And this letter, so astonishing from the pen of an imperial prefect, was a sort of revenge for all the poor people for whom the police had laid such odious traps; it would remind Fouché of all the Licquets and Foisons who in the exercise of justice found matter for repugnant comedies. It was surprising that Licquet had had no hand in the affair of La Délivrande. Had he breathed it to Réal? It is possible, though there is no indication of his interference, albeit his manner is recognised in the scenario of the snare to which d'Aché fell a victim, and in the fact that he appeared at the end, coming from Rouen with his secretary Dupont, and the husband of the woman Levasseur who was said to have been d'Aché's mistress.
On the morning of September 23d, a meeting took place at seven o'clock at the Mayor of Luc's house. The doctors who had held the autopsy were there, Captain Mancel and Foison, who was in great agitation, although he tried to hide it, at having to assist at the exhumation of his victim. They started for the cemetery, and the grave-digger did his work. After fifteen minutes the shovel struck the board that covered d'Aché's body, and soon after the corpse was seen. The beard had grown thick and strong. Foison gazed at it. It was indeed the man with whom he had travelled a whole night, chatting amiably while each step brought him nearer to the assassins who were waiting for him. Licquet moved about with complete self-control, talking of the time when he had known the man who lay there, his face swollen but severe, his nose thin as an eagle's beak, his lips tightened. Suddenly the detective remembered a sign that he had formerly noted, and ordered the dead man's boots to be removed. All present could then see that d'Aché's"toe-nails were so grown over into his flesh that he walked on them." Foison also saw, and wishing to brave this corpse, more terrifying for him than for any one else, he stooped and opened the dead lips with the end of his cane. A wave of fetid air struck the assassin full in the face, and he fell backward with a cry of fear.
This incident terminated the enquiry; the body was returned to the earth, and those who had been present at the exhumation started for La Délivrande. Foison walked alone behind the others; no one spoke to him, and when they arrived at the mayor's, where all had been invited to dine, he remained on the threshold which he dared not cross, knowing that for the rest of his life he would never again enter the house of an honest man.
The same evening at Caen, where everything was known, although Fouché was still looking for Morin-Cochu, the vengeance of the corpse annihilating Foison was the topic of all conversations. There was a certain gaiety in the town, that was proud of its prefect's attitude. When the curtain went up at the theatre, while all the young "swells" were in the orchestra talking of the event that was agitating "society," they saw a blonde woman with a red scarf on her shoulders in one of the boxes. The first one that saw her could not believe his eyes: it was Mme. de Vaubadon! The name was at firstwhispered, then a murmur went round that at last broke into an uproar. The whole theatre rose trembling, and with raised fists cried: "Down with the murderess! She is the woman with the red shawl; it is stained with d'Aché's blood. Death to her!"
The unhappy woman tried to put on a bold face, and remained calm; it is supposed that Pontécoulant was in the theatre, and perhaps she hoped that he, at least, would champion her. But when she understood that in that crowd, among whom many perhaps had loved her, no one now would defend her, she rose and left her box, while some of the most excited hustled into the corridor to hoot her in passing. She at last escaped and got to her house in the Rue Guilbert, and the next day she left Caen forever.
Less culpable certainly, and now pitied by all to whom d'Aché's death recalled the affair of Quesnay, Mme. Acquet was spending her last days in the conciergerie at Rouen. After the petition for a reprieve on account of her pregnancy, and the visit of two doctors, who said they could not admit the truth of her plea, Ducolombier used all his efforts to obtain grace from the Emperor. As soon as the sentence was pronounced he had hurried to Paris in quest of means of approaching his Majesty. His relative, Mme. de Saint-Léonard, wife of the Mayor of Falaise, joined him there, and got her relatives in official circles to interest themselves. But the Emperor was then living in a state of continual agitation; Laeken, Mayence and Cassel were as familiar stopping-places as Saint-Cloud and Fontainebleau, and even if a few minutes' audience could be obtained, what hope was there of fixing his attention on the life of an insignificant woman? Chauveau-Lagarde advised the intervention of Mme. Acquet's three girls, the eldest now twelve, and the youngest not eight years old. Mourning garments were hastily bought for them, and they were sent to Paris on January 24th, with a Mlle. Bodinot. Every day they pursued the Emperor's carriage through the town, as he went to visit the manufactories. Timoléon, Mme. de Saint-Léonard, and Mlle. de Séran took turns with the children; they went to Malmaison, to Versailles, to Meudon. At last, on March 2d, at Sèvres, one of the children succeeded in getting to the door of the imperial carriage, and put a petition into the hands of an officer, but it probably never reached the Emperor, for this step that had cost so much money and trouble remained ineffectual.
