"Arrested on a suspicion of brigandage, of which it is as important to justify myself as painful to have to do it, but full of confidence in my honour, which is unimpeachable, and in the well-known justice of your character, I beg you to grant me a few minutes' audience, during which—being well disposed to answer your questions, and even to forestall them—I flatter myself that I can convince you that the condition of my affairs and, above all, my whole conduct in life, raise me above any suspicion of brigandage whatever. I hope also, Monsieur, that this conversation, the favour of which your justice will accord me, will convince you that I am not mad enough to engage in political brigandage, or to engage in a struggle with the government to which the proudest sovereigns have yielded...."A. Le Chevalier."
"Arrested on a suspicion of brigandage, of which it is as important to justify myself as painful to have to do it, but full of confidence in my honour, which is unimpeachable, and in the well-known justice of your character, I beg you to grant me a few minutes' audience, during which—being well disposed to answer your questions, and even to forestall them—I flatter myself that I can convince you that the condition of my affairs and, above all, my whole conduct in life, raise me above any suspicion of brigandage whatever. I hope also, Monsieur, that this conversation, the favour of which your justice will accord me, will convince you that I am not mad enough to engage in political brigandage, or to engage in a struggle with the government to which the proudest sovereigns have yielded....
"A. Le Chevalier."
And to prove that he had taken no part in the robbery of June 7th, he added to his letter twenty affirmations of honourable and well-known persons who had either seen or dined with him in Paris each day of the month from the 1st to the 20th. Among these were the names of his compatriot, the poet Chênedollé, and Dr. Dupuytren whom he had consulted on the advisability of amputating the fingers of his left hand, long useless. He had even taken care to be seen at the Te Deum sung in Notre-Dame for the taking of Dantzig. His precautions had been well taken, and once again his aplomb was about to save him, when Réal, much embarrassed by this soft spoken prisoner, thought of sending him to Caen, in the hope that confronting him with Flierlé, Grand-Charles and the Buquets might have some result. Caffarelli was convinced that Le Chevalier was the leader in the plot, yet they had searched carefully in his house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur; without finding anything but some private papers. Flierlé had recognised him as the man to whom he acted as secretary and courier, yet Le Chevalier had contemptuously replied that "the German was not the sort to be his servant, and that their only connection was that of benefactor and recipient." It was out of the question that any tribunal could be found to condemn a man who on the day of the crime had been sixty leagues from the place where it was committed. As to convicting him as a royalist who approved of the theft of public funds—they might as well do the same with all Normandy. Besides, to Caffarelli, who had no allusions as to the sentiments of the district, and who was always in fear of a new Chouan explosion, the presence of Le Chevalier in prison at Caen was a perpetual nightmare. Allain might suddenly appear with an army, and make an attempt to carry off his chief similar to that which, under the Directory, saved the lives of the Vicomte de Chambray and Chevalier Destouches, to the amusement and delight of the whole province. And this is why the prudent prefect, not caring to encumber himself with such a compromising prisoner, in four days, obtained Réal's permission to send him back to Paris, where he was confined in the Temple. Ah! What a fine letter he wrote to the Chief of Police, as soon as he arrived there, and how he posed as the unlucky rival of Napoleon!
This profession of faith is too long to be given entirely, but it throws such light on the character of the writer, and on the illusions which the royalists obstinately fostered during the most brilliant period of the imperial régime, that a few extracts are indispensable.
"You wished to know the truth concerning the declarations of Flierlé on my account, and on the projects that he divulged. I will tell you of them. Denial suits well a criminal who fears the eye of justice, but it is foreign to a character that fears nothing and to whom the first success of his enterprises lies in the esteem of his enemies."Your Excellency will kindly see in me neither a man trembling at death, nor a mind seduced by the hope of reward. I ask nothing to tell what I think, for in telling it I satisfy myself. I planned an insurrection against Napoleon's government, I desired his ruin, if I have not been able to effect it, it is because I have always been badly seconded and often betrayed."What were my means of entertaining at least the hope of success? Not wishing to appear absolutely mad in your eyes, I am going to make them known; but not wishing to betray the confidence of those who would have served me, I shall withhold the details."I was born generous, and a lover of glory. After the amnesty of the year VIII I was the richest among my comrades: my money, well dispensed, procured me followers. For several years I watched for a favourable moment to revolt. The last campaign in Austria offered this occasion. Every one in the West believed in the defection of the French armies; I did not believe in it, but was going to profit by the general opinion. Victory came too quickly, and I had hardly time to plan anything."After having established connections in several departments, I left for Paris. There, all concurred in fortifying my hopes. Many republicans shared my wishes; I negotiated with them for a reunion of parties, to make action more certain and reaction less strong. The movement must take place in the capital, a provisional government must be established,—all France would have passed through a new régime before the Emperor returned."But it did not take me long to discover that the republicans had not all the means they boasted.... I returned to the royalists in the capital; they were disunited and without plans. I had only a few men in Paris; I abandoned my designs there, and returned to the provinces. There I could collect two or three thousand men, and as soon as I had done that I should have sent to ask the Bourbon princes to put themselves at the headof my troops...."But at the opening of the second campaign my plans were postponed. However, the measures I had been obliged to take could not remain secret. Some refractory conscripts, some deserters, appeared armed, at different places; they had to be maintained, and without an orderad hoc, but by virtue of general instructions, one of my officers possessed himself of the public funds for the purpose.... The guilty ones are ... myself, for whom I ask nothing, not from pride, for the haughtiest spirit need not feel humiliated at receiving grace from one who has granted it to kings, but from honour. Your Excellency will no doubt wish to know the motive that urged me to conceive and nourish such projects. The motive is this: I have seen the unhappiness of the amnestied, and my own misfortune; people proscribed in the state, classed as serfs, excluded not only from all employment, but also tyrannised by those who formerly only lacked the courage to join their cause...."Whatever fate is reserved for me, I beg you to consider that I have not ceased to be a Frenchman, that I may have succumbed to noble madness, but have not sought cowardly success; and I hope that, in view of this, your Excellency will grant me the only favour I ask for myself—that my trial, if I am to have one, may be military, as well as its execution...."A. Le Chevalier."
"You wished to know the truth concerning the declarations of Flierlé on my account, and on the projects that he divulged. I will tell you of them. Denial suits well a criminal who fears the eye of justice, but it is foreign to a character that fears nothing and to whom the first success of his enterprises lies in the esteem of his enemies.
"Your Excellency will kindly see in me neither a man trembling at death, nor a mind seduced by the hope of reward. I ask nothing to tell what I think, for in telling it I satisfy myself. I planned an insurrection against Napoleon's government, I desired his ruin, if I have not been able to effect it, it is because I have always been badly seconded and often betrayed.
"What were my means of entertaining at least the hope of success? Not wishing to appear absolutely mad in your eyes, I am going to make them known; but not wishing to betray the confidence of those who would have served me, I shall withhold the details.
"I was born generous, and a lover of glory. After the amnesty of the year VIII I was the richest among my comrades: my money, well dispensed, procured me followers. For several years I watched for a favourable moment to revolt. The last campaign in Austria offered this occasion. Every one in the West believed in the defection of the French armies; I did not believe in it, but was going to profit by the general opinion. Victory came too quickly, and I had hardly time to plan anything.
"After having established connections in several departments, I left for Paris. There, all concurred in fortifying my hopes. Many republicans shared my wishes; I negotiated with them for a reunion of parties, to make action more certain and reaction less strong. The movement must take place in the capital, a provisional government must be established,—all France would have passed through a new régime before the Emperor returned.
"But it did not take me long to discover that the republicans had not all the means they boasted.... I returned to the royalists in the capital; they were disunited and without plans. I had only a few men in Paris; I abandoned my designs there, and returned to the provinces. There I could collect two or three thousand men, and as soon as I had done that I should have sent to ask the Bourbon princes to put themselves at the headof my troops....
