The House of the Combrays Part 15

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 first whispered, 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'Ache's blood. Death to her!"

The unhappy woman tried to put on a bold face, and remained calm; it is supposed that Pontecoulant 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 pa.s.sing. 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'Ache's death recalled the affair of Quesnay, Mme. Acquet was spending her last days in the conciergerie at Rouen. After the pet.i.tion 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 p.r.o.nounced he had hurried to Paris in quest of means of approaching his Majesty.

His relative, Mme. de Saint-Leonard, 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 Ca.s.sel 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. Timoleon, Mme. de Saint-Leonard, and Mlle. de Seran took turns with the children; they went to Malmaison, to Versailles, to Meudon. At last, on March 2d, at Sevres, one of the children succeeded in getting to the door of the imperial carriage, and put a pet.i.tion 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 pet.i.tions 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 Timoleon:

"I am not surprised that you were not satisfied with the children; until now they have only been restrained by fear, and the circ.u.mstances 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 Fouche, Real, 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 Bicetre 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 Timoleon on June 1st. She had decided to send her two eldest grandchildren to Vienna with their aunt Mme. d'Houel and the faithful Ducolombier, who offered to undertake the long journey. Chauveau-Lagarde drew up a pet.i.tion 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'Houel and the children at Schoebrunn, where the imperial quarters were, and by dint of solicitations obtained the privilege of going into the court of the chateau 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 chateau. 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 pet.i.tion from Mme. d'Houel'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 pet.i.tion. "He changed colour several times, tears were in his eyes and his voice trembled." The Duke of Rovigo a.s.serted that pardon would be granted; the Emperor's heart had already p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sports 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 impa.s.sive 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 Bicetre 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 Real: "M. le Procureur-General 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 was then 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 cortege went by the "Gros-Horloge" to the "Vieux-Marche." Some one who saw Mme. Acquet pa.s.s, 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 r.e.t.a.r.d the execution, and the authorities congratulated themselves on the fact in the report sent to Real 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 those who 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, n.o.ble and powerful lady."

CHAPTER X

THE CHOUANS SET FREE

A letter in a woman's handwriting, addressed to Timoleon de Combray, Hotel 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 Bonnoeil'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 Timoleon 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 Maitre 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 frenzied plots," 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 Real and by the protection of Pontecoulant, with whom he had a.s.sociated 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 p.r.o.nounced against their mother."

The case thus stated, the discussion could only become a scandal.

Bonnoeil 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 pa.s.sed 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 Bonnoeil's handwriting is sufficient to ill.u.s.trate 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 repet.i.tion 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 Ferolles."

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 a.s.sa.s.sins, 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 Josephine, 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 Archd.u.c.h.ess 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 pet.i.tioners. 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 pa.s.sage 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 pet.i.tion, 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 Bonnoeil 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 pet.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pet.i.tion had had no effect, Timoleon 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 Bonnoeil 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 his mother 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 Ferolles, 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 Pontecoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin,"

had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Ferolles," to hand over d'Ache to a.s.sa.s.sins. 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 Carmelites. The next day at 1.30 p.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 pa.s.sengers, all hurrying to see the King's return to his capital. Bonnoeil, 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 chateau which she had never thought to see again. The astonishing reversions of fate make one think of the success which the opera "La Dame Blanche" had some years later. This charming work sang their own history to these n.o.bles who were still smarting, and recalled to them their ruined past. The abandoned "Chateau 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 n.o.ble 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, Guerin-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 the _Moniteur_ of 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 Bonnoeil 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'Ache 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 Pontecoulant who had d'Ache killed; Frotte's death was partly due to him." "With regard to Acquet, M. de Rivoire told Placene that he had been seen in the temple about six years ago, and that every one there considered him a spy and an informer...."