The House of the Combrays Part 4

Mme. d'Ache and her eldest daughter had been since February in the Madelonnettes prison; the second girl, Alexandrine, had been left at liberty in the hope that in Paris, where she was a stranger, she would be guilty of some imprudence that would deliver her father to the police. She had taken lodgings in the Rue Traversiere-Saint-Honore, at the Hotel des Treize-Cantons, and Real had immediately set two spies upon her, but their reports were monotonously melancholy. "Very well behaved, very quiet--she lives, and is daily with the master and mistress of the hotel, people of mature age. She sees no one, and is spoken of in the highest terms." From this side, also, all hope of catching d'Ache had to be abandoned.

Another way was thought of, and on March 22d the order to open all the gates was given. Fouche foresaw that in their anxiety to leave Paris all of Georges' accomplices who had not been caught would hasten to return to Normandy, and thanks to the watchfulness exercised, a clean sweep might be made of them. The cleverly conceived idea had some result. On the 25th a peasant called Jacques Pluquet of Meriel, near l'Isle-Adam, when working in his field on the border of the wood of La Muette, saw four men in hats pulled down over cotton caps, and with strong knotted clubs, coming towards him. They asked him if they could cross the Oise at Meriel. Pluquet replied that it was easy to do so, "but there were gendarmes to examine all who pa.s.sed." At that they hesitated. They described themselves as conscript deserters coming from Valenciennes who wished to get back to their homes. Pluquet's account is so picturesque as to be worth quoting:

"I asked them where they belonged; they replied in Alencon. I remarked that they would have trouble in getting there without being arrested.

One of them said: 'That is true, for after what had just happened in Paris, everywhere is guarded.' Then, allowing the three others to go on ahead, he said to me, 'But if they arrest us, what will they do to us?'

I replied: 'They will take you back to your corps, from brigade to brigade.' On that he said, 'If they catch us, they will make us do ten thousand leagues.' And he left me to regain his comrades, the youngest of whom might have been twenty-two years old and seemed very sad and tired."

The next morning some people at Auvers found a little log cabin in a wood in which the four men had spent the night. They were seen on the following days, wandering in the forest of l'Isle-Adam. At last, on April 1st they went to the ferryman of Meriel, Eloi Cousin, who was sheltering two gendarmes. While they were begging the ferryman to take them in his boat, the gendarmes appeared, and the men fled. A pistol shot struck one of them, and a second, who stopped to a.s.sist his comrade, was also taken. The two others escaped to the woods.

The wounded man was put in a boat and taken to the hospital at Pontoise, where he died the next day. Real, who was immediately informed of it, immediately sent Querelle, whom he was carefully keeping in prison to use in case of need, and he at once recognised the corpse to be that of Raoul Gaillard, called Houvel, or Saint-Vincent, the friend of d'Ache, the princ.i.p.al advance-agent of Georges. The other prisoner was his brother Armand, who was immediately taken to Paris and thrown into the Temple.

The commune of Meriel had deserved well of the country, and the First Consul showed his satisfaction in a dazzling manner. He expressed a desire to make the acquaintance of this population so devoted to his person, and on the 8th of April, the sous-prefet of Pontoise presented himself at the Tuileries at the head of all the men of the village.

Bonaparte congratulated them personally, and as a more substantial proof of his grat.i.tude, distributed among them a sum of 11,000 francs, found in Raoul Gaillard's belt.

This was certainly a glorious event for the peasants of Meriel, but it had an unexpected result. When they returned the next day they learned that a stranger, "well dressed, well armed and mounted on a fine horse,"

profiting by their absence, had gone to the village, and, "after many questions addressed to the women and children, had gone to the place where Raoul Gaillard was wounded, trying to find out if they had not found a case, to which he seemed to attach great importance." This incident reminded them that, in the boat that took him to Pontoise, Raoul Gaillard, then dying, had anxiously asked if a razor-case had been found among his things. On receiving a negative reply, "he had appeared to be very much put out, and was heard to murmur that the fortune of the man who would discover this case was made."

The visits of this stranger--since seen, "in the country, on the heights and near the woods,"--his threats of vengeance, and this mysterious case, provided matter for a report that perplexed Real. Was this not d'Ache? A great hunt was organised in the forest of Carnelle, but it brought no result. Four days later they explored the forest of Montmorency, where some signs of the "brigands'" occupation were seen, but of d'Ache no trace at all, and in spite of the fierceness that Real's men, incited by the promise of large rewards, brought to this chase of the Chouans, after weeks and months of research, of enquiries, tricks, false trails followed, and traps uselessly laid, it had to be admitted that the police had lost the scent, and that Georges' clever accomplice had long since disappeared.

