The House of the Combrays Part 5

D'Ache had taken refuge at Tournebut. He had left Paris as soon as the gates were opened, and whether he had escaped surveillance more cleverly than the brothers Gaillard, whether he had been able to get immediately to Saint-Germain where he had a refuge, and from there, without risking the pa.s.sage of a ferry or a bridge, without stopping at any inn, had succeeded in covering in one day the fifteen leagues that separated him from Gaillon, he arrived without mishap at Tournebut where Mme. de Combray immediately shut the door of one of the hiding-places upon him.

Tournebut was familiar ground to d'Ache. He was related to Mme. de Combray, and before the Revolution, when he was on furlough, he had made long visits there while "grandmere Brunelle" was still alive. He had been back since then and had spent there part of the autumn of 1803.

There had been a grand reunion at the chateau then, to celebrate the marriage of M. du Hasey, proprietor of a chateau near Gaillon. Du Hasey was aide-de-camp to Guerin de Bruslard, the famous Chouan whom Frotte had designated as his successor to the command of the royal army, and who had only had to disband it. This reunion, which is often mentioned in the reports, by the nature and quality of the guests, was more important than an ordinary wedding-feast.

D'Ache learned at Tournebut of the proclamation of the Empire and the death of Georges. He looked upon it as a death-blow to the royalist hopes; where-ever one might turn there was no resource--no chiefs, no money, no men. If many royalists remained in the Orne and the Manche, it was impossible to group them or pay them. The government gained strength and authority daily; at the slightest movement France felt the iron grasp in which she was held tightened around her, and such was the prestige of the extraordinary hero who personified the whole regime, that even those he had vanquished did not disguise their admiration. The King of Spain--a Bourbon--sent him the insignia of the Golden Fleece.

The world was fascinated and history shows no example of material and moral power comparable to that of Napoleon when the Holy Father crossed the mountains to recognise and hail him as the instrument of Providence, and anoint him Caesar in the name of G.o.d.

It was, however, just at this time that d'Ache, an exile, concealed in the Chateau of Tournebut, without a companion, without a penny, without a counsellor or ally other than the aged woman who gave him refuge, conceived the astonishing idea of struggling against the man before whom all Europe bowed the knee. Looked at in this light it seems madness, but undoubtedly d'Ache's royalist illusions blinded him to the conditions of the duel he was to engage in. But these illusions were common to many people for whom Bonaparte, at the height of his power, was never anything but an audacious criminal whose fact.i.tious greatness was at the mercy of a well-directed and fortunate blow.

Fouche's police had not given up hopes of finding the fugitive. They looked for him in Paris, Rouen, Saint-Denis-du-Bosguerard, near Bourgtheroulde, where his mother possessed a small estate; they watched closest at Saint-Clair whither his wife and daughters had returned after the execution of Georges. The doors of the Madelonnettes prison had been opened for them and they had been informed that they must remove themselves forty leagues from Paris and the coast; but the poor woman, almost without resources, had not paid attention to this injunction, and they were allowed to remain at Saint-Clair in the hope that d'Ache would tire of his wandering life, and allow himself to be taken at home. As to Placide, as soon as he found himself out of the Temple, and had conducted his sister-in-law and nieces home, he returned to Rouen, where he arrived in mid-July. Scarcely had he been one night in his lodging in the Rue Saint-Patrice, when he received a letter--how, or from where he could not say--announcing that his brother had gone away so as not to compromise his family again, and that he would not return to France until general peace was proclaimed, hoping then to obtain permission from the government to end his days in the bosom of his family.

D'Ache, however, was living in Tournebut without much mystery. The only precaution he took was to avoid leaving the property, and he had taken the name of "Deslorieres," one of the pseudonyms of Georges Cadoudal, "as if he wanted to name himself as his successor." Little by little the servants became accustomed to the presence of this guest of whom Mme. de Combray took such good care "because he had had differences with the government," as she said. Under pretext of repairs undertaken in the church of Aubevoye, the cure of the parish was invited to celebrate ma.s.s every Sunday in the chapel of the chateau, and d'Ache could thus be present at the celebration without showing himself in the village.

Doubtless the days pa.s.sed slowly for this man accustomed to an active life; he and his old friend dreamt of the return of the King, and Bonnoeil, who spent part of the year at Tournebut, read to them a funeral oration of the Duc d'Enghien, a virulent pamphlet that the royalists pa.s.sed from hand to hand, and of which he had taken a copy.