There are among Mme. de Combray's papers more than ten drafts of petitions addressed to the Emperor's brothers, to Josephine, and even to foreign princes. But each of them had much to ask for himself, and all were afraid to importune the master. The latter was now in Germany, cutting his way to Vienna, and poor Mme. Acquet would have had slight place in his thoughts in spite of the illusions of her friends, had he ever even heard her name. In April the little Acquets returned to Mme. Dusaussay in Rouen. She wrote to Timoléon:
"I am not surprised that you were not satisfied with the children; until now they have only been restrained by fear, and the circumstances of the journey to Paris brought them petting and kindness of which they have taken too much advantage. If worse trouble comes to Mme. Acquet, we will do our best to keep them in ignorance of it, and it is to be hoped the same can be done for your mother."
And so all hope of grace seemed lost for the poor woman, and it would have been very easy to forget her in prison, for who could be specially interested in her death? Neither Fouché, Réal, the prefect nor even Licquet, who, once the verdict was given, seemed to have lost all animosity towards his victims. Only the imperial procurer, Chapais-Marivaux, seemed determined on the execution of the sentence. He had already caused two consultations to be held on the subject of Mme. Acquet's health. The specialists could not or would not decide upon it, and this gave some hope to Mme. de Combray, who from her cell in Bicêtre still presided over all efforts made for her daughter, and continued to hold a firm hand over her family.
As the Emperor had now entered Vienna in triumph, the Marquise thought it a good time to implore once more the conqueror's pity. She sent for her son Timoléon on June 1st. She had decided to send her two eldest grandchildren to Vienna with their aunt Mme. d'Houël and the faithful Ducolombier, who offered to undertake the long journey. Chauveau-Lagarde drew up a petition for the children to give to Napoleon, and they left Rouen about July 10th, arriving in Vienna the fortnight following the battle of Wagram. Ducolombier at once sought a means of seeing the Emperor. Hurried by the Marquise, who allowed no discussion of the methods that seemed good to her, he had started without recommendations, letters of introduction or promises of an audience, and had to wait for chance to give him a moment's interview with Napoleon. He established himself with Mme. d'Houël and the children at Schœbrünn, where the imperial quarters were, and by dint of solicitations obtained the privilege of going into the court of the château with other supplicants.
The Emperor was away; he had wished to revisit the scene of his brilliant victory, and during the whole day Ducolombier and his companions waited his return on the porch of the château. Towards evening the gate opened, the guard took up arms, drums beat and the Emperor appeared on horseback in the immense courtyard, preceded by his guides and his mameluke, and followed by a numerous staff. The hearts of the poor little Acquets must have beaten fast when they saw this master of the world from whom they were going to beg their mother's life. In a moment the Emperor was upon them; Ducolombier pushed them; they fell on their knees.
Seeing these mourning figures, Napoleon thought he had before him the widow and orphans of some officer killed during the campaign. He raised the children kindly.
"Sire! Give us back our mother!" they sobbed.
The Emperor, much surprised, took the petition from Mme. d'Houël's hands and read it through. There were a few moments of painful silence; he raised his eyes to the little girls, asked Ducolombier a few brief questions, then suddenly starting on,
"I cannot," he said drily.
And he disappeared among the groups humbly bowing in the hall. Some one who witnessed the scene relates that the Emperor was very much moved when reading the petition. "He changed colour several times, tears were in his eyes and his voice trembled." The Duke of Rovigo asserted that pardon would be granted; the Emperor's heart had already pronounced it, but he was very angry with the minister of police, who after having made a great fuss over this affair and got all the credit, left him supreme arbiter without having given him any information concerning it.
"If the case is a worthy one," said Napoleon, "why did he not send me word of it? and if it is not, why did he give passports to a family whom I am obliged to send away in despair?"
The poor children had indeed to return to France, knowing that they took, as it were, her death sentence to their mother. Each relay that brought them nearer to her was a step towards the scaffold; nothing could now save the poor woman, and she waited in resignation. Never, since Le Chevalier's death, had she lost the impassive manner that had astonished the spectators in court. Whether solitude had altered her ardent nature, or whether she looked on death as the only possible end to her adventurous existence, she seemed indifferent as to her fate, and thought no longer of the future. Licquet had long abandoned her; he had been "her last friend." Of all the survivors of the affair of Quesnay she was the only one left in the conciergerie, the others having gone to serve their terms in Bicêtre or other fortresses.
Whilst it had seemed possible that Mme. Acquet's friends might obtain the Emperor's interest in her case, she had received great care and attention, but since the return of her daughters from Vienna things had changed. She had become once more "the woman Acquet," and the interest that had been taken in her gave place to brutal indifference. On August 23d (and this date probably accords with the return of the children and their aunt) Chapais-Marivaux, in haste to end the affair, sent three health-officers to examine her, but these good people, knowing the consequence of their diagnosis, declared that "the symptoms made it impossible for them to pronounce an opinion on the state of the prisoner."
Chapais-Marivaux took a month to find doctors who would not allow pity to interfere with their professional duty, and on October 6th the prefect wrote to Réal: "M. le Procureur-Général has just had the woman Acquet examined by four surgeons, three of whom had not seen her before. They have certified that she is not pregnant, and so she is to be executed to-day."
