National Archives, and the reports sent to Réal by
Savoye-Rollin and Licquet, this cunning detective beside whom Balzac's
Corentin seems a mere schoolboy. Consequently the family drama escapes
M. Daudet, who, for that matter, did not have to concern himself with
it. It would not have been possible to do better than he did with the
documents within his reach.

Lenôtre has pushed his researches further. He has not limited himself to
studying, bit by bit, the voluminous report of the trial of 1808, which
fills a whole cupboard; to comparing and opposing the testimony of the
witnesses one against the other, examining the reports and enquiries,
disentangling the real names from the false, truth from error--in a
word, investigating the whole affair, a formidable task of which he only
gives us the substance here. Aided by his wonderful instinct and the
persistency of the investigator, he has managed to obtain access to
family papers, some of which were buried in old trunks relegated to the
attics, and in these papers has found precious documents which clear up
the depths of this affair of Quesnay where the mad passion of one poor
woman plays the greatest part.

And let no one imagine that he is going to read a romance in these
pages. It is an _historical_ study in the severest meaning of the word.
Lenôtre mentions no fact that he cannot prove. He risks no hypothesis
without giving it as such, and admits no fancy in the slightest detail.
If he describes one of Mme. Acquet's toilettes, it is because it is
given in some interrogation. I have seen him so scrupulous on this
point, as to suppress all picturesqueness that could be put down to his
imagination. In no _cause celèbre_ has justice shown more exactitude in
exposing the facts. In short, here will be found all the qualities that
ensured the success of his "Conspiration de la Rouërie," the chivalrous
beginning of the Chouannerie that he now shows us in its decline,
reduced to highway robbery!

As for me, if I have lingered too long by this old tower, it is because
it suggested this book; and we owe some gratitude to these mute
witnesses of a past which they keep in our remembrance.

Victorien Sardou.




The House of the Combrays




CHAPTER I

THE TREACHERY OF JEAN-PIERRE QUERELLE


Late at night on January the 25th, 1804, the First Consul, who, as it
often happened, had arisen in order to work till daylight, was looking
over the latest police reports that had been placed on his desk.

His death was talked of everywhere. It had already been announced
positively in London, Germany and Holland. "To assassinate Bonaparte"
was a sort of game, in which the English were specially active. From
their shores, well-equipped and plentifully supplied with money, sailed
many who were desirous of gaining the great stake,--obdurate Chouans and
fanatical royalists who regarded as an act of piety the crime that would
rid France of the usurper. What gave most cause for alarm in these
reports, usually unworthy of much attention, was the fact that all of
them were agreed on one point--Georges Cadoudal had disappeared. Since
this man, formidable by reason of his courage and tenacity of purpose,
had declared war without mercy on the First Consul, the police had
never lost sight of him. It was known that he was staying in England,
and he was under surveillance there; but if it was true that he had
escaped this espionage, the danger was imminent, and the predicted
"earthquake" at hand.

Bonaparte, more irritated than uneasy at these tales, wished to remove
all doubt about the matter. He mistrusted Fouché, whose devotion he had
reason to suspect, and who besides had not at this time--officially at
least--the superintendence of the police; and he had attached to himself
a dangerous spy, the Belgian Réal. It was on this man that Bonaparte, on
certain occasions, preferred to rely. Réal was a typical detective. The
friend of Danton, he had in former days, organised the great popular
manifestations that were to intimidate the Convention. He had penetrated
the terrible depths of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the Committee of
Public Safety. He knew and understood how to make use of what remained
of the old committees of sections, of "septembriseurs" without
occupation, lacqueys, perfumers, dentists, dancing masters without
pupils, all the refuse of the revolution, the women of the Palais-Royal:
such was the army he commanded, having as his lieutenants Desmarets, an
unfrocked priest, and Veyrat, formerly a Genevese convict, who had been
branded and whipped by the public executioner. Réal and these two
subalterns were the principal actors in the drama that we are about to
relate.

On this night Bonaparte sent in haste for Réal. In his usual manner, by
brief questions he soon learned the number of royalists confined in the
tower of the Temple or at Bicêtre, their names, and on what suspicions
they had been arrested. Quickly satisfied on all these points he ordered
that before daylight four of the most deeply implicated of the prisoners
should be taken before a military commission; if they revealed nothing
they were to be shot in twenty-four hours. Aroused at five o'clock in
the morning, Desmarets was told to prepare the list, and the first two
names indicated were those of Picot and Lebourgeois. Picot was one of
Frotté's old officers, and during the wars of the Chouannerie had been
commander-in-chief of the Auge division. He had earned the surname of
"Egorge-Bleus" and was a Chevalier of St. Louis. Lebourgeois, keeper of
a coffee-house at Rouen, had been accused about the year 1800 of taking
part in an attack on a stage-coach, was acquitted, and like his friend
Picot, had emigrated to England. Both of these men had been denounced by
a professional instigator as having "been heard to say" that they had
come to attempt the life of the First Consul. They had been arrested at
Pont-Audemer as soon as they returned to France, and had now been
imprisoned in the Temple for nearly a year.

To these two victims Desmarets added another Chouan, Piogé, nicknamed
"Without Pity" or "Strike-to-Death," and Desol de Grisolles, an old
companion of Georges and "a very dangerous royalist." And then, to show
his zeal, he added a fifth name to the list, that of Querelle,
ex-surgeon of marine, arrested four months previously, under slight
suspicion, but described in the report as a poor-spirited creature of
whom "something might be expected."

"This one," said Bonaparte on reading the name of Querelle, and the
accompanying note, "is more of an intriguer than a fanatic; he will
speak."

The same day the five, accused of enticing away soldiers and
corresponding with the enemies of the Republic, were led before a
military commission over which General Duplessis presided; Desol and
Piogé were acquitted, returned to the hands of the government and
immediately reincarcerated. Picot, Lebourgeois and Querelle, condemned
to death, were transferred to the Abbaye there to await their execution
on the following day.

"There must be no delay, you understand," said Bonaparte, "I will not
have it."

But nevertheless it was necessary to give a little time for the courage
of the prisoners to fail, and for the police to aid in bringing this
about.

There was nothing to be expected of Picot or Lebourgeois; they knew
nothing of the conspiracy and were resigned to their fate; but their
deaths could be used to intimidate Querelle who was less firm, and the
authorities did not fail to make the most of the opportunity. He was
allowed to be present during all the preparations; he witnessed the
arrival of the soldiers who were to shoot his companions; he saw them
depart and was immediately told that it was "now his turn." Then to
prolong his agony he was left alone in the gloomy chamber where
Maillard's tribunal had formerly sat. This tragic room was lighted by a
small, strongly-barred window looking out on the square. From this
window the doomed man saw the soldiers who were to take him to the plain
of Grenelle drawn up in the narrow square and perceived the crowd
indulging in rude jokes while they waited for him to come out. One of
the soldiers had dismounted and tied his horse to the bars of the
window; while within the prison the noise of quick footsteps was heard,
doors opening and shutting heavily, all indicating the last
preparations....

Querelle remained silent for a long time, crouched up in a corner.
Suddenly, as if fear had driven him mad, he began to call desperately,
crying that he did not want to die, that he would tell all he knew,
imploring his gaolers to fly to the First Consul and obtain his pardon,
at the same time calling with sobs upon General Murat, Governor of
Paris, swearing that he would make a complete avowal if only he would
command the soldiers to return to their quarters. Although Murat could
see nothing in these ravings but a pretext for gaining a few hours of
life, he felt it his duty to refer the matter to the First Consul, who
sent word of it to Réal. All this had taken some time and meanwhile the
unfortunate Querelle, seeing the soldiers still under his window and the
impatient crowd clamouring for his appearance, was in the last paroxysm
of despair. When Réal opened the door he saw, cowering on the flags and
shaking with fear, a little man with a pockmarked face, black hair, a
thin and pointed nose and grey eyes continually contracted by a nervous
affection.

"You have announced your intention of making some revelations," said
Réal; "I have come to hear them."

But the miserable creature could scarcely articulate. Réal was obliged
to reassure him, to have him carried into another room, and to hold out
hopes of mercy if his confessions were sufficiently important. At last,
still trembling, and in broken words, with great effort the prisoner
confessed that he had been in Paris for six months, having come from
London with Georges Cadoudal and six of his most faithful officers; they
had been joined there by a great many more from Bretagne or England;
there were now more than one hundred of them hidden in Paris, waiting
for an opportunity to carry off Bonaparte, or to assassinate him. He
added more details as he grew calmer. A boat from the English navy had
landed them at Biville near Dieppe; there a man from Eu or Tréport had
met them and conducted them a little way from the shore to a farm of
which Querelle did not know the name. They left again in the night, and
in this way, from farm to farm, they journeyed to Paris where they did
not meet until Georges called them together; they received their pay in
a manner agreed upon. His own share was deposited under a stone in the
Champs Elysées every week, and he fetched it from there. A "gentleman"
had come to meet them at the last stage of their journey, near the
village of Saint-Leu-Taverny, to prepare for their entry into Paris and
help them to pass the barrier.

One point stood out boldly in all these revelations: Georges was in
Paris! Réal, whose account we have followed, left Querelle and hastened
to the Tuileries. The First Consul was in the hands of Constant, his
valet, when the detective was announced. Noticing his pallor, Bonaparte
supposed he had just come from the execution of the three condemned men.

"It is over, isn't it?" he said.

"No, General," replied Réal.

And seeing his hesitation the Consul continued: "You may speak before
Constant."

"Well then,--Georges and his band are in Paris."

On hearing the name of the only man he feared Bonaparte turned round
quickly, made the sign of the cross, and taking Réal by the sleeve led
him into the adjoining room.

So the First Consul's police, so numerous, so careful, and so active,
the police who according to the _Moniteur_ "had eyes everywhere," had
been at fault for six months! A hundred reports were daily piled up on
Réal's table, and not one of them had mentioned the goings and comings
of Georges, who travelled with his Chouans from Dieppe to Paris,
supported a little army, and planned his operations with as much liberty
as if he were in London. These revelations were so alarming that they
preferred not to believe them. Querelle must have invented this absurd
story as a last resource for prolonging his life. To set at rest all
doubt on this subject he must be convinced of the imposture. If it was
true that he had accompanied the "brigands" from the sea to Paris, he
could, on travelling over the route, show their different
halting-places. If he could do this his life was to be spared.

From the 27th January, when he made his first declarations, Querelle was
visited every night by Réal or Desmarets who questioned him minutely.
The unfortunate creature had sustained such a shock, that, even while
maintaining his avowals, he would be seized with fits of madness, and
beating his breast, would fall on his knees and call on those whom fear
of death had caused him to denounce, imploring their pardon. When he
learned what was expected of him he appeared to be overwhelmed, not at
the number of victims he was going to betray, but because he was aghast
at the idea of leading the detectives over a road that he had traversed
only at night, and that he feared he might not remember. The expedition
set out on February 3d. Réal had taken the precaution to have an escort
of gendarmes for the prisoner whom Georges and his followers might try
to rescue. The detachment was commanded by a zealous and intelligent
officer, Lieutenant Manginot, assisted by a giant called Pasque, an
astute man celebrated for the sureness of his attack. They left Paris at
dawn by the Saint-Denis gate and took the road to l'Isle-Adam.

The first day's search was without result. Querelle thought he
remembered that a house in the village of Taverny had sheltered the
Chouans the night before their entry into Paris; but at the time he had
not paid any attention to localities, and in spite of his efforts, he
could be positive of nothing. The next day they took the Pontoise road
from Pierrelaye to Franconville,--with no more success. They returned
towards Taverny by Ermont, le Plessis-Bouchard and the Château de
Boissy. Querelle, who knew that his life was at stake, showed a feverish
eagerness which was not shared by Pasque nor Manginot, who were now
fully persuaded that the prisoner had only wanted to gain time, or some
chance of escape. They thought of abandoning the search and returning to
Paris, but Querelle begged so vehemently for twenty-four hours' reprieve
that Manginot weakened. The third day, therefore, they explored the
environs of Taverny and the borders of the forest as far as Bessancourt.
Querelle now led them by chance, thinking he recognised a group of
trees, a turn of the road, even imagining he had found a farm "by the
particular manner in which the dog barked."

At last, worn out, the little band were returning to Paris when, on
passing through the village of Saint-Leu, Querelle gave a triumphant
cry! He had just recognised the long-looked for house, and he gave so
exact a description of it and its inhabitants that Pasque did not
hesitate to interrogate the proprietor, a vine-dresser named Denis
Lamotte. He laid great stress on the fact that he had a son in the
service of an officer of the Consul's guard; his other son, Vincent
Lamotte, lived with him. The worthy man appeared very much surprised at
the invasion of his house, but his peasant cunning could not long
withstand the professional cleverness of the detective, and after a few
minutes he gave up.

He admitted that at the beginning of July last he had received a person
calling himself Houvel, or Saint-Vincent, who under pretence of buying
some wine, had proposed to him to lodge seven or eight persons for a
night. Lamotte had accepted. On the evening of the 30th August Houvel
had reappeared and told him that the men would arrive that night. He
went to fetch them in the neighbourhood of l'Isle-Adam, and his son
Vincent accompanied him to serve as guide to the travellers, whom he met
on the borders of the wood of La Muette. They numbered seven, one of
whom, very stout and covered with sweat, stopped in the wood to change
his shirt. They all appeared to be very tired, and only two of them were
on horseback. They arrived at Lamotte's house at Saint-Leu about two
o'clock in the morning; the horses were stabled and the men stretched
themselves out on the straw in one of the rooms of the house. Lamotte
noticed that each of them carried two pistols. They slept long and had
dinner about twelve o'clock. Two individuals, who had driven from Paris
and left their cabriolets, one at the "White Cross" the other at the
"Crown," talked with the travellers who, about seven o'clock, resumed
their journey to the capital. Each of the "individuals" took one in his
cab; two went on horseback and the others awaited the phaeton which ran
between Taverny and Paris.

This account tallied so well with Querelle's declarations that there
was no longer any room for doubt. The band of seven was composed of
Georges and his staff; the "stout man" was Georges himself, and Querelle
gave the names of the others, all skilful and formidable Chouans.
Lamotte, on his part, did not hesitate to name the one who had conducted
the "brigands" to the wood of La Muette. He was called Nicolas
Massignon, a farmer of Jouy-le-Comte. Pasque set out with his gendarmes,
and Massignon admitted that he had brought the travellers from across
the Oise to the Avenue de Nesles, his brother, Jean-Baptiste Massignon,
a farmer of Saint-Lubin, having conducted them thither. Pasque
immediately took the road to Saint-Lubin and marched all night. At four
o'clock in the morning he arrived at the house of Jean-Baptiste, who,
surprised in jumping out of bed, remembered that he had put up some men
that his brother-in-law, Quentin-Rigaud, a cultivator at Auteuil, had
brought there. Pasque now held four links of the chain, and Manginot
started for the country to follow the track of the conspirators to the
sea. Savary had preceded him in order to surprise a new disembarkation
announced by Querelle. Arrived at the coast he perceived, at some
distance, an English brig tacking, but in spite of all their precautions
to prevent her taking alarm, the vessel did not come in. They saw her
depart on a signal given on shore by a young man on horseback, whom
Savary's gendarmes pursued as far as the forest of Eu, where he
disappeared.

In twelve days, always accompanied by Querelle, Manginot had ended his
quest, and put into the hands of Réal such a mass of depositions that it
was possible, as we shall show, to reconstruct the voyage of Georges and
his companions to Paris from the sea.

On the night of August 23, 1803, the English cutter "Vincejo," commanded
by Captain Wright, had landed the conspirators at the foot of the cliffs
of Biville, a steep wall of rocks and clay three hundred and twenty feet
high. From time immemorial, in the place called the hollow of Parfonval
there had existed an "estamperche," a long cord fixed to some piles,
which was used by the country people for descending to the beach. It was
necessary to pull oneself up this long rope by the arms, a most painful
proceeding for a man as corpulent as Georges. At last the seven Chouans
were gathered at the top of the cliff, and under the guidance of Troche,
son of the former procureur of the commune of Eu, and one of the most
faithful adherents of the party, they arrived at the farm of La Poterie,
near the hamlet of Heudelimont, about two leagues from the coast. Whilst
the farmer, Detrimont, was serving them drinks, a mysterious personage,
who called himself M. Beaumont, came to consult with them. He was a tall
man, with the figure of a Hercules, a swarthy complexion, a high
forehead and black eyebrows and hair. He disappeared in the early
morning.

