Chapter 10 THE CHOUANS SET FREE

A letter in a woman's handwriting, addressed to Timoléon de Combray, H?tel de la Loi, Rue de Richelieu, its black seal hastily broken, contains these words: "Alas, my dear cousin, you still continued to hope when all hope was over.... I cannot leave your mother and I am anxious about M. de Bonn?il's condition."

This is all that we can glean of the manner in which Mme. Acquet's mother and brothers learned of her execution on October 6th. Mme. de Combray at least displayed a good deal of energy, if not great calmness. After the winter began, the letters she wrote Timoléon regained their natural tone. The great sorrow seems to have been forgotten; they all were leagued together against Acquet, who still reigned triumphant at Donnay, and threatened to absorb the fortune of the whole family. The trial had cost an enormous sum. Besides the money stolen in the woods at Quesnay, which the Marquise had to refund, she had been obliged to spend money freely in order to "corrupt Licquet," for Chauveau-Lagarde's fee, for her advocate Ma?tre Gady de la Vigne, and for Ducolombier's journeys to Paris and Vienna with the little girls,-the whole outlay amounting to nearly 125,000 francs; and as the farms at Tournebut were tenantless, while Acquet retained all the estates in lower Normandy and would not allow them anything, the Marquise and her sons found their income reduced to almost nothing. There remained not a single crown of the 25,000 francs deposited in August, 1807, with Legrand. All had been spent on "necessaries for the prisoners, or in their interests."

Acquet was intractable. When the time for settling up came, he refused insolently to pay his share of the lawsuit or for his children's education. "Mme. de Combray, in order to carry out her own frenzied plots," he stated, "had foolishly used her daughter's money in paying her accomplices, and now she came and complained that Mme. Acquet lacked bread and that she supported her, besides paying for the children's schooling.... Mme. Acquet left her husband's house on the advice of her mother who wished to make an accomplice of her. They took away the children, their father did not even know the place of their retreat, and the very persons who had abducted them came and asked him for the cost of their maintenance."

This was his plea; to which the Combrays replied: "The fee of Mme. Acquet's lawyer, the expenses of the journey to Vienna and of the little girls' stay in Paris that they might beg for their mother's pardon, devolved, if not on the prisoner's husband, at least on her young children as her heirs; and in any case Acquet ought to pay the bill." But the latter, who was placed in a very strong position by the services he had rendered Réal and by the protection of Pontécoulant, with whom he had associated himself, replied that Chauveau-Lagarde, while pretending to plead for Mme. Acquet, had in reality only defended Mme. de Combray: "All Rouen who heard the counsel's speech bears witness that the daughter was sacrificed to save the mother.... The real object of their solicitude had been the Marquise. Certainly they took very little interest in their sister, and the moment her eyes were closed in death, were base enough to ask for her funeral expenses in court, and hastened to denounce her children to the Minister of Public Affairs in order that they might be forced to pay for the sentence pronounced against their mother."

The case thus stated, the discussion could only become a scandal. Bonn?il disclosed the fact that his brother-in-law, on being asked by a third person what influences he could bring to bear in order to obtain Mme. Acquet's pardon, had replied that "such steps offered little chance of success, and that from the moment the unhappy woman was condemned, the best way to save her from dying on the scaffold, would be to poison her in prison." A fresh suit was begun. The correspondence which passed between the exasperated Combrays and their brother-in-law, who succeeded in maintaining his self-control, must have made all reconciliation impossible. A letter in Bonn?il's handwriting is sufficient to illustrate the style:

"Is it charitable for an old French chevalier, a defender of the Faith and of the Throne, to increase the sorrows on which his two brothers-in-law are feeding in the silence of oblivion? Does he hope in his exasperation that he will be able to force them into a repetition of the story of the crimes committed by Desrues, Cartouche, Pugatscheff, Shinderhannes, and other impostors, thieves, garrotters and ruffians, who have rendered themselves famous by their murders, poisonings, cruelties and cowardly actions? They promise that, once their case is decided, they will not again trouble Sieur Acquet de Férolles."

The invectives were, to say the least, ill-timed. The Combrays had gone to law in order to force this man, whom they compared to the most celebrated assassins, to undertake the education of their sister's three children. These orphans, for whose schooling at the Misses Dusaussay's no one was ready to pay, were pitied by all who knew of their situation. Some pious ladies mentioned it to the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, who kindly offered to subscribe towards the cost of their education. The Combrays proudly refused, for which Acquet naturally blamed them. "They think their nieces would be dishonoured by accepting a favour," he wrote.