We know nothing of the way in which she prepared for death, nor of the feeling which the news of her imminent execution must have occasioned in the prison; but when she was handed over to the executioner for the final arrangements, Mme. Acquet wrote two or three letters to beg that her children might never fall into her husband's hands. Her toilet wasthen made; her beautiful black hair, which she had cut off on coming to the conciergerie two years previously, fell now under the executioner's scissors; she put on a sort of jacket of white flannel, and her hands were tied behind her back. She was now ready; it was half past four in the afternoon, the doors opened, and a squad of gendarmes surrounded the cart.
The cortège went by the "Gros-Horloge" to the "Vieux-Marché." Some one who saw Mme. Acquet pass, seated in the cart beside the executioner Ferey, says that "her white dress and short black hair blowing in her face made the paleness of her skin conspicuous; she was neither downcast nor bold; the sentence was cried aloud beside the cart."
She died calmly, as she had lived for months. At five o'clock she appeared on the platform, very white and very tranquil; unresisting, she let them tie her; without fear or cry she lay on the board which swung and carried her under the knife. Her head fell without anything happening to retard the execution, and the authorities congratulated themselves on the fact in the report sent to Réal that evening: "The thing caused no greater sensation than that ordinarily produced by similar events; the rather large crowd did not give the slightest trouble."
And thosewho had stayed to watch the scaffold disappeared before the gendarmes escorting the men who had come to take away the body. A few followed it to the cemetery of Saint-Maur where the criminals were usually buried. The basket was emptied into a ditch that had been dug not far from a young tree to which some unknown hand had attached a black ribbon, to mark the spot which neither cross nor tombstone might adorn. The rain and wind soon destroyed this last sign; and nothing now remains to show the corner of earth in the deserted and abandoned cemetery in which still lies the body of the woman whose rank in other times would have merited the traditional epitaph: "A very high, noble and powerful lady."
A letter in a woman's handwriting, addressed to Timoléon de Combray, Hôtel de la Loi, Rue de Richelieu, its black seal hastily broken, contains these words: "Alas, my dear cousin, you still continued to hope when all hope was over.... I cannot leave your mother and I am anxious about M. de Bonnœil's condition."
This is all that we can glean of the manner in which Mme. Acquet's mother and brothers learned of her execution on October 6th. Mme. de Combray at least displayed a good deal of energy, if not great calmness. After the winter began, the letters she wrote Timoléon regained their natural tone. The great sorrow seems to have been forgotten; they all were leagued together against Acquet, who still reigned triumphant at Donnay, and threatened to absorb the fortune of the whole family. The trial had cost an enormous sum. Besides the money stolen in the woods at Quesnay, which the Marquise had to refund, she had been obliged to spend money freely in order to "corrupt Licquet," for Chauveau-Lagarde's fee, for her advocate Maître Gady de la Vigne, and for Ducolombier's journeys to Paris and Vienna with the little girls,—the whole outlay amounting to nearly 125,000 francs; and as the farms at Tournebut were tenantless, while Acquet retained all the estates in lower Normandy and would not allow them anything, the Marquise and her sons found their income reduced to almost nothing. There remained not a single crown of the 25,000 francs deposited in August, 1807, with Legrand. All had been spent on "necessaries for the prisoners, or in their interests."
Acquet was intractable. When the time for settling up came, he refused insolently to pay his share of the lawsuit or for his children's education. "Mme. de Combray, in order to carry out her own frenziedplots," he stated, "had foolishly used her daughter's money in paying her accomplices, and now she came and complained that Mme. Acquet lacked bread and that she supported her, besides paying for the children's schooling.... Mme. Acquet left her husband's house on the advice of her mother who wished to make an accomplice of her. They took away the children, their father did not even know the place of their retreat, and the very persons who had abducted them came and asked him for the cost of their maintenance."
This was his plea; to which the Combrays replied: "The fee of Mme. Acquet's lawyer, the expenses of the journey to Vienna and of the little girls' stay in Paris that they might beg for their mother's pardon, devolved, if not on the prisoner's husband, at least on her young children as her heirs; and in any case Acquet ought to pay the bill." But the latter, who was placed in a very strong position by the services he had rendered Réal and by the protection of Pontécoulant, with whom he had associated himself, replied that Chauveau-Lagarde, while pretending to plead for Mme. Acquet, had in reality only defended Mme. de Combray: "All Rouen who heard the counsel's speech bears witness that the daughter was sacrificed to save the mother.... The real object of their solicitude had been the Marquise. Certainly they took very little interest in their sister, and the moment her eyes were closed in death, were base enough to ask for her funeral expenses in court, and hastened to denounce her children to the Minister of Public Affairs in order that they might be forced to pay for the sentence pronounced against their mother."