How many times must d'Ache have paced the magnificent avenue of limes, which still exists as the only vestige of the old park. There is a moss-grown stone table on which one loves to fancy this strange man leaning his elbow while he thought of his "rival," and planned the future according to his royalist illusions as the other in his Olympia, the Tuileries, planned it according to his ambitious caprices.

This existence lasted fifteen months. From the time of his arrival at the end of March, 1804, until the day he left, it does not seem that d'Ache received any visitors, except Mme. Leva.s.seur of Rouen, who, if police reports are to be believed, was simultaneously his mistress and Raoul Gaillard's. The truth is that she was a devoted friend of the royalists--to whom she had rendered great service, and through her d'Ache was kept informed of what happened in Lower Normandy during his seclusion at Tournebut. Since the general pacification, tranquillity was, in appearance at least, established; Chouannerie seemed to be forgotten. But conscription was not much to the taste of the rural cla.s.ses, and the rigour with which it was applied alienated the population. The number of refractories and deserters augmented at each requisition; protected by the sympathy of the peasants they easily escaped all search; the country people considered them victims rather than rebels, and gave them a.s.sistance when they could do so without being seen. There were here all the elements of a new insurrection; to which would be added, if they succeeded in uniting and equipping all these malcontents, the survivors of Frotte's bands, exasperated by the rigours of the new regime, and the ill-treatment of the gendarmes.

The descent of a French prince on the Norman coast would in d'Ache's opinion, group all these malcontents. Thoroughly persuaded that to persuade one of them to cross the channel it would suffice to tell M. le Comte d'Artois or one of his sons that his presence was desired by the faithful population in the West, he thought of going himself to England with the invitation. Perhaps they would be able to persuade the King to put himself at the head of the movement, and be the first to land on French soil. This was d'Ache's secret conviction, and in the ardour of his credulous enthusiasm he was certain that on the announcement, Napoleon's Empire would crumble of itself, without the necessity of a single blow.

Such was the eternal subject of conversation between Mme. de Combray and her guest, varied by interminable parties of cards of tric-trac. In their feverish idleness, isolated from the rest of the world, ignorant of new ideas and new manners, they shut themselves up with their illusions, which took on the colour of reality. And while the exile studied the part of the coast where, followed by an army of volunteers with white plumes, he would go to receive his Majesty, the old Marquise put the last touches to the apartments long ago prepared for the reception of the King and his suite on their way to Paris. And in order to perpetuate the remembrance of this visit, which would be the most glorious page in the history of Tournebut, she had caused the old part of the chateau, left unfinished by Marillac, to be restored and ornamented.

In July, 1805, after more than a year pa.s.sed in this solitude, d'Ache judged that the moment to act had arrived. The Emperor was going to take the field against a new coalition, and the campaign might be unfavourable to him. It only needed a defeat to shake to its foundations the new Empire whose prestige a victorious army alone maintained. It was important to profit by this chance should it arrive. And in order to be within reach of the English cruiser d'Ache had to be near Cotentin; he had many devoted friends in this region and was sure of finding a safe retreat. Mme. de Combray, taking advantage of the fair of Saint-Clair which was held every year in mid-July, near the Chateau of Donnay, could conduct her guest beyond Falaise without exciting suspicion. They determined to start then, and about July 15, 1805, the Marquise left Tournebut with her son Bonnoeil, in a cabriolet that d'Ache drove, disguised as a postillion.

In this equipage, the man without any resource but his courage, and his royalist faith, whose dream was to change the course of the world's events, started on his campaign; and one is obliged to think, in face of this heroic simplicity, of Cervantes' hero, quitting his house one fine morning, and armed with an old shield and lance, encased in antiquated armour and animated by a sublime but foolish faith, going forth to succour the oppressed, and declare war on Giants.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHe

The demesne of Donnay, situated about three leagues from Falaise on the road to Harcourt, was one of the estates which Acquet de Ferolles had usurped, under pretext of saving them from the Public Treasury and of taking over the management of the property of his brother-in-law, Bonnoeil, who was an emigre. Now, the latter had for some time returned to the enjoyment of his civil rights, but Acquet had not restored his possessions. This terrible man, acting in the name of his wife, who was a claimant of the inheritance of the late M. de Combray, had inst.i.tuted a series of lawsuits against his brother-in-law. He proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend upon was a pension of 2,000 francs which the court had granted to her on August 1, 1804, for her maintenance pending a definite decision. She lived alone at the Hotel de Combray in the Rue du Trepot at Falaise, a very large house composed of two main buildings, one of which was vacant owing to the absence of Timoleon who had settled in Paris. Mme. de Combray had undertaken to a.s.sist with her granddaughters' education, and they had been sent off to a school kept by a Mme. du Saussay at Rouen.