Georges and his companions spent the whole of the 24th at La Poterie.
They left the farm in the night and marched five leagues to Preuseville,
where a M. Loisel sheltered them. The route was cleverly planned not to
leave the vast forest of Eu, which provided shaded roads, and in case of
alarm, almost impenetrable hiding-places. On the night of the 26th they
again covered five leagues, through the forest of Eu, arriving at Aumale
at two o'clock in the morning, and lodging with a man called Monnier,
who occupied the ancient convent of the Dominican Nuns. "The stout man"
rode a black horse which Monnier, for want of a stable, hid in a
corridor in the house, the halter tied to the key of the door. As for
the men, they threw themselves pell-mell on some straw, and did not go
out during the day. M. Beaumont had reappeared at Aumale. He arrived on
horseback and, after passing an hour with the conspirators, had left in
the direction of Quincampoix. They had seen him again with Boniface
Colliaux, called Boni, at their next stage, Feuquières, four leagues
off, which they reached on the night of the 27th. They passed the 28th
with Leclerc, five leagues further on, at the farm of Monceaux which
belonged to the Count d'Hardivilliers, situated in the commune of
Saint-Omer-en-Chaussée. From there, avoiding Beauvais, the son of
Leclerc had guided them to the house of Quentin-Rigaud at Auteuil, and
on the 29th he had taken them to Massignon, the farmer of Saint-Lubin,
who in turn had passed them on, the next day, to his brother Nicolas,
charged, as we have seen, to help them cross the Oise and direct them to
the wood of La Muette, where Denis Lamotte, the vine-dresser of
Saint-Leu, had come to fetch them.

Such was the result of Manginot's enquiries. He had reconstructed
Georges' itinerary with most remarkable perspicacity and this was the
more important as the chain of stations from the sea to Paris
necessitated long and careful organisation, and as the conspirators used
the route frequently. Thus, two men mentioned in the disembarkation of
August 23d had returned to Biville in mid-September. On October 2d
Georges and three of his officers, coming from Paris, had again
presented themselves before Lamotte, who had conducted them to the wood
of La Muette, where Massignon was waiting for them. It was proved that
their journeys had been made with perfect regularity; the same guides,
the same night marches, the same hiding-places by day. The house of
Boniface Colliaux at Feuquières, that of Monnier at Aumale, and the farm
of La Poterie seemed to be the principal meeting-places. Another passage
took place in the second fortnight of November, and another in December,
corresponding to a new disembarkation. In January, 1804, Georges made
the journey for the fourth time, to await at Biville the English
corvette bringing Pichegru, the Marquis de Rivière and four other
conspirators. A fisherman called Étienne Horné gave some valuable
details of this arrival. He had noticed particularly the man who
appeared to be the leader--"a fat man, with a full, rather hard face,
round-shouldered, and with a slight trouble in his arms."

"These gentlemen," he added, "usually arrived at night, and left about
midnight; they were satisfied with our humble fare, and always kept
together in a corner, talking."

When the tide was full Horné went down to the beach to watch for the
sloop. The password was "Jacques," to which the men in the boat replied
"Thomas."

Manginot, as may well be imagined, arrested all who in any way had
assisted the conspirators, and hurried them off to Paris. The tower of
the Temple became crowded with peasants, with women in Normandy caps,
and fishermen of Dieppe, dumbfounded at finding themselves in the famous
place where the monarchy had suffered its last torments. But these were
only the small fry of the conspiracy, and the First Consul, who liked to
pose as the victim exposed to the blows of an entire party, could not
with decency take these inoffensive peasants before a high court of
justice. While waiting for chance or more treachery to reveal the refuge
of Georges Cadoudal, the discovery of the organisers of the plot was
most important, and this seemed well-nigh impossible, although Manginot
had reason to think that the centre of the conspiracy was near Aumale or
Feuquières.

His attention had been attracted by a deposition mentioning the black
horse that Georges had ridden from Preuseville to Aumale--the one that
the school-master Monnier had hidden in a corridor of his house. With
this slight clue he started for the country. There he learned that a
workman called Saint-Aubin, who lived in the hamlet of Coppegueule, had
been ordered to take the horse to an address on a letter which Monnier
had given him. This man, when called upon to appear, remembered that he
had led the horse "to a fine house in the environs of Gournay." When he
arrived there a servant had taken the animal to the stables, and a lady
had come out and asked for the letter, but he denied all knowledge of
the lady's name or the situation of the house.

Manginot resolved to search the country in company with Saint-Aubin, but
he was either stupid or pretended to be so, and refused to give any
assistance. He led the gendarmes six leagues, as far as Aumale, and
said, at first, that he recognised the Château de Mercatet-sur-Villers,
but on looking carefully at the avenues and the arrangement of the
buildings, he declared he had never been there. The same thing happened
at Beaulevrier and at Mothois; but on approaching Gournay his memory
returned, and he led Manginot to a house in the hamlet of Saint-Clair
which he asserted was the one to which Monnier had sent him. On entering
the courtyard he recognised the servant to whom he had given the horse
six months before, a groom named Joseph Planchon. Manginot instantly
arrested the man, and then began his search.

The house belonged to an ex-officer of marine, François Robert d'Aché,
who rarely occupied it, being an ardent sportsman and preferring his
estates near Neufchâtel-en-Bray, where there was more game. Saint-Clair
was occupied by Mme. d'Aché, an invalid who rarely left her room, and
her two daughters, Louise and Alexandrine, as well as d'Aché's mother, a
bedridden octogenarian, and a young man named Caqueray, who was also
called the Chevalier de Lorme, who farmed the lands of M. and Mme.
d'Aché, whose property had recently been separated by law. Caqueray
looked upon himself as one of the family, and Louise, the eldest girl,
was betrothed to him.

Nothing could have been less suspicious than the members of this
patriarchal household, who seemed to know nothing of politics, and whose
tranquil lives were apparently unaffected by revolutions. The absence of
the head of so united a family was the only astonishing thing about it.
But Mme. d'Aché and her daughters explained that he was bored at
Saint-Clair and usually lived in Rouen, that he hunted a great deal, and
spent his time between his relatives who lived near Gaillon and friends
at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. They could not say where he was at present,
having had no news of him for two months.

But on questioning the servants Manginot learned some facts that changed
the aspect of affairs. Lambert, the gardener, had recently been shot at
Evreux, convicted of having taken part with a band of Chouans in an
attack on the stage-coach, Caqueray's brother had just been executed for
the same cause at Rouen. Constant Prévot, a farm hand, accused of having
killed a gendarme, had been acquitted, but died soon after his return to
Saint-Clair. Manginot had unearthed a nest of Chouans, and only when he
learned that the description of d'Aché was singularly like that of the
mysterious Beaumont who had been seen with Georges at La Poterie, Aumale
and Feuquières, did he understand the importance of his discovery.
After a rapid and minute inquiry, he took it upon himself to arrest
every one at Saint-Clair, and sent an express to Réal, informing him of
the affair, and asking for further instructions.

It had been the custom for several years, when a person was denounced to
the police as an enemy of the government, or a simple malcontent, to
have his name put up in Desmarets' office, and to add to it, in
proportion to the denunciations, every bit of information that could
help to make a complete portrait of the individual. That of d'Aché was
consulted. There were found annotations of this sort: "By reason of his
audacity he is one of the most important of the royalists," "Last
December he took a passport at Rouen for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he
was called by business," "His host at Saint-Germain, Brandin de
Saint-Laurent, declares that he did not sleep there regularly, sometimes
two, sometimes three days at a time." At last a letter was intercepted
addressed to Mme. d'Aché, containing this phrase, which they recognised
as Georges' style: "Tell M. Durand that things are taking a good
turn,... his presence is necessary.... He will have news of me at the
Hôtel de Bordeaux, rue de Grenelle, Saint-Honoré, where he will ask for
Houvel." Now Houvel was the unknown man who, first of all, had gone to
the vine-dresser of Saint-Leu to persuade him to aid the "brigands."
Thus d'Aché's route was traced from Biville to Paris and the conclusion
drawn that, knowing all the country about Bray, where he owned estates,
he had been chosen to arrange the itinerary of the conspirators and to
organise their journeys. He had accompanied them from La Poterie to
Feuquières, sometimes going before them, sometimes staying with them in
the farms where he had found for them places of refuge.

In default of Georges, then, d'Aché was the next best person to seize,
and the First Consul appreciated this fact so keenly that he organised
two brigades of picked soldiers and fifty dragoons. But they only served
to escort poor sick Mme. d'Aché, her daughter Louise and their friend
Caqueray, who were immediately locked up--the last named in the Tower of
the Temple, and the two women in the Madelonnettes. The infirm old
grandmother remained at Saint-Clair, while Alexandrine wished to follow
her mother and sister, and was left quite at liberty. But d'Aché could
not be found. Manginot's army had searched the whole country, from
Beauvais to Tréport, without success; they had sought him at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he was said to be hidden, at
Saint-Denis-de-Monts, at Saint-Romain, at Rouen. The prefects of Eure
and Seine-Inférieure were ordered to set all their police on his track.
The result of this campaign was pitiable, and they only succeeded in
arresting d'Aché's younger brother, an inoffensive fellow of feeble
mind, appropriately named "Placide," who was nicknamed "Tourlour," on
account of his lack of wit and his rotundity. His greatest fear was of
being mistaken for his brother, which frequently happened. As the elder
d'Aché could never be caught, Placide, who loved tranquillity and
hardly ever went away from home, was invariably taken in his stead. It
happened again this time, and Manginot seized him, thinking he had done
a fine thing. But the first interview undeceived him. However, he sent
word of his capture to Réal, who, in his zeal to execute the First
Consul's orders, took upon himself to determine that Placide d'Aché was
as dangerous a royalist "brigand" as his brother. He ordered the
prisoner to be brought under a strong escort to Paris, determining to
interrogate him himself. But as soon as he had seen "Tourlour," and had
asked him a few questions, including one as to his behaviour during the
Terror, and received for answer, "I hid myself with mamma," Réal
understood that such a man could not be brought before a tribunal as a
rival to Bonaparte. He kept him, however, in prison, so that the name of
d'Aché could appear on the gaol-book of the Temple.

In the meantime, on the 9th of March 1804, at the hour when Placide
d'Aché was being interrogated, an event occurred, which transformed the
drama and hastened its tragic dénouement.




CHAPTER II

THE CAPTURE OF GEORGES CADOUDAL


Georges had arrived in Paris on September 1, 1803, in a yellow cabriolet
driven by the Marquis d'Hozier dressed as a coachman. D'Hozier, who was
formerly page to the King and had for several months been established as
a livery-stable keeper in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, conducted Georges
to the Hôtel de Bordeaux, kept by the widow Dathy, in the Rue de
Grenelle-Saint-Honoré.

The task of finding hiding-places in Paris for the conspirators, had
been given to Houvel, called Saint-Vincent, whom we have already seen at
Saint-Leu. Houvel's real name was Raoul Gaillard. A perfect type of the
incorrigible Chouan, he was a fine-looking man of thirty,
fresh-complexioned, with white teeth and a ready smile, and dressed in
the prevailing fashion. He was a close companion of d'Aché, and it was
even said that they had the same mistress at Rouen. The speciality of
Raoul and his brother Armand was attacking coaches which carried
government money. Their takings served to pay recruits to the royalist
cause. For the past six months Raoul Gaillard had been in Paris looking
for safe lodging-places. He was assisted in this delicate task by
Bouvet de Lozier, another of d'Aché's intimate friends, who like him,
had served in the navy before the Revolution.

Georges went first to Raoul Gaillard at the Hôtel de Bordeaux, but he
left in the evening and slept with Denaud at the "Cloche d'Or," at the
corner of the Rue du Bac, and the Rue de Varenne. He was joined there by
his faithful servant Louis Picot, who had arrived in Paris the same day.
The "Cloche d'Or" was a sort of headquarters for the conspirators; they
filled the house, and Denaud was entirely at their service. He was
devoted to the cause, and not at all timid. He had placed Georges' cab
in the stable of Senator François de Neufchâteau, whose house was next
door.

Six weeks before, Bouvet de Lozier had taken, through Mme. Costard de
Saint-Léger, his mistress, an isolated house at Chaillot near the Seine.
He had put there as concierge, a man named Daniel and his wife, both of
whom he knew to be devoted to him. A porch with fourteen steps led to
the front hall of the house. This served as dining-room. It was lighted
by four windows and paved with squares of black and white marble; a
walnut table with eight covers, cane-seated chairs, the door-panels
representing the games of children, and striped India muslin curtains
completed the decoration of this room. The next room had also four
windows, and contained an ottoman and six chairs covered with blue and
white Utrecht velvet, two armchairs of brocaded silk, and two mahogany
tables with marble tops. Then came the bedroom with a four-post bed,
consoles and mirrors. On the first floor was an apartment of three
rooms, and in an adjoining building, a large hall which could be used as
an assembly-room. The whole was surrounded by a large garden, closed on
the side towards the river-bank by strong double gates.

If we have lingered over this description, it is because it seems to say
so much. Who would have imagined that this elegant little house had been
rented by Georges to shelter himself and his companions? These men,
whose disinterestedness and tenacity we cannot but admire, who for ten
years had fought with heroic fortitude for the royal cause, enduring the
hardest privations, braving tempests, sleeping on straw and marching at
night; these men whose bodies were hardened by exposure and fatigue,
retained a purity of mind and sincerity really touching. They never
ceased to believe that "the Prince" for whom they fought would one day
come and share their danger. It had been so often announced and so often
put off that a little mistrust might have been forgiven them, but they
had faith, and that inspired them with a thought which seemed quite
simple to them but which was really sublime. While they were lodging in
holes, living on a pittance parsimoniously taken from the party's funds,
they kept a comfortable and secure retreat ready, where "their
prince"--who was never to come--could wait at his ease, until at the
price of their lives, they had assured the success of his cause. If the
history of our bloody feuds has always an epic quality, it is because it
abounds in examples of blind devotion, so impossible nowadays that they
seem to us improbable exaggerations.

After six days at the "Cloche d'Or," Georges took possession of the
house at Chaillot, but he did not stay there long, for about the 25th of
September he was at 21 Rue Carême-Prenant in the Faubourg du Temple.
Hozier had rented an entresol there, and had employed a man called
Spain, who had an aptitude for this sort of work, to make a secret place
in it. Spain, under pretence of indispensable repairs, had shut himself
up with his tools in the apartment, and had made a cleverly-concealed
trap-door, by means of which, in case of alarm, the tenants could
descend to the ground floor and go out by an unoccupied shop whose door
opened under the porch of the house. Spain took a sort of pride in his
strange talent; he was very proud of a hiding-place he had made in the
lodging of a friend, the tailor Michelot, in the Rue de Bussy, which
Michelot himself did not suspect. The tailor was obliged to be absent
often, and four of the conspirators had successively lodged there. When
he was away his lodgers "limbered up" in this apartment, but as soon as
they heard his step on the stairs, they reentered their cell, and the
worthy Michelot, who vaguely surmised that there was some mystery about
his house, only solved the enigma when he was cited to appear before the
tribunal as an accomplice in the royalist plot of which he had never
even heard the name.

Georges started for his first journey to Biville from the Rue
Carême-Prenant. On January 23d he returned finally to Paris, bringing
with him Pichegru, Jules de Polignac and the Marquis de Rivière, whom he
had gone to the farm of La Poterie to receive. He lodged Pichegru with
an employé of the finance department, named Verdet, who had given the
Chouans the second floor of his house in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite.
They stayed there three days. On the 27th, Georges took the general to
the house at Chaillot "where they only slept a few nights." At the very
moment that they went there Querelle signed his first declarations
before Réal.