The case thus stated, the discussion could only become a scandal. Bonnœil disclosed the fact that his brother-in-law, on being asked by a third person what influences he could bring to bear in order to obtain Mme. Acquet's pardon, had replied that "such steps offered little chance of success, and that from the moment the unhappy woman was condemned, the best way to save her from dying on the scaffold, would be to poison her in prison." A fresh suit was begun. The correspondence which passed between the exasperated Combrays and their brother-in-law, who succeeded in maintaining his self-control, must have made all reconciliation impossible. A letter in Bonnœil's handwriting is sufficient to illustrate the style:
"Is it charitable for an old French chevalier, a defender of the Faith and of the Throne, to increase the sorrows on which his two brothers-in-law are feeding in the silence of oblivion? Does he hope in his exasperation that he will be able to force them into a repetition of the story of the crimes committed by Desrues, Cartouche, Pugatscheff, Shinderhannes, and other impostors, thieves, garrotters and ruffians, who have rendered themselves famous by their murders, poisonings, cruelties and cowardly actions? They promise that, once their case is decided, they will not again trouble Sieur Acquet de Férolles."
"Is it charitable for an old French chevalier, a defender of the Faith and of the Throne, to increase the sorrows on which his two brothers-in-law are feeding in the silence of oblivion? Does he hope in his exasperation that he will be able to force them into a repetition of the story of the crimes committed by Desrues, Cartouche, Pugatscheff, Shinderhannes, and other impostors, thieves, garrotters and ruffians, who have rendered themselves famous by their murders, poisonings, cruelties and cowardly actions? They promise that, once their case is decided, they will not again trouble Sieur Acquet de Férolles."
The invectives were, to say the least, ill-timed. The Combrays had gone to law in order to force this man, whom they compared to the most celebrated assassins, to undertake the education of their sister's three children. These orphans, for whose schooling at the Misses Dusaussay's no one was ready to pay, were pitied by all who knew of their situation. Some pious ladies mentioned it to the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, who kindly offered to subscribe towards the cost of their education. The Combrays proudly refused, for which Acquet naturally blamed them. "They think their nieces would be dishonoured by accepting a favour," he wrote.
Mme. de Combray might perhaps have yielded, if any one had made her understand that her granddaughters were the only stake she had left. In fact, since Mme. Acquet's death, no stone had been left unturned to obtain the old Marquise's pardon. Ducolombier even went to Navarre to entreat the help of the Empress Joséphine, whose credit did not stand very high. We can understand that after the official notification of the imperial divorce, and as soon as the great event became known, the Combrays, renouncing their relationship (which was of the very slightest) with the Tascher de la Pageries, began immediately to count in advance on the clemency of the future Empress, be she who she might. When it was certain that an Archduchess was to succeed General Beauharnais's widow on the throne of France, Ducolombier set out for Vienna in the hope of outstripping the innumerable host of those who went there as petitioners. It does not appear that he got farther than Carlsruhe, and his journey was absolutely fruitless; but it soon became known that the imperial couple intended making a triumphal progress through the north of France, ending at Havre or Rouen, and it was then decided that the little Acquets should appear again.
At three o'clock in the afternoon of May 30th, the Emperor and Empress arrived at Rouen. Ducolombier, walking in front of the three little girls, who were escorted by Mlle. Querey, tried to force a passage for them through the streets leading to the imperial residence, but could not get into the house, and was obliged to content himself with handing the petition, drawn up by Chauveau-Legarde, to the King of Westphalia. He hoped the next day to be able to place the children on the Emperor's route as he was on his way to visit some spinning mills; but as soon as he was in the street with the orphans, he learnt that Napoleon had inspected the factories at half past three in the morning, and that his departure was fixed for ten o'clock. Branzon, a revenue collector and friend of Licquet's procured the little Acquets a card from the prefect, by showing which they were allowed to wait at the door of the Emperor's residence. We quote the very words of the letter written the same day by Ducolombier to Bonnœil and the old Marquise:
"Mlle. Querey and the three little girls were permitted to wait at the door of the prefecture where, as you must know, they allow no one. As soon as their Majesties' carriage came out, little Caroline cried out to the Empress. The Emperor lowered the window to take the petition, and handed it to the Empress, as it was meant for her. The Empress bent forward in order to see them...."
"Mlle. Querey and the three little girls were permitted to wait at the door of the prefecture where, as you must know, they allow no one. As soon as their Majesties' carriage came out, little Caroline cried out to the Empress. The Emperor lowered the window to take the petition, and handed it to the Empress, as it was meant for her. The Empress bent forward in order to see them...."
This time their confidence was unbounded. The old Marquise was already congratulated on her approaching liberation; but days passed and nothing more was heard of it. They waited patiently for a year, their hopes growing fainter each day, and when it became only too evident that the petition had had no effect, Timoléon ventured to remind the Empress of it, and drew up in his own name a fresh request for his mother's pardon, with no better result than before. A supreme and useless effort was made on the 30th of August, 1813, when Marie Louise was Empress-Queen-Regent. At this time Bonnœil had at length been let out of prison, where he had been unjustly detained since August, 1807. He had not appeared before the court, and consequently was not condemned, but was detained as a "precautionary measure." As his health was much impaired by his stay at the conciergerie, the prefect took it upon himself to have him removed, and placed him at Rouen under the supervision of the police.
