The House of the Combrays Part 3

THE CAPTURE OF GEORGES CADOUDAL

Georges had arrived in Paris on September 1, 1803, in a yellow cabriolet driven by the Marquis d'Hozier dressed as a coachman. D'Hozier, who was formerly page to the King and had for several months been established as a livery-stable keeper in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, conducted Georges to the Hotel de Bordeaux, kept by the widow Dathy, in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore.

The task of finding hiding-places in Paris for the conspirators, had been given to Houvel, called Saint-Vincent, whom we have already seen at Saint-Leu. Houvel's real name was Raoul Gaillard. A perfect type of the incorrigible Chouan, he was a fine-looking man of thirty, fresh-complexioned, with white teeth and a ready smile, and dressed in the prevailing fashion. He was a close companion of d'Ache, and it was even said that they had the same mistress at Rouen. The speciality of Raoul and his brother Armand was attacking coaches which carried government money. Their takings served to pay recruits to the royalist cause. For the past six months Raoul Gaillard had been in Paris looking for safe lodging-places. He was a.s.sisted in this delicate task by Bouvet de Lozier, another of d'Ache's intimate friends, who like him, had served in the navy before the Revolution.

Georges went first to Raoul Gaillard at the Hotel de Bordeaux, but he left in the evening and slept with Denaud at the "Cloche d'Or," at the corner of the Rue du Bac, and the Rue de Varenne. He was joined there by his faithful servant Louis Picot, who had arrived in Paris the same day.

The "Cloche d'Or" was a sort of headquarters for the conspirators; they filled the house, and Denaud was entirely at their service. He was devoted to the cause, and not at all timid. He had placed Georges' cab in the stable of Senator Francois de Neufchateau, whose house was next door.

Six weeks before, Bouvet de Lozier had taken, through Mme. Costard de Saint-Leger, his mistress, an isolated house at Chaillot near the Seine.

He had put there as concierge, a man named Daniel and his wife, both of whom he knew to be devoted to him. A porch with fourteen steps led to the front hall of the house. This served as dining-room. It was lighted by four windows and paved with squares of black and white marble; a walnut table with eight covers, cane-seated chairs, the door-panels representing the games of children, and striped India muslin curtains completed the decoration of this room. The next room had also four windows, and contained an ottoman and six chairs covered with blue and white Utrecht velvet, two armchairs of brocaded silk, and two mahogany tables with marble tops. Then came the bedroom with a four-post bed, consoles and mirrors. On the first floor was an apartment of three rooms, and in an adjoining building, a large hall which could be used as an a.s.sembly-room. The whole was surrounded by a large garden, closed on the side towards the river-bank by strong double gates.

If we have lingered over this description, it is because it seems to say so much. Who would have imagined that this elegant little house had been rented by Georges to shelter himself and his companions? These men, whose disinterestedness and tenacity we cannot but admire, who for ten years had fought with heroic fort.i.tude for the royal cause, enduring the hardest privations, braving tempests, sleeping on straw and marching at night; these men whose bodies were hardened by exposure and fatigue, retained a purity of mind and sincerity really touching. They never ceased to believe that "the Prince" for whom they fought would one day come and share their danger. It had been so often announced and so often put off that a little mistrust might have been forgiven them, but they had faith, and that inspired them with a thought which seemed quite simple to them but which was really sublime. While they were lodging in holes, living on a pittance parsimoniously taken from the party's funds, they kept a comfortable and secure retreat ready, where "their prince"--who was never to come--could wait at his ease, until at the price of their lives, they had a.s.sured the success of his cause. If the history of our b.l.o.o.d.y feuds has always an epic quality, it is because it abounds in examples of blind devotion, so impossible nowadays that they seem to us improbable exaggerations.

After six days at the "Cloche d'Or," Georges took possession of the house at Chaillot, but he did not stay there long, for about the 25th of September he was at 21 Rue Careme-Prenant in the Faubourg du Temple.