Mme. de Combray might perhaps have yielded, if any one had made her understand that her granddaughters were the only stake she had left. In fact, since Mme. Acquet's death, no stone had been left unturned to obtain the old Marquise's pardon. Ducolombier even went to Navarre to entreat the help of the Empress Joséphine, whose credit did not stand very high. We can understand that after the official notification of the imperial divorce, and as soon as the great event became known, the Combrays, renouncing their relationship (which was of the very slightest) with the Tascher de la Pageries, began immediately to count in advance on the clemency of the future Empress, be she who she might. When it was certain that an Archduchess was to succeed General Beauharnais's widow on the throne of France, Ducolombier set out for Vienna in the hope of outstripping the innumerable host of those who went there as petitioners. It does not appear that he got farther than Carlsruhe, and his journey was absolutely fruitless; but it soon became known that the imperial couple intended making a triumphal progress through the north of France, ending at Havre or Rouen, and it was then decided that the little Acquets should appear again.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of May 30th, the Emperor and Empress arrived at Rouen. Ducolombier, walking in front of the three little girls, who were escorted by Mlle. Querey, tried to force a passage for them through the streets leading to the imperial residence, but could not get into the house, and was obliged to content himself with handing the petition, drawn up by Chauveau-Legarde, to the King of Westphalia. He hoped the next day to be able to place the children on the Emperor's route as he was on his way to visit some spinning mills; but as soon as he was in the street with the orphans, he learnt that Napoleon had inspected the factories at half past three in the morning, and that his departure was fixed for ten o'clock. Branzon, a revenue collector and friend of Licquet's procured the little Acquets a card from the prefect, by showing which they were allowed to wait at the door of the Emperor's residence. We quote the very words of the letter written the same day by Ducolombier to Bonn?il and the old Marquise:

"Mlle. Querey and the three little girls were permitted to wait at the door of the prefecture where, as you must know, they allow no one. As soon as their Majesties' carriage came out, little Caroline cried out to the Empress. The Emperor lowered the window to take the petition, and handed it to the Empress, as it was meant for her. The Empress bent forward in order to see them...."

This time their confidence was unbounded. The old Marquise was already congratulated on her approaching liberation; but days passed and nothing more was heard of it. They waited patiently for a year, their hopes growing fainter each day, and when it became only too evident that the petition had had no effect, Timoléon ventured to remind the Empress of it, and drew up in his own name a fresh request for his mother's pardon, with no better result than before. A supreme and useless effort was made on the 30th of August, 1813, when Marie Louise was Empress-Queen-Regent. At this time Bonn?il had at length been let out of prison, where he had been unjustly detained since August, 1807. He had not appeared before the court, and consequently was not condemned, but was detained as a "precautionary measure." As his health was much impaired by his stay at the conciergerie, the prefect took it upon himself to have him removed, and placed him at Rouen under the supervision of the police.

For there he could at least keep himself informed of what was going on. If the newspapers gave but little news, he could still collect the rumours of the town. Doubtless he was the first to advise his mother to submit to her fate; and from this very moment the Marquise displayed an astonishing serenity, as if she in fact foresaw the fall of him whom she considered her personal enemy. She had accustomed herself very quickly to life in the prison to which she had been transferred in 1813. The rules were not very strict for those inmates who had a little money to spend; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board and her book of rules, and calmly awaited the long-hoped-for thunderbolt.

It fell at length, and the old Chouan must have flushed with triumph when she heard that Bonaparte was crushed. What a sudden change! In less than a day, the prisoner became again the venerable Marquise de Combray, a victim to her devotion to the royal cause, a heroine, a martyr, a saint; while at the other end of Normandy, Acquet de Férolles, who had at last decided to take in his three children, felt the ground tremble under his feet, and hurriedly made his preparations for flight. In their eagerness to make themselves acceptable to the Combrays, people "who would not have raised a finger to help them when they were overwhelmed with misfortune," now revealed to them things that had hitherto been hidden from them; and thus the Marquise and her sons learned how Senator Pontécoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin," had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Férolles," to hand over d'Aché to assassins. Proscribed royalists emerged on all sides from the holes where they had been burrowing for the last fifteen years. There was a spirit of retaliation in the air. Every one was making up his account and writing out the bill. In this home of the Chouannerie, where hatred ran rife and there were so many bitter desires for revenge, a terrible reaction set in. The short notes, which the Marquise exchanged with her sons and servants during the last few days of her captivity, expressed neither joy at the Princes' return nor happiness at her own restoration to liberty. They might be summed up in these words: "It is our turn now," and the germ of the dark history of the Restoration and the revolutions which followed it is contained in the outpourings of this embittered heart, which nothing save vengeance could henceforth satisfy.

