The House of the Combrays Part 13

"Come," he said, "it is Twelfth-Night, and it is a fine day; have a ma.s.s said for us, and get breakfast ready. I shall be back in two hours."

Two hours later Inspector Pasque restored him to the Temple, and saw that he was put "hands and feet in irons, in the most rigorous seclusion, under the surveillance of a police agent who was not to leave him day or night."

The same evening Fouche sent the Emperor a report which contained no mention of the chivalrous conduct of Le Chevalier; it said that "the police had seized this brigand at the house of a woman with whom he had relations, and that they had succeeded in throwing themselves upon him before he could use his weapons." On the morning of the 9th, Commandant Durand, of the staff, presented himself at the Temple, and had the irons removed from the prisoner, who appeared at noon before a military commission in a hall in the staff office, 7 Quoi Voltaire. This expeditious magistracy was so sparing of its paper and ink that it took no notes. It played, in the social organisation, the role of a trap into which were thrust such people as were found embarra.s.sing. Some were condemned whose fate is only known because their names have been found scribbled on a torn paper that served as an envelope for police reports.

Le Chevalier was condemned to death; he left the office of the staff at four o'clock and was thrown into the Abbaye to await execution. While the preparations were being made he wrote the following letter to Mme.

Thiboust who had been three days without news, and it reached the poor woman the next day.

"_Sat.u.r.day_, 9 January, 1808.

"I am going to die, my sister, and I bequeath you my son. I do not doubt that you will show him all a mother's tenderness and care. I beg you also to have all the firmness and vigilance that I should have had in forming his character and heart.

"Unfortunately, in leaving you the child that is so dear to me, I cannot also leave you a fortune equal to that which I inherited from my parents. I reproach myself, more than for any other fault in my life, for having diminished the inheritance they transmitted to me. Bring him up according to his actual fortune, and make him an artisan, if you must, rather than commit him to the care of strangers.

"One of my greatest regrets in quitting this life, is leaving it without having shown my grat.i.tude to you and your daughter.

"Good-bye; I shall live, I hope, in your remembrance, and you will keep me alive in that of my son.

"Le Chevalier."

Night had come--a cold misty winter night--when the cab that was to take the prisoner to his execution arrived at the door of the Abbaye. It was a long way from Saint-Germain-des-Pres to the barriers by way of the Rue du Four and Rue de Grenelle, the Avenue de l'ecole Militaire, and the tortuous way that is now the Rue Dupleix. The damp fog made the night seem darker; few persons were about, and the scene must have been peculiarly gloomy and forbidding. The cab stopped in the angle formed by the barrier of Grenelle, and on the bare ground the condemned man stood with his back to the wall of the enclosure. It was the custom at night executions to place a lighted lantern on the breast of the victim as a target for the men.

It was all over at six o'clock. While the troop was returning to town the grave-diggers took the corpse which had fallen beneath the wall and carried it to the cemetery of Vaugirard; a neighbouring gardener and an old man of eighty, whom curiosity had led to the corpse of this unknown Chouan, served as witnesses to the death certificate.

The death of Le Chevalier put an end to the prosecution of the affair of Quesnay. He was one of those prisoners of whom the grand judge said "that they could not be set at liberty, but that the good of the State required that they should not appear before the judges"; and they feared that by pushing the investigations farther they might bring on some great political trial that would agitate the whole west of France, always ready for an insurrection, and shown in the reports to be organised for a new Chouan outburst. It is certain that d'Ache's capture would have embarra.s.sed Fouche seriously, and in default of causing him to disappear like Le Chevalier, he would much have preferred to see him escape the pursuit of his agents. The absence of these two leaders in the plot would enable him to represent the robbery of June 7th, as a simple act of brigandage which had no political significance whatever.

They therefore imposed silence on the gabblings of Lefebre, who had become a prey to such incontinence of denunciations that he only stopped them to lament his fate and curse those who had drawn him into the adventure; they moderated Licquet's zeal, and the prefect confided to him the drawing up of the general report of the affair, a task of which he acquitted himself so well that his voluminous work seemed to Fouche "sufficiently luminous and circ.u.mstantial to be submitted as it was to his Majesty."

Then they began, but in no haste, to concern themselves with the trial of the other prisoners. It was necessary, according to custom, to interrogate and confront the forty-seven persons imprisoned; of this number the prosecution only held thirty-two, of whom twenty-three were present. These were Flierle, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'epine and Le Hericey who by Allain's orders had attacked the waggon; the Marquise de Combray, her daughter and Lefebre, instigators of the crime; Gousset the carrier; Alexandre Buquet, Placene, Vannier, Langelley, who had received the money; Chauvel and Lanoe as accomplices, and the innkeepers of Louvigny, d'Aubigny and elsewhere who had entertained the brigands.