It is not necessary to follow the movements of Pichegru, nor to relate
his interviews with Moreau. The organisation of the plot is what
interests us, by reason of the part taken in it by d'Aché. No one has
ever explained what might have resulted politically from the combination
of Moreau's embittered ambition, the insouciance of Pichegru, and the
fanatical ardour of Georges. Of this ill-assorted trio the latter alone
had decided on action, although he was handicapped by the obstinacy of
the princes in refusing to come to the fore until the throne was
reestablished. He told the truth when he affirmed before the judges,
later on, that he had only come to France to attempt a restoration, the
means for which were never decided on, for they had not agreed on the
manner in which they should act towards Bonaparte. A strange plan had at
first been suggested. The Comte d'Artois, at the head of a band of
royalists equal in number to the Consul's escort, was to meet him on the
road to Malmaison, and provoke him to single combat, but the presence
of the Prince was necessary for this revival of the Combat of Thirty,
and as he refused to appear, this project of rather antiquated chivalry
had to be abandoned. Their next idea was to kidnap Bonaparte. Some
determined men--as all of Georges' companions were--undertook to get
into the park at Malmaison at night, seize Bonaparte and throw him into
a carriage which thirty Chouans, dressed as dragoons, would escort as
far as the coast. They actually began to put this theatrical "coup" into
execution. Mention is made of it in the Memoirs of the valet Constant,
and certain details of the investigation confirm these assertions. Raoul
Gaillard, who still lived at the Hôtel de Bordeaux, and entertained his
friends Denis Lamotte, the vine-dresser of Saint-Leu and Massignon,
farmer of Saint-Lubin there, had discovered that Massignon leased some
land from Macheret, the First Consul's coachman, and had determined at
all hazards to make this man's acquaintance. He even had the audacity to
show himself at the Château of Saint-Cloud in the hope of meeting him.
Besides this, Genty, a tailor in the Palais-Royal, had delivered four
chasseur uniforms, ordered by Raoul Gaillard, and Debausseaux, a tailor
at Aumale, during one of their journeys had measured some of Monnier's
guests for cloaks and breeches of green cloth, which only needed metal
buttons to be transformed into dragoon uniforms.

Querelle's denunciations put a stop to all these preparations. Nothing
remained but to run to earth again. A great many of the conspirators
succeeded in doing this, but all were not so fortunate. The first one
seized by Réal's men was Louis Picot, Georges' servant. He was a coarse,
rough man, entirely devoted to his master, under whose orders he had
served in the Veudée. He was taken to the Prefecture and promised
immediate liberty in exchange for one word that would put the police on
the track of Georges. He was offered 1,500 louis d'or, which they took
care to count out before him, and on his refusal to betray his master,
Réal had him put to the torture. Bertrand, the concierge of the depôt,
undertook the task. The unfortunate Picot's fingers were crushed by
means of an old gun and a screw-driver, his feet were burned in the
presence of the officers of the guard. He revealed nothing. "He has
borne everything with criminal resignation," the judge-inquisitor,
Thuriot, wrote to Réal; "he is a fanatic, hardened by crime. I have now
left him to solitude and suffering; I will begin again to-morrow; he
knows where Georges is hidden and must be made to reveal it."

The next day the torture was continued, and this time agony wrung the
address of the Chaillot house from Picot. They hastened there--only to
find it empty. But the day had not been wasted, for the police, on an
anonymous accusation, had seized Bouvet de Lozier as he was entering the
house of his mistress, Mme. de Saint-Léger, in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. He
was interrogated and denied everything. Thrown into the Temple, he
hanged himself in the night, by tying his necktie to the bars of his
cell. A gaoler hearing his death-rattle, opened the door and took him
down; but Bouvet, three-quarters dead, as soon as they had brought him
to, was seized with convulsive tremblings, and in his delirium he spoke.

This attempted suicide, to tell the truth, was only half believed in,
and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple
and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been assisted in his
strangling, just as they had put Picot's feet to the fire. What gave
colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet's hands "were
horribly swollen" when he appeared before Réal the next day, and also
the strange form of the declaration which he was reputed to have
dictated at midnight, just as he was restored to life. "A man who comes
from the gates of the tomb, still covered with the shadows of death,
demands vengeance on those who, by their perfidy," etc. Many were agreed
in thinking that that was not the style of a suicide, with the
death-rattle still in his throat, but that Réal's agents must have lent
their eloquence to this half-dead creature.

However it may have been, the government now knew enough to order the
most rigorous measures to be taken against the "last royalists." Bouvet
had, like Picot, only been able to mention the house at Chaillot, and
the lodging in the Rue Carême-Prenant, and Georges' retreat was still
undiscovered. The revelations that fear or torture had drawn from his
associates only served to make the figure of this extraordinary man loom
greater, by showing the power of his ascendancy over his companions, and
the mystery that surrounded all his actions. A legend grew around his
name, and the communications published by _Le Moniteur_, contributed not
a little towards making him a sort of fantastic personage, whom one
expected to see arise suddenly, and by one grand theatrical stroke put
an end to the Revolution.

Paris lived in a fever of excitement during the first days of March,
1804, anxiously following this duel to the death, between the First
Consul and this phantom-man who, shut up in the town and constantly seen
about, still remained uncaught. The barriers were closed as in the
darkest days of the Terror. Patrols, detectives and gendarmes held all
the streets; the soldiers of the garrison had departed, with loaded
arms, to the boulevards outside the walls. White placards announced that
"Those who concealed the brigands would be classed with the brigands
themselves"; the penalty of death attached to any one who should shelter
one of them, even for twenty-four hours, without denouncing him to the
police. The description of Georges and his accomplices was inserted in
all the papers, distributed in leaflets, and posted on the walls. Their
last domicile was mentioned, as well as anything that could help to
identify them. The clerks at the barriers were ordered to search
barrels, washerwomen's carts, baskets, and, as the cemeteries were
outside the walls, to look carefully into all the hearses that carried
the dead to them.

       *       *       *       *       *

On leaving Chaillot, Georges had returned to Verdet, in the Rue du
Puits-de-l'Hermite. As he did not go out and his friends dared not come
to see him, Mme. Verdet had instituted herself commissioner for the
conspiracy.

One evening she did not return. Armed with a letter for Bouvet de
Lozier, she had arrived at the Rue Saint-Sauveur just as they were
taking him to the Temple, and had been arrested with him. Thus the
circle was narrowing around Georges. He was obliged to leave the Rue du
Puits-de-l'Hermite in haste, for fear that torture would wring the
secret of his asylum from Mme. Verdet. But where could he go? The house
at Chaillot, the Hôtel of the Cloche d'Or, the Rue Carême-Prenant were
now known to the police. Charles d'Hozier, on being consulted, showed
him a retreat that he had kept for himself, which had been arranged for
him by Mlle. Hisay, a poor deformed girl, who served the conspirators
with tireless zeal, taking all sorts of disguises and vying in address
and activity with Réal's men. She had rented from a fruitseller named
Lemoine, a little shop with a room above it, intending "to use it for
some of her acquaintances."

It was there that she conducted Georges on the night of February 17. The
next day two of his officers, Burban and Joyaut, joined him there, and
all three lived at the woman Lemoine's for twenty days. They occupied
the room above, leaving the shop untenanted save by Mlle. Hisay and a
little girl of Lemoine's, who kept watch there. At night both of them
went up to the room, and slept there, separated by a curtain from the
beds occupied by Georges and his accomplices. The fruiterer and her
daughter were entirely ignorant of the standing of their guests, Mlle.
Hisay having introduced them as three shop-keepers who were
unfortunately obliged to hide from their creditors.

This incognito occasioned some rather amusing incidents. One day Mme.
Lemoine, on returning from market where the neighbours had been
discussing the plot that was agitating all Paris, said to her tenants,
"Goodness me! You don't know about it? Why, they say that that miserable
Georges would like to destroy us all; if I knew where he was, I'd soon
have him caught."

Another time the little girl brought news that Georges had left Paris
disguised as an aide-de-camp of the First Consul. Some days later, when
Georges asked her what the latest news was, she answered, "They say the
rascal has escaped in a coffin."

"I should like to go out the same way," hinted Burban.

However, the police had lost track of the conspirator. It was generally
supposed that he had passed the fortifications, when on the 8th of
March, Petit, who had known Léridant, one of the Chouans, for a long
time, saw him talking with a woman on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine. He
followed him, and a little further off, saw him go up to a man who
struck him as bearing a great likeness to Joyaut, whose description had
been posted on all the walls.

It was indeed Joyaut, who had left Mme. Lemoine's for the purpose of
looking for a lodging for Georges where he would be less at the mercy
of chance than in the fruitseller's attic. Léridant told him that the
house of a perfumer named Caron, in the Rue Four-Saint-Germain, was the
safest retreat in Paris. For some years Caron, a militant royalist, had
sheltered distressed Chouans, in the face of the police. He had hidden
Hyde de Neuville for several weeks; his house was well provided with
secret places, and for extreme cases he had made a place in his
sign-post overhanging the street, where a man could lie _perdu_ at ease,
while the house was being searched. Léridant had obtained Caron's
consent, and it was agreed that Léridant should come in a cab at seven
o'clock the next evening to take Georges from Sainte-Geneviève to the
Rue du Four.

When he had seen the termination of the interview of which his
detective's instinct showed him the importance, Petit, who had remained
at a distance, followed Joyaut, and did not lose sight of him till he
arrived at the Place Maubert. Suspecting that Georges was in the
neighbourhood he posted policemen at the Place du Panthéon, and at the
narrow streets leading to it; then he returned to watch Léridant, who
lodged with a young man called Goujon, in the cul-de-sac of the
Corderie, behind the old Jacobins Club. The next day, March 9th, Petit
learned through his spies that Goujon had hired out a cab, No. 53, for
the entire day. He hastened to the Prefecture and informed his
colleague, Destavigny, who, with a party of inspectors took up his
position on the Place Maubert. If, as Petit supposed, Georges was hidden
near there, if the cab was intended for him, it would be obliged to
cross the place where the principal streets of the quarter converged.
The order was given to let it pass if it contained only one person, but
to follow it with most extreme care.

The night had arrived, and nothing had happened to confirm the
hypotheses of Petit, when, a little before seven o'clock, a cab appeared
on the Place, coming from the Rue Galande. Only one man was on it,
holding the reins. The spies in different costumes, who hung about the
fountain, recognised him as Léridant. The cab was numbered 53, and had
only the lantern at the left alight. It went slowly up the steep Rue de
la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève; the police, hugging the walls, followed it
far off. Petit, the Inspector Caniolle, and the officer of the peace,
Destavigny, kept nearer to it, expecting to see it stop before one of
the houses in the street, when they would only have to take Georges on
the threshold. But to their great disappointment the cab turned to the
right, into the narrow Rue des Amandiers, and stopped at a porte cocherè
near the old Collège des Grassins. As the lantern shed a very brilliant
light, the three detectives concealed themselves in the lanes near by.
They saw Léridant descend from the cab. He went through a door, came
out, went in again and stayed for a quarter of an hour. Then he turned
his horse round, and got up on the seat again.

The cab turned again into the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, and
went slowly down it; it went across the Place Saint-Etienne-du-Mont,
following the houses. Caniolle walked behind it, Petit and Destavigny
followed at a distance. Just as the carriage arrived at the corner of
the Rue des Sept-Voies, four individuals came out from the shadow. One
of them seized the apron, and helping himself up by the step, flung
himself into the cab, which had not stopped, and went off at full
speed....

The police had recognised Georges, disguised as a market-porter.
Caniolle, who was nearest, rushed forward; the three men who had
remained on the spot, and who were no other than Joyaut, Burban and
Raoul Gaillard, tried to stop him. Caniolle threw them off, and chased
the cab which had disappeared in the Rue Saint-Etienne-des-Grès. He
caught up to it, just as it was entering the Passage des Jacobins.
Seizing the springs, he was carried along with it. The two officers of
the peace, less agile, followed crying, "Stop! Stop!"

Georges, seated on the right of Léridant, who held the reins, had turned
to the back of the carriage and tried to follow the fortunes of the
pursuit through the glass. The moment that he had jumped into the
carriage, he had seen the detectives, and said to Léridant: "Whip him,
whip him hard!"

"To go where?" asked the other.

"I do not know, but we must fly!"

And the horse, tingling with blows, galloped off.

At the end of the Passage des Jacobins, which at a sharp angle ended in
the Rue de la Harpe, Léridant was obliged to slow up in order to turn on
the Place Saint-Michel, and not miss the entrance to the Rue des
Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince. He turned towards the Rue du Four, hoping,
thanks to the steepness of the Rue des Fossés, to distance the
detectives and arrive at Caron's before they caught up with the
carriage.

From where he was Georges could not, through the little window, see
Caniolle crouched behind the hood. But he saw others running with all
their might. Destavigny and Petit had indeed continued the pursuit, and
their cries brought out all the spies posted in the quarter. Just as
Léridant wildly dashed into the Rue des Fossés, a whole pack of
policemen rushed upon him.

At the approach of this whirlwind the frightened passers-by shrank into
the shelter of the doorways. Their minds were so haunted by one idea
that at the sight of this cab flying past in the dark with the noise of
whips, shouts, oaths, and the resonant clang of the horse's hoofs on the
pavement, a single cry broke forth, "Georges! Georges! it is Georges!"
Anxious faces appeared at the windows, and from every door people came
out, who began to run without knowing it, drawn along as by a
waterspout. Did Georges see in this a last hope of safety? Did he
believe he could escape in the crowd? However that may be, at the top of
the Rue Voltaire he jumped out into the street. Caniolle, at the same
moment, left the back of the cab--which Petit, and another policeman
called Buffet, had at last succeeded in outrunning,--threw himself on
the reins, and allowing himself to be dragged along, mastered the horse,
which stopped, exhausted. Buffet took one step towards Georges, who
stretched him dead with a pistol shot; with a second ball the Chouan rid
himself, for a moment at least, of Caniolle. He still thought, probably,
that he could hide himself in the crowd; and perhaps he would have
succeeded, for Destavigny, who had run up, "saw him before him, standing
with all the tranquillity of a man who has nothing to fear, and three or
four people near him appeared not to be thinking more about Georges than
anything else." He was going to turn the corner of the Rue de
l'Observance when Caniolle, who was only wounded, struck him with his
club. In an instant Georges was surrounded, thrown down, searched and
bound. The next morning more than forty individuals, among them several
women, made themselves known to the judge as being each "the principal
author" of the arrest of the "brigand" chief.

By way of the Carrefour de la Comédie, the Rues des Fossés Saint-Germain
and Dauphine, Georges, tied with cords, was taken to the Prefecture. A
growing mob escorted him, more out of curiosity than anger, and one can
imagine the excitement at police headquarters when they heard far off on
the Quai des Orfèvres, the increasing tumult announcing the event, and
when suddenly, from the corps de garde in the salons of the Prefect
Dubois the news came, "Georges is taken!"

A minute later the vanquished outlaw was pushed into the office of
Dubois, who was still at dinner. In spite of his bonds he still showed
so much pride and coolness that the all-powerful functionary was almost
afraid of him. Desmaret, who was present, could not himself escape this
feeling.

"Georges, whom I saw for the first time," he said, "had always been to
me a sort of Old Man of the Mountain, sending his assassins far and
near, against the powers. I found, on the contrary, an open face, bright
eyes, fresh complexion, and a look firm but gentle, as was also his
voice. Although stout, his movements and manner were easy; his head
quite round, with short curly hair, no whiskers, and nothing to indicate
the chief of a mortal conspiracy, who had long dominated the _landes_ of
Brittany. I was present when Comte Dubois, the prefect of police,
questioned him. His ease amidst all the hubbub, his answers, firm,
frank, cautious and couched in well-chosen language, contrasted greatly
with my ideas about him.

"Indeed his first replies showed a disconcerting calm. One may be
quoted. When Dubois, not knowing where to begin, rather foolishly
reproached him with the death of Buffet, 'the father of a family,'
Georges smilingly gave him this advice:--'Next time, then, have me
arrested by bachelors.'"

His courageous pride did not fail him either in the interrogations he
had to submit to, or before the court of justice. His replies to the
President are superb in disdain and abnegation. He assumed all
responsibility for the plot, and denied knowledge of any of his friends.
He carried his generosity so far as to behave with courteous dignity
even to those who had betrayed him; he even tried to excuse the
indifference of the princes whose selfish inertia had been his ruin. He
remained great until he reached the scaffold; eleven faithful Chouans
died with him, among the number being Louis Picot, Joyaut and Burban,
whose names have appeared in this story.

Thus ended the conspiracy. Bonaparte came out of it emperor. Fouché,
minister of police, and his assistants were not going to be useless, for
if in the eyes of the public, Georges' death seemed the climax, it was
in reality but one incident in a desperate struggle. The depths sounded
by the investigation had revealed the existence of an incurable evil.
The whole west of France was cankered with Chouannerie. From Rouen to
Nantes, from Cherbourg to Poitiers, thousands of peasants, bourgeois and
country gentlemen remained faithful to the old order, and if they were
not all willing to take up arms in its cause, they could at least do
much to upset the equilibrium of the new government. And could not
another try to do what Georges Cadoudal had attempted? If some one with
more influence over the princes than he possessed should persuade one of
them to cross the Channel, what would the glory of the parvenu count
for, balanced against the ancient prestige of the name of Bourbon,
magnified and as it were sanctified by the tragedies of the Revolution?
This fear haunted Bonaparte; the knowledge that in France these
Bourbons, exiled, without soldiers or money, were still more the masters
then he, exasperated him. He felt that he was in their home, and their
nonchalance, contrasted with his incessant agitation, indicated both
insolence and disdain.