CHAPTER III

THE COMBRAYS

At the period of our story there existed in the department of the Eure, on the left bank of the Seine, beyond Gaillon, a large old manor-house, backed by the hill that extended as far as Andelys; it was called the Chateau de Tournebut. Although its peaked roofs could be seen from the river above a thicket of low trees, Tournebut was off the main route of travel, whether by land or water, from Rouen to Paris. Some fairly large woods separated it from the highroad which runs from Gaillon to Saint-Cyr-de-Vaudreuil, while the barges usually touched at the hamlet of Roule, where hacks were hired to take pa.s.sengers and goods to the ferry of Muids, thereby saving them the long detour made by the Seine.

Tournebut was thus isolated between these two much-travelled roads. Its princ.i.p.al facade, facing east, towards the river, consisted of two heavy turrets, one against the other, built of brick and stone in the style of Louis XIII, with great slate roofs and high dormer windows. After these came a lower and more modern building, ending with the chapel. In front of the chateau was an old square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the chateau, the farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide mora.s.s, stretching from the foot of the terrace to the Seine, rendered access impossible from that side.

By the marriage of Genevieve de Bois-l'Eveque, Lady of Tournebut, this mansion had pa.s.sed to the family of Marillac, early in the seventeenth century. The Marshal Louis de Marillac--uncle of Mme. Legras, collaborator of St. Vincent de Paul--had owned it from 1613 to 1631, and tradition a.s.serted that during his struggle against Cardinal Richelieu he had established there a plant for counterfeiting money. To him was due the construction of the brick wing which remained unfinished, his condemnation to death for peculation having put a stop to the embellishments he had intended to make.

There are very few chateaux left in France like this romantic manor of a dead and gone past, whose stones have endured all the crises of our history, and to which each century has added a tower, or a legend.

Tournebut, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was a perfect type of these old dwellings, where there were so many great halls and so few living rooms, and whose high slate roofs covered intricacies of framework forming lofts vast as cathedrals. It was said that its thick walls were pierced by secret pa.s.sages and contained hiding-places that Louis de Marillac had formerly used.

In 1804 Tournebut was inhabited by the Marquise de Combray, born Genevieve de Brunelles, daughter of a President of the Cour des Comptes of Normandy. Her husband, Jean-Louis-Armand-Emmanuel Helie de Combray, had died in 1784, leaving her with two sons and two daughters, and a great deal of property in the environs of Falaise, in the parishes of Donnay, Combray, Bonnoeil and other places. Madame de Combray had inherited Tournebut from her mother, Madeleine Hubert, herself a daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Normandy. Besides the chateau and the farm, which were surrounded by a park well-wooded with old trees, the domain included the woods that covered the hillside, at the extremity of which was an old tower, formerly a wind-mill, built over deep quarries, and called the "Tower of the Burned Mill," or "The Hermitage." It figures in the ancient plans of the country under the latter name, which it owes to the memory of an old hermit who lived in the quarries for many years and died there towards the close of the reign of Louis XV, leaving a great local reputation for holiness.

Mme. de Combray was of a "haughty and imperious nature; her soul was strong and full of energy; she knew how to brave danger and public opinion; the boldest projects did not frighten her, and her ambition was unbounded." Such is the picture that one of her most irreconcilable enemies has drawn of her, and we shall see that the princ.i.p.al traits were faithfully described. But to complete the resemblance one must first of all plead an extenuating circ.u.mstance: Madame de Combray was a fanatical royalist. Even that, however, would not make her story intelligible, if one did not make allowance for the Calvary that the faithful royalists travelled through so many years, each station of which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the n.o.bles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many of them, it is true, had resigned themselves to defeat, but the _Intransigeants_ continued to struggle obstinately; and to say truth, this tenacious attachment to the ghost of monarchy was not without grandeur.

From the very beginning of the Revolution the Marquise de Combray had numbered herself among the unchangeable royalists. Her husband, a timorous and quiet man, who employed in reading the hours that he did not consecrate to sleep, had long since abandoned to her the direction of the household and the management of his fortune. Widowhood had but strengthened the authority of the Marquise, who reigned over a little world of small farmers, peasants and servants, more timid, perhaps, than devoted.