Those absent were d'Ache, Allain, Le Lorault called "La Jeunesse,"

Joseph Buquet, the Dupont girl, and the friends of Le Chevalier or Lefebre who were compromised by the latter's revelations--Courmaceul, Reverend, Dusaussay, etc., Grenthe, called "Coeur-le-Roi," had died in the conciergerie during the enquiry. Mme. de Combray's gardener, Chatel, had committed suicide a few days after his arrest. As to Placide d'Ache and Bonnoeil, it was decided not to bring them to trial but to take them later before a military commission. Everything was removed that could give the trial political significance.

Mme. de Combray, who was at last enlightened as to the kind of interest taken in her by Licquet, and awakened from the illusions that the detective had so cleverly nourished, had been able to communicate directly with her family. Her son Timoleon had never approved of her political actions and since the Revolution had stayed away from Tournebut; but as soon as he heard of their arrest he hurried to Rouen to be near his mother and brother in prison. The letters he exchanged with Bonnoeil, as soon as it was permitted, show a strong sense of the situation on the part of both, irreproachable honesty and profound friendship. This family, whom it suited Licquet to represent as consisting of spiteful, dissolute or misguided people, appears in a very different light in this correspondence. The two brothers were full of respect for their mother, and tenderly attached to their sister: unfortunate and guilty as she was, they never reproached her, nor made any allusion to facts well-known and forgiven. They were all leagued against the common enemy, Acquet, whom they considered the cause of all their suffering. This man had returned from the Temple strengthened by the cowardly service he had rendered, and entered Donnay in triumph; he did not try to conceal his joy at all the catastrophes that had overtaken the Combrays, and treated them as vanquished enemies. The family held a council. The advice of Bonnoeil and Timoleon, as well as of the Marquise, was to sacrifice everything to save Mme. Acquet. They knew that her husband's denunciations made her the chief culprit, and that the accusation would rest almost entirely on her. They determined to appeal to Chauveau-Lagarde, whom the perilous honour of defending Marie-Antoinette before the Revolutionary tribunal had rendered ill.u.s.trious. The great advocate undertook the defence of Mme. Acquet and sent a young secretary named Ducolombier, who usually lived with him, to Rouen to study the case--"an intriguer calling himself doctor," wrote Licquet scornfully. Ducolombier stayed in Rouen and set himself to examine the condition of the Combrays' fortune. Mme. de Combray had consented some years back to the sale of a part of her property, and Timoleon, in the hope of averting financial disaster and being of use to his mother by diminishing her responsibility, had succeeded in having a trustee appointed for her.

The matter was brought to Rouen and it was there that, "for the safety of the State," the trial took place that excited all Normandy in advance. Curiosity was greatly aroused by the crime committed by "ladies of the chateau," and surprising revelations were expected, the examination having lasted more than a year and having brought together an army of witnesses from around Falaise and Tournebut. Mme. de Combray's house in the Rue des Carmelites had become the headquarters of the defence. Mlle. Querey had come out of prison after several weeks'

detention, and was there looking after the little Acquets, who had been kept at the pension Du Saussay in ignorance of what was going on around them: the three children still suffered from the ill-treatment they had received in infancy. Timoleon also lived in the Rue des Carmelites when the interests of his family did not require his presence in Falaise or Paris. There, also, lived Ducolombier, who had organised a sort of central office in the house where the lawyers of the other prisoners could come and consult. Mme. de Combray had chosen Maitre Gady de la Vigne of Rouen to defend her; Maitre Denise had charge of Flierle's case, and Maitre le Bouvier was to speak for Lefebre and Placene.

Chauveau-Lagarde arrived in Rouen on December 1, 1808. He had scarcely done so when he received a long epistle from Acquet de Ferolles, in which the unworthy husband tried to dissuade him from undertaking the defence of his wife, and to ruin the little testimony for the defence that Ducolombier had collected. It seems that this scoundrelly proceeding immediately enlightened the eminent advocate as to the preliminaries of the drama, for from this day he proved for the Combray family not only a brilliant advocate, but a friend whose devotion never diminished.

The trial opened on December 15th in the great hall of the Palais. A crowd, chiefly peasants, collected as soon as the doors were opened in the part reserved for the public. A platform had been raised for the twenty-three prisoners, among whom all eyes searched for Mme. Acquet, very pale, indifferent or resigned, and Mme. de Combray, very much animated and with difficulty induced by her counsel to keep silent.