The police, as a matter of fact, had unearthed only a few of the
conspirators. Many who, like Raoul Gaillard, had played an important
part in the plot, had succeeded in escaping all pursuit; they were
evidently the cleverest, therefore the most dangerous, and among them
might be found a man ambitious of succeeding Cadoudal. The capture to
which Fouché and Réal attached the most importance was that of d'Aché,
whose presence at Biville and Saint-Leu had been proved. For three
months, in Paris even, wherever the police had worked, they had struck
the trail of this same d'Aché, who appeared to have presided over the
whole organisation of the plot. Thus, he had been seen at Verdet's in
the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite, while Georges was there; he had met Raoul
Gaillard several times; in making an inventory of the papers of a young
lady called Margeot, with whom Pichegru had dined, two rather
enigmatical notes had been found, in which d'Aché's name appeared.

Mme. d'Aché and her eldest daughter had been since February in the
Madelonnettes prison; the second girl, Alexandrine, had been left at
liberty in the hope that in Paris, where she was a stranger, she would
be guilty of some imprudence that would deliver her father to the
police. She had taken lodgings in the Rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré, at
the Hôtel des Treize-Cantons, and Réal had immediately set two spies
upon her, but their reports were monotonously melancholy. "Very well
behaved, very quiet--she lives, and is daily with the master and
mistress of the hotel, people of mature age. She sees no one, and is
spoken of in the highest terms." From this side, also, all hope of
catching d'Aché had to be abandoned.

Another way was thought of, and on March 22d the order to open all the
gates was given. Fouché foresaw that in their anxiety to leave Paris all
of Georges' accomplices who had not been caught would hasten to return
to Normandy, and thanks to the watchfulness exercised, a clean sweep
might be made of them. The cleverly conceived idea had some result. On
the 25th a peasant called Jacques Pluquet of Meriel, near l'Isle-Adam,
when working in his field on the border of the wood of La Muette, saw
four men in hats pulled down over cotton caps, and with strong knotted
clubs, coming towards him. They asked him if they could cross the Oise
at Meriel. Pluquet replied that it was easy to do so, "but there were
gendarmes to examine all who passed." At that they hesitated. They
described themselves as conscript deserters coming from Valenciennes who
wished to get back to their homes. Pluquet's account is so picturesque
as to be worth quoting:

"I asked them where they belonged; they replied in Alençon. I remarked
that they would have trouble in getting there without being arrested.
One of them said: 'That is true, for after what had just happened in
Paris, everywhere is guarded.' Then, allowing the three others to go on
ahead, he said to me, 'But if they arrest us, what will they do to us?'
I replied: 'They will take you back to your corps, from brigade to
brigade.' On that he said, 'If they catch us, they will make us do ten
thousand leagues.' And he left me to regain his comrades, the youngest
of whom might have been twenty-two years old and seemed very sad and
tired."

The next morning some people at Auvers found a little log cabin in a
wood in which the four men had spent the night. They were seen on the
following days, wandering in the forest of l'Isle-Adam. At last, on
April 1st they went to the ferryman of Meriel, Eloi Cousin, who was
sheltering two gendarmes. While they were begging the ferryman to take
them in his boat, the gendarmes appeared, and the men fled. A pistol
shot struck one of them, and a second, who stopped to assist his
comrade, was also taken. The two others escaped to the woods.

The wounded man was put in a boat and taken to the hospital at Pontoise,
where he died the next day. Réal, who was immediately informed of it,
immediately sent Querelle, whom he was carefully keeping in prison to
use in case of need, and he at once recognised the corpse to be that of
Raoul Gaillard, called Houvel, or Saint-Vincent, the friend of d'Aché,
the principal advance-agent of Georges. The other prisoner was his
brother Armand, who was immediately taken to Paris and thrown into the
Temple.

The commune of Meriel had deserved well of the country, and the First
Consul showed his satisfaction in a dazzling manner. He expressed a
desire to make the acquaintance of this population so devoted to his
person, and on the 8th of April, the sous-prefet of Pontoise presented
himself at the Tuileries at the head of all the men of the village.
Bonaparte congratulated them personally, and as a more substantial proof
of his gratitude, distributed among them a sum of 11,000 francs, found
in Raoul Gaillard's belt.

This was certainly a glorious event for the peasants of Meriel, but it
had an unexpected result. When they returned the next day they learned
that a stranger, "well dressed, well armed and mounted on a fine horse,"
profiting by their absence, had gone to the village, and, "after many
questions addressed to the women and children, had gone to the place
where Raoul Gaillard was wounded, trying to find out if they had not
found a case, to which he seemed to attach great importance." This
incident reminded them that, in the boat that took him to Pontoise,
Raoul Gaillard, then dying, had anxiously asked if a razor-case had been
found among his things. On receiving a negative reply, "he had appeared
to be very much put out, and was heard to murmur that the fortune of the
man who would discover this case was made."

The visits of this stranger--since seen, "in the country, on the heights
and near the woods,"--his threats of vengeance, and this mysterious
case, provided matter for a report that perplexed Réal. Was this not
d'Aché? A great hunt was organised in the forest of Carnelle, but it
brought no result. Four days later they explored the forest of
Montmorency, where some signs of the "brigands'" occupation were seen,
but of d'Aché no trace at all, and in spite of the fierceness that
Réal's men, incited by the promise of large rewards, brought to this
chase of the Chouans, after weeks and months of research, of enquiries,
tricks, false trails followed, and traps uselessly laid, it had to be
admitted that the police had lost the scent, and that Georges' clever
accomplice had long since disappeared.




CHAPTER III

THE COMBRAYS


At the period of our story there existed in the department of the Eure,
on the left bank of the Seine, beyond Gaillon, a large old manor-house,
backed by the hill that extended as far as Andelys; it was called the
Château de Tournebut. Although its peaked roofs could be seen from the
river above a thicket of low trees, Tournebut was off the main route of
travel, whether by land or water, from Rouen to Paris. Some fairly large
woods separated it from the highroad which runs from Gaillon to
Saint-Cyr-de-Vaudreuil, while the barges usually touched at the hamlet
of Roule, where hacks were hired to take passengers and goods to the
ferry of Muids, thereby saving them the long détour made by the Seine.
Tournebut was thus isolated between these two much-travelled roads. Its
principal façade, facing east, towards the river, consisted of two heavy
turrets, one against the other, built of brick and stone in the style of
Louis XIII, with great slate roofs and high dormer windows. After these
came a lower and more modern building, ending with the chapel. In front
of the château was an old square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy
walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west
front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level
ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A
wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the château, the
farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide morass, stretching from
the foot of the terrace to the Seine, rendered access impossible from
that side.

By the marriage of Geneviève de Bois-l'Evêque, Lady of Tournebut, this
mansion had passed to the family of Marillac, early in the seventeenth
century. The Marshal Louis de Marillac--uncle of Mme. Legras,
collaborator of St. Vincent de Paul--had owned it from 1613 to 1631, and
tradition asserted that during his struggle against Cardinal Richelieu
he had established there a plant for counterfeiting money. To him was
due the construction of the brick wing which remained unfinished, his
condemnation to death for peculation having put a stop to the
embellishments he had intended to make.

There are very few châteaux left in France like this romantic manor of a
dead and gone past, whose stones have endured all the crises of our
history, and to which each century has added a tower, or a legend.
Tournebut, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was a perfect
type of these old dwellings, where there were so many great halls and so
few living rooms, and whose high slate roofs covered intricacies of
framework forming lofts vast as cathedrals. It was said that its thick
walls were pierced by secret passages and contained hiding-places that
Louis de Marillac had formerly used.

In 1804 Tournebut was inhabited by the Marquise de Combray, born
Geneviève de Brunelles, daughter of a President of the Cour des Comptes
of Normandy. Her husband, Jean-Louis-Armand-Emmanuel Hélie de Combray,
had died in 1784, leaving her with two sons and two daughters, and a
great deal of property in the environs of Falaise, in the parishes of
Donnay, Combray, Bonnoeil and other places. Madame de Combray had
inherited Tournebut from her mother, Madeleine Hubert, herself a
daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Normandy. Besides the
château and the farm, which were surrounded by a park well-wooded with
old trees, the domain included the woods that covered the hillside, at
the extremity of which was an old tower, formerly a wind-mill, built
over deep quarries, and called the "Tower of the Burned Mill," or "The
Hermitage." It figures in the ancient plans of the country under the
latter name, which it owes to the memory of an old hermit who lived in
the quarries for many years and died there towards the close of the
reign of Louis XV, leaving a great local reputation for holiness.

Mme. de Combray was of a "haughty and imperious nature; her soul was
strong and full of energy; she knew how to brave danger and public
opinion; the boldest projects did not frighten her, and her ambition was
unbounded." Such is the picture that one of her most irreconcilable
enemies has drawn of her, and we shall see that the principal traits
were faithfully described. But to complete the resemblance one must
first of all plead an extenuating circumstance: Madame de Combray was a
fanatical royalist. Even that, however, would not make her story
intelligible, if one did not make allowance for the Calvary that the
faithful royalists travelled through so many years, each station of
which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the
nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at
first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully
abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some
justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new
order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed
themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many of them, it is true,
had resigned themselves to defeat, but the _Intransigeants_ continued to
struggle obstinately; and to say truth, this tenacious attachment to the
ghost of monarchy was not without grandeur.

From the very beginning of the Revolution the Marquise de Combray had
numbered herself among the unchangeable royalists. Her husband, a
timorous and quiet man, who employed in reading the hours that he did
not consecrate to sleep, had long since abandoned to her the direction
of the household and the management of his fortune. Widowhood had but
strengthened the authority of the Marquise, who reigned over a little
world of small farmers, peasants and servants, more timid, perhaps, than
devoted.

She exacted complete obedience from her children. The eldest son, called
the Chevalier de Bonnoeil, after a property near the Château of
Donnay, in the environs of Falaise, supported the maternal yoke
patiently; he was an officer in the Royal Dragoons at the time of the
Revolution. His younger brother, Timoléon de Combray, was of a less
docile nature. On leaving the military school, as his father was just
dead he solicited from M. de Vergennes a mission in an uncivilised
country and set sail for Morocco. Timoléon was a liberal-minded man, of
high intellectual culture, and a philosophical scepticism that fitted
ill with the Marquise's authoritative temper; although a devoted and
respectful man, it was to get away from his mother's tutelage that he
expatriated himself. "Our diversity of opinion," he said later on, "has
kept me from spending two consecutive months with her in seventeen
years." From Morocco he went to Algiers and thence to Tunis and Egypt.
He was about to penetrate to Tartary when he heard of the outbreak of
the Revolution; and immediately started for France where he arrived at
the beginning of 1791.

Of Mme. de Combray's two daughters the eldest had married, in 1787, at
the age of twenty-two, Jacques-Philippe-Henri d'Houël; the youngest
Caroline-Madeleine-Louise-Geneviève, was born in 1773, and consequently
was only eleven years old when her father died. This child is the
heroine of the drama we are about to relate.

In August, 1791, Mme. de Combray inscribed herself and her two sons on
the list of the hostages of Louis XVI which the journalist Durosay had
conceived. It was a courageous act, for it was easy to foresee that the
six hundred and eleven names on "this golden book of fidelity," would
soon all be suspected. While hope remained for the monarchy the two
brothers struggled bravely. Timoléon stayed near the King till August
10, and only went to England after he had taken part in the defence of
the Tuileries; Bonnoeil had emigrated the preceding year, and served
in the army of the Princes. Mme. de Combray, left alone with her two
daughters--the husband of the elder had also emigrated,--left Tournebut
in 1793, and settled in Rouen, where, although she owned much real
estate in the town, she rented in the Rue de Valasse, Faubourg
Bouvreuil, "an isolated, unnumbered house, with an entrance towards the
country." She gave her desire to finish the education of her younger
daughter who was entering her twentieth year as a reason for her
retreat.

Caroline de Combray was very small,--"as large as a dog sitting," they
said,--but charming; her complexion was delicately pure, her black hair
of extraordinary length and abundance. She was loving and sensible, very
romantic, full of frankness and vivacity; the great attraction of her
small person was the result of a piquant combination of energy and
gentleness. She had been brought up in the convent of the Nouvelles
Catholiques de Caen, where she stayed six years, receiving lessons from
"masters of all sorts of accomplishments, and of different languages."
She was a musician and played the harp, and as soon as they were settled
in Rouen her mother engaged Boiëldieu as her accompanist, "to whom she
long paid six silver francs per lesson," a sum that seemed fabulous in
that period of paper-money, and territorial mandates.

Madame de Combray, besides, was much straightened. As both her sons had
emigrated, all the property that they inherited from their father was
sequestrated. Of the income of 50,000 francs possessed by the family
before the Revolution, scarcely fifty remained at her disposal, and she
had been obliged to borrow to sustain the heavy expenses of her house in
Rouen.

Besides her two daughters and the servants, she housed half a dozen nuns
and two or three Chartreux, among them a recusant friar called
Lemercier, who soon gained great influence in the household. By reason
of his refractoriness Père Lemercier was doomed, if discovered, to
death, or at least to deportation, and it will be understood that he
sympathised but feebly with the Revolution that consigned him, against
his will, to martyrdom. He called down the vengeance of heaven on the
miscreants, and not daring to show himself, with unquenchable ardour
preached the holy crusade to the women who surrounded him.

Mme. de Combray's royalist enthusiasm did not need this inspiration; a
wise man would have counselled resignation, or at least patience, but
unhappily, she was surrounded only by those whose fanaticism encouraged
and excused her own. Enthusiastic frenzy had become the habitual state
of these people, whose overheated imaginations were nourished on
legendary tales, and foolish hopes of imminent reprisals. They welcomed
with unfailing credulity the wildest prophecies, announcing terrible
impending massacres, to which the miraculous return of the Bourbon
lilies would put an end, and as illusions of this kind are strengthened
by their own deceptions, the house in the Rue de Valasse soon heard
mysterious voices, and became the scene "of celestial apparitions,"
which, on the invitation of Père Lemercier predicted the approaching
destruction of the blues and the restoration of the monarchy.

On a certain day in the summer of 1795, a stranger presented himself to
Père Lemercier, armed with a password, and a very warm recommendation
from a refractory priest, who was in hiding at Caen. He was a Chouan
chief, bearing the name and title of General Lebret; of medium stature,
with red hair and beard, and cold steel-coloured eyes. Introduced to
Mme. de Combray by Lemercier, he admitted that his real name was Louis
Acquet d'Hauteporte, Chevalier de Férolles. He had come to Rouen, he
said, to transmit the orders of the Princes to Mallet de Créçy, who
commanded for the King in Upper Normandy.

We can judge of the welcome the Chevalier received. Mme. de Combray, her
daughters, the nuns and the Chartreux friars used all their ingenuity to
satisfy the slightest wish of this man, who modestly called himself "the
agent general of His Majesty." They arranged a hiding-place for him in
the safest part of the house, and Père Lemercier blessed it. Acquet
stayed there part of the day, and in the evening joined in the usual
pursuits of the household, and related the story of his adventures by
way of entertainment.

According to him, he possessed large estates in the environs of the
Sables-d'Olonne, of which place he was a native. An officer in the
regiment of Brie infantry before the Revolution, being at Lille in 1791
he had taken advantage of his nearness to the frontier to incite his
regiment to insurrection and emigrate to Belgium. He had then put
himself at the disposal of the Princes, and had enlisted men for the
royal army in Veudée, Poitou and Normandy, helping priests to emigrate,
and saving whole villages from the fury of the blues. He named Charette,
Frotté and Puisaye as his most intimate friends, and these names
recalled the chivalrous times of the wars in the west in which he had
taken a glorious part. Sometimes he disappeared for several days, and on
his return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he
had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to
a successful termination. In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Férolles
had become the idol of the little group of naïve royalists among whom he
had found refuge. He had bravely served _the cause_; he plumed himself
on having merited the surname of "_toutou_ of the Princes," and in Mme.
de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal to any number of references.

Acquet was in reality an adventurer. If we were to take account here of
all the evil deeds he is credited with, we should be suspected of
wantonly blackening the character of this melodramatic figure. A few
facts gathered by the Combrays will serve to describe him. As an officer
at Lille he was about to be imprisoned as the result of an odious
accusation, but deserted and escaped to Belgium, not daring to join the
army of the émigrés. He stopped at Mons, then went to the west of
France, and became a Chouan, but politics had nothing to do with this
act. He associated himself with some bravos of his stripe, and plundered
travellers, and levied contributions on the purchasers of national
property. In the Eure, where he usually pursued his operations, he
assassinated with his own hand two defenceless gamekeepers whom his
little band had encountered.