Foreseeing that this state of things could not last forever, Acquet, despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests, chopping the elms into f.a.ggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The very castle whose facade but lately reached to the end of the stately avenue, suffered from his devastations. It was now nothing but a ruin with swing-doors and a leaking roof. Here Acquet had reserved a garret for himself, abandoning the rest of the house to the ravages of time and the weather. Shut up in this ruin like a wild beast in his lair, he would not permit the slightest infringement of what he called his rights. Mme. de Combray wished to spend the harvest season of 1803 at the chateau, where the happiest years of her life had been pa.s.sed, and where all her children had grown up, but Acquet made the bailiff turn her out, and the Marquise took refuge in the village parsonage, which had been sold at the time of the Revolution as national property, and for which she had supplied half the money, when the Commune bought it back, to restore it to its original purpose. Since no priest had yet been appointed she was able to take up her residence there, to the indignation of her son-in-law, who considered this intrusion as a piece of bravado.

Two years later Mme. de Combray had still no other shelter at Donnay, and it was to this parsonage that she brought d'Ache. They arrived there on the evening of July 17th. A long stay in this conspicuous house, which was always exposed to the hateful espionage of Acquet, was out of the question for the exile. He nevertheless spent a fortnight there, without trying to hide himself, even going so far as to hunt, and receive several visits, among others one from Mme. Acquet, who came from Falaise to see her mother, and thus met d'Ache for the first time. At the beginning of August he quitted Donnay, and Mme. de Combray accompanied him as far as the country chateau of a neighbour, M.

Descroisy, where he pa.s.sed one night. At break of day he set out on horseback in the direction of Bayeux, Mme. de Combray alone knowing where he went.

In this neighbourhood d'Ache had the choice of several places of refuge.

He was closely connected by ties of friendship with the family of Duquesnay de Monfiquet who lived at Mandeville near Trevieres. M. de Monfiquet, a thoroughly loyal but quite unimportant n.o.bleman, having emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution, his estate at Mandeville had been sequestrated and his chateau pillaged and half demolished. Mme.

de Monfiquet, a clever and energetic woman, being left with six daughters unprovided for, took refuge with the d'Ache's at Gournay, where she spent the whole period of the Terror. Madame d'Ache even kept Henriette, one of the little girls who was ill-favoured and hunchbacked but remarkably clever, with her for five years.

Monsieur de Monfiquet, returning from abroad in the year VII, and having somewhat reorganised his little estate at Mandeville, lived there in poverty with his family in the hope that brighter days would dawn for them with the return of the monarchy. On all these grounds d'Ache was sure of finding not only a safe retreat but congenial society. The few persons who were acquainted with what pa.s.sed at Mandeville were convinced that Mlle. Henriette possessed a great influence over the exile, and that she had been his mistress for a long time. According to general opinion he made her his confidant and she helped him like a devoted admirer. In fact she arranged several other hiding-places for him in the neighbourhood of Trevieres in case of need;--one at the mill at Dungy, another with M. de Cantelou at Lingevres, and a third at a tanner's named La Perandeere at Bayeux. And to escort him in his flights she secured a man of unparalleled audacity who had been a brigand in the district for ten years, and who had to avenge the death of his two brothers, who had fallen into an ambush and been shot at Bayeux in 1796.

People called him David the Intrepid. Having been ten times condemned to death and certain of being shot as soon as he was caught, David had no settled abode. On stormy nights he would embark in a boat which he steered himself, and, sure of not being overtaken, he would reach England where he used to act as an agent for the emigrants. They say that he was not without influence with the entourage of the Comte d'Artois. When he stayed in France he lodged with an old lady former housekeeper to a Councillor of the Parliament of Normandy, who lived alone in an old house in Bayeux and to whom he had been recommended by Mlle. Henriette de Monfiquet. David did not take up much room. When he arrived he set in motion a contrivance of his own by which two steps of the princ.i.p.al staircase were raised, and slipping into the cavity thus made, he quickly replaced everything. All the gendarmes in Calvados could have gone up and down this staircase without suspecting that a man was hidden in the house, where, however, he was never looked for.