Hozier had rented an entresol there, and had employed a man called Spain, who had an apt.i.tude for this sort of work, to make a secret place in it. Spain, under pretence of indispensable repairs, had shut himself up with his tools in the apartment, and had made a cleverly-concealed trap-door, by means of which, in case of alarm, the tenants could descend to the ground floor and go out by an unoccupied shop whose door opened under the porch of the house. Spain took a sort of pride in his strange talent; he was very proud of a hiding-place he had made in the lodging of a friend, the tailor Michelot, in the Rue de Bussy, which Michelot himself did not suspect. The tailor was obliged to be absent often, and four of the conspirators had successively lodged there. When he was away his lodgers "limbered up" in this apartment, but as soon as they heard his step on the stairs, they reentered their cell, and the worthy Michelot, who vaguely surmised that there was some mystery about his house, only solved the enigma when he was cited to appear before the tribunal as an accomplice in the royalist plot of which he had never even heard the name.

Georges started for his first journey to Biville from the Rue Careme-Prenant. On January 23d he returned finally to Paris, bringing with him Pichegru, Jules de Polignac and the Marquis de Riviere, whom he had gone to the farm of La Poterie to receive. He lodged Pichegru with an employe of the finance department, named Verdet, who had given the Chouans the second floor of his house in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite.

They stayed there three days. On the 27th, Georges took the general to the house at Chaillot "where they only slept a few nights." At the very moment that they went there Querelle signed his first declarations before Real.

It is not necessary to follow the movements of Pichegru, nor to relate his interviews with Moreau. The organisation of the plot is what interests us, by reason of the part taken in it by d'Ache. No one has ever explained what might have resulted politically from the combination of Moreau's embittered ambition, the insouciance of Pichegru, and the fanatical ardour of Georges. Of this ill-a.s.sorted trio the latter alone had decided on action, although he was handicapped by the obstinacy of the princes in refusing to come to the fore until the throne was reestablished. He told the truth when he affirmed before the judges, later on, that he had only come to France to attempt a restoration, the means for which were never decided on, for they had not agreed on the manner in which they should act towards Bonaparte. A strange plan had at first been suggested. The Comte d'Artois, at the head of a band of royalists equal in number to the Consul's escort, was to meet him on the road to Malmaison, and provoke him to single combat, but the presence of the Prince was necessary for this revival of the Combat of Thirty, and as he refused to appear, this project of rather antiquated chivalry had to be abandoned. Their next idea was to kidnap Bonaparte. Some determined men--as all of Georges' companions were--undertook to get into the park at Malmaison at night, seize Bonaparte and throw him into a carriage which thirty Chouans, dressed as dragoons, would escort as far as the coast. They actually began to put this theatrical "coup" into execution. Mention is made of it in the Memoirs of the valet Constant, and certain details of the investigation confirm these a.s.sertions. Raoul Gaillard, who still lived at the Hotel de Bordeaux, and entertained his friends Denis Lamotte, the vine-dresser of Saint-Leu and Ma.s.signon, farmer of Saint-Lubin there, had discovered that Ma.s.signon leased some land from Macheret, the First Consul's coachman, and had determined at all hazards to make this man's acquaintance. He even had the audacity to show himself at the Chateau of Saint-Cloud in the hope of meeting him.

Besides this, Genty, a tailor in the Palais-Royal, had delivered four cha.s.seur uniforms, ordered by Raoul Gaillard, and Debausseaux, a tailor at Aumale, during one of their journeys had measured some of Monnier's guests for cloaks and breeches of green cloth, which only needed metal b.u.t.tons to be transformed into dragoon uniforms.