For there he could at least keep himself informed of what was going on. If the newspapers gave but little news, he could still collect the rumours of the town. Doubtless he was the first to advise hismother to submit to her fate; and from this very moment the Marquise displayed an astonishing serenity, as if she in fact foresaw the fall of him whom she considered her personal enemy. She had accustomed herself very quickly to life in the prison to which she had been transferred in 1813. The rules were not very strict for those inmates who had a little money to spend; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board and her book of rules, and calmly awaited the long-hoped-for thunderbolt.
It fell at length, and the old Chouan must have flushed with triumph when she heard that Bonaparte was crushed. What a sudden change! In less than a day, the prisoner became again the venerable Marquise de Combray, a victim to her devotion to the royal cause, a heroine, a martyr, a saint; while at the other end of Normandy, Acquet de Férolles, who had at last decided to take in his three children, felt the ground tremble under his feet, and hurriedly made his preparations for flight. In their eagerness to make themselves acceptable to the Combrays, people "who would not have raised a finger to help them when they were overwhelmed with misfortune," now revealed to them things that had hitherto been hidden from them; and thus the Marquise and her sons learned how Senator Pontécoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin," had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Férolles," to hand over d'Aché to assassins. Proscribed royalists emerged on all sides from the holes where they had been burrowing for the last fifteen years. There was a spirit of retaliation in the air. Every one was making up his account and writing out the bill. In this home of the Chouannerie, where hatred ran rife and there were so many bitter desires for revenge, a terrible reaction set in. The short notes, which the Marquise exchanged with her sons and servants during the last few days of her captivity, expressed neither joy at the Princes' return nor happiness at her own restoration to liberty. They might be summed up in these words: "It is our turn now," and the germ of the dark history of the Restoration and the revolutions which followed it is contained in the outpourings of this embittered heart, which nothing save vengeance could henceforth satisfy.
On Sunday, May 1st, 1814, at the hour when Louis XVIII was to enter Saint Ouen, the doors of the prison were opened for the Marquise de Combray, who slept the following night at her house in the Rue des Carmélites. The next day at 1.30p.m.she set out for Tournebut with Mlle. Querey; her bailiff, Leclerc, came as far as Rouen to fetch her in his trap. All the public conveyances were overcrowded; on the roads leading to Paris there was an uninterrupted stream of vehicles of all sorts, of cavaliers and of foot passengers, all hurrying to see the King's return to his capital. Bonnœil, who was at last delivered from police supervision, had to set out on foot for Tournebut; he walked the distance during the night, and arrived in the morning to find his mother already installed there and making an inspection of the despoiled old château which she had never thought to see again. The astonishing reversions of fate make one think of the successwhich the opera "La Dame Blanche" had some years later. This charming work sang their own history to these nobles who were still smarting, and recalled to them their ruined past. The abandoned "Château d'Avenel," the "poor Dame Marguerite" spinning in the deserted halls and dreaming of her masters, the mysterious being who watched over the destinies of the noble family, and the amusing revival of those last vestiges of feudal times, the bailiff, the bell in the turret, the gallant paladin, the knight's banner—all these things saddened our grandmothers by arousing the melancholy spectre of the good old times.
At the beginning of August, 1814, Guérin-Bruslart, who had become M. le Chevalier de Bruslard, Field Marshal in the King's army, attracted his Majesty's attention to the survivors of the affair of Quesnay. He took Le Chevalier's son, aged twelve years, to the Tuileries, and the King accorded him a pension and a scholarship at one of the royal colleges. The very same day Louis XVIII signed a royal pardon, which the Court of Rouen ratified a few days later, by which Mme. de Combray's sentence was annulled. On September 5th the Marquise saw her wildest dream realised and was presented to the King—a fact which was mentioned in theMoniteurof the following day.
This signal favour rallied many to the Combrays. Denunciations of Acquet and his friends were heard on all sides. The letters written at this period from Bonnœil to his brother testify to the astonishment they felt at these revelations. They made a fresh discovery every day. "M. Bruslard told me the other day that La Vaubadon wished to have him arrested, but that he took care not to fall into the trap she had set for him." "With regard to Licquet, he knew d'Aché well and had made up to him before the affair with Georges, believing at that time that there would be a change of government." "It is quite certain that it was Senator Pontécoulant who had d'Aché killed; Frotté's death was partly due to him." "With regard to Acquet, M. de Rivoire told Placène that he had been seen in the temple about six years ago, and that every one there considered him a spy and an informer...."