These were the persons and means made use of by d'Ache in his new theatre of operations: a poor hunchbacked girl was his council, and his army was composed of David the Intrepid. He was, moreover, penniless. At the beginning of the autumn Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis by Lanoe, a keeper who had been in her service, and who now occupied a small farm at Glatigny, near to Bretteville-sur-Dives. Lanoe belonged to that rapacious type of peasant whom even a small sum of money never fails to attract. Already he had on two occasions acted as guide to the Baron de Commarque and to Frotte when Mme. de Combray offered them shelter at Donnay. For this he had been summoned before a military commission and spent nearly two years in prison, but this had no effect. For three francs he would walk ten leagues and if he complained sufficiently of the dangers to which these missions exposed him the sum was doubled and he would go away satisfied. In the middle of August he went to Mandeville to fetch d'Ache to Donnay, where he spent ten days and again pa.s.sed three weeks at the end of September. He was to have gone there again in December, but at the moment when he was preparing to start Bonnoeil suddenly appeared at Mandeville, having come to warn him not to venture there as Mme. de Combray had been accused of a crime and was on the point of being arrested.

It was not without vexation that Acquet saw his mother-in-law settling herself at his very door. Keenly on the lookout for any means of annoying the Marquise, he was struck by the idea that if an inc.u.mbent were appointed to the vacant cure of Donnay, he would have to live at the parsonage, half of which belonged to the Commune, and that their being obliged to live in the same house would be a great inconvenience to Mme. de Combray. This prospect charmed Acquet, and as he had several friends in high positions, among them the Baron Darthenay his neighbour at Meslay, who had lately been elected deputy for Calvados, he had small difficulty in getting a priest appointed. A few days afterwards a cure, the Abbe Clerisse, arrived at Donnay, fully determined to carry out the duties of his ministry faithfully, and very far from foreseeing the tragic fate in store for him.

Mme. de Combray had made herself quite comfortable at the parsonage, which she considered in a manner her own property since she had furnished half the money for its purchase. She now saw herself compelled to surrender a portion of it, which from the very first embittered her against the new arrival. Acquet, for his part, feted his protege, and welcoming him cordially put him on his guard against the machinations of the Marquise, whom he represented as an inveterate enemy of the conciliatory government to which France owed the Concordat. The Abbe Clerisse, who, from the construction of the house was obliged to use the rooms in common with Mme. de Combray, was not long in noticing the mysterious behaviour of the occupants. There were conferences conducted in whispers, visitors who arrived at night and left at dawn, secret comings and goings, in short, all the strange doings of a houseful of conspirators, so that the good cure one day took Lanoe aside and recommended him to be prudent, "predicting that he would get himself into serious difficulties if he did not quit the service of the Marquise as soon as possible." Mme. de Combray, in her exasperation, called the Abbe "Concordataire," an epithet which, from her, was equivalent to renegade. She had the imprudence to add that the reign of the "usurper would not last forever, and that the princes would soon return at the head of an English army and restore everything." In her wrath she left the parsonage, making a great commotion, and went to beg shelter from her farmer Hebert, who lived in a cottage used as a public house, called La Bijude, where the road from Harcourt met that from Cesny. Acquet was triumphant. The astonished Abbe remained pa.s.sive; and as ill luck would have it, fell ill and died a few days afterwards. A report was circulated, emanating from the chateau, that he had died of grief caused by Mme. de Combray. Then people began to talk in whispers about a certain basket of white wine with which she had presented the poor priest. A week later all those who sided with Acquet were convinced that the Marquise had poisoned the Abbe Clerisse, "after having been imprudent enough to take him into her confidence." Feeling ran high in the village. Acquet affected consternation. The authorities, no doubt informed by him, began making investigations when a nephew of the Marquise, M. de Saint Leonard, Mayor of Falaise, who was on very good terms with the Court, came down to hush up the affair and impose silence on the mischief-makers.

This first bout between Acquet de Ferolles and the family de Combray resulted in d'Ache's being forbidden the house of his old friend.