Querelle's denunciations put a stop to all these preparations. Nothing remained but to run to earth again. A great many of the conspirators succeeded in doing this, but all were not so fortunate. The first one seized by Real's men was Louis Picot, Georges' servant. He was a coa.r.s.e, rough man, entirely devoted to his master, under whose orders he had served in the Veudee. He was taken to the Prefecture and promised immediate liberty in exchange for one word that would put the police on the track of Georges. He was offered 1,500 louis d'or, which they took care to count out before him, and on his refusal to betray his master, Real had him put to the torture. Bertrand, the concierge of the depot, undertook the task. The unfortunate Picot's fingers were crushed by means of an old gun and a screw-driver, his feet were burned in the presence of the officers of the guard. He revealed nothing. "He has borne everything with criminal resignation," the judge-inquisitor, Thuriot, wrote to Real; "he is a fanatic, hardened by crime. I have now left him to solitude and suffering; I will begin again to-morrow; he knows where Georges is hidden and must be made to reveal it."

The next day the torture was continued, and this time agony wrung the address of the Chaillot house from Picot. They hastened there--only to find it empty. But the day had not been wasted, for the police, on an anonymous accusation, had seized Bouvet de Lozier as he was entering the house of his mistress, Mme. de Saint-Leger, in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. He was interrogated and denied everything. Thrown into the Temple, he hanged himself in the night, by tying his necktie to the bars of his cell. A gaoler hearing his death-rattle, opened the door and took him down; but Bouvet, three-quarters dead, as soon as they had brought him to, was seized with convulsive tremblings, and in his delirium he spoke.

This attempted suicide, to tell the truth, was only half believed in, and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been a.s.sisted in his strangling, just as they had put Picot's feet to the fire. What gave colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet's hands "were horribly swollen" when he appeared before Real the next day, and also the strange form of the declaration which he was reputed to have dictated at midnight, just as he was restored to life. "A man who comes from the gates of the tomb, still covered with the shadows of death, demands vengeance on those who, by their perfidy," etc. Many were agreed in thinking that that was not the style of a suicide, with the death-rattle still in his throat, but that Real's agents must have lent their eloquence to this half-dead creature.

However it may have been, the government now knew enough to order the most rigorous measures to be taken against the "last royalists." Bouvet had, like Picot, only been able to mention the house at Chaillot, and the lodging in the Rue Careme-Prenant, and Georges' retreat was still undiscovered. The revelations that fear or torture had drawn from his a.s.sociates only served to make the figure of this extraordinary man loom greater, by showing the power of his ascendancy over his companions, and the mystery that surrounded all his actions. A legend grew around his name, and the communications published by _Le Moniteur_, contributed not a little towards making him a sort of fantastic personage, whom one expected to see arise suddenly, and by one grand theatrical stroke put an end to the Revolution.

Paris lived in a fever of excitement during the first days of March, 1804, anxiously following this duel to the death, between the First Consul and this phantom-man who, shut up in the town and constantly seen about, still remained uncaught. The barriers were closed as in the darkest days of the Terror. Patrols, detectives and gendarmes held all the streets; the soldiers of the garrison had departed, with loaded arms, to the boulevards outside the walls. White placards announced that "Those who concealed the brigands would be cla.s.sed with the brigands themselves"; the penalty of death attached to any one who should shelter one of them, even for twenty-four hours, without denouncing him to the police. The description of Georges and his accomplices was inserted in all the papers, distributed in leaflets, and posted on the walls. Their last domicile was mentioned, as well as anything that could help to identify them. The clerks at the barriers were ordered to search barrels, washerwomen's carts, baskets, and, as the cemeteries were outside the walls, to look carefully into all the hea.r.s.es that carried the dead to them.

On leaving Chaillot, Georges had returned to Verdet, in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite. As he did not go out and his friends dared not come to see him, Mme. Verdet had inst.i.tuted herself commissioner for the conspiracy.

One evening she did not return. Armed with a letter for Bouvet de Lozier, she had arrived at the Rue Saint-Sauveur just as they were taking him to the Temple, and had been arrested with him. Thus the circle was narrowing around Georges. He was obliged to leave the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite in haste, for fear that torture would wring the secret of his asylum from Mme. Verdet. But where could he go? The house at Chaillot, the Hotel of the Cloche d'Or, the Rue Careme-Prenant were now known to the police. Charles d'Hozier, on being consulted, showed him a retreat that he had kept for himself, which had been arranged for him by Mlle. Hisay, a poor deformed girl, who served the conspirators with tireless zeal, taking all sorts of disguises and vying in address and activity with Real's men. She had rented from a fruitseller named Lemoine, a little shop with a room above it, intending "to use it for some of her acquaintances."