"But at the opening of the second campaign my plans were postponed. However, the measures I had been obliged to take could not remain secret. Some refractory conscripts, some deserters, appeared armed, at different places; they had to be maintained, and without an orderad hoc, but by virtue of general instructions, one of my officers possessed himself of the public funds for the purpose.... The guilty ones are ... myself, for whom I ask nothing, not from pride, for the haughtiest spirit need not feel humiliated at receiving grace from one who has granted it to kings, but from honour. Your Excellency will no doubt wish to know the motive that urged me to conceive and nourish such projects. The motive is this: I have seen the unhappiness of the amnestied, and my own misfortune; people proscribed in the state, classed as serfs, excluded not only from all employment, but also tyrannised by those who formerly only lacked the courage to join their cause....
"Whatever fate is reserved for me, I beg you to consider that I have not ceased to be a Frenchman, that I may have succumbed to noble madness, but have not sought cowardly success; and I hope that, in view of this, your Excellency will grant me the only favour I ask for myself—that my trial, if I am to have one, may be military, as well as its execution....
"A. Le Chevalier."
One can imagine the stupefaction, on reading this missive of Fouché, of Réal, Desmarets, Veyrat, and of all those on whom it rested to make his people appear to the Master as enthusiastic and contented, or at least silent and submissive. They felt that the letter was not all bragging; they saw in it Georges' plan amplified; the same threat of a descent of Bourbons on the coast, the same assurance of overturning, by a blow at Bonaparte, the immense edifice he had erected. In fact, the belief that the Empire, to which all Europe now seemed subjugated, was at the mercy of a battle won or lost, was so firmly established in the mind of the population, that even a man like Fouché, for example, who thoroughly understood the undercurrents of opinion, could never believe in the solidity of the régime that he worked for. Were not the germs of the whole story of the Restoration in Le Chevalier's profession of faith? Were they not found again, five years later, in the astonishing conception of Malet? Were things very different in 1814? The Emperor vanquished, the defection of the generals, the descent of the princes, the intervention of a provisional government, the reestablishment of the monarchy, such were, in reality the events that followed; they were what Georges had foreseen, what d'Aché had anticipated, what Le Chevalier had divined with such clear-sightedness. Though they seemed miraculous to many people they were simply the logical result of continued effort, the success of a conspiracy in which the actors had frequently been changed, but which had suffered no cessation from the coup d'état of Brumaire until the abdication at Fontainebleau. The chiefs of the imperial police, then, found themselves confronted by a new "affaire Georges." From Flierlé's partial revelations and the little that had been learned from the Buquets, they inferred that d'Aché was at the head of it, and recommended all the authorities to search well, but quietly. In spite of these exhortations, Caffarelli seemed to lose all interest in the plot, which he had finally analysed as "vast but mad," and unworthy of any further attention on his part.
The prefect of the Seine-Inférieure, Savoye-Rollin, had manifested a zeal and ardour each time that Réal addressed him on the subject of the affair of Quesnay, in singular contrast with the indifference shown by his colleague of Calvados. Savoye-Rollin belonged to an old parliamentary family. Being advocate-general to the parliament of Grenoble before 1790, he had adopted the more moderate ideas of the Revolution, and had been made a member of the tribunate on the eighteenth Brumaire in 1806, at the age of fifty-two, he replaced Beugnot in the prefecture of Rouen. He was a most worthy functionary, a distinguished worker, and possessor of a fine fortune.
Réal left it to Savoye-Rollin to find d'Aché, who, they remembered, had lived at the farm of Saint-Clair near Gournay, before Georges' disembarkation, and who possessed some property in the vicinity of Neufchâtel. The police of Rouen was neither better organised nor more numerous than that of Caen, but its chief was a singular personage whose activity made up for the qualities lacking in his men. He was a little, restless, shrewd, clever man, full of imagination and wit, frank with every one and fearing, as he himself said, "neither woman, God nor devil." He was named Licquet, and in 1807 was fifty-three years old. At the time of the Revolution he had been keeper of the rivers and forests of Caudebec, which position he had resigned in 1790 for a post in the municipal administration at Rouen. In the year IV he was chief of the Bureau of Public Instruction, but in reality he alone did all the work of the mayoralty, and also some of that of the Department, and did it so well that he found himself, in 1802, in the post of secretary-in-chief of the municipality. In this capacity he gave and inspected all passports. For five years past no one had been able to travel in the Seine-Inférieure without going through his office. As he had a good memory and his business interested him, he had a very clear recollection of all whom he had scrutinised and passed. He remembered very well having signed the passport that took d'Aché from Gournay to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1803, and retained a good idea of the robust man, tall, with a high forehead and black hair. He remembered, moreover, that d'Aché's "toe-nails were so grown into his flesh that he walked on them."
Since this meeting with d'Aché, Licquet's appointments had increased considerably; while retaining his place as secretary-general, he had obtained the directorship of police, and fulfilled his functions with so much energy, authority and cunning that no one dreamt of criticising his encroachments. He was, besides, much feared for his bitter tongue, but he pleased the prefect, who liked his wit and appreciated his cleverness. From the beginning Licquet was fascinated by the idea of discovering the elusive conspirator and thus demonstrating his adroitness to the police of Paris; and his satisfaction was profound, when, on the 17th of August, 1807, three days after having arranged a plan of campaign and issued instructions to his subordinates, he was informed that M. d'Aché was confined in the Conciergerie of the Palais de Justice. He rushed to the Palais and ordered the prisoner to be brought before him. It was "Tourlour," d'Aché's inoffensive brother Placide, arrested at Saint Denis-du-Bosguérard, where he had gone to visit his old mother. Licquet's disappointment was cruel, for he had nothing to expect from Tourlour; but to hide his chagrin he questioned him about his brother (whom Placide declared he had not seen for four years) and how he passed his time, which was spent, said Tourlour, when he was not in the Rue Saint-Patrice, between Saint-Denis-du-Bosguérard and Mme. de Combray's château near Gaillon. Placide declared that he only desired to live in peace, and to care for his aged and infirm mother. This was the second time Licquet's attention had been attracted by the name of Mme. de Combray. He had already read it, incidentally, in the report of Flierlé's examination, and with the instinct of a detective, for whom a single word will often unravel a whole plot, he had a sudden intuition that in it lay the key to the entire affair. Tourlour's imprudent admission, which was to bring terrible catastrophes on Mme. de Combray's head, gave Licquet a thread that was to lead him through the maze that Caffarelli had refused to enter.
Nearly a month earlier, Mme. de Combray had expressly forbidden Soyer to talk about her return with Lefebre. She had shut herself up in her room with Catherine Querey, her chambermaid; the lawyer had shared Bonnœil's room. Next day, Tuesday, July 28th, the Marquise had shown Lefebre the apartments prepared for the King and the hiding-places in the great château; Bonnœil showed him copies of d'Aché's manifesto, and the Duc d'Enghien's funeral oration, which they read, with deep respect, after dinner. Towards evening Soyer announced the postmaster of Gaillon, a friend who had often rendered valuable services to the people at Tournebut. He had just heard that the commandant had received orders from Paris to search the château, and would do so immediately. Mme. de Combray was not at all disturbed; she had long been prepared for this, and ordered Soyer to take some provisions to the little château, where she repaired that night with Lefebre. There were two comfortable hiding-places there whose mechanism she explained to the lawyer. One of them was large enough to contain two mattresses side by side; she showed Lefebre in, slipped after him, and shut the panels upon them both. Bonnœil remained alone at Tournebut. The quiet life he had led for the last two years removed him from any suspicion, and he prepared to receive the gendarmes who appeared at dawn on Friday. The commandant showed his order, and Bonnœil, confident of the issue, and completely cool, opened all the doors and gave up the keys. The soldiers rummaged the château from top to bottom. Nothing could have been more innocent than the appearance of this great mansion, most of whose apartments seemed to have been long unoccupied, and Bonnœil stated that his mother had gone a fortnight ago to Lower Normandy, where she went every year about this time to collect her rents and visit her property near Falaise. When the servants were interrogated they were all unanimous in declaring that with the exception of Soyer and Mlle. Querey, they had seen the Marquise start for Falaise, and did not know of her return. The commandant returned to Gaillon with his men, little suspecting that the woman he was looking for was calmly playing cards with one of her accomplices a few steps away, while they were searching her house.