Besides the president, Carel, the court was composed of seven judges, of whom three were military; the imperial and special Procurer-General, Chopais-Marivaux, occupied the bench.

From the beginning it was evident that orders had been given to suppress everything that could give political colour to the affair. As neither d'Ache, Le Chevalier, Allain nor Bonnoeil was present, nor any of the men who could claim the honour of being treated as conspirators and not as brigands, the judges only had the small fry of the plot before them, and the imperial commissary took care to name the chiefs only with great discretion. He did it by means of epithets, and in a melodramatic tone that caused the worthy people who jostled each other in the hall to shiver with terror.

Never had the gilded panels, which since the time of Louis XII had formed the ceiling of the great hall of the Palais, heard such astonishing eloquence; for three hours the Procurer Chopais-Marivaux piled up his heavy sentences, pretentious to the point of unintelligibility. When, after having recounted the facts, the magistrate came to the flight of Mme. Acquet and her sojourn with the Vanniers and Langelley, and it was necessary without divulging Licquet's proceedings to tell of her arrest, he became altogether incomprehensible. He must have thought himself lucky in not having before him, on the prisoners' bench, a man bold enough to show up the odious subterfuges that had been used in order to entrap the conspirators and obtain their confessions; there is no doubt that such a revelation would have gained for the two guilty women, if not the leniency of the judges, the sympathy at least of the public, who all over the province were awaiting with anxious curiosity the slightest details of the trial. The gazettes had been ordered to ignore it; the _Journal de Rouen_ only spoke of it once to state that, as it lacked s.p.a.ce to reproduce the whole trial, it preferred to abstain altogether; and but for a few of Licquet's notes, nothing would be known of the character of the proceedings.

The interrogation of the accused and the examination of the witnesses occupied seven sittings. On Thursday, December 22d, the Procurer-General delivered his charge. The prosecution tried above all to show up the antagonism existing between Mme. de Combray and M. Acquet de Ferolles.

The latter's denunciations had borne fruit; the Marquise was represented as having tried "to get rid of her son-in-law by poisoning his drink."

And the old story of the bottles of wine sent to Abbe Clarisse and of his inopportune death were revived; all the unpleasant rumours that had formerly circulated around Donnay were amplified, made grosser, and elevated to the position of accomplished facts. It was decided that poison "was a weapon familiar to the Marquise of Combray," and as, after having replied satisfactorily to all the first questions asked her, she remained mute on this point, a murmur of disapprobation ran round the audience, to the great joy of Licquet. "The prisoner," he notes, "whose s.e.x and age at first rendered her interesting, has lost to-day every vestige of popularity."

We know nothing of Mme. Acquet's examination, and but little of Chauveau-Lagarde's pleading; a leaf that escaped from his portfolio and was picked up by Mme. de Combray gives a few particulars. This paper has some pencilled notes, and two or three questions written to Mme. Acquet on the prisoners' bench, to which she scrawled a few words in reply. We find there a sketch of the theme which the advocate developed, doubtless to palliate his client's misconduct.

"Mme. Acquet is reproached with her liaisons with Le Chevalier; she can answer--or one can answer for her--that she suffered ill-treatment of all kinds for four years from a man who was her husband only from interest, so much so that he tried to get rid of her.... Fearful at one time of being poisoned, at another of having her brains dashed out,...

her suit for separation had brought her in touch with Le Chevalier, whom she had not known until her husband let him loose on her in order to bring about an understanding...."

During the fifteen sittings of the court a restless crowd filled the hall, the courts of the Palais, and the narrow streets leading to it. At eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel, declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions."

Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the magistrates. The verdict was immediately p.r.o.nounced. Capital punishment was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierle, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'epine, Le Hericey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years'

imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, called Bornet, Vannier and Bureau-Placene. The others were acquitted, but had to be detained "for the decision of his Excellency, the minister-of-police." The Marquise was, besides, to restore to the treasury the total sum of money taken.

Whilst the verdict was being read, the people crowded against the barriers till they could no longer move, eagerly scanning the countenances of the two women. The old Marquise, much agitated, declaimed in a loud voice against the Procurer-General: "Ah! the monster! The scoundrel! How he has treated us!"