On Sunday, May 1st, 1814, at the hour when Louis XVIII was to enter Saint Ouen, the doors of the prison were opened for the Marquise de Combray, who slept the following night at her house in the Rue des Carmélites. The next day at 1.30 p.m. she set out for Tournebut with Mlle. Querey; her bailiff, Leclerc, came as far as Rouen to fetch her in his trap. All the public conveyances were overcrowded; on the roads leading to Paris there was an uninterrupted stream of vehicles of all sorts, of cavaliers and of foot passengers, all hurrying to see the King's return to his capital. Bonn?il, who was at last delivered from police supervision, had to set out on foot for Tournebut; he walked the distance during the night, and arrived in the morning to find his mother already installed there and making an inspection of the despoiled old chateau which she had never thought to see again. The astonishing reversions of fate make one think of the success which the opera "La Dame Blanche" had some years later. This charming work sang their own history to these nobles who were still smarting, and recalled to them their ruined past. The abandoned "Chateau d'Avenel," the "poor Dame Marguerite" spinning in the deserted halls and dreaming of her masters, the mysterious being who watched over the destinies of the noble family, and the amusing revival of those last vestiges of feudal times, the bailiff, the bell in the turret, the gallant paladin, the knight's banner-all these things saddened our grandmothers by arousing the melancholy spectre of the good old times.

At the beginning of August, 1814, Guérin-Bruslart, who had become M. le Chevalier de Bruslard, Field Marshal in the King's army, attracted his Majesty's attention to the survivors of the affair of Quesnay. He took Le Chevalier's son, aged twelve years, to the Tuileries, and the King accorded him a pension and a scholarship at one of the royal colleges. The very same day Louis XVIII signed a royal pardon, which the Court of Rouen ratified a few days later, by which Mme. de Combray's sentence was annulled. On September 5th the Marquise saw her wildest dream realised and was presented to the King-a fact which was mentioned in the Moniteur of the following day.

This signal favour rallied many to the Combrays. Denunciations of Acquet and his friends were heard on all sides. The letters written at this period from Bonn?il to his brother testify to the astonishment they felt at these revelations. They made a fresh discovery every day. "M. Bruslard told me the other day that La Vaubadon wished to have him arrested, but that he took care not to fall into the trap she had set for him." "With regard to Licquet, he knew d'Aché well and had made up to him before the affair with Georges, believing at that time that there would be a change of government." "It is quite certain that it was Senator Pontécoulant who had d'Aché killed; Frotté's death was partly due to him." "With regard to Acquet, M. de Rivoire told Placène that he had been seen in the temple about six years ago, and that every one there considered him a spy and an informer...."

Thus, little by little Mme. de Combray arrived at the conclusion that all her misfortunes had been caused by her enemies' hatred. In 1815 a biographer published a life of the Marquise, which was preceded by a dedication to herself which she had evidently dictated, and which placed her high up in the list of royalist martyrs.

This halo pleased her immensely. She was present at the fêtes given at the Rouen prefecture, where she walked triumphantly-still holding herself very erect and wearing lilies in her hair-through the very halls into which she had once been dragged handcuffed by Savoye-Rollin's gaolers. At dinners where she was an honoured guest she would recount, with astonishing calmness, her impressions of the pillory and the prisons. She sent a confidential agent to Donnay "to obtain news of the Sieur Acquet," who was not at all satisfied and by no means at ease, as we can well imagine. It was said that he had sent for his sister to come and take care of his three children, the eldest of whom was nearly twenty years of age. Acquet pretended to be ill in order to defer his departure from Donnay. He finally quitted Normandy early in the autumn of 1814, taking with him his three daughters, "whom he counted on marrying off in his own home." "He is without house or home," wrote Mme. de Combray, "and possesses nothing but the shame by which he is covered." Acquet de Férolles settled at Saint-Hilaire-de-Tulmont, where he died on April 6th, 1815.