It was there that she conducted Georges on the night of February 17. The next day two of his officers, Burban and Joyaut, joined him there, and all three lived at the woman Lemoine's for twenty days. They occupied the room above, leaving the shop untenanted save by Mlle. Hisay and a little girl of Lemoine's, who kept watch there. At night both of them went up to the room, and slept there, separated by a curtain from the beds occupied by Georges and his accomplices. The fruiterer and her daughter were entirely ignorant of the standing of their guests, Mlle.

Hisay having introduced them as three shop-keepers who were unfortunately obliged to hide from their creditors.

This incognito occasioned some rather amusing incidents. One day Mme.

Lemoine, on returning from market where the neighbours had been discussing the plot that was agitating all Paris, said to her tenants, "Goodness me! You don't know about it? Why, they say that that miserable Georges would like to destroy us all; if I knew where he was, I'd soon have him caught."

Another time the little girl brought news that Georges had left Paris disguised as an aide-de-camp of the First Consul. Some days later, when Georges asked her what the latest news was, she answered, "They say the rascal has escaped in a coffin."

"I should like to go out the same way," hinted Burban.

However, the police had lost track of the conspirator. It was generally supposed that he had pa.s.sed the fortifications, when on the 8th of March, Pet.i.t, who had known Leridant, one of the Chouans, for a long time, saw him talking with a woman on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine. He followed him, and a little further off, saw him go up to a man who struck him as bearing a great likeness to Joyaut, whose description had been posted on all the walls.

It was indeed Joyaut, who had left Mme. Lemoine's for the purpose of looking for a lodging for Georges where he would be less at the mercy of chance than in the fruitseller's attic. Leridant told him that the house of a perfumer named Caron, in the Rue Four-Saint-Germain, was the safest retreat in Paris. For some years Caron, a militant royalist, had sheltered distressed Chouans, in the face of the police. He had hidden Hyde de Neuville for several weeks; his house was well provided with secret places, and for extreme cases he had made a place in his sign-post overhanging the street, where a man could lie _perdu_ at ease, while the house was being searched. Leridant had obtained Caron's consent, and it was agreed that Leridant should come in a cab at seven o'clock the next evening to take Georges from Sainte-Genevieve to the Rue du Four.

When he had seen the termination of the interview of which his detective's instinct showed him the importance, Pet.i.t, who had remained at a distance, followed Joyaut, and did not lose sight of him till he arrived at the Place Maubert. Suspecting that Georges was in the neighbourhood he posted policemen at the Place du Pantheon, and at the narrow streets leading to it; then he returned to watch Leridant, who lodged with a young man called Goujon, in the cul-de-sac of the Corderie, behind the old Jacobins Club. The next day, March 9th, Pet.i.t learned through his spies that Goujon had hired out a cab, No. 53, for the entire day. He hastened to the Prefecture and informed his colleague, Destavigny, who, with a party of inspectors took up his position on the Place Maubert. If, as Pet.i.t supposed, Georges was hidden near there, if the cab was intended for him, it would be obliged to cross the place where the princ.i.p.al streets of the quarter converged.

The order was given to let it pa.s.s if it contained only one person, but to follow it with most extreme care.

The night had arrived, and nothing had happened to confirm the hypotheses of Pet.i.t, when, a little before seven o'clock, a cab appeared on the Place, coming from the Rue Galande. Only one man was on it, holding the reins. The spies in different costumes, who hung about the fountain, recognised him as Leridant. The cab was numbered 53, and had only the lantern at the left alight. It went slowly up the steep Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve; the police, hugging the walls, followed it far off. Pet.i.t, the Inspector Caniolle, and the officer of the peace, Destavigny, kept nearer to it, expecting to see it stop before one of the houses in the street, when they would only have to take Georges on the threshold. But to their great disappointment the cab turned to the right, into the narrow Rue des Amandiers, and stopped at a porte cochere near the old College des Gra.s.sins. As the lantern shed a very brilliant light, the three detectives concealed themselves in the lanes near by.