Mme. Acquet, pale and impa.s.sive, seemed oblivious of what was going on around her. When she heard sentence of death p.r.o.nounced against her, she turned towards her defender, and Chauveau-Lagarde, rising, asked for a reprieve for his client. Although she had been in prison for fourteen months, she was, he said, "in an interesting condition." There was a murmur of astonishment in the hall, and while, during the excitement caused by this declaration, the court deliberated on the reprieve, one of the condemned, Le Hericey, leapt over the bar, fell with all his weight on the first rows of spectators, and by kicks and blows, aided by the general bewilderment, made a path for himself through the crowd, and amid shouts and shoves had already reached the door when a gendarme nabbed him in pa.s.sing and threw him back into the hall, where, trampled on and overcome with blows, he was pushed behind the bar and taken away with the other condemned prisoners. The reprieve asked for Mme. Acquet was p.r.o.nounced in the midst of the tumult, the crush at the door of the great hall being so great that many were injured.

The verdict, which soon became known all over the town, was in general ill received. If the ma.s.ses showed a dull satisfaction in the punishment of the Combray ladies, saying "that neither rank nor riches had counted, and that, guilty like the others, they were treated like the others,"

the bourgeois population of Rouen, still very indulgent to the royalists, disapproved of the condemnation of the two women, who had only been convicted of a crime by which neither of them had profited.

The reprieve granted to Mme. Acquet, "whose declaration had deceived no one," seemed a good omen, indicating a commutation of her sentence. The nine "brigands" condemned to death received no pity. Lefebre was not known in Rouen, and his att.i.tude during the trial had aroused no sympathy; the others were but vulgar actors in the drama, and only interested the populace hungry for a spectacle on the scaffold. The executions would take place immediately, the judgments p.r.o.nounced by the special court being without appeal, like those of the former revolutionary tribunals.

The nine condemned men were taken to the conciergerie. It was night when their "toilet" was begun. The high-executioner, Charles-Andre Ferey, of an old Norman family of executioners, had called on his cousins Joanne and Desmarets to help him, and while the scaffold was being hastily erected on the Place du Vieux-Marche, they made preparations in the prison. In the anguish of this last hour on earth Flierle's courage weakened. He sent a gaoler to the imperial procurer to ask "if a reprieve would be granted to any one who would make important revelations." On receiving a negative reply the German seemed to resign himself to his fate. "Since that is the case," he said, "I will carry my secret to the tomb with me."

The doors of the conciergerie did not open until seven in the evening.

By the light of torches the faces of the condemned were seen in the cart, moving above the crowds thronging the narrow streets. The usual route from the prison to the scaffold was by the Rue du Gros-Horloge, and this funeral march by torchlight and execution at midnight in December must have been a terrifying event. The crowd, kept at a distance, probably saw nothing but the glimmering light of the torches in the misty air, and the shadowy forms moving on the platform.

According to the _Journal de Rouen_ of the next day, Flierle mounted first, then Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'epine and Le Hericey who took part with him in the attack on June 7th. Lefebre "pa.s.sed" sixth. The knife struck poor Gautier-Boismale badly, as well as Alexandre Buquet, who died last. The agony of these two unfortunates was horrible, prolonged as it was by the repairs necessary for the guillotine to continue its work. The b.l.o.o.d.y scene did not end till half-past eight in the morning.

The next day, December 31st, the exhibition on the scaffold of Mme. de Combray, Placene, Vannier, and Lerouge, all condemned to twenty-two years' imprisonment, was to take place. But when they went to the old Marquise's cell she was found in such a state of exasperation, fearful crises of rage being succeeded by deep dejection, that they had to give up the idea of removing her. The three men alone were therefore tied to the post, where they remained for six hours. As soon as they returned to the conciergerie they were sent in irons to the House of Detention at the general hospital, whence they were to go to the convict prison.

The Marquise had not twenty-two years to live. The thought of ending her days in horrible Bicetre with thieves, beggars and prost.i.tutes; the humiliation of having been defeated, deceived and made ridiculous in the eyes of all Normandy; and perhaps more than all, the sudden comprehension that it had all been a game, that the Revolution would triumph in the end, that she, a great and powerful lady--n.o.ble, rich, a royalist--was treated the same as vulgar criminals, was so cruel a blow, that it was the general impression that she would succ.u.mb to it. It is impossible nowadays to realise what an effect these revelations must have produced on a mind obstinately set against all democratic realities. For nearly a month the Marquise remained in a state of stupefaction; from the day of her condemnation till January 15th it was impossible to get her to take any kind of nourishment. She knew that they were watching for the moment when she would be strong enough to stand the pillory, and perhaps she had resolved to die of hunger. There had been some thought--and this compa.s.sionate idea seems to have originated with Licquet--of sparing the aged woman this supreme agony, but the Procurer-General showed such bitter zeal in the execution of the sentence, that the prefect received orders from Real to proceed. He writes on January 29th: "I am informed of her condition daily. She now takes light nourishment, but is still extremely feeble; we could not just now expose this woman to the pillory without public scandal."