She lived with her guest for eight days in this house with the false bottom, so to speak, never appearing outside, wandering through the unfurnished rooms during the day, and returning to her hiding-place at night.
They did not return to Tournebut till August 4th. The same day Soyer received a letter from Mme. Acquet, on the envelope of which she had written, "For Mama." It was an answer to the letter sent to Croissanville by Lefebre. Mme. Acquet said that her mother's departure did her a great wrong, but that all danger was over and Lefebre couldreturn to Falaise without fear. As for herself, she had found refuge with a reliable person; the Abbé Moraud, vicar of Guibray, would take charge of her correspondence. Of the proposal which had been made her to take refuge at Tournebut, not a word. Evidently Mme. Acquet preferred the retreat she had chosen for herself—where, she did not say. Mme. de Combray, either hurt at this unjustifiable defiance, or afraid that she would prove herself an accomplice in the theft if she did not separate herself entirely from Mme. Acquet, made her maid reply that it was "too late for her to come now, that she was very ill and could receive no one." And thus the feeling that divided these two women was clearly defined.
Lefebre undertook to give the letter to Abbé Moraud; he was in a great hurry to return to Falaise, where he felt much safer than at Tournebut. He left the same day, after having chosen a yellow horse from the stables of the château. He put on top-boots and an overcoat belonging to Bonnœil, and left by a little door in the wall of the park. Soyer led him as far as the Moulin des Quatre-Vents on the highroad. Lefebre took the Neubourg road so as to avoid Evreux and Louviers. Two days after, he breakfasted at Glatigny with Lanoë, leaving there his boots, overcoat, and the yellow horse, and started gaily for Falaise, where he arrived in the evening. He saw Mme. Acquet on the 7th, and found her completely at her ease.
When Lanoë had abandoned her at the farm of Villeneuve, twelve days before, Mme. Acquet had entreated so pitifully that a woman who was there had gone to fetch Collin, one of the servants at La Bijude; Mme. de Combray's daughter had returned with him to Falaise, on one of the farmer's horses. She dared not go to the house in the Rue du Tripot, and therefore stopped with an honest woman named Chauvel, who did the washing for the Combray family. She was drawn there by the fact that the son, Victor Chauvel, was one of the gendarmes who had been at Donnay the night before, and she wanted to find out from him if the Buquets had denounced her.
She went to the Chauvels' under pretence of getting Captain Manginot's address. The gendarme was at supper. He was a man of thirty-six, an old hussar, and a good fellow, but although married and the father of three children, known as a "gadder, and fond of the sex." "When women are around, Chauvel forgets everything," his comrades used to say. He now saw Mme. Acquet for the first time, and to her questions replied that her name had indeed been mentioned, and that Manginot, who was at the "Grand-Ture," was looking for her. The young woman began to cry. She implored Mme. Chauvel to keep her, promised to pay her, and appealed to her pity, so that the washerwoman was touched. She had an attic in the third story, some bedding was thrown on the floor, and from that place Mme. Acquet wrote to tell her mother that she had found a safe retreat.
It was very safe indeed, and one can understand that she did not feel the need of telling too precisely the conditions of the hospitality she was given. Is it necessary to insist on the sort of relations established from the moment of her arrival at the Chauvels, between the poor woman whose fear of capture killed every other feeling and the soldier on whom her fate depended? Chauvel had only to say one word to insure her arrest; she yielded to him, he held his tongue and the existence which then began for them both was so miserable and so tragic that it excites more pity than disgust. Mme. Acquet had only one thought—to escape the scaffold; Chauvel had only one wish—to keep this unexpected mistress, more dear because he sacrificed for her his career, his honour and perhaps his life. At first things went calmly enough. No warrant had been issued for the fugitive, and in the evening she used to go out disguised with Chauvel. Soon she grew bolder and walked in broad daylight in the streets of Falaise. On the 15th of August Lefebre had Lanoë to breakfast and invited her also; they talked freely, and Mme. Acquet made no secret of the fact that she was living with the Chauvels and that the son kept her informed of all orders received from Caen or Paris. Lefebre led the conversation round to the "treasure," for the money hidden at the Buquets had excited much cupidity. Bureau de Placène, as "banker" to the Chouans, had advanced the claims of the royal exchequer; Allain and Lerouge the baker—who showed entire disinterestedness—had gone to Donnay, and with great trouble got 1,200 francs from the Buquets; five times Lerouge had gone in a little cart, by appointment, to the forest of Harcourt, where he waited under a large tree near the crossroad till Buquet brought him some money. In this way Placène received 12,000 francs in crowns, "so coated with mud that his wife was obliged to wash them." But Joseph's relations, who had been arrested when he fled, swore that he alone knew where the rest of the money was buried, and no one could get any more of it.
While at breakfast with the lawyer and Lanoë Mme. Acquet begged the latter to undertake a search. She believed the money was buried in the field of buckwheat between the Buquets' house and the walls of the château, and wanted Lanoë to dig there, but he refused. She seemed to have lost her head completely. She planned to throw herself at the Emperor's feet imploring his pardon; she talked of recovering the stolen money, returning it to the government, adding to it her "dot," and leaving France forever. When she returned in the evening greatly excited, she told the washerwoman of her plans; she dwelt on the idea for three days, and thought she had only to restore the stolen money to guarantee herself against punishment.
Chauvel was on duty. When he returned on the 19th he brought some news. Caffarelli was to arrive in Falaise the next day, to interrogate Mme. Acquet. The night passed in tears and agony. The poor woman attempted suicide, and Chauvel seized the poison she was about to swallow. An obscure point is reached here. Even if Caffarelli's ease and indifference are admitted, it is hard to believe that he was an active accomplice in the plot; but on the other hand, it is surprising that Mme. Acquet did not fly as soon as she heard of his intended visit, and that she consented to appear before him as if she were sure of finding help and protection. The interview took place in the house of the mayor, M. de Saint-Léonard, a relative of Mme. de Combray's, and resembled a family council rather than an examination. Caffarelli was more paternal than his rôle of judge warranted, and it was long believed in the family that Mme. de Combray's remote relationship with the Empress Josephine's family, which they had been careful not to boast of before, was drawn upon to soften the susceptible prefect. Whatever the reason, Mme. Acquet left the mayor's completely reassured, told Mme. Chauvel that she was going away, and took many messages from the good woman to Mme. de Combray, with whom she said she was going to spend several days at Tournebut. On the 22d she made a bundle of her belongings, and taking the arm of the gendarme, left the washerwoman's house disguised as a peasant.
Life at Tournebut resumed its usual course after Lefebre's departure. Mme. de Combray, satisfied that her daughter was safe, and that the prefect of Calvados even if he suspected her, would never venture to cause her arrest, went fearlessly among her neighbours. She was not aware that the enquiry had passed from Caffarelli's hands into those of the prefect of Rouen, and was now managed by a man whose malignity and stubbornness would not be easily discouraged.