She exacted complete obedience from her children. The eldest son, called the Chevalier de Bonnoeil, after a property near the Chateau of Donnay, in the environs of Falaise, supported the maternal yoke patiently; he was an officer in the Royal Dragoons at the time of the Revolution. His younger brother, Timoleon de Combray, was of a less docile nature. On leaving the military school, as his father was just dead he solicited from M. de Vergennes a mission in an uncivilised country and set sail for Morocco. Timoleon was a liberal-minded man, of high intellectual culture, and a philosophical scepticism that fitted ill with the Marquise's authoritative temper; although a devoted and respectful man, it was to get away from his mother's tutelage that he expatriated himself. "Our diversity of opinion," he said later on, "has kept me from spending two consecutive months with her in seventeen years." From Morocco he went to Algiers and thence to Tunis and Egypt.

He was about to penetrate to Tartary when he heard of the outbreak of the Revolution; and immediately started for France where he arrived at the beginning of 1791.

Of Mme. de Combray's two daughters the eldest had married, in 1787, at the age of twenty-two, Jacques-Philippe-Henri d'Houel; the youngest Caroline-Madeleine-Louise-Genevieve, was born in 1773, and consequently was only eleven years old when her father died. This child is the heroine of the drama we are about to relate.

In August, 1791, Mme. de Combray inscribed herself and her two sons on the list of the hostages of Louis XVI which the journalist Durosay had conceived. It was a courageous act, for it was easy to foresee that the six hundred and eleven names on "this golden book of fidelity," would soon all be suspected. While hope remained for the monarchy the two brothers struggled bravely. Timoleon stayed near the King till August 10, and only went to England after he had taken part in the defence of the Tuileries; Bonnoeil had emigrated the preceding year, and served in the army of the Princes. Mme. de Combray, left alone with her two daughters--the husband of the elder had also emigrated,--left Tournebut in 1793, and settled in Rouen, where, although she owned much real estate in the town, she rented in the Rue de Vala.s.se, Faubourg Bouvreuil, "an isolated, unnumbered house, with an entrance towards the country." She gave her desire to finish the education of her younger daughter who was entering her twentieth year as a reason for her retreat.

Caroline de Combray was very small,--"as large as a dog sitting," they said,--but charming; her complexion was delicately pure, her black hair of extraordinary length and abundance. She was loving and sensible, very romantic, full of frankness and vivacity; the great attraction of her small person was the result of a piquant combination of energy and gentleness. She had been brought up in the convent of the Nouvelles Catholiques de Caen, where she stayed six years, receiving lessons from "masters of all sorts of accomplishments, and of different languages."

She was a musician and played the harp, and as soon as they were settled in Rouen her mother engaged Boieldieu as her accompanist, "to whom she long paid six silver francs per lesson," a sum that seemed fabulous in that period of paper-money, and territorial mandates.

Madame de Combray, besides, was much straightened. As both her sons had emigrated, all the property that they inherited from their father was sequestrated. Of the income of 50,000 francs possessed by the family before the Revolution, scarcely fifty remained at her disposal, and she had been obliged to borrow to sustain the heavy expenses of her house in Rouen.

Besides her two daughters and the servants, she housed half a dozen nuns and two or three Chartreux, among them a recusant friar called Lemercier, who soon gained great influence in the household. By reason of his refractoriness Pere Lemercier was doomed, if discovered, to death, or at least to deportation, and it will be understood that he sympathised but feebly with the Revolution that consigned him, against his will, to martyrdom. He called down the vengeance of heaven on the miscreants, and not daring to show himself, with unquenchable ardour preached the holy crusade to the women who surrounded him.

Mme. de Combray's royalist enthusiasm did not need this inspiration; a wise man would have counselled resignation, or at least patience, but unhappily, she was surrounded only by those whose fanaticism encouraged and excused her own. Enthusiastic frenzy had become the habitual state of these people, whose overheated imaginations were nourished on legendary tales, and foolish hopes of imminent reprisals. They welcomed with unfailing credulity the wildest prophecies, announcing terrible impending ma.s.sacres, to which the miraculous return of the Bourbon lilies would put an end, and as illusions of this kind are strengthened by their own deceptions, the house in the Rue de Vala.s.se soon heard mysterious voices, and became the scene "of celestial apparitions,"

which, on the invitation of Pere Lemercier predicted the approaching destruction of the blues and the restoration of the monarchy.