With the Hundred Days came another sudden change. At the first rumour of Bonaparte's landing, Mme. de Combray set out for the coast and crossed to England. If the alarm was intense, it lasted but a short time. In July, 1815, the Marquise returned to Tournebut, which she busied herself with repairing. She found scope for her energy in directing the workmen, in superintending to the smallest detail the administration of her estate, and in looking after her household with the particularity of former times. Although Louis XVIII's Jacobinism seems to have been the first thing that disillusioned the old royalist, she was none the less the Lady of Tournebut, and within the limits of her estate she could still believe that she had returned to the days before 1789. She still had her seat at church, and her name was to be found in 1819 inscribed on the bell at Aubevoye of which she was patroness.

Mme. de Combray never again quitted Tournebut, where she lived with her son Bonn?il, waited upon by Catherine Querey, who had been faithful to her in her misfortunes. Except for this faithful girl, the Marquise had made a clean sweep of all her old servants. None of them are to be found among the persons who surrounded her during the Restoration. These were a maid, Henriette Lerebour, a niece of Mlle. Querey; a cook, a coachman and a footman. During the years that followed, there was an incessant coming and going of workmen at Tournebut. In 1823 the chateau and its surrounding walls were still undergoing repairs. In the middle of October of the same year, Mme. de Combray, who was worn out, took to her bed. On the morning of Thursday, the 23d, it was reported that she was very ill, and two village women were engaged to nurse her. At eight o'clock in the evening the tolling of the bells announced that the Marquise was no more.

Her age was eighty-one years and nine months. When the judge called on Friday, at Bonn?il's special request, to affix seals to her effects, he asked to be taken first into the chamber of death, where he saw the Marquise lying in her painted wooden bed, hung with chintz curtains. The funeral took place at the church of Aubevoye, the poor of the village forming an escort to the coffin which the men carried on their shoulders. After the service it was laid in a grave dug under a large dark tree at the entrance to the cemetery. The tomb, which is carefully kept, bears to this day a quite legible inscription setting forth in clumsy Latin the Marquise de Combray's extraordinary history.

The liquidation of her debts, which followed on her decease and the division of her property, brought Acquet de Férolles' daughters to Tournebut, all three of whom were well married. In making an inventory of the furniture in the chateau, they found amongst things forgotten in the attic the harp on which their mother had played when as a young girl she had lived at Tournebut, and a saddle which the "dragoon" may have used on her nocturnal rides towards the hill of Authevernes in pursuit of coaches.

Mme. de Combray's sons kept Tournebut, and Bonn?il continued to live there. There are many people in Aubevoye who remember him. He was a tall old man, with almost the figure of an athlete, though quite bowed and bent. His eyebrows were grizzled and bushy, his eyes large and very dark, his complexion sunburned. He was somewhat gloomy, and seemed to care for nothing but to talk with a very faded and wrinkled old woman in a tall goffered cap, who was an object of veneration to everybody. This was Mlle. Querey. All were aware she had been Mme. de Combray's confidante and knew all the Marquise's secrets: and she was often seen talking at great length to Bonn?il about the past.

Bonn?il died at Tournebut in 1846, at the age of eighty-four, and the manor of Marillac did not long outlast him. Put up for sale in 1856, it was demolished in the following year and replaced by a large and splendid villa. While the walls of the old chateau were being demolished, the peasants of Aubevoye, who had so often listened to the legends concerning it, displayed great curiosity as to the mysteries which the demolition would disclose. Nothing was discovered but a partly filled up subterranean passage, which seemed to run towards the small chateau. The secret of the other hiding-places had long been known. A careful examination of the old dwelling produced only one surprise. A portmanteau containing 3,000 francs in crowns and double-louis was found in a dark attic. Mme. de Combray's grandchildren knew so little of the drama of their house, that no one thought of connecting this find with the affairs of Quesnay, of which they had scarcely ever heard. It seems probable that this portmanteau belonged to the lawyer Lefebre and was hidden by him, unknown to the Marquise, in the hope of being able to recover it later on.

A very few words will suffice to tell the fate of the other actors in this drama. Licquet was unfortunate; but first of all he asked for the cross of the Legion of Honour. "I have served the government for twenty years," he wrote to Réal. "I bristle with titles. I am the father of a family and am looked up to by the authorities. My only ambition is honour, and I am bold enough to ask for a sign. Will you be kind enough to obtain it for me?" Did Réal not dare to stand sponsor for such a candidate? Did they think that the cross, given hitherto so parsimoniously to civilians, was not meant for the police? Licquet was obliged to wait in patience. In the hope of increasing his claims to the honour he coveted, he went in quest of new achievements, and had the good fortune to discover a second attack on a coach, far less picturesque, as a matter of fact, than the one to which he owed his fame, but which he undertook to work up like a master, and did it so well, by dint of disguises, forged letters, surprised confidences, the invention of imaginary persons, and other melodramatic tricks, that he succeeded in producing at the Criminal Court at Evreux seven prisoners against whom the evidence was so well concocted that five at least were in danger of losing their heads. But when the imperial Procurator arrived at the place, instead of accepting the work as completed, he carefully examined the papers referring to the inquiry. Disgusted at the means used to drag confessions from the accused, and indignant that his name should have been associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure, which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the Procurator himself generously demanded.