Licquet had taken a fortnight to study the affair. His only clues were Flierlé's ambiguous replies and the Buquets' cautious confessions, but during the years that he had eagerly devoted to detective work as an amateur, he had laid up a good store of suspicions. The failure of the gendarmes at Tournebut had convinced him that this old manor-house, so peaceful of aspect, hid terrible secrets, and that its occupants had arranged within it inaccessible retreats. Then he changed his tactics. Mme. de Combray and Bonnœil had gone in perfect confidence to spend the afternoon at Gaillon; when they returned to Tournebut in the evening they were suddenly stopped by a detachment of gendarmes posted across the road. They were obliged to give their names; the officer showed a warrant, and they all returned to the château, which was occupied by soldiers. The Marquise protested indignantly against the invasion of her house, but was forced to be present at a search that was begun immediately and lasted all the evening. Towards midnight she and her son were put into a carriage with two gendarmes and taken under escort to Rouen, where, at dawn, they were thrown into the Conciergerie of the Palais de Justice.
Licquet was only half satisfied with the result of the expedition; he had hoped to take d'Aché, whom he believed to be hidden at Tournebut; the police had arrested Mme. Levasseur and Jean-Baptiste Caqueray, lately married to Louise d'Aché; but of the conspirator himself there was no trace. For three years this extraordinary man had eluded the police. Was it to be believed that he had lived all this time, buried in some oubliette at Tournebut, and could one expect that Mme. de Combray would reveal the secret of his retreat?
As soon as she arrived at the Conciergerie, Licquet, without showing himself, had gone to "study" his prisoner. Like an old, caged lioness, this woman of sixty-seven behaved with surprising energy; she showed no evidence of depression or shame; she did as she liked in the prison, complained of the food, grumbled all day, and raged at the gaolers. There was no reason to hope that she would belie her character, nor to count on an emotion she did not feel to obtain any information from her. The prefect had her brought in a carriage to his house on August 23d, and interrogated her for two days. With the experience and astuteness of an old offender, the Marquise assumed complete frankness; but she only confessed to things she could not deny with success. Licquet asked several questions; she did not reply until she had caused them to be repeated several times, under pretence that she did not understand them. She struggled desperately, arguing, quibbling, fighting foot by foot. If she admitted knowing d'Aché and having frequently offered him hospitality, she positively denied all knowledge of his actual residence. In short, when Savoye-Rollin and Licquet sent her back to the Conciergerie, they felt that they had had the worst of it and gained nothing. Bonnœil, when his turn came told them nothing but what they already knew, and Placide d'Aché flew into a rage and denied everything.
The prefect and his acolyte were feeling somewhat abashed at their failure, when the concierge who had taken Mme. de Combray back to the Palais asked to speak to them. He told them that in the carriage the Marquise had offered him a large sum if he would take some letters to one of the prisoners. Accustomed to these requests he had said neither yes nor no, but had told "the Combray woman" that he would see her at night, when going the rounds, and he had come to get the prefect's orders concerning this correspondence. Licquet urged that the concierge be authorised to receive the letters. He hoped by intercepting them to learn much from the confidences and advice the Marquise would give her fellow-prisoners. The idea was at first very repugnant to Savoye-Rollin, but the Marquise's proposal seemed to establish her guilt so thoroughly, that he did not feel obliged to be delicate and consented, not without throwing on his secretary-general (one of Licquet's titles) the responsibility for the proceeding. Having obtained this concession Licquet took hold of the enquiry, and found it a good field for the employment of his particular talents. No duel was ever more pitiless; never did a detective show more ingenuity and duplicity. From "love of the art," from sheer delight in it, Licquet worked himself up against his prisoners with a passion that would be inexplicable, did not his letters reveal the intense joy the struggle gave him. He felt no hatred towards his victims, but only a ferocious satisfaction in seeing them fall into the traps he prepared and in unveiling the mysteries of a plot whose political significance seemed entirely indifferent to him.
With the keenest anticipation he awaited the time when Mme. de Combray's letters to Bonnœil and "Tourlour" should be handed to him. He had to be patient till next day, and this first letter told nothing; the Marquise gave her accomplices a sketch of her examination, and did it so artfully that Licquet suspected her of having known that the letter was to pass through his hands. The same day the concierge gave him another letter as insignificant as the first, which, however, ended with this sentence, whose perusal puzzled Licquet: "Do you not know that Tourlour's brother has burnt the muslin fichu?"
"Tourlour's brother"—that was d'Aché. Had he recently returned to Tournebut? Was he still there? Another letter, given to the gaoler by Bonnœil, answered these questions affirmatively. It was addressed to a man of business named Legrand in the Rue Cauchoise, and ran thus: "I implore you to start at once for Tournebut without telling any one of the object of your journey; go to Grosmenil (the little château), see the woman Bachelet, and burn everything she may have that seems suspicious; you will do us a great service. Return this letter to me. Tell Soyer that if any one asks if M. d'Aché has returned, it is two years since he was seen at Tournebut."
That same evening the order for Soyer's arrest was sent to Gaillon, and twelve hours later he also was in the Conciergerie at Rouen. This did not prevent Bonnœil's writing to him the next day, Licquet, as may be imagined, not having informed the prisoners of his arrest.
"I beg you, my dear Soyer, to look in the two or three desks in my mother's room, and see if you cannot find anything that could compromise her, above all any of M. Delorières' (d'Aché's) writing. Destroy it all. If you are asked how long it is since M. Delorières was at Tournebut, say he has not been there for nearly two years. Tell this to Collin, to Catin, and to the yard girl...."
Licquet carefully copied these letters and then sent them to their destination, hoping that the answers would give him some light. In his frequent visits to the prisoners he dared not venture on the slightest allusion to the confidences they exchanged, for fear that they might suspect the fidelity of their messenger, and refuse his help. Thus, many points remained obscure to the detective. The next letter from Bonnœil to Soyer contained this sentence: "Put the small curtains on the window of the place where I told you to bury the nail...." We can imagine Licquet with his head in his hands trying to solve this enigma. The muslin fichu, the little curtains, the nail—was this a cipher decided on in advance between the prisoners? And all these precautions seemed tobe taken for the mysterious d'Aché whose safety seemed to be their sole desire. A word from Mme. de Combray to Bonnœil leaves no doubt as to the conspirator's recent sojourn at Tournebut: "I wish Mme. K.... to go to my house and see with So ... if Delor ... has not left some paper in the oil-cloth of the little room near the room where the cooks slept. Let him look everywhere and burn everything." This time the information seemed so sure that Licquet started for Tournebut, which had been occupied by gendarmes for a fortnight; he took Soyer to guide him, and the commissary of police, Legendre, to make a report of the search.
They arrived at Tournebut on the morning of September 5th. Licquet, who was much exhilarated by this hunt for conspirators, must have felt a singular emotion on approaching the mysterious mansion, object of all his thoughts. He took it all in at a glance, he was struck by the isolation of the château, away from the road below the woods; he found that it could be entered at twenty different places, without one's being seen. He sent away the servants, posted a gendarme at each door, and conducted by Soyer, entered the apartments.