Thus, little by little Mme. de Combray arrived at the conclusion that all her misfortunes had been caused by her enemies' hatred. In 1815 a biographer published a life of the Marquise, which was preceded by a dedication to herself which she had evidently dictated, and which placed her high up in the list of royalist martyrs.
This halo pleased her immensely. She was present at the fêtes given at the Rouen prefecture, where she walked triumphantly—still holding herself very erect and wearing lilies in her hair—through the very halls into which she had once been dragged handcuffed by Savoye-Rollin's gaolers. At dinners where she was an honoured guest she would recount, with astonishing calmness, her impressions of the pillory and the prisons. She sent a confidential agent to Donnay "to obtain news of the Sieur Acquet," who was not at all satisfied and by no means at ease, as we can well imagine. It was said that he had sent for his sister to come and take care of his three children, the eldest of whom was nearly twenty years of age. Acquet pretended to be ill in order to defer his departure from Donnay. He finally quitted Normandy early in the autumn of 1814, taking with him his three daughters, "whom he counted on marrying off in his own home." "He is without house or home," wrote Mme. de Combray, "and possesses nothing but the shame by which he is covered." Acquet de Férolles settled at Saint-Hilaire-de-Tulmont, where he died on April 6th, 1815.
With the Hundred Days came another sudden change. At the first rumour of Bonaparte's landing, Mme. de Combray set out for the coast and crossed to England. If the alarm was intense, it lasted but a short time. In July, 1815, the Marquise returned to Tournebut, which she busied herself with repairing. She found scope for her energy in directing the workmen, in superintending to the smallest detail the administration of her estate, and in looking after her household with the particularity of former times. Although Louis XVIII's Jacobinism seems to have been the first thing that disillusioned the old royalist, she was none the less the Lady of Tournebut, and within the limits of her estate she could still believe that she had returned to the days before 1789. She still had her seat at church, and her name was to be found in 1819 inscribed on the bell at Aubevoye of which she was patroness.
Mme. de Combray never again quitted Tournebut, where she lived with her son Bonnœil, waited upon by Catherine Querey, who had been faithful to her in her misfortunes. Except for this faithful girl, the Marquise had made a clean sweep of all her old servants. None of them are to be found among the persons who surrounded her during the Restoration. These were a maid, Henriette Lerebour, a niece of Mlle. Querey; a cook, a coachman and a footman. During the years that followed, there was an incessant coming and going of workmen at Tournebut. In 1823 the château and its surrounding walls were still undergoing repairs. In the middle of October of the same year, Mme. de Combray, who was worn out, took to her bed. On the morning of Thursday, the 23d, it was reported that she was very ill, and two village women were engaged to nurse her. At eight o'clock in the evening the tolling of the bells announced that the Marquise was no more.
Her age was eighty-one years and nine months. When the judge called on Friday, at Bonnœil's special request, to affix seals to her effects, he asked to be taken first into the chamber of death, where he saw the Marquise lying in her painted wooden bed, hung with chintz curtains. The funeral took place at the church of Aubevoye, the poor of the village forming an escort to the coffin which the men carried on their shoulders. After the service it was laid in a grave dug under a large dark tree at the entrance to the cemetery. The tomb, which is carefully kept, bears to this day a quite legible inscription setting forth in clumsy Latin the Marquise de Combray's extraordinary history.
The liquidation of her debts, which followed on her decease and the division of her property, brought Acquet de Férolles' daughters to Tournebut, all three of whom were well married. In making an inventory of the furniture in the château, they found amongst things forgotten in the attic the harp on which their mother had played when as a young girl she had lived at Tournebut, and a saddle which the "dragoon" may have used on her nocturnal rides towards the hill of Authevernes in pursuit of coaches.
Mme. de Combray's sons kept Tournebut, and Bonnœil continued to live there. There are many people in Aubevoye who remember him. He was a tall old man, with almost the figure of an athlete, though quite bowed and bent. His eyebrows were grizzled and bushy, his eyes large and very dark, his complexion sunburned. He was somewhat gloomy, and seemed to care for nothing but to talk with a very faded and wrinkled old woman in a tall goffered cap, who was an object of veneration to everybody. This was Mlle. Querey. All were aware she had been Mme. de Combray's confidante and knew all the Marquise's secrets: and she was often seen talking at great length to Bonnœil about the past.
Bonnœil died at Tournebut in 1846, at the age of eighty-four, and the manor of Marillac did not long outlast him. Put up for sale in 1856, it was demolished in the following year and replaced by a large and splendid villa. While the walls of the old château were being demolished, the peasants of Aubevoye, who had so often listened to the legends concerning it, displayed great curiosity as to the mysteries which the demolition would disclose. Nothing was discovered but a partly filled up subterranean passage, which seemed to run towards the small château. The secret of the other hiding-places had long been known. A careful examination of the old dwelling produced only one surprise. A portmanteau containing 3,000 francs in crowns and double-louis was found in a dark attic. Mme. de Combray's grandchildren knew so little of the drama of their house, that no one thought of connecting this find with the affairs of Quesnay, of which they had scarcely ever heard. It seems probable that this portmanteau belonged to the lawyer Lefebre and was hidden by him, unknown to the Marquise, in the hope of being able to recover it later on.