On a certain day in the summer of 1795, a stranger presented himself to Pere Lemercier, armed with a pa.s.sword, and a very warm recommendation from a refractory priest, who was in hiding at Caen. He was a Chouan chief, bearing the name and t.i.tle of General Lebret; of medium stature, with red hair and beard, and cold steel-coloured eyes. Introduced to Mme. de Combray by Lemercier, he admitted that his real name was Louis Acquet d'Hauteporte, Chevalier de Ferolles. He had come to Rouen, he said, to transmit the orders of the Princes to Mallet de Crecy, who commanded for the King in Upper Normandy.

We can judge of the welcome the Chevalier received. Mme. de Combray, her daughters, the nuns and the Chartreux friars used all their ingenuity to satisfy the slightest wish of this man, who modestly called himself "the agent general of His Majesty." They arranged a hiding-place for him in the safest part of the house, and Pere Lemercier blessed it. Acquet stayed there part of the day, and in the evening joined in the usual pursuits of the household, and related the story of his adventures by way of entertainment.

According to him, he possessed large estates in the environs of the Sables-d'Olonne, of which place he was a native. An officer in the regiment of Brie infantry before the Revolution, being at Lille in 1791 he had taken advantage of his nearness to the frontier to incite his regiment to insurrection and emigrate to Belgium. He had then put himself at the disposal of the Princes, and had enlisted men for the royal army in Veudee, Poitou and Normandy, helping priests to emigrate, and saving whole villages from the fury of the blues. He named Charette, Frotte and Puisaye as his most intimate friends, and these names recalled the chivalrous times of the wars in the west in which he had taken a glorious part. Sometimes he disappeared for several days, and on his return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to a successful termination. In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Ferolles had become the idol of the little group of nave royalists among whom he had found refuge. He had bravely served _the cause_; he plumed himself on having merited the surname of "_toutou_ of the Princes," and in Mme.

de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal to any number of references.

Acquet was in reality an adventurer. If we were to take account here of all the evil deeds he is credited with, we should be suspected of wantonly blackening the character of this melodramatic figure. A few facts gathered by the Combrays will serve to describe him. As an officer at Lille he was about to be imprisoned as the result of an odious accusation, but deserted and escaped to Belgium, not daring to join the army of the emigres. He stopped at Mons, then went to the west of France, and became a Chouan, but politics had nothing to do with this act. He a.s.sociated himself with some bravos of his stripe, and plundered travellers, and levied contributions on the purchasers of national property. In the Eure, where he usually pursued his operations, he a.s.sa.s.sinated with his own hand two defenceless gamekeepers whom his little band had encountered.

He delighted in taking the funds of the country school-teachers, and to give a colour of royalism to the deed, he would nightly tear down the trees of liberty in the villages in which he operated. Tired at last of "an occupation where there was nothing but blows to receive, and his head to lose," he went to seek his fortune in Rouen; and before he presented himself to Mme. de Combray, had without doubt made enquiries.

He knew he would find a rich heiress, whose two brothers, emigrated, would probably never return, and from the first he set to work to flatter the royalist hobby of the mother, and the romantic imagination of the young girl. Pere Lemercier was himself conquered; Acquet, to catch him, pretended the greatest piety and most scrupulous devotion.

A note of Bonnoeil's informs us of the way this tragic intrigue ended. "Acquet employed every means of seduction to attain his end. The young girl, fearing to remain long unmarried because of the unhappy times, listened to him, in spite of the many reasons for waiting and for refusing the proposals of a man whose name, country and fortune were unknown to them. The mother's advice was unfortunately not heeded, and she found herself obliged to consent to the marriage, the laws of that period giving the daughters full liberty, and authorising them to shake off the salutary parental yoke."

The dates of certain papers complete the discreet periphrases of Bonnoeil. The truth is that Acquet "declared his pa.s.sion" to Mlle. de Combray and as she, a little doubtful though well-disposed to allow herself to be loved, still hesitated, the Chevalier signed a sort of mystic engagement dated January 1, 1796, where, "in sight of the Holy Church and at the pleasure of G.o.d," he pledged himself to marry her on demand. She carefully locked up this precious paper, and a little less than ten months later, the 17th October, the munic.i.p.al agent of Aubevoye, in which is situated the Chateau of Tournebut, inscribed the birth of a daughter, born to the citizeness Louise-Charlotte de Combray, "wife of the citizen Louis Acquet." Here, then, is the reason that the Marquise "found herself obliged to consent to the marriage," which did not take place until the following year, mention of it not being made in the registry of Rouen until the date 17th June, 1797.

