THE CAPTURE OF GEORGES CADOUDAL
Georges had arrived in Paris on September 1, 1803, in a yellow cabriolet
driven by the Marquis d'Hozier dressed as a coachman. D'Hozier, who was
formerly page to the King and had for several months been established as
a livery-stable keeper in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, conducted Georges
to the Hôtel de Bordeaux, kept by the widow Dathy, in the Rue de
Grenelle-Saint-Honoré.
The task of finding hiding-places in Paris for the conspirators, had
been given to Houvel, called Saint-Vincent, whom we have already seen at
Saint-Leu. Houvel's real name was Raoul Gaillard. A perfect type of the
incorrigible Chouan, he was a fine-looking man of thirty,
fresh-complexioned, with white teeth and a ready smile, and dressed in
the prevailing fashion. He was a close companion of d'Aché, and it was
even said that they had the same mistress at Rouen. The speciality of
Raoul and his brother Armand was attacking coaches which carried
government money. Their takings served to pay recruits to the royalist
cause. For the past six months Raoul Gaillard had been in Paris looking
for safe lodging-places. He was assisted in this delicate task by
Bouvet de Lozier, another of d'Aché's intimate friends, who like him,
had served in the navy before the Revolution.
Georges went first to Raoul Gaillard at the Hôtel de Bordeaux, but he
left in the evening and slept with Denaud at the "Cloche d'Or," at the
corner of the Rue du Bac, and the Rue de Varenne. He was joined there by
his faithful servant Louis Picot, who had arrived in Paris the same day.
The "Cloche d'Or" was a sort of headquarters for the conspirators; they
filled the house, and Denaud was entirely at their service. He was
devoted to the cause, and not at all timid. He had placed Georges' cab
in the stable of Senator François de Neufchâteau, whose house was next
door.
Six weeks before, Bouvet de Lozier had taken, through Mme. Costard de
Saint-Léger, his mistress, an isolated house at Chaillot near the Seine.
He had put there as concierge, a man named Daniel and his wife, both of
whom he knew to be devoted to him. A porch with fourteen steps led to
the front hall of the house. This served as dining-room. It was lighted
by four windows and paved with squares of black and white marble; a
walnut table with eight covers, cane-seated chairs, the door-panels
representing the games of children, and striped India muslin curtains
completed the decoration of this room. The next room had also four
windows, and contained an ottoman and six chairs covered with blue and
white Utrecht velvet, two armchairs of brocaded silk, and two mahogany
tables with marble tops. Then came the bedroom with a four-post bed,
consoles and mirrors. On the first floor was an apartment of three
rooms, and in an adjoining building, a large hall which could be used as
an assembly-room. The whole was surrounded by a large garden, closed on
the side towards the river-bank by strong double gates.
If we have lingered over this description, it is because it seems to say
so much. Who would have imagined that this elegant little house had been
rented by Georges to shelter himself and his companions? These men,
whose disinterestedness and tenacity we cannot but admire, who for ten
years had fought with heroic fortitude for the royal cause, enduring the
hardest privations, braving tempests, sleeping on straw and marching at
night; these men whose bodies were hardened by exposure and fatigue,
retained a purity of mind and sincerity really touching. They never
ceased to believe that "the Prince" for whom they fought would one day
come and share their danger. It had been so often announced and so often
put off that a little mistrust might have been forgiven them, but they
had faith, and that inspired them with a thought which seemed quite
simple to them but which was really sublime. While they were lodging in
holes, living on a pittance parsimoniously taken from the party's funds,
they kept a comfortable and secure retreat ready, where "their
prince"--who was never to come--could wait at his ease, until at the
price of their lives, they had assured the success of his cause. If the
history of our bloody feuds has always an epic quality, it is because it
abounds in examples of blind devotion, so impossible nowadays that they
seem to us improbable exaggerations.
After six days at the "Cloche d'Or," Georges took possession of the
house at Chaillot, but he did not stay there long, for about the 25th of
September he was at 21 Rue Carême-Prenant in the Faubourg du Temple.
Hozier had rented an entresol there, and had employed a man called
Spain, who had an aptitude for this sort of work, to make a secret place
in it. Spain, under pretence of indispensable repairs, had shut himself
up with his tools in the apartment, and had made a cleverly-concealed
trap-door, by means of which, in case of alarm, the tenants could
descend to the ground floor and go out by an unoccupied shop whose door
opened under the porch of the house. Spain took a sort of pride in his
strange talent; he was very proud of a hiding-place he had made in the
lodging of a friend, the tailor Michelot, in the Rue de Bussy, which
Michelot himself did not suspect. The tailor was obliged to be absent
often, and four of the conspirators had successively lodged there. When
he was away his lodgers "limbered up" in this apartment, but as soon as
they heard his step on the stairs, they reentered their cell, and the
worthy Michelot, who vaguely surmised that there was some mystery about
his house, only solved the enigma when he was cited to appear before the
tribunal as an accomplice in the royalist plot of which he had never
even heard the name.