They saw Leridant descend from the cab. He went through a door, came out, went in again and stayed for a quarter of an hour. Then he turned his horse round, and got up on the seat again.

The cab turned again into the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, and went slowly down it; it went across the Place Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, following the houses. Caniolle walked behind it, Pet.i.t and Destavigny followed at a distance. Just as the carriage arrived at the corner of the Rue des Sept-Voies, four individuals came out from the shadow. One of them seized the ap.r.o.n, and helping himself up by the step, flung himself into the cab, which had not stopped, and went off at full speed....

The police had recognised Georges, disguised as a market-porter.

Caniolle, who was nearest, rushed forward; the three men who had remained on the spot, and who were no other than Joyaut, Burban and Raoul Gaillard, tried to stop him. Caniolle threw them off, and chased the cab which had disappeared in the Rue Saint-Etienne-des-Gres. He caught up to it, just as it was entering the Pa.s.sage des Jacobins.

Seizing the springs, he was carried along with it. The two officers of the peace, less agile, followed crying, "Stop! Stop!"

Georges, seated on the right of Leridant, who held the reins, had turned to the back of the carriage and tried to follow the fortunes of the pursuit through the gla.s.s. The moment that he had jumped into the carriage, he had seen the detectives, and said to Leridant: "Whip him, whip him hard!"

"To go where?" asked the other.

"I do not know, but we must fly!"

And the horse, tingling with blows, galloped off.

At the end of the Pa.s.sage des Jacobins, which at a sharp angle ended in the Rue de la Harpe, Leridant was obliged to slow up in order to turn on the Place Saint-Michel, and not miss the entrance to the Rue des Fosses-Monsieur-le-Prince. He turned towards the Rue du Four, hoping, thanks to the steepness of the Rue des Fosses, to distance the detectives and arrive at Caron's before they caught up with the carriage.

From where he was Georges could not, through the little window, see Caniolle crouched behind the hood. But he saw others running with all their might. Destavigny and Pet.i.t had indeed continued the pursuit, and their cries brought out all the spies posted in the quarter. Just as Leridant wildly dashed into the Rue des Fosses, a whole pack of policemen rushed upon him.

At the approach of this whirlwind the frightened pa.s.sers-by shrank into the shelter of the doorways. Their minds were so haunted by one idea that at the sight of this cab flying past in the dark with the noise of whips, shouts, oaths, and the resonant clang of the horse's hoofs on the pavement, a single cry broke forth, "Georges! Georges! it is Georges!"

Anxious faces appeared at the windows, and from every door people came out, who began to run without knowing it, drawn along as by a waterspout. Did Georges see in this a last hope of safety? Did he believe he could escape in the crowd? However that may be, at the top of the Rue Voltaire he jumped out into the street. Caniolle, at the same moment, left the back of the cab--which Pet.i.t, and another policeman called Buffet, had at last succeeded in outrunning,--threw himself on the reins, and allowing himself to be dragged along, mastered the horse, which stopped, exhausted. Buffet took one step towards Georges, who stretched him dead with a pistol shot; with a second ball the Chouan rid himself, for a moment at least, of Caniolle. He still thought, probably, that he could hide himself in the crowd; and perhaps he would have succeeded, for Destavigny, who had run up, "saw him before him, standing with all the tranquillity of a man who has nothing to fear, and three or four people near him appeared not to be thinking more about Georges than anything else." He was going to turn the corner of the Rue de l'Observance when Caniolle, who was only wounded, struck him with his club. In an instant Georges was surrounded, thrown down, searched and bound. The next morning more than forty individuals, among them several women, made themselves known to the judge as being each "the princ.i.p.al author" of the arrest of the "brigand" chief.

