The House of the Combrays Part 16

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 fetes 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 Ferolles 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 Bonnoeil, 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 chateau 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 Bonnoeil'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 Ferolles' daughters to Tournebut, all three of whom were well married. In making an inventory of the furniture in the chateau, 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 Bonnoeil 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 Bonnoeil about the past.

Bonnoeil 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 chateau 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 pa.s.sage, which seemed to run towards the small chateau. 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 Real. "I bristle with t.i.tles. 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 Real not dare to stand sponsor for such a candidate? Did they think that the cross, given hitherto so parsimoniously 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 a.s.sociated 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 Bicetre, 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 us think 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 Bicetre." 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-Le. 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 pa.s.sed; the "Vieux-Marche," where so many heads had fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where the graves of his victims grew green; Bicetre, 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 Piemont, 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 Placene, who was let out of prison at the Restoration, a.s.sisted 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, who lived 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-Lo 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 a.s.sures us that an avenger had reserved for him a death similar to d'Ache'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'Ache'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'Ache 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'Ache was in 1815 appointed lady-in-waiting to the d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess so tenderly for the desertion of her inconstant husband." Louise d'Ache died in 1817, and her sister Alexandrine, who was unmarried, was in her turn summoned to the Princess, and took the t.i.tle of Comtesse d'Ache. 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'Ache and Louise.

Caqueray died in 1834, leaving several children quite unprovided for.

They were, however, adopted by their grandmother, d'Ache'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 a.s.sa.s.sin. 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 t.i.tles 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 Greve, of Le Chevalier who fell at the wall at Grenelle, of d'Ache 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.