He delighted in taking the funds of the country school-teachers, and to
give a colour of royalism to the deed, he would nightly tear down the
trees of liberty in the villages in which he operated. Tired at last of
"an occupation where there was nothing but blows to receive, and his
head to lose," he went to seek his fortune in Rouen; and before he
presented himself to Mme. de Combray, had without doubt made enquiries.
He knew he would find a rich heiress, whose two brothers, emigrated,
would probably never return, and from the first he set to work to
flatter the royalist hobby of the mother, and the romantic imagination
of the young girl. Père Lemercier was himself conquered; Acquet, to
catch him, pretended the greatest piety and most scrupulous devotion.

A note of Bonnoeil's informs us of the way this tragic intrigue
ended. "Acquet employed every means of seduction to attain his end. The
young girl, fearing to remain long unmarried because of the unhappy
times, listened to him, in spite of the many reasons for waiting and for
refusing the proposals of a man whose name, country and fortune were
unknown to them. The mother's advice was unfortunately not heeded, and
she found herself obliged to consent to the marriage, the laws of that
period giving the daughters full liberty, and authorising them to shake
off the salutary parental yoke."

The dates of certain papers complete the discreet periphrases of
Bonnoeil. The truth is that Acquet "declared his passion" to Mlle. de
Combray and as she, a little doubtful though well-disposed to allow
herself to be loved, still hesitated, the Chevalier signed a sort of
mystic engagement dated January 1, 1796, where, "in sight of the Holy
Church and at the pleasure of God," he pledged himself to marry her on
demand. She carefully locked up this precious paper, and a little less
than ten months later, the 17th October, the municipal agent of
Aubevoye, in which is situated the Château of Tournebut, inscribed the
birth of a daughter, born to the citizeness Louise-Charlotte de Combray,
"wife of the citizen Louis Acquet." Here, then, is the reason that the
Marquise "found herself obliged to consent to the marriage," which did
not take place until the following year, mention of it not being made in
the registry of Rouen until the date 17th June, 1797.

Acquet had thus attained his wish; he had seduced Mlle. de Combray to
make the marriage inevitable, and this accomplished, under pretext of
preventing their sale, he caused the estates of the Combrays situated at
Donnay near Falaise, and sequestrated by the emigration of Bonnoeil,
to be conveyed to him. Scarcely was this done when he began to pillage
the property, turning everything into money, cutting down woods, and
sparing neither thickets nor hedges. "The domain of Donnay became a sort
of desert in his hands." Stopped in his depredations by a complaint of
his two brothers-in-law he tried to attack the will of the Marquis de
Combray, pretending that his wife, a minor at the time of her father's
death, had been injured in the division of property. This was to declare
open war on the family he had entered, and to compel his wife to espouse
his cause he beat her unmercifully. A second daughter was born of this
unhappy union, and even the children did not escape the brutality of
their father. A note on this subject, written by Mme. Acquet, is of
heart-breaking eloquence:

"M. Acquet beat the children cruelly every day; he ill-treated me also
unceasingly: he often chastised them with sticks, which he always used
when he made the children read; they were continually black and blue
with the blows they received. He gave me such a severe blow one day that
blood gushed from my nose and mouth, and I was unconscious for some
moments.... He went to get his pistols to blow out my brains, which he
would certainly have done if people had not been present.... He was
always armed with a dagger."

In January, 1804, Mme. Acquet resolved to escape from this hell.
Profiting by her husband's absence in La Veudée she wrote to him that
she refused to live with him longer, and hastened to Falaise to ask a
shelter from her brother Timoléon, who had lately returned to France.
Timoléon, in order to prevent a scandal, persuaded his sister to return
to her husband's house. She took this wise advice, but refused to see M.
Acquet, who, returning in haste and finding her barricaded in the
château, called the justice of the peace of the canton of Harcourt,
aided by his clerk and two gendarmes, to witness that his wife refused
to receive him. Having, one fine morning, "found her desk forced and all
her papers taken," she returned to Falaise, obtained a judgment
authorising her to live with her brother, and lodged a petition for
separation.

Things were at this point when the trial of Georges Cadoudal was in
progress. Acquet, exasperated at the resistance to his projects, swore
that he would have signal vengeance on his wife and all the Combrays.
They were, unhappily, to give his hatred too good an opportunity of
showing itself.

After passing three years in Rouen, Mme. de Combray returned to
Tournebut in the spring of 1796, with her royalist passions and
illusions as strong as ever. She had declared war on the Revolution, and
believed that victory was assured at no distant period. It is a not
uncommon effect of political passion to blind its subjects to the point
of believing that their desires and hopes are imminent realities. Mme.
de Combray anticipated the return of the King so impatiently that one of
her reasons for returning to the château was to prepare apartments for
the Princes and their suite in case the debarkation should take place on
the coast of Normandy. Once before, in 1792, Gaillon had been designated
as a stopping-place for Louis XVI in case he should again make the
attempt that had been frustrated at Varennes. The Château de Gaillon was
no longer habitable in 1796, but Tournebut, in the opinion of the
Marquise, offered the same advantages, being about midway between the
coast and Paris. Its isolation also permitted the reception of passing
guests without awakening suspicion, while the vast secret rooms where
sixty to eighty persons could hide at one time, were well suited for
holding secret councils. To make things still safer, Mme. de Combray now
acquired a large house, situated about two hundred yards from the walls
of Tournebut, and called "Gros-Mesnil" or "Le Petit Château." It was a
two-story building with a high slate roof; the court in front was
surrounded by huts and offices; a high wall enclosed the property on all
sides, and a pathway led from it to one of the doors in the wall
surrounding Tournebut.

As soon as she was in possession of the Petit Château, Mme. de Combray
had some large secret places constructed in it. For this work she
employed a man called Soyer who combined the functions of intendant,
maître d'hôtel and valet-de-chambre at Tournebut. Soyer was born at
Combray, one of the Marquise's estates in Lower Normandy, and entered
her service in 1791, at the age of sixteen, in the capacity of scullion.
He had gone with his mistress to Rouen during the Terror, and since the
return to Tournebut she had given the administration of the estate into
his hands. In this way he had authority over the domestics at the
château, who numbered six, and among whom the chambermaid Querey and the
gardener Châtel deserve special mention. Each year, about Easter, Mme.
de Combray went to Rouen, where under pretext of purchases to make and
rents to collect, she remained a month. Only Soyer and Mlle. Querey
accompanied her. Besides her patrimonial house in the Rue Saint-Amand,
she had retained the quiet house in the Faubourg Bouvreuil which still
served as a refuge for the exiles sought by the police of the Directory,
and as a depôt for the refractories who were sure of finding supplies
there and means of rejoining the royalist army. Tournebut itself,
admirably situated between Upper and Lower Normandy, became the refuge
for all the partisans whom a particularly bold stroke had brought to the
attention of the authorities on either bank of the river, totally
separated at this time by the slowness and infrequency of communication,
and also by the centralisation of the police which prevented direct
intercourse between the different departmental authorities. It was in
this way that Mme. de Combray, having become from 1796 to 1804, the
chief of the party with the advantage of being known as such only to
the party itself, sheltered the most compromised of the chiefs of Norman
Chouannerie, those strange heroes whose mad bravery has brought them a
legendary fame, and whose names are scarcely to be found, doubtfully
spelled, in the accounts of historians.

Among those who sojourned at Tournebut was Charles de Margadel, one of
Frotté's officers, who had organised a royalist police even in Paris.
Thence he had escaped to deal some blows in the Eure under the orders of
Hingant de Saint-Maur, another habitué of Tournebut who was preparing
there his astonishing expedition of Pacy-sur-Eure. Besides Margadel and
Hingant, Mme. de Combray had oftenest sheltered Armand Gaillard, and his
brother Raoul, whose death we have related. Deville, called "Tamerlan";
the brothers Tellier; Le Bienvenu du Buc, one of the officers of
Hingant; also another, hidden under the name of Collin, called
"Cupidon"; a German bravo named Flierlé, called "Le Marchand," whom we
shall meet again, were also her guests, without counting
"Sauve-la-Graisse," "Sans-Quartier," "Blondel," "Perce-Pataud"--actors
in the drama, without name or history, who were always sure of finding
in the "cachettes" of the great château or the Tour de l'Ermitage,
refuge and help.

These were compromising tenants, and it is quite easy to imagine what
amusements at Tournebut served to fill the leisure of these men so long
unaccustomed to regular occupation, and to whom strife and danger had
become absolute necessaries. Some statistics, rather hard to prove, will
furnish hints on this point. In September, 1800, the two coaches from
Caen to Paris were stopped between Evreux and Pacy, at a place called
Riquiqui, by two hundred armed brigands, and 48,000 livres belonging to
the State taken. Again, in 1800, the coach from Rouen to Pont-Audemer
was attacked by twenty Chouans and a part of the funds carried off. In
1801 a coach was robbed near Evreux; some days later the mail from Caen
to Paris was plundered by six brigands. On the highroad on the right
bank of the Seine attacks on coaches were frequent near Saint-Gervais,
d'Authevernes, and the old mill of Mouflaines. It was only a good deal
later, when the château of Tournebut was known as an avowed retreat of
the Chouans, that it occurred to the authorities that "by its position
at an equal distance from the two roads to Paris by Vernon and by
Magny-en-Vexin, where the mail had so often been stopped," it might well
have served as a centre of operations, and as the authors of these
outrages remained undiscovered, they credited them all to Mme. de
Combray's inspiration, and this accusation without proof is none too
bold. The theft of state funds was a bagatelle to people whom ten years
of implacable warfare had rendered blasé about all brigandage. Moreover,
it was easily conceivable that the snare laid by Bonaparte for Frotté,
who was so popular in Normandy, the summary execution of the General and
his six officers, the assassination of the Duc d'Enghien, the death of
Georges Cadoudal (almost a god to the Chouans) and of his brave
companions, following so many imprisonments without trial, acts of
police treachery, traps and denunciations paid for and rewarded, had
exasperated the vanquished royalists, and envenomed their hatred to the
point of believing any expedient justifiable. Such was the state of mind
of Mme. de Combray in the middle of 1804, at which date we have stopped
the recital of the marital misfortunes of Mme. Acquet de Férolles, and
it justified Bonald's saying: "Foolish deeds done by clever men,
extravagances uttered by men of intellect, crimes committed by honest
people--such is the story of the revolution."

       *       *       *       *       *

D'Aché had taken refuge at Tournebut. He had left Paris as soon as the
gates were opened, and whether he had escaped surveillance more cleverly
than the brothers Gaillard, whether he had been able to get immediately
to Saint-Germain where he had a refuge, and from there, without risking
the passage of a ferry or a bridge, without stopping at any inn, had
succeeded in covering in one day the fifteen leagues that separated him
from Gaillon, he arrived without mishap at Tournebut where Mme. de
Combray immediately shut the door of one of the hiding-places upon him.

Tournebut was familiar ground to d'Aché. He was related to Mme. de
Combray, and before the Revolution, when he was on furlough, he had made
long visits there while "grandmère Brunelle" was still alive. He had
been back since then and had spent there part of the autumn of 1803.
There had been a grand reunion at the château then, to celebrate the
marriage of M. du Hasey, proprietor of a château near Gaillon. Du Hasey
was aide-de-camp to Guérin de Bruslard, the famous Chouan whom Frotté
had designated as his successor to the command of the royal army, and
who had only had to disband it. This reunion, which is often mentioned
in the reports, by the nature and quality of the guests, was more
important than an ordinary wedding-feast.

D'Aché learned at Tournebut of the proclamation of the Empire and the
death of Georges. He looked upon it as a death-blow to the royalist
hopes; where-ever one might turn there was no resource--no chiefs, no
money, no men. If many royalists remained in the Orne and the Manche, it
was impossible to group them or pay them. The government gained strength
and authority daily; at the slightest movement France felt the iron
grasp in which she was held tightened around her, and such was the
prestige of the extraordinary hero who personified the whole régime,
that even those he had vanquished did not disguise their admiration. The
King of Spain--a Bourbon--sent him the insignia of the Golden Fleece.
The world was fascinated and history shows no example of material and
moral power comparable to that of Napoleon when the Holy Father crossed
the mountains to recognise and hail him as the instrument of Providence,
and anoint him Cæsar in the name of God.

It was, however, just at this time that d'Aché, an exile, concealed in
the Château of Tournebut, without a companion, without a penny, without
a counsellor or ally other than the aged woman who gave him refuge,
conceived the astonishing idea of struggling against the man before whom
all Europe bowed the knee. Looked at in this light it seems madness, but
undoubtedly d'Aché's royalist illusions blinded him to the conditions of
the duel he was to engage in. But these illusions were common to many
people for whom Bonaparte, at the height of his power, was never
anything but an audacious criminal whose factitious greatness was at the
mercy of a well-directed and fortunate blow.

Fouché's police had not given up hopes of finding the fugitive. They
looked for him in Paris, Rouen, Saint-Denis-du-Bosguérard, near
Bourgthéroulde, where his mother possessed a small estate; they watched
closest at Saint-Clair whither his wife and daughters had returned after
the execution of Georges. The doors of the Madelonnettes prison had been
opened for them and they had been informed that they must remove
themselves forty leagues from Paris and the coast; but the poor woman,
almost without resources, had not paid attention to this injunction, and
they were allowed to remain at Saint-Clair in the hope that d'Aché would
tire of his wandering life, and allow himself to be taken at home. As to
Placide, as soon as he found himself out of the Temple, and had
conducted his sister-in-law and nieces home, he returned to Rouen, where
he arrived in mid-July. Scarcely had he been one night in his lodging in
the Rue Saint-Patrice, when he received a letter--how, or from where he
could not say--announcing that his brother had gone away so as not to
compromise his family again, and that he would not return to France
until general peace was proclaimed, hoping then to obtain permission
from the government to end his days in the bosom of his family.

D'Aché, however, was living in Tournebut without much mystery. The only
precaution he took was to avoid leaving the property, and he had taken
the name of "Deslorières," one of the pseudonyms of Georges Cadoudal,
"as if he wanted to name himself as his successor." Little by little the
servants became accustomed to the presence of this guest of whom Mme. de
Combray took such good care "because he had had differences with the
government," as she said. Under pretext of repairs undertaken in the
church of Aubevoye, the curé of the parish was invited to celebrate mass
every Sunday in the chapel of the château, and d'Aché could thus be
present at the celebration without showing himself in the village.

Doubtless the days passed slowly for this man accustomed to an active
life; he and his old friend dreamt of the return of the King, and
Bonnoeil, who spent part of the year at Tournebut, read to them a
funeral oration of the Duc d'Enghien, a virulent pamphlet that the
royalists passed from hand to hand, and of which he had taken a copy.
How many times must d'Aché have paced the magnificent avenue of limes,
which still exists as the only vestige of the old park. There is a
moss-grown stone table on which one loves to fancy this strange man
leaning his elbow while he thought of his "rival," and planned the
future according to his royalist illusions as the other in his Olympia,
the Tuileries, planned it according to his ambitious caprices.

This existence lasted fifteen months. From the time of his arrival at
the end of March, 1804, until the day he left, it does not seem that
d'Aché received any visitors, except Mme. Levasseur of Rouen, who, if
police reports are to be believed, was simultaneously his mistress and
Raoul Gaillard's. The truth is that she was a devoted friend of the
royalists--to whom she had rendered great service, and through her
d'Aché was kept informed of what happened in Lower Normandy during his
seclusion at Tournebut. Since the general pacification, tranquillity
was, in appearance at least, established; Chouannerie seemed to be
forgotten. But conscription was not much to the taste of the rural
classes, and the rigour with which it was applied alienated the
population. The number of refractories and deserters augmented at each
requisition; protected by the sympathy of the peasants they easily
escaped all search; the country people considered them victims rather
than rebels, and gave them assistance when they could do so without
being seen. There were here all the elements of a new insurrection; to
which would be added, if they succeeded in uniting and equipping all
these malcontents, the survivors of Frotté's bands, exasperated by the
rigours of the new régime, and the ill-treatment of the gendarmes.