Feeling herself in the clutches of an enemy who was always on the watch, she did not dare to expose to denunciation a man on whose head the fate of the monarchy rested. D'Ache did not come to La Bijude the whole winter. Mme. de Combray lived there alone with her son Bonnoeil and the farmer Hebert. She had the house done up and repainted, but it distressed her to be so meanly lodged, and she regretted the lofty halls and the quiet of Tournebut. At the beginning of Lent, 1806, she sent Lanoe for the last time to Mandeville to arrange with d'Ache some means of correspondence, and with Bonnoeil she again started for Gaillon, determined never again to set foot on her estates in Lower Normandy as long as her son-in-law reigned there, and thoroughly convinced that the fast approaching return of the King would avenge all the humiliations she had lately endured. She had, moreover, quarrelled with her daughter, who had only come to Donnay twice during her mother's stay, and had there displayed only a very moderate appreciation of d'Ache's plans, and had seemed entirely uninterested in the annoyance caused to the Marquise, and her exodus to La Bijude.

If Mme. Acquet de Ferolles was really lacking in interest, it was because a great event had occurred in her own life.

Acquet knew that his wife's suit for a separation must inevitably be granted. The ill-treatment she had had to endure was only too well-known, and every one in Falaise took her part. If Acquet lost the case, it would mean the end of the easy life he was leading at Donnay, and he not only wished to gain time but secretly hoped that his wife would commit some indiscretion that would regain for him if not the sympathies of the public, at least her loss of the suit which if won, would ruin him. In order to carry out his Machiavellian schemes, he pretended that he wished to come to an understanding with the Combray family, and he despatched one of his friends to Mme. Acquet to open negotiations. This friend, named Le Chevalier, was a handsome young man of twenty-five, with dark hair, a pale complexion and white teeth. He had languishing eyes, a sympathetic voice and a graceful figure, inexhaustible good-humour, despite his melancholy appearance, and unbounded audacity. As he was the owner of a farm in the Commune of Saint Arnould in the neighbourhood of Exmes, he was called Le Chevalier de Saint-Arnould, which gave him the position of a n.o.bleman. He was moreover related to the n.o.bility.

Less has been written about Le Chevalier than about most of those who were concerned in the troubles in the west. Nevertheless, his adventures deserve more than the few lines, often incorrect, devoted to him by some chroniclers of the revolt of the Chouans. He was a remarkable personality, very romantic, somewhat of an enigma, and one who by a touch of gallantry and scepticism was distinguished from his savage and heroic companions.

Born with a generous temperament and deeply in love with glory, as he said, he was the son of a councillor, hammer-keeper to the corporation of the woods and forests of Vire. A stay of several years in Paris where he took lessons from different masters as much in science as in the arts and foreign languages, had completed his education. He returned to Saint Arnould in 1799, uncertain as to the choice of a career, when a chance meeting with Picot, chief of the Auge division, whose death was described at the beginning of this story, decided his vocation, and Le Chevalier became a royalist officer, less from conviction than from generous feelings which inclined him towards the cause of the vanquished and oppressed. A pistol shot broke his left arm two or three days after he was enrolled, and he was scarcely cured of this wound when he again took the field and was implicated in the stopping of a coach. Three of his friends were imprisoned, and when he himself was arrested, he succeeded in proving that on the very day of the attack, in the neighbourhood of Evreux, he was on a visit to a senator in Paris who had great friends among the authorities, and the magistrates were compelled to yield before this indisputable alibi. Le Chevalier, nevertheless, appeared before the tribunal which was trying the cases of his companions, and pleaded their cause with the eloquence inspired by the purest and bravest friendship, and when he heard them condemned to death, he begged in a burst of feeling which amazed everybody, to be allowed to share their fate. It was considered a sufficient punishment to send him to prison at Caen, whence he was liberated a few months later, though he had to remain in the town under police surveillance. It was then that the wild romance of his life began.

He possessed an ample fortune. His chivalrous behaviour in the affair at Evreux had gained for him, among the Chouans such renown that without knowing him otherwise than from hearsay, Mme. de Combray travelled across Normandy, as did many other royalist ladies in order to visit the hero in prison and offer him her services. He had admirers who fawned on him, flatterers who praised him to the skies, and how could this rather hot-headed youth of twenty resist such adulation at that strange epoch when even the wisest lost their balance? At least his folly was generous.

Scarcely out of prison he was seized with pity for the misery of the pardoned Chouans, veritable pariahs, who lived by all sorts of contrivances or were dependent on charity, and he made their care his special charge. He was always followed by a dozen of these parasites, a ragged troop of whom filled the Cafe Hervieux, where he held his court and which moreover was frequented by teachers of English, mathematics and fencing, whom he had in his pay, and from whom he took lessons when not playing faro.