What was most feared was the indignation of the public at sight of the torture uselessly inflicted on an old woman who had already been sufficiently punished. The prefect's words, "without scandal," showed how popular feeling in Rouen had revolted at the verdict. More than one story got afloat. As the details of the trial were very imperfectly known, no journal having published the proceedings, it was said that the Marquise's only crime was her refusal to denounce her daughter, and widespread pity was felt for this unhappy woman who was considered a martyr to maternal love and royalist faith. Perhaps some of this universal homage was felt even in the prison, for towards the middle of February the Marquise seemed calmer and morally strengthened. The authorities profited by this to order her punishment to proceed. It was February the 17th, and as one of her "attacks" was feared, they prudently took her by surprise. She was told that Dr. Ducolombier, coming from Chauveau-Lagarde, asked to see her at the wicket. She went down without suspicion and was astonished to find in place of the man she expected, two others whom she had never seen. One was the executioner Ferey, who seized her hands and tied her. The doors opened, and seeing the gendarmes, the cart and the crowd, she understood, and bowed her head in resignation.

On the Place du Vieux-Marche the scaffold was raised, and a post to which the text of the verdict was affixed. The prisoner was taken up to the platform; she seemed quite broken, thin, yet very imposing, with her still black hair, and her air of "lady of the manor." She was dressed in violet silk, and as she persisted in keeping her head down, her face was hidden by the frills of her bonnet. To spare her no humiliation Ferey pinned them up; he then made her sit on a stool and tied her to the post, which forced her to hold up her head.

What she saw at the foot of the scaffold brought tears of pride to her eyes. In the first row of the crowd that quietly and respectfully filled the place, ladies in sombre dresses were grouped as close as possible to the scaffold, as if to take a voluntary part in the punishment of the old Chouanne; and during the six hours that the exhibition lasted the ladies of highest rank and most distinguished birth in the town came by turns to keep her company in her agony; some of them even spread flowers at the foot of the scaffold, thus transforming the disgrace into an apotheosis.

The heart of the Marquise, which had not softened through seventeen months of torture and anxiety, melted at last before this silent homage; tears were seen rolling down her thin cheeks, and the crowd was touched to see the highest ladies in the town sitting round this old unhappy woman, and saluting her with solemn courtesies.

At nightfall Mme. de Combray was taken back to the conciergerie; later in the evening she was sent to Bicetre, and several days afterwards Chopais-Marivaux, thinking he had served the Master well, begged as the reward of his zeal for the cross of the Legion of Honour.

CHAPTER IX

THE FATE OF D'ACHe

D'Ache, however, had not renounced his plans; the arrest of Le Chevalier, Mme. de Combray and Mme. Acquet was not enough to discourage him. It was, after all, only one stake lost, and he was the sort to continue the game. It is not even certain that he took the precaution, when Licquet was searching for him all over Normandy, to leave the Chateau of Montfiquet at Mandeville, where he had lived since his journey to England in the beginning of 1807. Ten months after the robbery of Quesnay he was known to be in the department of the Eure; Licquet, who had just terminated his enquiry, posted to Louviers, d'Ache, he found, had been there three days previously. From where had he come? From Tournebut, where, in spite of the search made, he could have lived concealed for six months in some well-equipped hiding-place?

Unlikely as this seems, Licquet was inclined to believe it, so much was his own cunning disconcerted by the audacious cleverness of his rival.

The letter in which he reports to Real his investigation in the Eure, is stamped with deep discouragement; he did not conceal the fact that the pursuit of d'Ache was a task as deceptive as it was useless. Perhaps he also thought that Le Chevalier's case was a precedent to be followed; d'Ache would have been a very undesirable prisoner to bring before a tribunal, and to get rid of him without scandal would be the best thing for the State. Licquet felt that an excess of zeal, bringing on a spectacular arrest such as that of Georges Cadoudal, would be ill-received in high quarters, and he therefore showed some nonchalance in his search for the conspirator.

D'Ache, meanwhile, showed little concern on learning of the capture of his accomplices. Lost in his illusions he took no care for his own safety, and remained at Mandeville, organising imaginary legions on paper, arranging the stages of the King's journey to Paris, and discussing with the Montfiquets certain points of etiquette regarding the Prince's stay at their chateau on the day following his arrival in France. One day, however, when they were at table--it was in the spring of 1808--a stranger arrived at the Chateau de Mandeville, and asked for M. Alexandre (the name taken by d'Ache, it will be remembered, at Bayeux). D'Ache saw the man himself, and thinking his manner suspicious, and his questions indiscreet, he treated him as a spy and showed him the door, but not before the intruder had launched several threats at him.