The blow fell all the heavier on Licquet as he was at the time deeply compromised in the frauds of his friend Branzon, a collector at Rouen, whose malversations had caused the ruin of Savoye-Rollin. The prefect's innocence was firmly established, but Branzon, who had already been imprisoned as a Chouan in the Temple, and whose history must have been a very varied one, was condemned to twelve years' imprisonment in chains.

This also was a blow to Licquet. Realising, during the early days of the Restoration, that the game he had played had brought him more enemies than friends, he thought it wise to leave Rouen, and like so many others lose himself among the police in Paris. Doubtless he was not idle while he was there, and if the fire of 1871 had not destroyed the archives of the prefecture, it would have been interesting to search for traces of him. We seem to recognise his methods in the strangely dubious affair of the false dauphin, Mathurin Bruneau. This obscure intrigue was connected with Rouen; his friend Branzon, who was detained at Bicêtre, was the manager of it. A certain Joseph Paulin figured in it-a strange person, who boasted of having received the son of Louis XVI at the door of the temple and, for this reason, was a partisan of two dauphins. Joseph Paulin was, in my opinion, a very cunning detective, who was, moreover, charged with the surveillance of the believers, sincere or otherwise, in the survival of Louis XVII. In order the better to gain their confidence, he pretended to have had a hand in the young King's flight. With the exception of a few plausible allegations, the accounts he gave of his wonderful adventures do not bear investigation. What makes us think that he was Licquet's pupil, or that at least he had some connection with the police of Rouen, is that in 1817, at the time of the Bruneau intrigue, we find him marrying the woman, Delaitre, aged forty-six, and living on an allowance from the parish and a sum left him "by a person who had died at Bicêtre." The woman Delaitre seemed to be identical with the spy whom Licquet had so cleverly utilised.

Joseph Paulin died in 1842; his wife survived him twenty years, dying at last in the Rue Croix de Fer at the age of ninety-one. Up to the time of her death she received a small pension from the town. As to Licquet, he lived to one hundred-but without any decoration-in his lodging in the Rue Saint-Lé. The old man's walks in the streets which were so familiar to him, must have been rich in memories. The "Gros-Horloge" under which the tumbrils had passed; the "Vieux-Marché," where so many heads had fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where the graves of his victims grew green; Bicêtre, the old conciergerie, the palace itself, which he could see from his windows,-all these objects must have called up to his mind painful recollections. The certificate of his death, which bears the date February 7, 1855, simply describes him as an ex-advocate.

Querelle, whose denunciation ruined Georges Cadoudal, was set at liberty at the end of a year. Besides his life, Desmarets had promised him the sum of 80,000 francs to pay his debts with, but as they were in no hurry to hand him the money, his creditors lost patience and had him shut up in Sainte-Pelagie. Desmarets at last decided to pay up, and Querelle was sent to Piémont, where he lived on a small pension from the government. In 1814 we find those of Georges' accomplices who had escaped the scaffold-among whom were Hozier and Amand Gaillard,-scattered among the prisons of the kingdom, in the fortresses of Ham, Joux, and Bouillon. Others who had been sent under surveillance forty leagues from Paris and the seacoast, reappeared, ruined by ten years of enforced idleness, threats and annoyances. Vannier the lawyer died in prison at Brest; Bureau de Placène, who was let out of prison at the Restoration, assisted Bruslard in the distribution of the rewards granted by the King to those who had helped on the good cause. Allain, who had been condemned to death for contumacy by the decree of Rouen, gave himself up in 1815. He was immediately set free, and a pension granted him. Seeing which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the 43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived "rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's confidante, she was kept in prison till 1814. Being released on the King's return she immediately took refuge in a convent where she spent the rest of her life.

Mme. de Vaubadon, who lived disguised under the name of Tourville, which had been her mother's, died in misery in a dirty lodging-house at Belleville on January 23, 1848; her body was borne on the following day to the parish cemetery, where the old register proves that no one bought a corner of ground for her where she could rest in peace. M. de Vaubadon had died eight years previously, having pardoned her some years before.