Le Chevalier had a warm heart, and a purse that was never closed. He was a facile speaker whose eloquence was of a forensic type. His friendships were pa.s.sionate. While in prison he received news of the death of one of his friends, Gilbert, who had been guillotined at Evreux, and when some one congratulated him on his approaching release he replied: "Ah, my dear comrade! do you think this is a time to congratulate me? Do you know so little of my heart and are you so ignorant of the love I bore Gilbert? The happiness of my life is destroyed forever. Nothing can fill the void in my heart.... I have lived, ah! far too long. O divine duties of friendship and honour, how my heart burns to fulfil you! O eternity or annihilation, how sweet will you seem to me whence once I have fulfilled them!" Such was Le Chevalier's style and this affection contrasted singularly with the world in which he lived. His comparative wealth, his generosity, and an air of mystery about his life, gave him a certain advantage over the most popular leaders. People knew that he was dreaming of gigantic projects, and his partisans considered him cut out for the accomplishment of great things.

In reality Le Chevalier squandered his patrimony recklessly.

The treasury of the party--presided over by an old officer of Frotte's, Bureau de Placene, who pompously styled himself the Treasurer-General--was empty, and orders came from "high places,"

without any one exactly knowing whence they emanated, for the faithful to refill them by pillaging the coffers of the state. The police had little by little relaxed their supervision of Le Chevalier's conduct, and he took advantage of this to go away for short periods. It was remarked that each of his absences generally coincided with the stopping of a coach--a frequent occurrence in Normandy at this time, and one that was considered as justifiable by the royalists. Seldom did they feel any qualms about these exploits. The driver, and often his escort, were accomplices of the Chouans. A few shots were fired from muskets or pistols to keep up the pretence of a fight. Some of the men opened the chests while others kept watch. The money belonging to the government was divided to the last sou, while that belonging to private individuals was carefully returned to the strong box. A few hours later the band returned to Caen and the noisy meetings at the Cafe Hervieux were not even interrupted.

What renders the figure of Le Chevalier especially attractive, despite these mad pranks, which no one of his day considered dishonourable, is the deep private grief which saddened his adventurous life. In 1801, when he was twenty-one years of age, and during his detention at Caen, he had married Lucile Thiboust, a girl somewhat older than himself, whose father had been overseer of an estate. He was obliged to break out of prison to spend a few rare hours with the wife whom he dearly loved, all the more so since his pa.s.sion was oftenest obliged to expend itself in ardent letters not devoid of literary merit. In prison he learned of the birth of a son born of this union, and a week later, of the death of his adored wife. His grief was terrible, but he was seized with a pa.s.sionate love for his child, and it is said that from that day forth he cared for no one else. He had lived so fast that at the age of twenty-three he was tired of life; his only anxiety was for the future of his son, whom he had confided to the care of a good woman named Marie Hamon. He traced out a line of conduct for this babe in swaddling clothes: "Let him flee corruption, seduction and all shameful and violent pa.s.sions; let him be a friend as they were in ancient Greece, a lover as in ancient Gaul."

In short his exploits, his captivity, his sorrows, his eloquence, his courage, his n.o.ble bearing, made Le Chevalier a hero of romance, and this was the man whom Acquet de Ferolles deemed it wise to despatch to his wife. Doubtless he had made his acquaintance through the medium of some of his Chouan comrades. He received him at Donnay, and in order to attach him to himself lent him large sums of money, which Le Chevalier immediately distributed among the crowd of parasites that never left him. Acquet told him of the separation with which his wife threatened him, begging him to use all his eloquence to bring about an amicable settlement.

The poor woman would never have known this peacemaker but for her husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom.

She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero--he was so handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling novelties, loved him from the first day with an "ungovernable pa.s.sion."

She a.s.sociated herself with his life with an ardour that excluded every other sentiment, and she so wished to stand well with him that, casting aside all prudence, she adopted his adventurous mode of living, mixing with the outcasts who formed the entourage of her lover, and with them frequenting the inns and cafes of Caen. He succeeded in avoiding the surveillance of the police, and secretly undertook journeys to Paris where he said he had friends in the Emperor's immediate circle. He travelled by those roads in Normandy which were known to all the old Chouans, talking to them of the good times when they made war on the Blues, and not hesitating to say that, whenever he wished, he had only to make a sign and an army would spring up around him. He maintained, moreover, a small troop of determined men who carried his messages and formed his staff.