The descent of a French prince on the Norman coast would in d'Aché's
opinion, group all these malcontents. Thoroughly persuaded that to
persuade one of them to cross the channel it would suffice to tell M. le
Comte d'Artois or one of his sons that his presence was desired by the
faithful population in the West, he thought of going himself to England
with the invitation. Perhaps they would be able to persuade the King to
put himself at the head of the movement, and be the first to land on
French soil. This was d'Aché's secret conviction, and in the ardour of
his credulous enthusiasm he was certain that on the announcement,
Napoleon's Empire would crumble of itself, without the necessity of a
single blow.

Such was the eternal subject of conversation between Mme. de Combray and
her guest, varied by interminable parties of cards of tric-trac. In
their feverish idleness, isolated from the rest of the world, ignorant
of new ideas and new manners, they shut themselves up with their
illusions, which took on the colour of reality. And while the exile
studied the part of the coast where, followed by an army of volunteers
with white plumes, he would go to receive his Majesty, the old Marquise
put the last touches to the apartments long ago prepared for the
reception of the King and his suite on their way to Paris. And in order
to perpetuate the remembrance of this visit, which would be the most
glorious page in the history of Tournebut, she had caused the old part
of the château, left unfinished by Marillac, to be restored and
ornamented.

In July, 1805, after more than a year passed in this solitude, d'Aché
judged that the moment to act had arrived. The Emperor was going to
take the field against a new coalition, and the campaign might be
unfavourable to him. It only needed a defeat to shake to its foundations
the new Empire whose prestige a victorious army alone maintained. It was
important to profit by this chance should it arrive. And in order to be
within reach of the English cruiser d'Aché had to be near Cotentin; he
had many devoted friends in this region and was sure of finding a safe
retreat. Mme. de Combray, taking advantage of the fair of Saint-Clair
which was held every year in mid-July, near the Château of Donnay, could
conduct her guest beyond Falaise without exciting suspicion. They
determined to start then, and about July 15, 1805, the Marquise left
Tournebut with her son Bonnoeil, in a cabriolet that d'Aché drove,
disguised as a postillion.

In this equipage, the man without any resource but his courage, and his
royalist faith, whose dream was to change the course of the world's
events, started on his campaign; and one is obliged to think, in face of
this heroic simplicity, of Cervantes' hero, quitting his house one fine
morning, and armed with an old shield and lance, encased in antiquated
armour and animated by a sublime but foolish faith, going forth to
succour the oppressed, and declare war on Giants.




CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHÉ


The demesne of Donnay, situated about three leagues from Falaise on the
road to Harcourt, was one of the estates which Acquet de Férolles had
usurped, under pretext of saving them from the Public Treasury and of
taking over the management of the property of his brother-in-law,
Bonnoeil, who was an émigré. Now, the latter had for some time
returned to the enjoyment of his civil rights, but Acquet had not
restored his possessions. This terrible man, acting in the name of his
wife, who was a claimant of the inheritance of the late M. de Combray,
had instituted a series of lawsuits against his brother-in-law. He
proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for
some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray
estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations
drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the
Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions
in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the
period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend upon
was a pension of 2,000 francs which the court had granted to her on
August 1, 1804, for her maintenance pending a definite decision. She
lived alone at the Hôtel de Combray in the Rue du Trepot at Falaise, a
very large house composed of two main buildings, one of which was vacant
owing to the absence of Timoléon who had settled in Paris. Mme. de
Combray had undertaken to assist with her granddaughters' education, and
they had been sent off to a school kept by a Mme. du Saussay at Rouen.

Foreseeing that this state of things could not last forever, Acquet,
despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate
Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests,
chopping the elms into faggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The
very castle whose façade but lately reached to the end of the stately
avenue, suffered from his devastations. It was now nothing but a ruin
with swing-doors and a leaking roof. Here Acquet had reserved a garret
for himself, abandoning the rest of the house to the ravages of time and
the weather. Shut up in this ruin like a wild beast in his lair, he
would not permit the slightest infringement of what he called his
rights. Mme. de Combray wished to spend the harvest season of 1803 at
the château, where the happiest years of her life had been passed, and
where all her children had grown up, but Acquet made the bailiff turn
her out, and the Marquise took refuge in the village parsonage, which
had been sold at the time of the Revolution as national property, and
for which she had supplied half the money, when the Commune bought it
back, to restore it to its original purpose. Since no priest had yet
been appointed she was able to take up her residence there, to the
indignation of her son-in-law, who considered this intrusion as a piece
of bravado.

Two years later Mme. de Combray had still no other shelter at Donnay,
and it was to this parsonage that she brought d'Aché. They arrived there
on the evening of July 17th. A long stay in this conspicuous house,
which was always exposed to the hateful espionage of Acquet, was out of
the question for the exile. He nevertheless spent a fortnight there,
without trying to hide himself, even going so far as to hunt, and
receive several visits, among others one from Mme. Acquet, who came from
Falaise to see her mother, and thus met d'Aché for the first time. At
the beginning of August he quitted Donnay, and Mme. de Combray
accompanied him as far as the country château of a neighbour, M.
Descroisy, where he passed one night. At break of day he set out on
horseback in the direction of Bayeux, Mme. de Combray alone knowing
where he went.

In this neighbourhood d'Aché had the choice of several places of refuge.
He was closely connected by ties of friendship with the family of
Duquesnay de Monfiquet who lived at Mandeville near Trévières. M. de
Monfiquet, a thoroughly loyal but quite unimportant nobleman, having
emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution, his estate at Mandeville
had been sequestrated and his château pillaged and half demolished. Mme.
de Monfiquet, a clever and energetic woman, being left with six
daughters unprovided for, took refuge with the d'Aché's at Gournay,
where she spent the whole period of the Terror. Madame d'Aché even kept
Henriette, one of the little girls who was ill-favoured and hunchbacked
but remarkably clever, with her for five years.

Monsieur de Monfiquet, returning from abroad in the year VII, and having
somewhat reorganised his little estate at Mandeville, lived there in
poverty with his family in the hope that brighter days would dawn for
them with the return of the monarchy. On all these grounds d'Aché was
sure of finding not only a safe retreat but congenial society. The few
persons who were acquainted with what passed at Mandeville were
convinced that Mlle. Henriette possessed a great influence over the
exile, and that she had been his mistress for a long time. According to
general opinion he made her his confidant and she helped him like a
devoted admirer. In fact she arranged several other hiding-places for
him in the neighbourhood of Trévières in case of need;--one at the mill
at Dungy, another with M. de Cantelou at Lingèvres, and a third at a
tanner's named La Pérandeère at Bayeux. And to escort him in his flights
she secured a man of unparalleled audacity who had been a brigand in the
district for ten years, and who had to avenge the death of his two
brothers, who had fallen into an ambush and been shot at Bayeux in 1796.
People called him David the Intrepid. Having been ten times condemned to
death and certain of being shot as soon as he was caught, David had no
settled abode. On stormy nights he would embark in a boat which he
steered himself, and, sure of not being overtaken, he would reach
England where he used to act as an agent for the emigrants. They say
that he was not without influence with the entourage of the Comte
d'Artois. When he stayed in France he lodged with an old lady former
housekeeper to a Councillor of the Parliament of Normandy, who lived
alone in an old house in Bayeux and to whom he had been recommended by
Mlle. Henriette de Monfiquet. David did not take up much room. When he
arrived he set in motion a contrivance of his own by which two steps of
the principal staircase were raised, and slipping into the cavity thus
made, he quickly replaced everything. All the gendarmes in Calvados
could have gone up and down this staircase without suspecting that a man
was hidden in the house, where, however, he was never looked for.

These were the persons and means made use of by d'Aché in his new
theatre of operations: a poor hunchbacked girl was his council, and his
army was composed of David the Intrepid. He was, moreover, penniless. At
the beginning of the autumn Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis by
Lanoë, a keeper who had been in her service, and who now occupied a
small farm at Glatigny, near to Bretteville-sur-Dives. Lanoë belonged to
that rapacious type of peasant whom even a small sum of money never
fails to attract. Already he had on two occasions acted as guide to the
Baron de Commarque and to Frotté when Mme. de Combray offered them
shelter at Donnay. For this he had been summoned before a military
commission and spent nearly two years in prison, but this had no
effect. For three francs he would walk ten leagues and if he complained
sufficiently of the dangers to which these missions exposed him the sum
was doubled and he would go away satisfied. In the middle of August he
went to Mandeville to fetch d'Aché to Donnay, where he spent ten days
and again passed three weeks at the end of September. He was to have
gone there again in December, but at the moment when he was preparing to
start Bonnoeil suddenly appeared at Mandeville, having come to warn
him not to venture there as Mme. de Combray had been accused of a crime
and was on the point of being arrested.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not without vexation that Acquet saw his mother-in-law settling
herself at his very door. Keenly on the lookout for any means of
annoying the Marquise, he was struck by the idea that if an incumbent
were appointed to the vacant curé of Donnay, he would have to live at
the parsonage, half of which belonged to the Commune, and that their
being obliged to live in the same house would be a great inconvenience
to Mme. de Combray. This prospect charmed Acquet, and as he had several
friends in high positions, among them the Baron Darthenay his neighbour
at Meslay, who had lately been elected deputy for Calvados, he had small
difficulty in getting a priest appointed. A few days afterwards a curé,
the Abbé Clérisse, arrived at Donnay, fully determined to carry out the
duties of his ministry faithfully, and very far from foreseeing the
tragic fate in store for him.

Mme. de Combray had made herself quite comfortable at the parsonage,
which she considered in a manner her own property since she had
furnished half the money for its purchase. She now saw herself compelled
to surrender a portion of it, which from the very first embittered her
against the new arrival. Acquet, for his part, fêted his protégé, and
welcoming him cordially put him on his guard against the machinations of
the Marquise, whom he represented as an inveterate enemy of the
conciliatory government to which France owed the Concordat. The Abbé
Clérisse, who, from the construction of the house was obliged to use the
rooms in common with Mme. de Combray, was not long in noticing the
mysterious behaviour of the occupants. There were conferences conducted
in whispers, visitors who arrived at night and left at dawn, secret
comings and goings, in short, all the strange doings of a houseful of
conspirators, so that the good curé one day took Lanoë aside and
recommended him to be prudent, "predicting that he would get himself
into serious difficulties if he did not quit the service of the Marquise
as soon as possible." Mme. de Combray, in her exasperation, called the
Abbé "Concordataire," an epithet which, from her, was equivalent to
renegade. She had the imprudence to add that the reign of the "usurper
would not last forever, and that the princes would soon return at the
head of an English army and restore everything." In her wrath she left
the parsonage, making a great commotion, and went to beg shelter from
her farmer Hébert, who lived in a cottage used as a public house, called
La Bijude, where the road from Harcourt met that from Cesny. Acquet was
triumphant. The astonished Abbé remained passive; and as ill luck would
have it, fell ill and died a few days afterwards. A report was
circulated, emanating from the château, that he had died of grief caused
by Mme. de Combray. Then people began to talk in whispers about a
certain basket of white wine with which she had presented the poor
priest. A week later all those who sided with Acquet were convinced that
the Marquise had poisoned the Abbé Clérisse, "after having been
imprudent enough to take him into her confidence." Feeling ran high in
the village. Acquet affected consternation. The authorities, no doubt
informed by him, began making investigations when a nephew of the
Marquise, M. de Saint Léonard, Mayor of Falaise, who was on very good
terms with the Court, came down to hush up the affair and impose silence
on the mischief-makers.

This first bout between Acquet de Férolles and the family de Combray
resulted in d'Aché's being forbidden the house of his old friend.
Feeling herself in the clutches of an enemy who was always on the watch,
she did not dare to expose to denunciation a man on whose head the fate
of the monarchy rested. D'Aché did not come to La Bijude the whole
winter. Mme. de Combray lived there alone with her son Bonnoeil and
the farmer Hébert. She had the house done up and repainted, but it
distressed her to be so meanly lodged, and she regretted the lofty
halls and the quiet of Tournebut. At the beginning of Lent, 1806, she
sent Lanoë for the last time to Mandeville to arrange with d'Aché some
means of correspondence, and with Bonnoeil she again started for
Gaillon, determined never again to set foot on her estates in Lower
Normandy as long as her son-in-law reigned there, and thoroughly
convinced that the fast approaching return of the King would avenge all
the humiliations she had lately endured. She had, moreover, quarrelled
with her daughter, who had only come to Donnay twice during her mother's
stay, and had there displayed only a very moderate appreciation of
d'Aché's plans, and had seemed entirely uninterested in the annoyance
caused to the Marquise, and her exodus to La Bijude.

If Mme. Acquet de Férolles was really lacking in interest, it was
because a great event had occurred in her own life.

Acquet knew that his wife's suit for a separation must inevitably be
granted. The ill-treatment she had had to endure was only too
well-known, and every one in Falaise took her part. If Acquet lost the
case, it would mean the end of the easy life he was leading at Donnay,
and he not only wished to gain time but secretly hoped that his wife
would commit some indiscretion that would regain for him if not the
sympathies of the public, at least her loss of the suit which if won,
would ruin him. In order to carry out his Machiavellian schemes, he
pretended that he wished to come to an understanding with the Combray
family, and he despatched one of his friends to Mme. Acquet to open
negotiations. This friend, named Le Chevalier, was a handsome young man
of twenty-five, with dark hair, a pale complexion and white teeth. He
had languishing eyes, a sympathetic voice and a graceful figure,
inexhaustible good-humour, despite his melancholy appearance, and
unbounded audacity. As he was the owner of a farm in the Commune of
Saint Arnould in the neighbourhood of Exmes, he was called Le Chevalier
de Saint-Arnould, which gave him the position of a nobleman. He was
moreover related to the nobility.

Less has been written about Le Chevalier than about most of those who
were concerned in the troubles in the west. Nevertheless, his adventures
deserve more than the few lines, often incorrect, devoted to him by some
chroniclers of the revolt of the Chouans. He was a remarkable
personality, very romantic, somewhat of an enigma, and one who by a
touch of gallantry and scepticism was distinguished from his savage and
heroic companions.

Born with a generous temperament and deeply in love with glory, as he
said, he was the son of a councillor, hammer-keeper to the corporation
of the woods and forests of Vire. A stay of several years in Paris where
he took lessons from different masters as much in science as in the arts
and foreign languages, had completed his education. He returned to Saint
Arnould in 1799, uncertain as to the choice of a career, when a chance
meeting with Picot, chief of the Auge division, whose death was
described at the beginning of this story, decided his vocation, and Le
Chevalier became a royalist officer, less from conviction than from
generous feelings which inclined him towards the cause of the vanquished
and oppressed. A pistol shot broke his left arm two or three days after
he was enrolled, and he was scarcely cured of this wound when he again
took the field and was implicated in the stopping of a coach. Three of
his friends were imprisoned, and when he himself was arrested, he
succeeded in proving that on the very day of the attack, in the
neighbourhood of Evreux, he was on a visit to a senator in Paris who had
great friends among the authorities, and the magistrates were compelled
to yield before this indisputable alibi. Le Chevalier, nevertheless,
appeared before the tribunal which was trying the cases of his
companions, and pleaded their cause with the eloquence inspired by the
purest and bravest friendship, and when he heard them condemned to
death, he begged in a burst of feeling which amazed everybody, to be
allowed to share their fate. It was considered a sufficient punishment
to send him to prison at Caen, whence he was liberated a few months
later, though he had to remain in the town under police surveillance. It
was then that the wild romance of his life began.

He possessed an ample fortune. His chivalrous behaviour in the affair at
Evreux had gained for him, among the Chouans such renown that without
knowing him otherwise than from hearsay, Mme. de Combray travelled
across Normandy, as did many other royalist ladies in order to visit the
hero in prison and offer him her services. He had admirers who fawned
on him, flatterers who praised him to the skies, and how could this
rather hot-headed youth of twenty resist such adulation at that strange
epoch when even the wisest lost their balance? At least his folly was
generous.

Scarcely out of prison he was seized with pity for the misery of the
pardoned Chouans, veritable pariahs, who lived by all sorts of
contrivances or were dependent on charity, and he made their care his
special charge. He was always followed by a dozen of these parasites, a
ragged troop of whom filled the Café Hervieux, where he held his court
and which moreover was frequented by teachers of English, mathematics
and fencing, whom he had in his pay, and from whom he took lessons when
not playing faro.