Georges started for his first journey to Biville from the Rue
Carême-Prenant. On January 23d he returned finally to Paris, bringing
with him Pichegru, Jules de Polignac and the Marquis de Rivière, whom he
had gone to the farm of La Poterie to receive. He lodged Pichegru with
an employé of the finance department, named Verdet, who had given the
Chouans the second floor of his house in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite.
They stayed there three days. On the 27th, Georges took the general to
the house at Chaillot "where they only slept a few nights." At the very
moment that they went there Querelle signed his first declarations
before Réal.
It is not necessary to follow the movements of Pichegru, nor to relate
his interviews with Moreau. The organisation of the plot is what
interests us, by reason of the part taken in it by d'Aché. No one has
ever explained what might have resulted politically from the combination
of Moreau's embittered ambition, the insouciance of Pichegru, and the
fanatical ardour of Georges. Of this ill-assorted trio the latter alone
had decided on action, although he was handicapped by the obstinacy of
the princes in refusing to come to the fore until the throne was
reestablished. He told the truth when he affirmed before the judges,
later on, that he had only come to France to attempt a restoration, the
means for which were never decided on, for they had not agreed on the
manner in which they should act towards Bonaparte. A strange plan had at
first been suggested. The Comte d'Artois, at the head of a band of
royalists equal in number to the Consul's escort, was to meet him on the
road to Malmaison, and provoke him to single combat, but the presence
of the Prince was necessary for this revival of the Combat of Thirty,
and as he refused to appear, this project of rather antiquated chivalry
had to be abandoned. Their next idea was to kidnap Bonaparte. Some
determined men--as all of Georges' companions were--undertook to get
into the park at Malmaison at night, seize Bonaparte and throw him into
a carriage which thirty Chouans, dressed as dragoons, would escort as
far as the coast. They actually began to put this theatrical "coup" into
execution. Mention is made of it in the Memoirs of the valet Constant,
and certain details of the investigation confirm these assertions. Raoul
Gaillard, who still lived at the Hôtel de Bordeaux, and entertained his
friends Denis Lamotte, the vine-dresser of Saint-Leu and Massignon,
farmer of Saint-Lubin there, had discovered that Massignon leased some
land from Macheret, the First Consul's coachman, and had determined at
all hazards to make this man's acquaintance. He even had the audacity to
show himself at the Château of Saint-Cloud in the hope of meeting him.
Besides this, Genty, a tailor in the Palais-Royal, had delivered four
chasseur uniforms, ordered by Raoul Gaillard, and Debausseaux, a tailor
at Aumale, during one of their journeys had measured some of Monnier's
guests for cloaks and breeches of green cloth, which only needed metal
buttons to be transformed into dragoon uniforms.
Querelle's denunciations put a stop to all these preparations. Nothing
remained but to run to earth again. A great many of the conspirators
succeeded in doing this, but all were not so fortunate. The first one
seized by Réal's men was Louis Picot, Georges' servant. He was a coarse,
rough man, entirely devoted to his master, under whose orders he had
served in the Veudée. He was taken to the Prefecture and promised
immediate liberty in exchange for one word that would put the police on
the track of Georges. He was offered 1,500 louis d'or, which they took
care to count out before him, and on his refusal to betray his master,
Réal had him put to the torture. Bertrand, the concierge of the depôt,
undertook the task. The unfortunate Picot's fingers were crushed by
means of an old gun and a screw-driver, his feet were burned in the
presence of the officers of the guard. He revealed nothing. "He has
borne everything with criminal resignation," the judge-inquisitor,
Thuriot, wrote to Réal; "he is a fanatic, hardened by crime. I have now
left him to solitude and suffering; I will begin again to-morrow; he
knows where Georges is hidden and must be made to reveal it."
The next day the torture was continued, and this time agony wrung the
address of the Chaillot house from Picot. They hastened there--only to
find it empty. But the day had not been wasted, for the police, on an
anonymous accusation, had seized Bouvet de Lozier as he was entering the
house of his mistress, Mme. de Saint-Léger, in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. He
was interrogated and denied everything. Thrown into the Temple, he
hanged himself in the night, by tying his necktie to the bars of his
cell. A gaoler hearing his death-rattle, opened the door and took him
down; but Bouvet, three-quarters dead, as soon as they had brought him
to, was seized with convulsive tremblings, and in his delirium he spoke.
This attempted suicide, to tell the truth, was only half believed in,
and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple
and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been assisted in his
strangling, just as they had put Picot's feet to the fire. What gave
colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet's hands "were
horribly swollen" when he appeared before Réal the next day, and also
the strange form of the declaration which he was reputed to have
dictated at midnight, just as he was restored to life. "A man who comes
from the gates of the tomb, still covered with the shadows of death,
demands vengeance on those who, by their perfidy," etc. Many were agreed
in thinking that that was not the style of a suicide, with the
death-rattle still in his throat, but that Réal's agents must have lent
their eloquence to this half-dead creature.