Acquet had thus attained his wish; he had seduced Mlle. de Combray to make the marriage inevitable, and this accomplished, under pretext of preventing their sale, he caused the estates of the Combrays situated at Donnay near Falaise, and sequestrated by the emigration of Bonnoeil, to be conveyed to him. Scarcely was this done when he began to pillage the property, turning everything into money, cutting down woods, and sparing neither thickets nor hedges. "The domain of Donnay became a sort of desert in his hands." Stopped in his depredations by a complaint of his two brothers-in-law he tried to attack the will of the Marquis de Combray, pretending that his wife, a minor at the time of her father's death, had been injured in the division of property. This was to declare open war on the family he had entered, and to compel his wife to espouse his cause he beat her unmercifully. A second daughter was born of this unhappy union, and even the children did not escape the brutality of their father. A note on this subject, written by Mme. Acquet, is of heart-breaking eloquence:

"M. Acquet beat the children cruelly every day; he ill-treated me also unceasingly: he often chastised them with sticks, which he always used when he made the children read; they were continually black and blue with the blows they received. He gave me such a severe blow one day that blood gushed from my nose and mouth, and I was unconscious for some moments.... He went to get his pistols to blow out my brains, which he would certainly have done if people had not been present.... He was always armed with a dagger."

In January, 1804, Mme. Acquet resolved to escape from this h.e.l.l.

Profiting by her husband's absence in La Veudee she wrote to him that she refused to live with him longer, and hastened to Falaise to ask a shelter from her brother Timoleon, who had lately returned to France.

Timoleon, in order to prevent a scandal, persuaded his sister to return to her husband's house. She took this wise advice, but refused to see M.

Acquet, who, returning in haste and finding her barricaded in the chateau, called the justice of the peace of the canton of Harcourt, aided by his clerk and two gendarmes, to witness that his wife refused to receive him. Having, one fine morning, "found her desk forced and all her papers taken," she returned to Falaise, obtained a judgment authorising her to live with her brother, and lodged a pet.i.tion for separation.

Things were at this point when the trial of Georges Cadoudal was in progress. Acquet, exasperated at the resistance to his projects, swore that he would have signal vengeance on his wife and all the Combrays.

They were, unhappily, to give his hatred too good an opportunity of showing itself.

After pa.s.sing three years in Rouen, Mme. de Combray returned to Tournebut in the spring of 1796, with her royalist pa.s.sions and illusions as strong as ever. She had declared war on the Revolution, and believed that victory was a.s.sured at no distant period. It is a not uncommon effect of political pa.s.sion to blind its subjects to the point of believing that their desires and hopes are imminent realities. Mme.

de Combray antic.i.p.ated the return of the King so impatiently that one of her reasons for returning to the chateau was to prepare apartments for the Princes and their suite in case the debarkation should take place on the coast of Normandy. Once before, in 1792, Gaillon had been designated as a stopping-place for Louis XVI in case he should again make the attempt that had been frustrated at Varennes. The Chateau de Gaillon was no longer habitable in 1796, but Tournebut, in the opinion of the Marquise, offered the same advantages, being about midway between the coast and Paris. Its isolation also permitted the reception of pa.s.sing guests without awakening suspicion, while the vast secret rooms where sixty to eighty persons could hide at one time, were well suited for holding secret councils. To make things still safer, Mme. de Combray now acquired a large house, situated about two hundred yards from the walls of Tournebut, and called "Gros-Mesnil" or "Le Pet.i.t Chateau." It was a two-story building with a high slate roof; the court in front was surrounded by huts and offices; a high wall enclosed the property on all sides, and a pathway led from it to one of the doors in the wall surrounding Tournebut.

As soon as she was in possession of the Pet.i.t Chateau, Mme. de Combray had some large secret places constructed in it. For this work she employed a man called Soyer who combined the functions of intendant, maitre d'hotel and valet-de-chambre at Tournebut. Soyer was born at Combray, one of the Marquise's estates in Lower Normandy, and entered her service in 1791, at the age of sixteen, in the capacity of scullion.