By way of the Carrefour de la Comedie, the Rues des Fosses Saint-Germain and Dauphine, Georges, tied with cords, was taken to the Prefecture. A growing mob escorted him, more out of curiosity than anger, and one can imagine the excitement at police headquarters when they heard far off on the Quai des Orfevres, the increasing tumult announcing the event, and when suddenly, from the corps de garde in the salons of the Prefect Dubois the news came, "Georges is taken!"

A minute later the vanquished outlaw was pushed into the office of Dubois, who was still at dinner. In spite of his bonds he still showed so much pride and coolness that the all-powerful functionary was almost afraid of him. Desmaret, who was present, could not himself escape this feeling.

"Georges, whom I saw for the first time," he said, "had always been to me a sort of Old Man of the Mountain, sending his a.s.sa.s.sins far and near, against the powers. I found, on the contrary, an open face, bright eyes, fresh complexion, and a look firm but gentle, as was also his voice. Although stout, his movements and manner were easy; his head quite round, with short curly hair, no whiskers, and nothing to indicate the chief of a mortal conspiracy, who had long dominated the _landes_ of Brittany. I was present when Comte Dubois, the prefect of police, questioned him. His ease amidst all the hubbub, his answers, firm, frank, cautious and couched in well-chosen language, contrasted greatly with my ideas about him.

"Indeed his first replies showed a disconcerting calm. One may be quoted. When Dubois, not knowing where to begin, rather foolishly reproached him with the death of Buffet, 'the father of a family,'

Georges smilingly gave him this advice:--'Next time, then, have me arrested by bachelors.'"

His courageous pride did not fail him either in the interrogations he had to submit to, or before the court of justice. His replies to the President are superb in disdain and abnegation. He a.s.sumed all responsibility for the plot, and denied knowledge of any of his friends.

He carried his generosity so far as to behave with courteous dignity even to those who had betrayed him; he even tried to excuse the indifference of the princes whose selfish inertia had been his ruin. He remained great until he reached the scaffold; eleven faithful Chouans died with him, among the number being Louis Picot, Joyaut and Burban, whose names have appeared in this story.

Thus ended the conspiracy. Bonaparte came out of it emperor. Fouche, minister of police, and his a.s.sistants were not going to be useless, for if in the eyes of the public, Georges' death seemed the climax, it was in reality but one incident in a desperate struggle. The depths sounded by the investigation had revealed the existence of an incurable evil.

The whole west of France was cankered with Chouannerie. From Rouen to Nantes, from Cherbourg to Poitiers, thousands of peasants, bourgeois and country gentlemen remained faithful to the old order, and if they were not all willing to take up arms in its cause, they could at least do much to upset the equilibrium of the new government. And could not another try to do what Georges Cadoudal had attempted? If some one with more influence over the princes than he possessed should persuade one of them to cross the Channel, what would the glory of the parvenu count for, balanced against the ancient prestige of the name of Bourbon, magnified and as it were sanctified by the tragedies of the Revolution?

This fear haunted Bonaparte; the knowledge that in France these Bourbons, exiled, without soldiers or money, were still more the masters then he, exasperated him. He felt that he was in their home, and their nonchalance, contrasted with his incessant agitation, indicated both insolence and disdain.

The police, as a matter of fact, had unearthed only a few of the conspirators. Many who, like Raoul Gaillard, had played an important part in the plot, had succeeded in escaping all pursuit; they were evidently the cleverest, therefore the most dangerous, and among them might be found a man ambitious of succeeding Cadoudal. The capture to which Fouche and Real attached the most importance was that of d'Ache, whose presence at Biville and Saint-Leu had been proved. For three months, in Paris even, wherever the police had worked, they had struck the trail of this same d'Ache, who appeared to have presided over the whole organisation of the plot. Thus, he had been seen at Verdet's in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite, while Georges was there; he had met Raoul Gaillard several times; in making an inventory of the papers of a young lady called Margeot, with whom Pichegru had dined, two rather enigmatical notes had been found, in which d'Ache's name appeared.