Le Chevalier had a warm heart, and a purse that was never closed. He was
a façile speaker whose eloquence was of a forensic type. His friendships
were passionate. While in prison he received news of the death of one of
his friends, Gilbert, who had been guillotined at Evreux, and when some
one congratulated him on his approaching release he replied: "Ah, my
dear comrade! do you think this is a time to congratulate me? Do you
know so little of my heart and are you so ignorant of the love I bore
Gilbert? The happiness of my life is destroyed forever. Nothing can fill
the void in my heart.... I have lived, ah! far too long. O divine duties
of friendship and honour, how my heart burns to fulfil you! O eternity
or annihilation, how sweet will you seem to me whence once I have
fulfilled them!" Such was Le Chevalier's style and this affection
contrasted singularly with the world in which he lived. His comparative
wealth, his generosity, and an air of mystery about his life, gave him a
certain advantage over the most popular leaders. People knew that he was
dreaming of gigantic projects, and his partisans considered him cut out
for the accomplishment of great things.

In reality Le Chevalier squandered his patrimony recklessly.
The treasury of the party--presided over by an old officer of
Frotté's, Bureau de Placène, who pompously styled himself the
Treasurer-General--was empty, and orders came from "high places,"
without any one exactly knowing whence they emanated, for the faithful
to refill them by pillaging the coffers of the state. The police had
little by little relaxed their supervision of Le Chevalier's conduct,
and he took advantage of this to go away for short periods. It was
remarked that each of his absences generally coincided with the stopping
of a coach--a frequent occurrence in Normandy at this time, and one that
was considered as justifiable by the royalists. Seldom did they feel any
qualms about these exploits. The driver, and often his escort, were
accomplices of the Chouans. A few shots were fired from muskets or
pistols to keep up the pretence of a fight. Some of the men opened the
chests while others kept watch. The money belonging to the government
was divided to the last sou, while that belonging to private individuals
was carefully returned to the strong box. A few hours later the band
returned to Caen and the noisy meetings at the Café Hervieux were not
even interrupted.

What renders the figure of Le Chevalier especially attractive, despite
these mad pranks, which no one of his day considered dishonourable, is
the deep private grief which saddened his adventurous life. In 1801,
when he was twenty-one years of age, and during his detention at Caen,
he had married Lucile Thiboust, a girl somewhat older than himself,
whose father had been overseer of an estate. He was obliged to break out
of prison to spend a few rare hours with the wife whom he dearly loved,
all the more so since his passion was oftenest obliged to expend itself
in ardent letters not devoid of literary merit. In prison he learned of
the birth of a son born of this union, and a week later, of the death of
his adored wife. His grief was terrible, but he was seized with a
passionate love for his child, and it is said that from that day forth
he cared for no one else. He had lived so fast that at the age of
twenty-three he was tired of life; his only anxiety was for the future
of his son, whom he had confided to the care of a good woman named Marie
Hamon. He traced out a line of conduct for this babe in swaddling
clothes: "Let him flee corruption, seduction and all shameful and
violent passions; let him be a friend as they were in ancient Greece, a
lover as in ancient Gaul."

In short his exploits, his captivity, his sorrows, his eloquence, his
courage, his noble bearing, made Le Chevalier a hero of romance, and
this was the man whom Acquet de Férolles deemed it wise to despatch to
his wife. Doubtless he had made his acquaintance through the medium of
some of his Chouan comrades. He received him at Donnay, and in order to
attach him to himself lent him large sums of money, which Le Chevalier
immediately distributed among the crowd of parasites that never left
him. Acquet told him of the separation with which his wife threatened
him, begging him to use all his eloquence to bring about an amicable
settlement.

The poor woman would never have known this peacemaker but for her
husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself
of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from
compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom.
She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning
for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly
into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero--he was so
handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and
politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling
novelties, loved him from the first day with an "ungovernable passion."
She associated herself with his life with an ardour that excluded every
other sentiment, and she so wished to stand well with him that, casting
aside all prudence, she adopted his adventurous mode of living, mixing
with the outcasts who formed the entourage of her lover, and with them
frequenting the inns and cafés of Caen. He succeeded in avoiding the
surveillance of the police, and secretly undertook journeys to Paris
where he said he had friends in the Emperor's immediate circle. He
travelled by those roads in Normandy which were known to all the old
Chouans, talking to them of the good times when they made war on the
Blues, and not hesitating to say that, whenever he wished, he had only
to make a sign and an army would spring up around him. He maintained,
moreover, a small troop of determined men who carried his messages and
formed his staff.

There is not the slightest doubt that their chief resource lay in
carrying off the money of the State which was sent from place to place
in public conveyances, and it was this booty that enriched the coffers
of the party, the treasurer, Placène, having long since grown
indifferent to the source of his supplies. The agreement of certain
dates is singularly convincing. Thus, at the beginning of December,
1805, d'Aché was at Mandeville with the Monfiquets, in a state of such
penury that, as we have seen, Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis d'or
by Lanoë; nevertheless, he was thinking of going to England to fetch
back the princes. He would require a considerable sum to prepare for his
journey, and to guard against all the contingencies of this somewhat
audacious attempt. Mme. Acquet was informed of the situation by her
mother whom she came to visit at Donnay, and on the 22d December, 1805,
the coach from Rouen to Paris was attacked on the slope of Authevernes,
at a distance of only three leagues from the Château of Tournebut. The
travellers noticed that one of the brigands, dressed in a military
costume, and whom his comrades called The Dragon, was so much thinner
and more active than the rest, that he might well have been taken "for a
woman dressed as a man." A fresh attack was made at the same place by
the same band on the 15th February, 1806; and as before the band
disappeared so rapidly, once the blow was struck, that it seemed they
must have taken refuge in one of the neighbouring houses. Suspicion fell
on the Château de Mussegros, situated about three leagues from
Authevernes; but nobody then thought of Tournebut, the owners of which
had been absent for seven months. It was only in March that Mme. de
Combray returned there, and it was in April that d'Aché, having laid in
a good stock of money, decided to cross the channel and convey to the
princes the good wishes of their faithful provinces in the west.

D'Aché had not wasted his time during his stay at Mandeville. It was a
difficult enterprise in existing circumstances to arrange his crossings
with any chance of success. The embarkation was easy enough, and David
the Intrepid had undertaken to see to it; but it was especially
important to secure a safe return, and a secret landing on the French
coast, lined as it was by patrols, watched day and night by custom-house
officers, and guarded by sentinels at every point where a boat could
approach the shore, offered almost insuperable difficulties. D'Aché
selected a little creek at the foot of the rocks of Saint Honorine,
scarcely two leagues from Trévières and David, who knew all the coast
guards in the district, bribed one of them to become an accomplice.

It was on a stormy night at the end of April, 1806, that d'Aché put to
sea in a boat seventeen feet long, which was steered by David the
Intrepid. After tossing about for fifty hours, they landed in England.
David immediately stood out to sea again, while d'Aché took the road to
London.

One can easily imagine what the feelings of these royalist fanatics must
have been when they approached the princes to whom they had devoted so
many years of their lives, hunted over France and pursued like
malefactors; how they must have anticipated the welcome in London that
their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by
the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who
were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The
deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of
its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many
false Chouans--spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each
brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining money made off
and were never seen again--that distrust at last had taken the place of
the unsuspecting confidence of former days. Every Frenchman who arrived
in London was considered an adventurer, and as far as we can gather from
this closed page of history,--for those, who tried the experiment of a
visit to the exiled princes, have respectfully kept silence on the
subject of their discomfiture--it appears that terrible mortifications
were in store for the militant royalists who approached the emigrant
leaders. D'Aché did not escape disillusionment, and though he did not
disclose the incidents of his stay in London, we know that at first he
was thrown into prison, and that for two months he could not succeed in
obtaining an interview with the Comte d'Artois, much less with the
exiled King.

M. de la Chapelle, the most influential man at the little court at
Hartwell, sent for him and questioned him about his plans, but was
opposed to his being received by the princes, though he put him in
communication with King George's ministers, every person who brought
news of any plot against Napoleon's government being sure of a welcome
and a hearing from the latter.

After three weeks of conferences the expedition which was to support a
general rising of the peasants in the West, was postponed till the
spring of 1807. A feigned attack on Port-en-Bessin would allow of their
surprising the islands of Tahitou and Saint-Marcouf as well as Port-Bail
on the western slope of the Cotentin. The destruction of the roads,
which protect the lower part of the peninsula, would insure the success
of the undertaking by cutting off Cherbourg which, attacked from behind,
would easily be carried, resistance being impossible. The invading army,
concentrating under the forts of the town, in which they would have a
safe retreat, would descend by Carenton on Saint-Lô and Caen to meet the
army of peasants and malcontents whose cooperation d'Aché guaranteed.
He undertook to collect twenty thousand men; the English government
offered the same number of Russian and Swedish soldiers, and to provide
for their transportation to the coast of France. Pending this, d'Aché
was given unlimited credit on the banker Nourry at Caen.

His stay in London lasted nearly three months. Towards the end of July
an English frigate took him to the fleet where Admiral Saumarez received
him with great deference, and equipped a brig with fourteen cannon to
convey him to the shore. When, at night, they were within a gunshot of
the coast of Saint-Honorine, d'Aché himself made the signals agreed
upon, which were quickly answered by the coast guard on shore. An hour
afterwards David the Intrepid's boat hailed the English brig, and before
daybreak d'Aché was back at Mandeville, sharing with his hosts the joy
he felt at the success of his voyage. They began to make plans
immediately. It was decided on the spot that the Château de Monfiquet
should shelter the King during the first few days after he landed. Eight
months were to elapse before the beginning of the campaign, and as money
was not lacking this time was sufficient for d'Aché to prepare for
operations.

We may as well mention at once that the English Cabinet, while playing
on the fanaticism of d'Aché, as they had formerly done on that of
Georges Cadoudal and so many others, had not the slightest intention of
keeping their promises. Their hatred of Napoleon suggested to them the
infamous idea of exciting the naïve royalists of France by raising
hopes they never meant to satisfy. They abandoned them once they saw
their dupes so deeply implicated that there was no drawing back, caring
little if they helped them to the scaffold, desirous only of maintaining
agitations in France and of driving them into such desperate straits
that some assassin might arise from among them who would rid the world
of Bonaparte. Here lies, doubtless, one of the reasons why the exiled
princes so obstinately refused to encourage their partisans' attempts.
Did they know of the snares laid for these unhappy creatures? Did they
not dare to put them on their guard for fear of offending the English
government? Was this the rent they paid for Hartwell? The history of the
intrigues which played around the claimant to the throne is full of
mystery. Those who were mixed up in them, such as Fauche-Bonel or Hyde
de Neuville were ruined, and it required the daylight of the Restoration
to open the eyes of the persons most interested to the fact that certain
professions of devotion had been treacherous.

As far as d'Aché was concerned it seems fairly certain that he did not
receive any promise from the princes, and was not even admitted to their
presence; the English ministers alone encouraged him to embark on this
extraordinary adventure, in which they were fully determined to let him
ruin himself. Therefore the "unlimited" credit opened at the banker
Nourry's was only a bait: while making the conspirators think they would
never want for money, the credit was limited beforehand to 30,000
francs, a piece of duplicity which enraged even the detectives who,
later on, discovered it.

It is not easy to follow d'Aché in the mysterious work upon which he
entered: the precautions he took to escape the police have caused him to
be lost to posterity as well. Some slight landmarks barely permit our
following his trail during the few years which form the climax of his
wonderful career.

We find him first of all during the autumn of 1806, at La Bijude, where
Mme. de Combray, who had remained at Tournebut had charged Bonnoeil
and Mme. Acquet to go and receive him. There was some question of
providing him with a messenger familiar with the haunts of the Chouans
and the dangers connected with the task. To fulfil this duty Mme. Acquet
proposed a German named Flierlé whom Le Chevalier recommended. Flierlé
had distinguished himself in the revolt of the Chouans; a renowned
fighter, he had been mixed up in every plot. He was in Paris at the time
of the eighteenth Fructidor; he turned up there again at the moment when
Saint-Réjant was preparing his infernal machine; he again spent three
months there at the time of Georges' conspiracy. For the last two years,
whilst waiting for a fresh engagement, he had lived on a small pension
from the royal treasury, and when funds were low, he made one of his
more fortunate companions in old days put him up; and thus he roamed
from Caen to Falaise, from Mortain to Bayeux or Saint-Lô, even going
into Mayenne in his wanderings. Although he would never have
acknowledged it, we may say that he was one of the men usually employed
in attacking public vehicles: in fact, he was an adept at it and went by
the name of the "Teisch."

Summoned to La Bijude he presented himself there one morning towards the
end of October. D'Aché arrived there the same evening while they were at
dinner. They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of
their old Chouan comrades. In spite of his decided German accent Flierlé
was inexhaustible on this theme. He and d'Aché slept in the same room,
and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was
decided that Flierlé should be employed as a messenger at a salary of
fifty crowns a month. That same night, Lanoë conducted d'Aché two
leagues from La Bijude and left him on the road to Arjentan.

Here is a new landmark: on November 26th, Veyrat, the inspector of
police, hastily informed Desmarets that d'Aché, whom they had been
seeking for two years, had arrived the night before in Paris, getting
out of the coach from Rennes in the company of a man named Durand. The
latter, leaving his trunk at the office, spent the night at a house in
the Rue Montmartre, whence he departed the next morning for Boulogne. As
for d'Aché, wrote Veyrat, he had neither box nor parcel, and disappeared
as soon as he got out of the carriage. Search was made in all the
furnished lodgings and hotels in the neighbourhood, but without result.
Desmarets set all his best men to work, but in vain: d'Aché was not to
be found.

He was at Tournebut, where he spent a month. It is probable that a
pressing need of money was the cause of this journey to Paris and his
visit to Mme. de Combray. By this time d'Aché had exhausted his credit
at the banker Nourry's. Believing that this source would never be
exhausted, he had drawn on it largely. His disappointment was therefore
cruel when he heard that his account was definitely closed. He found
himself again without money, and by a coincidence which must be
mentioned, the diligence from Paris to Rouen was robbed, during his stay
at Tournebut, in November, 1806, at the Mill of Monflaines, about a
hundred yards from Authevernes, where the preceding attacks had taken
place. The booty was not large this time, and when d'Aché again took the
road to Mandeville his resources consisted of six hundred francs.

He was obliged to spend the winter in torturing idleness; there is no
indication of his movements till February, 1807. The time fixed for the
great events was drawing near, and it was important to make them known.
He decided on the plan of a manifesto which was to be widely circulated
through the whole province, and would not allow any one to assist in
drawing it up. This proclamation, written in the name of the princes,
stipulated a general amnesty, the retention of those in authority, a
reduction of taxation, and the abolition of conscription. Lanoë,
summoned to Mandeville, received ten louis and the manuscript of the
manifesto, with the order to get it printed as secretly as possible. The
crafty Norman promised, slipped the paper into the lining of his coat,
and after a fruitless--and probably very feeble--attempt on a printer's
apprentice at Falaise, returned it to Flierlé, with many admonitions to
be prudent, but only refunded five louis. Flierlé first applied to a
bookseller in the Froide Rue at Caen. The latter, as soon as he found
out what it contained, refused his assistance.

An incident now occurred, the importance of which it is difficult to
discover, but which seems to have been great, to judge from the mystery
in which it is shrouded. Whether he had received some urgent
communication from England, or whether, in his state of destitution, he
had thought of claiming the help of his friends at Tournebut, d'Aché
despatched Flierlé to Mme. de Combray, and gave him two letters,
advising him to use the greatest discretion. Flierlé set out on
horseback from Caen in the morning of March 13th. At dawn next day he
arrived at Rouen, and immediately repaired to the house of a Mme.
Lambert, a milliner in the Rue de l'Hôpital, to whom one of the letters
was addressed. "I gave it to her," he said, "on her staircase, without
speaking to her, as I had been told to do, and set out that very morning
for Tournebut, where I arrived between two and three o'clock. I gave
Mme. de Combray the other letter, which she threw in the fire after
having read it."

Flierlé slept at the château. Next day Bonnoeil conducted him to
Louviers, and there intrusted a packet of letters to him addressed to
d'Aché. Both directed their steps to Rouen, and the German fetched from
the Rue de l'Hôpital, the milliner's reply, which she gave him herself
without saying a word.

He immediately continued his journey, and by March 20th was back at
Mandeville, and placed the precious mail in d'Aché's hands. The latter
had scarcely read it before he sent David word to get his boat ready,
and without losing a moment, the letters which had arrived from Rouen
were taken out to sea to the English fleet, to be forwarded to London.