There is not the slightest doubt that their chief resource lay in carrying off the money of the State which was sent from place to place in public conveyances, and it was this booty that enriched the coffers of the party, the treasurer, Placene, having long since grown indifferent to the source of his supplies. The agreement of certain dates is singularly convincing. Thus, at the beginning of December, 1805, d'Ache was at Mandeville with the Monfiquets, in a state of such penury that, as we have seen, Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis d'or by Lanoe; nevertheless, he was thinking of going to England to fetch back the princes. He would require a considerable sum to prepare for his journey, and to guard against all the contingencies of this somewhat audacious attempt. Mme. Acquet was informed of the situation by her mother whom she came to visit at Donnay, and on the 22d December, 1805, the coach from Rouen to Paris was attacked on the slope of Authevernes, at a distance of only three leagues from the Chateau of Tournebut. The travellers noticed that one of the brigands, dressed in a military costume, and whom his comrades called The Dragon, was so much thinner and more active than the rest, that he might well have been taken "for a woman dressed as a man." A fresh attack was made at the same place by the same band on the 15th February, 1806; and as before the band disappeared so rapidly, once the blow was struck, that it seemed they must have taken refuge in one of the neighbouring houses. Suspicion fell on the Chateau de Mussegros, situated about three leagues from Authevernes; but n.o.body then thought of Tournebut, the owners of which had been absent for seven months. It was only in March that Mme. de Combray returned there, and it was in April that d'Ache, having laid in a good stock of money, decided to cross the channel and convey to the princes the good wishes of their faithful provinces in the west.

D'Ache had not wasted his time during his stay at Mandeville. It was a difficult enterprise in existing circ.u.mstances to arrange his crossings with any chance of success. The embarkation was easy enough, and David the Intrepid had undertaken to see to it; but it was especially important to secure a safe return, and a secret landing on the French coast, lined as it was by patrols, watched day and night by custom-house officers, and guarded by sentinels at every point where a boat could approach the sh.o.r.e, offered almost insuperable difficulties. D'Ache selected a little creek at the foot of the rocks of Saint Honorine, scarcely two leagues from Trevieres and David, who knew all the coast guards in the district, bribed one of them to become an accomplice.

It was on a stormy night at the end of April, 1806, that d'Ache put to sea in a boat seventeen feet long, which was steered by David the Intrepid. After tossing about for fifty hours, they landed in England.

David immediately stood out to sea again, while d'Ache took the road to London.

One can easily imagine what the feelings of these royalist fanatics must have been when they approached the princes to whom they had devoted so many years of their lives, hunted over France and pursued like malefactors; how they must have antic.i.p.ated the welcome in London that their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many false Chouans--spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining money made off and were never seen again--that distrust at last had taken the place of the unsuspecting confidence of former days. Every Frenchman who arrived in London was considered an adventurer, and as far as we can gather from this closed page of history,--for those, who tried the experiment of a visit to the exiled princes, have respectfully kept silence on the subject of their discomfiture--it appears that terrible mortifications were in store for the militant royalists who approached the emigrant leaders. D'Ache did not escape disillusionment, and though he did not disclose the incidents of his stay in London, we know that at first he was thrown into prison, and that for two months he could not succeed in obtaining an interview with the Comte d'Artois, much less with the exiled King.

M. de la Chapelle, the most influential man at the little court at Hartwell, sent for him and questioned him about his plans, but was opposed to his being received by the princes, though he put him in communication with King George's ministers, every person who brought news of any plot against Napoleon's government being sure of a welcome and a hearing from the latter.

After three weeks of conferences the expedition which was to support a general rising of the peasants in the West, was postponed till the spring of 1807. A feigned attack on Port-en-Bessin would allow of their surprising the islands of Tahitou and Saint-Marcouf as well as Port-Bail on the western slope of the Cotentin. The destruction of the roads, which protect the lower part of the peninsula, would insure the success of the undertaking by cutting off Cherbourg which, attacked from behind, would easily be carried, resistance being impossible. The invading army, concentrating under the forts of the town, in which they would have a safe retreat, would descend by Carenton on Saint-Lo and Caen to meet the army of peasants and malcontents whose cooperation d'Ache guaranteed.

He undertook to collect twenty thousand men; the English government offered the same number of Russian and Swedish soldiers, and to provide for their transportation to the coast of France. Pending this, d'Ache was given unlimited credit on the banker Nourry at Caen.