A very few words will suffice to tell the fate of the other actors in this drama. Licquet was unfortunate; but first of all he asked for the cross of the Legion of Honour. "I have served the government for twenty years," he wrote to Réal. "I bristle with titles. I am the father of a family and am looked up to by the authorities. My only ambition is honour, and I am bold enough to ask for a sign. Will you be kind enough to obtain it for me?" Did Réal not dare to stand sponsor for such a candidate? Did they think that the cross, given hitherto soparsimoniously to civilians, was not meant for the police? Licquet was obliged to wait in patience. In the hope of increasing his claims to the honour he coveted, he went in quest of new achievements, and had the good fortune to discover a second attack on a coach, far less picturesque, as a matter of fact, than the one to which he owed his fame, but which he undertook to work up like a master, and did it so well, by dint of disguises, forged letters, surprised confidences, the invention of imaginary persons, and other melodramatic tricks, that he succeeded in producing at the Criminal Court at Evreux seven prisoners against whom the evidence was so well concocted that five at least were in danger of losing their heads. But when the imperial Procurator arrived at the place, instead of accepting the work as completed, he carefully examined the papers referring to the inquiry. Disgusted at the means used to drag confessions from the accused, and indignant that his name should have been associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure, which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the Procurator himself generously demanded.
The blow fell all the heavier on Licquet as he was at the time deeply compromised in the frauds of his friend Branzon, a collector at Rouen, whose malversations had caused the ruin of Savoye-Rollin. The prefect's innocence was firmly established, but Branzon, who had already been imprisoned as a Chouan in the Temple, and whose history must have been a very varied one, was condemned to twelve years' imprisonment in chains.
This also was a blow to Licquet. Realising, during the early days of the Restoration, that the game he had played had brought him more enemies than friends, he thought it wise to leave Rouen, and like so many others lose himself among the police in Paris. Doubtless he was not idle while he was there, and if the fire of 1871 had not destroyed the archives of the prefecture, it would have been interesting to search for traces of him. We seem to recognise his methods in the strangely dubious affair of the false dauphin, Mathurin Bruneau. This obscure intrigue was connected with Rouen; his friend Branzon, who was detained at Bicêtre, was the manager of it. A certain Joseph Paulin figured in it—a strange person, who boasted of having received the son of Louis XVI at the door of the temple and, for this reason, was a partisan of two dauphins. Joseph Paulin was, in my opinion, a very cunning detective, who was, moreover, charged with the surveillance of the believers, sincere or otherwise, in the survival of Louis XVII. In order the better to gain their confidence, he pretended to have had a hand in the young King's flight. With the exception of a few plausible allegations, the accounts he gave of his wonderful adventures do not bear investigation. What makes usthink that he was Licquet's pupil, or that at least he had some connection with the police of Rouen, is that in 1817, at the time of the Bruneau intrigue, we find him marrying the woman, Delaitre, aged forty-six, and living on an allowance from the parish and a sum left him "by a person who had died at Bicêtre." The woman Delaitre seemed to be identical with the spy whom Licquet had so cleverly utilised.
Joseph Paulin died in 1842; his wife survived him twenty years, dying at last in the Rue Croix de Fer at the age of ninety-one. Up to the time of her death she received a small pension from the town. As to Licquet, he lived to one hundred—but without any decoration—in his lodging in the Rue Saint-Lé. The old man's walks in the streets which were so familiar to him, must have been rich in memories. The "Gros-Horloge" under which the tumbrils had passed; the "Vieux-Marché," where so many heads had fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where the graves of his victims grew green; Bicêtre, the old conciergerie, the palace itself, which he could see from his windows,—all these objects must have called up to his mind painful recollections. The certificate of his death, which bears the date February 7, 1855, simply describes him as an ex-advocate.
Querelle, whose denunciation ruined Georges Cadoudal, was set at liberty at the end of a year. Besides his life, Desmarets had promised him the sum of 80,000 francs to pay his debts with, but as they were in no hurry to hand him the money, his creditors lost patience and had him shut up in Sainte-Pelagie. Desmarets at last decided to pay up, and Querelle was sent to Piémont, where he lived on a small pension from the government. In 1814 we find those of Georges' accomplices who had escaped the scaffold—among whom were Hozier and Amand Gaillard,—scattered among the prisons of the kingdom, in the fortresses of Ham, Joux, and Bouillon. Others who had been sent under surveillance forty leagues from Paris and the seacoast, reappeared, ruined by ten years of enforced idleness, threats and annoyances. Vannier the lawyer died in prison at Brest; Bureau de Placène, who was let out of prison at the Restoration, assisted Bruslard in the distribution of the rewards granted by the King to those who had helped on the good cause. Allain, who had been condemned to death for contumacy by the decree of Rouen, gave himself up in 1815. He was immediately set free, and a pension granted him. Seeing which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the 43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived "rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's confidante, she was kept in prison till 1814. Being released on the King's return she immediately took refuge in a convent where she spent the rest of her life.