First he went to the brick wing built by de Marillac, where was a vast chamber occupied by Bonnœil and leading to the great hall, astoundingly high and solemn in spite of its dilapidation, with a brick floor, a ceiling with great beams, and immense windows looking over the terrace towards the Seine. By a double door with monumental ironwork, set in awall as thick as a bastille, Mme. de Combray's apartments were reached, the first room wainscoted, then a boudoir, next a small room hidden by a staircase, and communicating with a lot of other small, low rooms. A long passage, lighted by three windows opening on the terrace, led, leaving the Marquise's bedchamber on the right, to the most ancient part of the château the front of which had been recently restored. Having crossed the landing of the steps leading to the garden, one reached the salon; then the dining-room, where there was a stone staircase leading to the first floor. On this were a long passage and three chambers looking out on the valley of the Seine, and a lot of small rooms that were not used. All the rest was lofts, where the framework of the roofs crossed. When a door was opened, frightened bats flapped their wings with a great noise in the darkness of this forest of enormous, worm-eaten beams. In fact, everything looked very simple; there was no sign whatever of a hiding-place. The furniture was opened, the walls sounded, and the panels examined without finding any hollow place. It was now Soyer's turn to appear. Whether he feared for himself, or whether Licquet had made him understand that denial was useless, Mme. de Combray's confidential man consented to guide the detectives. He took a bunch of keys and followed by Licquet and Legendre, went up to a little room under the roof of a narrow building next to Marillac's wing. This room had only one window, on the north, with a bit of green stuff for a curtain; its only furniture was a miserable wooden bed drawn into the middle of the room. Licquet and the commissary examined the partitions and had them sounded. Soyer allowed them to rummage in all the corners, then, when they had given up all idea of finding anything themselves, he went up to the bed, put his hand under the mattress and removed a nail. They immediately heard the fall of a weight behind the wall, which opened, disclosing a chamber large enough to hold fifteen persons. In it were a wooden bench, a large chafing-dish, silver candlesticks, a trunk full of papers and letters, two packets of hair of different colours, and some treatises on games. They seized among other things, the funeral oration of the Duc d'Enghien, copied by Placide, and the passport d'Aché had obtained at Rouen in 1803, which was signed by Licquet. When they had put everything in a bag and closed the partition, when they had sufficiently admired the mechanism which left no crack or opening visible, Soyer, still followed by two policemen, went over the whole château, climbed to the loft, and stopped at last in a little room at the end of the building. It was full of soiled linen hung on ropes; a thick beam was fixed almost level with the ground, the whole length of the wall embellished with shelves supported by brackets. Soyer thrust his hand into a small, worm-eaten hole in the beam, and drawing out a piece of iron, fitted it on a nail that seemed to be driven into one of the brackets. Instantly the shelves folded up, a door opened in the wall, and they entered a room large enough to hold fifty people with ease. A window—impossible to discover from the outside—opened on the roof of the chapel, and gave light and air tothis apartment; it contained only a large wardrobe, in which were an earthen dish and an altar stone.
And so this old manor-house, with its venerable and homelike air, was arranged as a resort for brigands, and an arsenal and retreat for a little army of conspirators. For Soyer also revealed the secrets of theoubliettesof the little château, whose unfurnished rooms could shelter a considerable garrison; they only found there three trunks full of silver, marked with so many different arms that Licquet believed it must have come from the many thefts perpetrated during the last fifteen years in the neighbourhood. On examination it proved to be nothing of the sort, but that all these different pieces of silver bore the arms of branches of the families of Brunelle and Combray; but even though he was obliged to withdraw his first supposition, Licquet was firm in attributing to the owners of Tournebut all the misdeeds that had been committed in the region since the Directory. These perfect hiding-places, this château on the banks of the river, in the woods between two roads, like the rocky nests in which the robber-chiefs of the middle ages fortified themselves, explained so well the attacks on the coaches, the bands of brigands who disappeared suddenly, and remained undiscoverable, that the detective gave free rein to his imagination. He persuaded himself that d'Aché was there, buried in some hollow wall of which even Soyer had not the secret, and as the only hope, in this event, was to starve him out, Licquet sent all of Mme. deCombray's servants away, and left a handful of soldiers in the château, the keys of which, as well as the administration of the property, he left in the hands of the mayor of Aubevoye.
His first thought on returning to Rouen was for his prisoners. They had continued to correspond during his absence, and copies of all their letters were faithfully delivered to him; but they seemed to have told each other all they had that was interesting to tell, and the correspondence threatened to become monotonous. The imagination of the detective found a way of reawakening the interest. One evening, when every one was asleep in the prison, Licquet gave the gaoler orders to open several doors hastily, to push bolts, and walk about noisily in the corridors, and when, next day, Mme. de Combray enquired the cause of all this hubbub, she was easily induced to believe that Lefebre had been arrested at Falaise and imprisoned during the night. An hour later the concierge, with a great show of secrecy, gave the Marquise a note written by Licquet, in which "Lefebre" informed her of his arrest, and said that he had disguised his writing as an act of prudence. The stratagem was entirely successful. Mme. de Combray answered, and her letter was immediately given to Licquet, who, awaiting some definite information, was astonished to find himself confronted with a fresh mystery. "Let me know," said the Marquise, "how the horse went back; that no one saw it anywhere."
What horse? What answer should he give? If Lefebre had been really in prison, it would have been possible to give a sensible reply, but without his help how could Licquet avoid awakening her suspicions as to the personality of her correspondent? In the rôle of the lawyer he wrote a few lines, avoiding any mention of the horse, and asking how the examinations went off. To this the Marquise replied: "The prefect and a bad fellow examined us. But you do not tell me if the horse has been sent back, and by whom. If they asked me, what should I say?"
The "bad fellow" was Licquet himself, and he knew it; but this time he must answer. Hoping that chance would favour him, he adopted an expedient to gain time. He let Mme. de Combray hear that Lefebre had fainted during an examination, and was not in a condition to write. But she did not slacken her correspondence, and wrote several letters daily to the lawyer, which greatly increased Licquet's perplexity:
"Tell me what has become of my yellow horse. The police are still at Tournebut; now if they hear about the horse—you can guess the rest. Be smart enough to say that you sold it at the fair at Rouen. Little Licquet is sharp and clever, but he often lies. My only worry is the horse; they will soon have the clue. My hand trembles; can you read this? If I hear anything about the horse I will let you know at once, but just now I know nothing. Don't worry about the saddle and bridle. They were sent to Deslorières, who told me he had received them."
This yellow horse assumed gigantic proportions in Licquet's imagination; it haunted him day and night, and galloped through all his nightmares. A fresh search at Tournebut proved that the stables contained only a small donkey and four horses, instead of the usual five, and the peasants said that the missing beast was "reddish, inclining to yellow." As the detective sent Réal all of Mme. de Combray's letters in his daily budget, they were just as much agitated in Paris over this mysterious animal, whose discovery was, as the Marquise said, the clue to the whole affair. Whom had this horse drawn or carried? One of the Bourbon princes, perhaps? D'Aché? Mme. Acquet, whom they were vainly seeking throughout Normandy? Licquet was obliged to confess to his chiefs that he did not know to what occurrence the story of the horse referred. He felt that the weight attached by Mme. de Combray to its return, increased the importance of knowing what it had been used for. "This is the main point," he said; "the horse, the saddle and bridle must be found."
In the absence of Lefebre, who could have solved the enigma, and whom Caffarelli had not decided to arrest, there remained one way of discovering Mme. de Combray's secret—an odious way, it is true, but one that Licquet, in his bewilderment, did not hesitate to employ. This was to put a spy with her, who would make her speak. There was in the Conciergerie at Rouen a woman named Delaitre, who had been there for six years. This woman was employed in the infirmary; she had good enough manners, expressed herself well, and was about the same age as Mme. Acquet. It was easy to believe that, in return for some remission of her sentence, she would act as Licquet's spy. They spoke of her to the Marquise, taking care to represent her as a royalist, persecuted for her opinions. The Marquise expressed a wish to see her; Delaitre played her part to perfection, saying that she had been educated with Mme. Acquet at the convent of the Nouvelles Catholique, and that she felt honoured in sharing the prison of the mother of her old school friend. In short, that evening she was in a position to betray the Marquise's confidence to Licquet. She had learned that Mme. Acquet had assisted at many of the attacks on coaches, dressed as a man. Mme. de Combray dreaded nothing more than to have her daughter fall into the hands of the police. "If she is taken," she said, "she will accuse me." The Marquise was resigned to her fate; she knew she was destined for the scaffold; "after all, the King and the Queen had perished on the guillotine, and she would die there also." However, she was anxious to know if she could be saved by paying a large sum; but not a word was said about the yellow horse.