Certain of the inhabitants of Saint-L? still remember the tall old man, always gloomy and with a pale complexion, who seemed to have only one idea, and who, to the last day of his life, loved and defended the woman to whom he had given his name. As for Foison, the murderer, he was made a lieutenant and received the cross of the Legion of Honour. Caffarelli, to whose lot it fell to present it to him, excused himself on a plea of necessary absence. M. Lance, the Secretary-General for the prefecture, who was obliged to take his place, could not, as he bestowed the decoration, refrain "from letting him observe the disgust he felt for his person, and the shame he experienced at seeing the star of the brave thus profaned." M. Lance was dismissed at the instance of Foison, who, soon afterwards, was made an officer, and despatched to the army in Spain, whither his reputation had preceded him. Tradition assures us that an avenger had reserved for him a death similar to d'Aché's, and that he was found on the road one morning pierced with bullets. Nothing is farther from the truth. Foison became a captain and lived till 1843.

D'Aché's family, which returned to Gournay after Georges Cadoudal's execution, was disturbed afresh at Mme. de Combray's arrest. As we have said before, Licquet had had Jean Baptiste de Caqueray (who had married Louise d'Aché in 1806) brought handcuffed into Rouen, but had scarcely examined him. "Caqueray," he wrote, "is quite innocent; he quarrelled with his father-in-law;" and he dismissed him with this remark: "If only he had known the prey he was allowing to escape!" Up to 1814 Caqueray did not again attract the attention of the police. At the Restoration he was made a captain of gendarmes. His wife Louise d'Aché was in 1815 appointed lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Bourbon, by whom she had in part been brought up, being on her mother's side the niece of the gentle Vicomte de Roquefeuille, who had previously "consoled the Duchess so tenderly for the desertion of her inconstant husband." Louise d'Aché died in 1817, and her sister Alexandrine, who was unmarried, was in her turn summoned to the Princess, and took the title of Comtesse d'Aché. In spite of the Princes' favour, Caqueray remained a captain of gendarmes till he left the service in 1830. It was only then made known that in 1804, at the time of Querelle's disclosures and of the journey undertaken by Savary to Biville, to surprise a fourth landing of conspirators, it was he, Jean-Baptiste de Caqueray, who, warned by a messenger from Georges that "all were compromised," started from Gournay on horseback, reached the farm of La Poterie in twelve hours, crossed three lines of gendarmes, and signalled to the English brig which was tacking along the coast, to stand out to sea. Caqueray immediately remounted his horse, endured the fire of an ambuscade, flung himself into the forest of Eu, and succeeded in reaching Gournay before his absence had been noticed, and just in time to receive a visit from Captain Manginot, who, as we have already related, sent him to the Temple with Mme. d'Aché and Louise.

Caqueray died in 1834, leaving several children quite unprovided for. They were, however, adopted by their grandmother, d'Aché's widow, who survived her daughters and son-in-law. She was small and had never been pretty, but had very distinguished and imposing manners. She is said to have made the following answer to a great judge who, at the time of her arrest, asked her where her husband was: "You doubtless do not know, Monsieur, whom you are addressing." From that time they ceased questioning her. She lived on till 1836. She was never heard to complain, though she and her family had lived in great poverty and known constant anxiety. She had lost her money, and her husband had died at the hand of a treacherous assassin. All her children had gone before her, and in spite of all her misfortunes, and old though she was, she still strove to bring up her grandchildren "to love their lawful King," for whose sake she had now nothing left to sacrifice.

Perhaps in the course of that tragic night when the defeated Napoleon found himself alone in deserted Fontainebleau, the great Emperor's mind may have reverted jealously to those stubborn royalists whom neither their Princes' apathy nor the certainty of never being rewarded could daunt. At that very moment the generals whom he had loaded with titles and wealth were hastening to meet the Bourbons. He had not one friend left among the hundred million people he had governed in the day of his power. His mameluke had quitted him, his valet had fled. And if he thought of Georges guillotined in the Place de la Grève, of Le Chevalier who fell at the wall at Grenelle, of d'Aché stabbed on the road, he must also have thought of the speech ascribed to Cromwell: "Who would do the like for me?"

And perhaps of all his pangs this was the cruellest and most vengeful. His cause must, in its turn, be sanctified by misfortune to gain its fanatics and its martyrs.

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