He had gone with his mistress to Rouen during the Terror, and since the return to Tournebut she had given the administration of the estate into his hands. In this way he had authority over the domestics at the chateau, who numbered six, and among whom the chambermaid Querey and the gardener Chatel deserve special mention. Each year, about Easter, Mme.

de Combray went to Rouen, where under pretext of purchases to make and rents to collect, she remained a month. Only Soyer and Mlle. Querey accompanied her. Besides her patrimonial house in the Rue Saint-Amand, she had retained the quiet house in the Faubourg Bouvreuil which still served as a refuge for the exiles sought by the police of the Directory, and as a depot for the refractories who were sure of finding supplies there and means of rejoining the royalist army. Tournebut itself, admirably situated between Upper and Lower Normandy, became the refuge for all the partisans whom a particularly bold stroke had brought to the attention of the authorities on either bank of the river, totally separated at this time by the slowness and infrequency of communication, and also by the centralisation of the police which prevented direct intercourse between the different departmental authorities. It was in this way that Mme. de Combray, having become from 1796 to 1804, the chief of the party with the advantage of being known as such only to the party itself, sheltered the most compromised of the chiefs of Norman Chouannerie, those strange heroes whose mad bravery has brought them a legendary fame, and whose names are scarcely to be found, doubtfully spelled, in the accounts of historians.

Among those who sojourned at Tournebut was Charles de Margadel, one of Frotte's officers, who had organised a royalist police even in Paris.

Thence he had escaped to deal some blows in the Eure under the orders of Hingant de Saint-Maur, another habitue of Tournebut who was preparing there his astonishing expedition of Pacy-sur-Eure. Besides Margadel and Hingant, Mme. de Combray had oftenest sheltered Armand Gaillard, and his brother Raoul, whose death we have related. Deville, called "Tamerlan"; the brothers Tellier; Le Bienvenu du Buc, one of the officers of Hingant; also another, hidden under the name of Collin, called "Cupidon"; a German bravo named Flierle, called "Le Marchand," whom we shall meet again, were also her guests, without counting "Sauve-la-Graisse," "Sans-Quartier," "Blondel," "Perce-Pataud"--actors in the drama, without name or history, who were always sure of finding in the "cachettes" of the great chateau or the Tour de l'Ermitage, refuge and help.

These were compromising tenants, and it is quite easy to imagine what amus.e.m.e.nts at Tournebut served to fill the leisure of these men so long unaccustomed to regular occupation, and to whom strife and danger had become absolute necessaries. Some statistics, rather hard to prove, will furnish hints on this point. In September, 1800, the two coaches from Caen to Paris were stopped between Evreux and Pacy, at a place called Riquiqui, by two hundred armed brigands, and 48,000 livres belonging to the State taken. Again, in 1800, the coach from Rouen to Pont-Audemer was attacked by twenty Chouans and a part of the funds carried off. In 1801 a coach was robbed near Evreux; some days later the mail from Caen to Paris was plundered by six brigands. On the highroad on the right bank of the Seine attacks on coaches were frequent near Saint-Gervais, d'Authevernes, and the old mill of Mouflaines. It was only a good deal later, when the chateau of Tournebut was known as an avowed retreat of the Chouans, that it occurred to the authorities that "by its position at an equal distance from the two roads to Paris by Vernon and by Magny-en-Vexin, where the mail had so often been stopped," it might well have served as a centre of operations, and as the authors of these outrages remained undiscovered, they credited them all to Mme. de Combray's inspiration, and this accusation without proof is none too bold. The theft of state funds was a bagatelle to people whom ten years of implacable warfare had rendered blase about all brigandage. Moreover, it was easily conceivable that the snare laid by Bonaparte for Frotte, who was so popular in Normandy, the summary execution of the General and his six officers, the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Duc d'Enghien, the death of Georges Cadoudal (almost a G.o.d to the Chouans) and of his brave companions, following so many imprisonments without trial, acts of police treachery, traps and denunciations paid for and rewarded, had exasperated the vanquished royalists, and envenomed their hatred to the point of believing any expedient justifiable. Such was the state of mind of Mme. de Combray in the middle of 1804, at which date we have stopped the recital of the marital misfortunes of Mme. Acquet de Ferolles, and it justified Bonald's saying: "Foolish deeds done by clever men, extravagances uttered by men of intellect, crimes committed by honest people--such is the story of the revolution."