The next day she again wrote of the fear she felt for her daughter; she would have liked to warn her to disguise herself and go as a servant ten or twelve leagues from Falaise. "If she is arrested she will speak, and then I am lost," she continued; so that Licquet came to the conclusion that the reason the Marquise did not want the yellow horse to be found was that it would lead to the discovery of her daughter. Mme. Acquet had so successfully disappeared during the last two weeks that Réal was convinced she had escaped to England. Nothing could be done without d'Aché or Mme. Acquet. The failure of the pursuit, showing the organised strength of the royalist party and the powerlessness of the government, would justify Caffarelli's indolent neutrality. On the other hand, Licquet knew that failure spelled ruin for him. He had made the affair his business; his prefect, Savoye-Rollin, was very half-hearted about it, and quite ready to stop all proceedings at the slightest hitch. Réal was even preparing to sacrifice his subordinate if need be, and to the amiable letters at first received from the ministry of police, succeeded curt orders that implied disfavour. "It is indispensable to find Mme. Acquet's retreat." "You must arrest d'Aché without delay, and above all find the yellow horse."
As if the Marquise were enjoying the confusion into which the mention of this phantom beast threw her persecutor, she continued to scribble on scraps of paper which the concierge was told to take to the lawyer, who never received them.
"There is one great difficulty; the yellow horse is wanted. I shall send a safe and intelligent man to the place where it is, to tell the people to have it killed twelve leagues away and skinned at once. Send me in writing the road he must take, and the people to whom he must apply, so as to be able to do it without asking anything. He is strong and able to do fifteen leagues a day. Send me an answer."
Mme. de Combray had applied to the woman Delaitre for this "safe and intelligent man," and the latter had, at Licquet's instance, offered the services of her husband, an honest royalist, who in reality did not exist, but was to be personated by a man whom Licquet had ready to send in search of the horse as soon as its whereabouts should be determined. Lefebre refused to answer this question for the same reason that he had refused to answer others, and the detective was obliged to confess his perplexity to Réal. "There is no longer any trouble in intercepting the prisoner's letters; the difficulty of sending replies increases each day. You must give me absolution, Monsieur, for all the sins that this affair has caused me to commit; for the rest, all is fair in love and war, and surely we are at war with these people." To which Réal replied: "I cannot believe that the horse only served for Mme. Acquet's flight; they would not advise the strange precaution of taking it twelve leagues away, killing, and skinning it on the spot. These anxieties show the existence of some grave offence, for which the horse was employed, and which its discovery will disclose. You must find out the history of this animal; how long Mme. de Combray has had it, and who owned it before." In vain Licquet protested that he had exhausted his supply of inventions and ruses; the invariable reply was, "Find the yellow horse!"
He cursed his own zeal; but an unexpected event renewed his confidence and energy. Lefebre, who was arrested early in September, had just been thrown into the Conciergerie at Rouen. This new card, if well played, would set everything right. It was easy to induce Mme. de Combray to write another letter insisting once more on knowing "the exact address of the horse," and the lawyer at last answered unsuspectingly, "With Lanoë at Glatigny, near Bretteville-sur-Dives."
With Lanoë! Why had Licquet never guessed it! This name, indeed, so often mentioned in the declarations of the prisoners, had made no impression on him. Mme. Acquet was hidden there without doubt, and he triumphantly sent off an express to Réal announcing the good news, and sent two sharp men to Glatigny at the same time. They left Rouen on September 15th, and time lagged for Licquet while awaiting their return. Three days, five days, ten days passed without any news of them. In his impatience he spent his time worrying Lefebre. A continuous correspondence was established between him and Mme. de Combray; but in his letters, as in his examination, he showed great mistrust, and Licquet even began to fear that the prudent lawyer would not have told where the yellow horse was, if he had not been sure that the hunt for it would be fruitless. And so the detective, who had played his last card, was in an agony during the two weeks' absence of his men. At last they returned, discomfited and weary, leading the foundered yellow horse, and accompanied by a sort of colossus, "somewhat resembling a grenadier," who was no otherthan Lanoë's wife.
The story told by Licquet's emissaries was as short as it was delusive. On arriving at Bretteville-sur-Dives they had gone to the farm of Glatigny, but had not found Lanoë, whom Caffarelli had arrested a fortnight before. His wife had received them, and after their first enquiry had led them to the famous horse's stable, enchanted at being relieved of the famished beast who consumed all her fodder. The men had gone as far as Caen, and obtained the prefect's authorisation to speak to Lanoë. The latter remembered that Lefebre had left the horse with him at the end of July, on returning from Tournebut, but he denied all knowledge of Mme. Acquet's retreat. If he was to be believed, she was "a prisoner of her family," and would never be found, as the whole country round Falaise was "sold" to the mayor, M. de Saint-Léonard, who had declared himself his cousin's protector.
Lanoë's wife was sent back to Glatigny, but the horse was kept at Rouen—apparently in the hope that this dumb witness would bring some revelation. Licquet even cut off some of its hairs and sent them, carefully wrapped up, to Mme. de Combray, implying that they came from the faithful Delaitre, to whom the Marquise had confided the task of disposing of the compromising animal. The same evening the Marquise, completely reassured, wrote the following note to the lawyer:
"You see that my commissioner was speedy. I have had certain proof. He went to Lanoë's wife, found the horse, got on it, went five or six leagues, killed it, and brought away the skin. He brought me some of its coat, and I send you half, so that you may see the truth for yourself, and so have no fear. I am going to write to Soyer to say that he sold the horse at Guibray for 350 livres."
In her joy at being delivered from her nightmare, she wrote the same day to Colas, her groom, who was also in the Conciergerie: "Do not worry: do you need money? I will send you twelve francs. The cursed horse! They have sent me some of its skin, which I send for recognition. Burn this." And to her chambermaid, Catherine Querey: "The horse is killed. My agent skinned and burnt it. If you are asked about the missing horse, say that it was sold. My miserable daughter gives me a great deal of pain."
Thus ends the story of the yellow horse. It finished its mysterious odyssey in the stables of Savoye-Rollin, where Licquet often visited it, as if he could thus learn its secret. For a doubt remained, and Réal's suggestion haunted him: "If the horse had only served for Mme. Acquet's flight, they would not advise the strange precaution of taking it twelve leagues away, killing, and skinning it on the spot." Even now a great deal of mystery hangs about it. The horse had not been used by Mme. Acquet, because we know that since the robbery of June 7th, she had not left the neighbourhood of Falaise. Lefebre had ridden it from Tournebut; but was that a fact to be so carefully concealed? Why did the Marquise in her confidential letters insist on this point? "Say that the lawyer returned to his house on foot," is a sentence that we find in each of her letters. Since no mystery was made of the journey, why was its means of accomplishment important?
There was something unexplained, and Licquet was not satisfied. His tricks had brought no result. D'Aché was not found; Mme. Acquet had disappeared; her description had in vain been sent to all the brigades.Manginot, in despair of finding her, had renounced the search, and Savoye-Rollin himself was "determined to suspend all action." Such was the situation during the last days of September. It seemed most probable that the affair of Quesnay and the great plot of which it was an off-shoot, were going to join many others of the same kind, whose originators Fouché's police had despaired of finding, when an unexpected event reawakened Licquet's fervour and suggested to him a new machination.