Mme. de Vaubadon, wholived disguised under the name of Tourville, which had been her mother's, died in misery in a dirty lodging-house at Belleville on January 23, 1848; her body was borne on the following day to the parish cemetery, where the old register proves that no one bought a corner of ground for her where she could rest in peace. M. de Vaubadon had died eight years previously, having pardoned her some years before.
Certain of the inhabitants of Saint-Lô still remember the tall old man, always gloomy and with a pale complexion, who seemed to have only one idea, and who, to the last day of his life, loved and defended the woman to whom he had given his name. As for Foison, the murderer, he was made a lieutenant and received the cross of the Legion of Honour. Caffarelli, to whose lot it fell to present it to him, excused himself on a plea of necessary absence. M. Lance, the Secretary-General for the prefecture, who was obliged to take his place, could not, as he bestowed the decoration, refrain "from letting him observe the disgust he felt for his person, and the shame he experienced at seeing the star of the brave thus profaned." M. Lance was dismissed at the instance of Foison, who, soon afterwards, was made an officer, and despatched to the army in Spain, whither his reputation had preceded him. Tradition assures us that an avenger had reserved for him a death similar to d'Aché's, and that he was found on the road one morning pierced with bullets. Nothing is farther from the truth. Foison became a captain and lived till 1843.
D'Aché's family, which returned to Gournay after Georges Cadoudal's execution, was disturbed afresh at Mme. de Combray's arrest. As we have said before, Licquet had had Jean Baptiste de Caqueray (who had married Louise d'Aché in 1806) brought handcuffed into Rouen, but had scarcely examined him. "Caqueray," he wrote, "is quite innocent; he quarrelled with his father-in-law;" and he dismissed him with this remark: "If only he had known the prey he was allowing to escape!" Up to 1814 Caqueray did not again attract the attention of the police. At the Restoration he was made a captain of gendarmes. His wife Louise d'Aché was in 1815 appointed lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Bourbon, by whom she had in part been brought up, being on her mother's side the niece of the gentle Vicomte de Roquefeuille, who had previously "consoled the Duchess so tenderly for the desertion of her inconstant husband." Louise d'Aché died in 1817, and her sister Alexandrine, who was unmarried, was in her turn summoned to the Princess, and took the title of Comtesse d'Aché. In spite of the Princes' favour, Caqueray remained a captain of gendarmes till he left the service in 1830. It was only then made known that in 1804, at the time of Querelle's disclosures and of the journey undertaken by Savary to Biville, to surprise a fourth landing of conspirators, it was he, Jean-Baptiste de Caqueray, who, warned by a messenger from Georges that "all were compromised," started from Gournay on horseback, reached the farm of La Poterie in twelve hours, crossed three lines of gendarmes, and signalled to the English brig which was tacking along the coast, to stand out to sea. Caqueray immediately remounted his horse, endured the fire of an ambuscade, flung himself into the forest of Eu, and succeeded in reaching Gournay before his absence had been noticed, and just in time to receive a visit from Captain Manginot, who, as we have already related, sent him to the Temple with Mme. d'Aché and Louise.
Caqueray died in 1834, leaving several children quite unprovided for. They were, however, adopted by their grandmother, d'Aché's widow, who survived her daughters and son-in-law. She was small and had never been pretty, but had very distinguished and imposing manners. She is said to have made the following answer to a great judge who, at the time of her arrest, asked her where her husband was: "You doubtless do not know, Monsieur, whom you are addressing." From that time they ceased questioning her. She lived on till 1836. She was never heard to complain, though she and her family had lived in great poverty and known constant anxiety. She had lost her money, and her husband had died at the hand of a treacherous assassin. All her children had gone before her, and in spite of all her misfortunes, and old though she was, she still strove to bring up her grandchildren "to love their lawful King," for whose sake she had now nothing left to sacrifice.
Perhaps in the course of that tragic night when the defeated Napoleon found himself alone in deserted Fontainebleau, the great Emperor's mind may have reverted jealously to those stubborn royalists whom neither their Princes' apathy nor the certainty of never being rewarded could daunt. At that very moment the generals whom he had loaded with titles and wealth were hastening to meet the Bourbons. He had not one friend left among the hundred million people he had governed in the day of his power. His mameluke had quitted him, his valet had fled. And if he thought of Georges guillotined in the Place de la Grève, of Le Chevalier who fell at the wall at Grenelle, of d'Aché stabbed on the road, he must also have thought of the speech ascribed to Cromwell: "Who would do the like for me?"
And perhaps of all his pangs this was the cruellest and most vengeful. His cause must, in its turn, be sanctified by misfortune to gain its fanatics and its martyrs.