We are still ignorant of the contents of these mysterious despatches,
and inquiry on this point is reduced to supposition. Some pretended that
d'Aché sent the manifesto to Mme. de Combray, and that it was
clandestinely printed in the cellars at Tournebut; others maintain that
towards March 15th Bonnoeil returned from Paris, bringing with him the
correspondence of the secret royalist committee which was to be sent to
the English Cabinet via Mandeville. D'Aché certainly attached immense
importance to this expedition, which ought, according to him, to make
the princes decide on the immediate despatch of funds, and to hasten the
preparation for the attack on the island of Tahitou. But days passed and
no reply came. In the agony of uncertainty he decided to approach Le
Chevalier, whom he only knew by reputation as being a shrewd and
resolute man. The meeting took place at Trévières towards the middle of
April, 1807. Le Chevalier brought one of his aides-de-camp with him, but
d'Aché came alone.

The names of these two men are so little known, they occupy such a very
humble place in history, that we can hardly imagine, now that we know
how pitifully their dreams miscarried, how without being ridiculous they
could fancy that any result whatever could come of their meeting. The
surroundings made them consider themselves important: d'Aché was--or
thought he was--the mouthpiece of the exiled King; as for Le Chevalier,
whether from vainglory or credulity he boasted of an immense popularity
with the Chouans, and spoke mysteriously of the royalist committee
which, working in Paris, had succeeded, he said, in rallying to the
cause men of considerable importance in the entourage of the Emperor
himself.

Since he had been Mme. Acquet's adored lover, Le Chevalier's visits to
the Café Hervieux had become rarer; his parasites had dispersed, and
although he still kept up his house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur at Caen, he
spent the greater part of his time either at Falaise or at La Bijude,
where his devoted mistress alternately lived. The police of Count
Caffarelli, Prefect of Calvados, had ceased keeping an eye on him, and
he even received a passport for Paris, whither he went frequently. He
always returned more confident than before, and in the little group
amongst whom he lived at Falaise--consisting of his cousin, Dusaussay,
two Chouan comrades, Beaupaire and Desmontis; a doctor in the Frotté
army, Révérend; and the Notary of the Combray family, Maître Febre--he
was never tired of talking in confidence about the secret Royalist
Committee, and the near approach of the Restoration. The revolution
which was to bring it about, was to be a very peaceful one, according to
him. Bonaparte, taken prisoner by two of his generals, each at the head
of 40,000 men, was to be handed over to the English and replaced by "a
regency, the members of which were to be chosen from among the senators
who could be trusted." The Comte d'Artois was then to be recalled--or
his son, the Duc de Berry--to take possession of the kingdom as
Lieutenant-General.

Did Le Chevalier believe in this Utopia? It has been said that in
propagating it "he only sought to intoxicate the people and excite them
to acts of pillage, the profits of which would come to him without any
of the danger." This accusation fits in badly with the chivalrous
loyalty of his character. It seems more probable that on one of his
journeys to Paris he fell into the trap set by the spy Perlet who, paid
by the princes to be their chief intelligence agent, sold their
correspondence to Fouché and handed over to the police the royalists who
brought the letters. This Perlet had invented, as a bait for his trap, a
committee of powerful persons who, he boasted, he had won over to the
royal cause, and doubtless Le Chevalier was one of his only too numerous
victims. Whatever it was, Le Chevalier took a pride in his high
commissions, and went to meet d'Aché as an equal, if not a rival.

At the beginning, the conference was more than cold. These two men, so
different in appearance and character, both aspired to play a great part
and were instinctively jealous of each other. Their own personal
feelings divided them. One was the lover of Mme. Acquet de Férolles, the
other was the friend of Mme. de Combray, and the latter blamed her
daughter for her misconduct, and had forbidden her ever to come back to
Tournebut. Le Chevalier, after the usual civilities, refused to continue
the conversation till he was informed of the exact nature of the powers
conferred by the King on his interlocutor, and the authority with which
he was invested. Now, d'Aché had never had any written authority, and
arrogantly intrenched himself behind the confidence which the princes
had shown in him from the very first days of the revolution. He stated
that he was expecting a regular commission from them. Whereupon Le
Chevalier, seizing the advantage, called him an "agent of the English,"
and placing his pistols on the table "invited him to blow out his brains
immediately." They both grew calmer, however, and explained their plans.
Le Chevalier knew most of the Norman Chouans, either from having fought
by their side, or from having made their acquaintance in the various
prisons in Caen or Evreux, wherein he had been confined. He therefore
undertook the enrollment and management of the army, the command of
which he would assign to two men who were devoted to him. The name of
one is not published; they say he was an ex-chief of Staff to Charette.
The other was famous through the whole revolt of the Chouans under the
pseudonym of General Antonio; his real name was Allain, and he had been
working with Le Chevalier since the year IX. The latter was sure also
of the cooperation of his friend M. de Grimont, manager of the stud at
Argentan, who would furnish the prince's army with the necessary
cavalry; besides which he offered to go to Paris for the "great event,"
and took upon himself with the assistance of certain accomplices "to
secure the imperial treasury." D'Aché, for his part, was to go to
England to fetch the King, and was to preside over the disembarkation
and lead the Russo-Swedish army through insurgent Normandy to the gates
of the capital.

Their work thus assigned, the two men parted allies, but not friends.
D'Aché was offended at Le Chevalier's pretensions; the latter returning
to Mme. Acquet, did not disguise the fact that, in his opinion, d'Aché
was nothing but a common intriguer and an agent of England.

There still remained the question of money which, for the moment, took
precedence of all others. They had agreed that it was necessary to
pillage the coffers of the state whilst waiting the arrival of subsidies
from England, but neither d'Aché nor Le Chevalier expressed himself
openly; each wished to leave the responsibility of the theft to the
other. Later, they both obstinately rejected it, Le Chevalier affirming
that d'Aché had ordered the stopping of public conveyances in the King's
name, while d'Aché disowned Le Chevalier, accusing him of having brought
the cause into disrepute by employing such means. The dispute is of
little interest. The money was lacking, and not only were the royal
coffers empty, but what was of more immediate importance, Le Chevalier
and his friends were without resources. In consequence of leading a wild
life and sacrificing himself for his party, he had spent his entire
fortune, and was overwhelmed with debts. The lawyer Vanièr, who was
entrusted with the management of his business affairs, lost his head at
the avalanche of bills, protests and notes of hand which poured into his
office, and which it was impossible to meet. The lawyer Lefebre, a fat
and sensual free-liver, was equally low in funds, and laid on the
government the blame of the confusion into which his affairs had fallen,
though it had been entirely his own fault. As for Le Chevalier himself,
he attributed his ruin, not without justice, to his disinterestedness
and devotion to the royal cause, which was his excuse for the past and
the future. Mme. Acquet, who loved him blindly, had given her last louis
to provide for his costly liberality. Touching letters from her are
extant, proving how attached she was to him:

     "I am herewith sending you a letter from Mme. Blins" (a creditor).
     "My only regret is that I have not the sum. It would have given me
     great pleasure to pay it for you, and then you would never have
     known.... I love you with all my heart. I am entirely yours, and
     there is nothing I would not do for you.... Love me as I love you.
     I embrace you tenderly."

"There is nothing I would not do for you,"--and the poor woman was
wretched in the knowledge that the hero whom she idolised was hampered
for want of small sums of money. She could not ward off the trouble,
since her demand for a separation had recently been refused. Acquet was
triumphant. She was reduced to living on a modest pension of 2,000
francs, and not able to sell what she had inherited from her father. One
evening, when she and Lanoë were alone in the Hôtel de Combray, in the
Rue du Tripot at Falaise, one part of which was rented to the collector
of taxes, she heard through the wall the chinking of the money, which
they were packing into bags. On hearing it she fell into a sort of
delirium, thinking that here was the wherewithal to satisfy her lover's
fancies....

"Lanoë," she said suddenly, "I must have some money; I only want 10,000
francs."

The terrified Lanoë gave her no answer then, but a few days later, when
he was driving her back in her cabriolet to Falaise from La Bijude, she
returned to the charge, and gave him a piece of yellow wax wrapped up in
cotton telling him to go and take an impression of the tax collector's
lock as soon as they arrived at the Rue du Tripot. Lanoë excused
himself, saying that the house belonged to M. Timoléon, and that
disagreeable consequences might arise. But she insisted. "I must have
the impression," she said. "I do not tell you why I want it, but I will
have it." Lanoë, to get out of a task he did not like, went away and
secretly took an impression of the lock of the hayloft. A key was made
by this pattern, and when night came the Marquise de Combray's daughter
stole down--holding her breath and walking noiselessly--to the tax
collector's office, and vainly tried to open the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

About the same time Le Chevalier, who had just returned from a journey
to Paris, heard from the lawyer Vanièr, who was quite as much in debt as
his client, that the pecuniary situation was desperate. "I dread," wrote
Vanièr, "the accomplishment of the psalm: Unde veniet auxilium nobis
quia perimus." To which Le Chevalier replied, as he invariably did: "In
six weeks, or perhaps less, the King will be again on his throne.
Brighter days will dawn, and we shall have good posts. Now is the time
to show our zeal, for those who have done nothing will, as is fair, have
nothing to expect." He added that the hour was propitious, "since
Bonaparte was in the middle of Germany with his whole army."

He loved to talk this way, as it made him appear, as it were, Napoleon's
rival, raising him to the place he held in his own imagination.




CHAPTER V

THE AFFAIR OF QUESNAY


The lawyer, Lefebre, of high stature, with broad shoulders and florid
complexion, loved to dine well, and spent his time between billiards,
"Calvados" and perorations in the cafés. For taking this part in the
conspiracy he expected a fat sinecure on the return of the Bourbons, in
recompense for his devotion.

Early in April, 1807, Lefebre and Le Chevalier were dining together at
the Hôtel du Point-de-France at Argentan. They had found Beaurepaire,
Desmontis and the Cousin Dusaussay there; they went to the café and
stayed there several hours. Allain, called General Antonio, whom Le
Chevalier had chosen as his chief lieutenant, appeared and was presented
to the others. Allain was over forty; he had a long nose, light eyes, a
face pitted with smallpox, and a heavy black beard; the manner of a calm
and steady bourgeois. Le Chevalier took a playing card, tore half of it
off, wrote a line on it and gave it to Allain, saying, "This will admit
you." They talked awhile in the embrasure of a window, and the lawyer
caught these words: "Once in the church, you will go out by the door on
the left, and there find a lane; it is there...."

When Allain had gone Le Chevalier informed his friends of the affair on
hand. At the approach of each term, funds were passed between the
principal towns of the department; from Alençon, Saint-Lô and Evreux
money was sent to Caen, but these shipments took place at irregular
dates, and were generally accompanied by an escort of gendarmes. As the
carriage which took the funds to Alençon usually changed horses at
Argentan, it was sufficient to know the time of its arrival in that town
to deduce therefrom the hour of its appearance elsewhere. Now Le
Chevalier had secured the cooperation of a hostler named Gauthier,
called "Boismâle," who was bribed to let Dusaussay know when the
carriage started. Dusaussay lived at Argentan, and by starting
immediately on horseback, he could easily arrive at the place where the
conspirators were posted several hours before the carriage. Allain had
just gone to find Boismâle.

When he returned to the café, he gave the result of his efforts. The
hostler had decided to help Le Chevalier, but the affair would probably
not take place for six weeks or two months, which was longer than
necessary to collect the little troop needed for the expedition. The
rôles were assigned: Allain was to recruit men; the lawyer would procure
guns wherewith to arm them; and besides this he allowed Allain to use a
house in the Faubourg Saint-Laurent de Falaise, which he was
commissioned to sell. Here could be established "a depôt for arms and
provisions," for one difficulty was to lodge and feed the recruits
during the period of waiting. Le Chevalier answered for the assistance
of Mme. Acquet de Férolles, whom he easily persuaded to hide the men for
a few days at least; he also offered as a meeting-place his house in the
Rue de Saint-Sauveur at Caen.

The chief outlines of the affair being thus arranged, they parted, and
the next day Allain took the road, having with him as usual, a complete
surveyor's outfit, and a sort of diploma as "engineer" which served as a
reference, and justified his continual moves. He was, moreover, a
typical Chouan, determined and ready for anything, as able to command a
troop as to track gendarmes; bold and cunning, he knew all the
malcontents in the country, and could insure their obedience. The
recruiting of this troop, armed, housed and provided for during two
months, roaming the country, hiding in the woods, leading in the
environs of Caen and Falaise the existence of Mohicans, without causing
astonishment to a single gendarme, and, satisfied with having enough to
eat and to drink, never thinking of asking what was required of them, is
beyond belief. And it was in the most brilliant year of the imperial
régime, at the apogee of the much boasted administration, which in
reality was so hollow. The Chouans had sown such disorganisation in the
West, that the authorities of all grades found themselves powerless to
struggle against this ever-recurring epidemic. Count Caffarelli, préfet
of Calvados, in his desire to retain his office, treated the
refractories with an indolence bordering on complicity, and continued to
send Fouché the most optimistic reports of the excellent temper of his
fellow-citizens and their inviolable attachment to the imperial
constitution.

It was the middle of April, 1807. Allain passed through Caen, where he
joined Flierlé, and both of them hiding by day and marching at night,
gained the borders of Brittany. Allain knew where to find men;
twenty-five leagues from Caen, in the department of La Manche, some way
from any highroad, is situated the village of La Mancellière, whose men
were all refractories. General Antonio, who was very popular among the
malcontents, was shown the house of a woman named Harel whose husband
had joined the sixty-third brigade in the year VIII and deserted six
months after, "overcome by the desire to see his wife and children." His
story resembled many others; conscription was repugnant to these
peasants of ancient France, who could not resign themselves to losing
sight of their clock tower; they were brave enough and ready to fight,
but to them, the immediate enemy was the gendarmes, the "Bleus," whom
they saw in their villages carrying off the best men, and they felt no
animosity against the Prussians and Austrians who only picked a quarrel
with Bonaparte.

As he came with an offer of work to be well paid for, Allain was well
received by Mme. Harel, who with her children was reduced to extreme
poverty. It was a question, he said, "of a surveying operation
authorised by the government." Harel came out of hiding in the evening,
and eagerly accepted his old chief's proposition, and as the latter
needed some strong pole-carriers, Harel presented two friends to the
"General" under the names of "Grand-Charles" and "Coeur-le-Roi."
Allain completed his party by the enrollment of three others, Le
Héricey, called "La Sagesse"; Lebrée, called "Fleur d'Épine"; and Le
Lorault, called "La Jeunesse." They drank a cup of cider together, and
left the same evening, Allain and Flierlé leading them.

In six stages they arrived at Caen, and Allain took them to Le
Chevalier's house in the Rue Saint Sauveur. They had to stay there three
weeks. They were put in the loft on some hay, and Chalange, Le
Chevalier's servant, who took them their food, always found them
sleeping or playing cards. In order not to awaken the suspicions of the
usual tradespeople, Lerouge, called "Bornet," formerly a baker,
undertook to make the bread for the house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. One
day he brought in his bread cart four guns procured by Lefebre; Harel
cleaned them, took them to pieces, and hid them in a bundle of straw.
Then the guns were put on a horse which Lerouge led out at night from
the cellar which opened on the Rue Quimcampoix at the back of the house.
The men followed, and under Allain's guidance crossed the town; when
they reached the extremity of the Faubourg de Vaucelles they stopped and
distributed the arms. Lerouge went back to town with the horse, and the
little troop disappeared on the highroad.

At about five leagues from Caen, after having passed Langannerie, where
a brigade of gendarmerie was stationed, the Falaise road traverses a
small but dense thicket called the wood of Quesnay. The men stopped
there, and passed a whole day hidden among the trees. The following
night Allain led them a three hours' march to a large abandoned house,
whose doors were open, and installed them in the loft on some hay. This
was the Château of Donnay.

Le Chevalier had not deceived himself. Mme. Acquet had received his
suggestion with enthusiasm; the thought that she would be useful to her
hero, that she would share his danger, blinded her to all other
considerations. She had offered Allain and his companions the
hospitality of Bijude, without any fear of compromising her lover, who
made long sojourns there, and she decided on the audacious plan of
lodging them with her husband, who, inhabiting a wing of the Château of
Donnay, abandoned the main body of the château, which could be entered
from the back without being seen. Perhaps she hoped to throw a suspicion
of complicity on Acquet if the retreat should be discovered. As to Le
Chevalier, learning that d'Aché had just left Mandeville and gone to
England "after having announced his speedy return with the prince, with
munitions, money, etc.," he left for Paris, having certain arrangements,
he said, to make with the "Comité secret." Before quitting La Bijude, he
enjoined his mistress, in case the coup should be made in his absence,
to remit the money seized to Dusaussay, who would bring it to him in
Paris where the committee awaited it. She gave him a curl of her fine
black hair to 

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