Seclusion, isolation and trouble had in no way softened the Marquise de Combray's harsh nature. From the very first day, this woman, accustomed to living in a château, had accommodated herself to the life of a prisoner without abating anything of her haughty and despotic character. Her very illusions remained intact. She imagined that from her cell she still directed her confederates and agents, whom she considered one and all as servants, never suspecting that the permission to write letters, of which she made such bad use, was only a trap set for her ingenuous vanity. In less than a month she had written more than a hundred letters to her fellow-prisoners, which all passed through Licquet's hands. To one she dictated the answers he was to give, to another she counselled silence,—setting herself up to be an absolute judge of what they ought to say or to hold back, being quite unable to imagine that any of these unhappy people might prefer life to the pleasure of obeying her. She would have treated as a liar any one, be he who he might, who affirmed that all her accomplices had deserted her, that Soyer had hastened to disclose the secret hiding-places at Tournebut, that Mlle. Querey had told all about what she had seen, that Lanoë pestered Caffarelli with his incessant revelations, and that Lefebre, whom nothing but prudence kept silent, was very near telling all he knew to save his own head.
The Marquise was ignorant of all these defections. Licquet had created such an artificial atmosphere around her that she lived under the delusion that she was as important as before. Convinced that nobody was her equal in finesse and authority, she considered the detective sufficiently clever to deal with a person of humble position, but believed that as soon as she cared to trouble herself to bring it about, he would become entirely devoted to her. And Licquet, with his almost genial skilfulness, so easily fathomed the Marquise's proud soul—was such a perfect actor in the way he stood before her, spoke to her, and looked at her with an air of submissive admiration,—that it was no wonder she thought he was ready to serve her; and as she was not the sort of woman to use any discretion with a man of his class, she immediately despatched the turnkey to offer him the sum of 12,000 francs, half down, if he would consent to promote her interests. Licquet appeared very grateful, very much honoured, accepted the money, which he put in the coffers of the prefecture, and the very same day read a letter in which Mme. de Combray informed her accomplices of the great news: "We have the little secretary under our thumb."
Ah! what great talks Licquet and the prisoner had, now they had become friends. From the very first conversation he satisfied himself that she did not know Mme. Acquet's hiding-place; but the lawyer Lefebre, who had at last ceased to be dumb, had not concealed the fact that it might be learned through a laundress at Falaise named Mme. Chauvel, and Licquet immediately informed Mme. de Combray of this fact and represented to her, in a friendly manner, the danger in which her daughter's arrest would involve her, and insinuated that the only hope of security lay in the escape to England of Mme. Acquet, "on whose head the government had set a price."
The idea pleased the Marquise; but who would undertake to discover the fugitive and arrange for her embarcation? Whom dared she trust, in her desperate situation? Licquet seemed the very one; he, however, excused himself, saying that a faithful man, carrying a letter from Mme. de Combray, would do as well, and the Marquise never doubted that her daughter would blindly follow her advice—supported by a sufficient sum of money to live abroad while awaiting better days. It remained to find the faithful man. The Marquise only knew of one, who, quite recently, at her request, had consented to go and look for the yellow horse, which he had killed and skinned, and who, she said, had acquitted himself so cleverly of his mission. She was never tired of praising this worthy fellow, who only existed, as every one knew, in her own imagination; she admitted that she did not know him personally, but had corresponded with him through the medium of the woman Delaitre, who had been placed near her; but she knew that he was the woman's husband, captain of a boat at Saint Valery-en-Caux, and, in addition, a relation of poor Raoul Gaillard, whom the Marquise remembered even in her own troubles.
Licquet listened quite seriously while his victim detailed the history of this fictitious person whom he himself had invented; he assured her that the choice was a wise one, for he had known Delaitre for a long time as a man whose loyalty was beyond all doubt. As there could be no question of introducing him into the prison, Licquet kindly undertook to acquaint him with the service expected of him, and to give him the three letters which Mme. de Combray was to write immediately. The first, which was very confidential, was addressed to the good Delaitre himself; the second was to be handed, at the moment of going on board, to Maugé, a lawyer at Valery, who was to provide the necessary money for thefugitive's existence in England; the third accredited Delaitre to Mme. Acquet. The Marquise ordered her daughter to follow the honest Captain, whom she represented as a tried friend; she begged her, in her own interest and that of all their friends, to leave the country without losing a day; and she concluded by saying that in the event of her obeying immediately, she would provide generously for all her wants; then she signed and handed the three letters to Licquet, overwhelming him with protestations of gratitude.
All the detective had to do was to procure a false Delaitre, since the real did not exist. They selected an intelligent man, of suitable bearing, and making out a detailed passport, despatched him to Falaise, armed with the Marquise's letters, to have an interview with the laundress. Five days later he returned to Rouen. The Chauvels, on seeing Mme. de Combray's letters, quite unsuspectingly gave the messenger a warm welcome. The gendarme, however, did not approve of the idea of crossing to England. Mme. Acquet, he said, was very well hidden in Caen, and nobody suspected where she was. What was the use of exposing her to the risk of embarking at a well watched port. But as Delaitre insisted, saying that he had a commission from Mme. de Combray which he must carry out, Chauvel, whose duty kept him at Falaise, arranged to meet the Captain at Caen on the 2d of October. He wished to present him himself to Mme. Acquet, and to help his mistress in this matter on which her future depended. Thus it wasthat on the 1st of October, Licquet, now sure of success, put the false Captain Delaitre in the coach leaving for Caen, having given him as assistants, a nephew of the same name and a servant, both carefully chosen from amongst the wiliest of his assistants. The next day the three spies got out at the Hôtel du Pare in the Faubourg de Vaucelles at Caen, which Chauvel had fixed as the meeting-place, and whither he had promised to bring Mme. Acquet.
Six weeks previously, when quitting Falaise on the 23d August, after the examination to which Caffarelli had subjected her, Mme. Acquet, still ignorant of her mother's arrest, had proposed going to Tournebut, in order to hide there for some time before starting for Paris, where she hoped to find Le Chevalier. She had with her her third daughter, Céline, a child of six years, whom she counted on getting rid of by placing her at the school kept at Rouen by the ladies Dusaussay, where the two elder girls already were. They were accompanied by Chauvel's sister, a woman named Normand.
She went first to Caen where she was to take the diligence, and lodged with Bessin at the Coupe d'Or in the Rue Saint-Pierre. Chauvel came there the following day to say good-bye to his friend and they dined together. While they were at table, a man, whom the gendarme did not know, entered the room and said a few words to Mme. Acquet, who went into the adjoining room with him. It was Lemarchand, the innkeeper at Louvigny, Allain's host and friend. Chauvel grew anxiousat this private conversation, and seeing the time of the diligence was approaching, opened the door and warned Mme. Acquet that she must get ready to start. To his great surprise, she replied that she was no longer going, as important interests detained her in Caen. She begged him to escort the woman Normand and the little girl to the coach, and gave him the address of a lawyer in Rouen with whom the child could be left. The gendarme obeyed, and when he went back to the Coupe d'Or an hour later, his mistress had left. He returned sadly to Falaise.
Lemarchand, who had been informed of Mme. Acquet's journey, came to tell her, from Allain, that "a lodging had been found for her where she would be secure, and that, if she did not wish to go, she had only to come to the Promenade Saint-Julien at nightfall, and some one would meet her and escort her to her new hiding-place." It may well be that a threat of denouncing her, if she left the country, was added to this obliging offer. At any rate she was made to defer her journey. Towards ten o'clock at night, according to Lemarchand's advice, she reached the Promenade Saint-Julien alone, walked up and down under the trees for some time, and seeing two men seated on a bench, she went and sat down beside them. At first they eyed each other without saying a word; at last, one of the strangers asked her if she were not waiting for some one. Upon her answering in the affirmative they conferred for a moment, and then gave their names. They were the lawyer Vannier and Bureau de Placène, two intimate friends of Le Chevalier's. Mme. Acquet, in her turn, mentioned her name, and Vannier offering her his arm, escorted her to his house in the Rue Saint-Martin.
