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." NowHouvel 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.
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 ofRaoul 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 tobe 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 byLe 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 womanLemoine'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 lieperduat 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, Petitlearned 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 thelandesof 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 andas 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 thewoods,"—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.
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 offramework 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, Bonnœil 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 andpublic 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 theIntransigeantscontinued 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, peasantsand servants, more timid, perhaps, than devoted.
She exacted complete obedience from her children. The eldest son, called the Chevalier de Bonnœil, 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; Bonnœil 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'sroyalist 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 servedthe cause; he plumed himself on having merited the surnameof "toutouof 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 toflatter 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 Bonnœil'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 Bonnœil. 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 theMarquise "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 Bonnœil, 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.
Tournebutwas 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 takenat 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 Bonnœil, 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.