They held a council next day at breakfast. Lemarchand, Vannier, and Bureau de Placène appeared very anxious to keep Mme. Acquet. She was, they said, sure of not being punished as long as she did not quit the department of Calvados. Neither the prefect nor the magistrates would trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than 40,000 francs. Finding her ready to rejoin Le Chevalier, and persuaded that she would carry the remainder of this stolen money to her lover, they thought it well to stop her and the money, to which they believed they had a right—Lemarchand as Allain's friend and creditor, Placène in his capacity of cashier to the Chouans. The lawyer Vannier, as liquidator of Le Chevalier's debts, had offered to keep Mme. Acquet prisoner until they had succeeded in extorting the whole sum from her.
The life led by the unhappy woman at Vannier's, where she was a prey to this trio of scoundrels, was a purgatory of humiliations and misery. When the lawyer understood that not only didhis prisoner not possess a single sou, but that she could not dispose of the Buquets' treasure, he flew into a violent passion and plainly threatened to give her up to the police; he even reproached her "for what she eat," swearing that somehow or other "he would make her pay board, for he certainly was not going to feed her free of cost." The unhappy woman, who had spent her last louis in paying for the seat in the Rouen diligence, which she had not occupied, wrote to Lefebre early in September, begging him to send her a little money. He had received a large share of the plunder and might at least have shown himself generous; but he replied coolly that he could do nothing for her; and that she had better apply to Joseph Buquet.
This was exactly what they wished her to do. Vannier himself brutally advised her to try going to Donnay, even at the risk of being arrested, in order to bring back some money from there; and Lemarchand, rather than lose sight of her, resolved to accompany her.
Mme. Acquet, worn out and reduced to a state of subjection, consented to everything that was demanded of her. Dressed as a beggar, she took the road to Donnay where formerly she had ruled as sovereign mistress; she saw again the long avenues at the end of which the façade of the château, imposing still despite its decay, commanded a view of the three terraces of the park; she walked along by the walls to reach the Buquets' cottage where Joseph, who was hiding in the neighbouringwoods, occasionally returned to watch over his treasure. She surprised him there on this particular day, and implored him to come to her assistance but the peasant was inflexible; she obtained, however, the sum of one hundred and fifty francs, which he counted out to her in twelve-sou pieces and copper money. On the evening of her return to Caen Mme. Acquet faithfully made over the money to Vannier, reserving only fifteen francs for her trouble; moreover, she was obliged to submit to her host's obscene allusions as to the means she had employed to extort this ridiculous sum from Buquet. She bore everything unmoved; her indifference resembled stupefaction; she no longer appeared conscious of the horrors of her situation or the dangers to which she was exposed. Her happiest days were spent in walks round the town with Chauvel with whom she arranged meetings and who used to come from Falaise to pass a few hours with her; they went to a neighbouring village, dined there, and returned to the town at dusk.
Allain, too, showed some interest in her. He was hiding in the neighbourhood of Caen, and sometimes came in the evening to confer with Vannier in company with Bureau de Placène and a lawyer named Robert Langelley with whom her host had business dealings. They were all equally needed, and spent their time in planning means to make Joseph Buquet disgorge. Allain proposed only one plan, and it was adopted. Mme. Acquet was to go to Donnay again and try to soften the peasant; if he refused to show where the money was hidden, Allain was to spring on him and strangle him.
They set out from Caen one morning, about the 25th of September. Mme. Acquet had arranged to meet Joseph at the house of a farmer named Halbout, which was situated at some distance from the village of Donnay. He came at the appointed hour; but as he was approaching carefully, fearing an ambuscade, he caught sight of Allain hiding behind a hedge, and taking fright made off as fast as his legs could carry him.
They had to go back to Caen empty-handed and face the anger of Vannier, who accused his lodger of complicity with the Buquets to make their attempts miscarry. A fresh council was held, and this time Chauvel was admitted; he too, had a plan. This was that he and Mallet, one of his comrades, should go to Donnay in uniform; Langelley was to play the part of commissary of police. "They were to arrest Buquet on the part of the government; if he consented to say where the money was, he was to be given his liberty, and the address of a safe hiding-place; in case of his refusing, the police were to kill him, and they would then be free to draw up a report of contumacy."
The Marquise de Combray's daughter was present at these conferences, meek and resigned, her heart heavy at the thought that this wretched money would become the prey of these men who had had none of the trouble and who would have all the profit. Every day she sank deeper and deeper into this quagmire; the plots that were hatchedthere, the things she heard—for they showed no reserve before her—were horrible. As she represented 40,000 francs to these ruffians, she had to endure not only their brutal gallantries, but also their confidences. "Mme. Placène one day suggested the enforced disappearance of the baker Lerouge," says Bornet, as he was "very religious and a very good man," she was afraid that if he were arrested, "he would not consent to lie, and would ruin them all." Langelley specially feared the garrulity of Flierlé and Lanoë, in prison at Caen, and he was trying to get them poisoned. He had already made an arrangement "with the chemist and the prison doctor, whom he had under his thumb," and he also knew a man who "for a small sum, would create a disturbance in the town, allow himself to be arrested and condemned to a few months' imprisonment, and would thus find a way of getting rid of these individuals." They also spoke of Acquet, who was still in jail at Caen. In everybody's opinion Mme. Vannier was his mistress, and went to see him every day in his cell. He was supposed to be a government spy, and Placène pretended that Vannier received money from him to keep him informed of Mme. Acquet's doings. Langelley, for his part, said that Placène was a rogue and that if "he had already got his share of the plunder, he received at least as much again from the police."
The poor woman who formed the pivot of these intrigues was not spared by her unworthy accomplices. Having in mind Joseph Buquet and Chauvel, they all suspected one another ofhaving been her lovers. Vannier had thus made her pay for her hospitality; Langelley and the gendarme Mallet himself, had exacted the same price—accusations it was as impossible as it was useless to refute. She herself well knew her own abasement, and at times disgust seized her. On the evening of September 27th, she did not return to Vannier's; escaping from this hell, she craved shelter from a lacemaker named Adélaïde Monderard, who lodged in the Rue du Han, and who was Langelley's mistress. The girl consented to take her in and gave her up one of the two rooms which formed her lodgings, and which were reached by a very dark staircase. It was a poor room under the roof, lighted by two small casements, the furniture being of the shabbiest. Chauvel came to see her there the following day, and there it was that she learnt of the expected arrival of Captain Delaitre, sent by Mme. de Combray to save her, and secure her the means of going to England. Mme. Acquet manifested neither regret nor joy. She was astonished that her mother should think of her; but it seems that she did not attach great importance to this incident, which was to decide her fate. A single idea possessed her: how to find a retreat which would allow of her escaping from Vannier's hateful guardianship; and Langelley, who was very surprised at finding her at the lacemaker's, seeing her perplexity offered to escort her to a country house, about a league from the town, where his father lived. She set out with him that very evening; at the same hour the false Captain Delaitre left Rouen, and the ruse so cleverly planned by Licquet, put an end to Mme.Acquet's lamentable adventures.
Arriving at the Hôtel du Pare on October 2d, "Captain" Delaitre went to the window of his room and saw a man hurrying down the street with a very small woman on his arm, very poorly dressed. From his walk he recognised Chauvel dressed as a bourgeois; the woman was Mme. Acquet. The two men bowed, and Chauvel leaving his companion, went up to the Captain's room. "There were compliments, handshakes, the utmost confidence, as is usual between a soldier and a sailor." Chauvel explained that he had walked from Falaise that afternoon, and that in order to get off, he had pretended to his chiefs that private business took him to Bayonne. The false Delaitre immediately handed him Mme. de Combray's two letters which Chauvel read absently.
"Let us go down," he said; "the lady is near and awaits us."
They met her a few steps farther down the road in company with Langelley, whom Chauvel introduced to Delaitre. The latter immediately offered his arm to Mme. Acquet: Chauvel, Langelley and the "nephew Delaitre" followed at some distance. They passed the bridge and walked along by the river under the trees of the great promenade, talking all the time. It was now quite dark.