However it may have been, the government now knew enough to order the
most rigorous measures to be taken against the "last royalists." Bouvet
had, like Picot, only been able to mention the house at Chaillot, and
the lodging in the Rue Carême-Prenant, and Georges' retreat was still
undiscovered. The revelations that fear or torture had drawn from his
associates only served to make the figure of this extraordinary man loom
greater, by showing the power of his ascendancy over his companions, and
the mystery that surrounded all his actions. A legend grew around his
name, and the communications published by _Le Moniteur_, contributed not
a little towards making him a sort of fantastic personage, whom one
expected to see arise suddenly, and by one grand theatrical stroke put
an end to the Revolution.
Paris lived in a fever of excitement during the first days of March,
1804, anxiously following this duel to the death, between the First
Consul and this phantom-man who, shut up in the town and constantly seen
about, still remained uncaught. The barriers were closed as in the
darkest days of the Terror. Patrols, detectives and gendarmes held all
the streets; the soldiers of the garrison had departed, with loaded
arms, to the boulevards outside the walls. White placards announced that
"Those who concealed the brigands would be classed with the brigands
themselves"; the penalty of death attached to any one who should shelter
one of them, even for twenty-four hours, without denouncing him to the
police. The description of Georges and his accomplices was inserted in
all the papers, distributed in leaflets, and posted on the walls. Their
last domicile was mentioned, as well as anything that could help to
identify them. The clerks at the barriers were ordered to search
barrels, washerwomen's carts, baskets, and, as the cemeteries were
outside the walls, to look carefully into all the hearses that carried
the dead to them.
* * * * *
On leaving Chaillot, Georges had returned to Verdet, in the Rue du
Puits-de-l'Hermite. As he did not go out and his friends dared not come
to see him, Mme. Verdet had instituted herself commissioner for the
conspiracy.
One evening she did not return. Armed with a letter for Bouvet de
Lozier, she had arrived at the Rue Saint-Sauveur just as they were
taking him to the Temple, and had been arrested with him. Thus the
circle was narrowing around Georges. He was obliged to leave the Rue du
Puits-de-l'Hermite in haste, for fear that torture would wring the
secret of his asylum from Mme. Verdet. But where could he go? The house
at Chaillot, the Hôtel of the Cloche d'Or, the Rue Carême-Prenant were
now known to the police. Charles d'Hozier, on being consulted, showed
him a retreat that he had kept for himself, which had been arranged for
him by Mlle. Hisay, a poor deformed girl, who served the conspirators
with tireless zeal, taking all sorts of disguises and vying in address
and activity with Réal's men. She had rented from a fruitseller named
Lemoine, a little shop with a room above it, intending "to use it for
some of her acquaintances."
It was there that she conducted Georges on the night of February 17. The
next day two of his officers, Burban and Joyaut, joined him there, and
all three lived at the woman Lemoine's for twenty days. They occupied
the room above, leaving the shop untenanted save by Mlle. Hisay and a
little girl of Lemoine's, who kept watch there. At night both of them
went up to the room, and slept there, separated by a curtain from the
beds occupied by Georges and his accomplices. The fruiterer and her
daughter were entirely ignorant of the standing of their guests, Mlle.
Hisay having introduced them as three shop-keepers who were
unfortunately obliged to hide from their creditors.
This incognito occasioned some rather amusing incidents. One day Mme.
Lemoine, on returning from market where the neighbours had been
discussing the plot that was agitating all Paris, said to her tenants,
"Goodness me! You don't know about it? Why, they say that that miserable
Georges would like to destroy us all; if I knew where he was, I'd soon
have him caught."
Another time the little girl brought news that Georges had left Paris
disguised as an aide-de-camp of the First Consul. Some days later, when
Georges asked her what the latest news was, she answered, "They say the
rascal has escaped in a coffin."
"I should like to go out the same way," hinted Burban.
However, the police had lost track of the conspirator. It was generally
supposed that he had passed the fortifications, when on the 8th of
March, Petit, who had known Léridant, one of the Chouans, for a long
time, saw him talking with a woman on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine. He
followed him, and a little further off, saw him go up to a man who
struck him as bearing a great likeness to Joyaut, whose description had
been posted on all the walls.
It was indeed Joyaut, who had left Mme. Lemoine's for the purpose of
looking for a lodging for Georges where he would be less at the mercy
of chance than in the fruitseller's attic. Léridant told him that the
house of a perfumer named Caron, in the Rue Four-Saint-Germain, was the
safest retreat in Paris. For some years Caron, a militant royalist, had
sheltered distressed Chouans, in the face of the police. He had hidden
Hyde de Neuville for several weeks; his house was well provided with
secret places, and for extreme cases he had made a place in his
sign-post overhanging the street, where a man could lie _perdu_ at ease,
while the house was being searched. Léridant had obtained Caron's
consent, and it was agreed that Léridant should come in a cab at seven
o'clock the next evening to take Georges from Sainte-Geneviève to the
Rue du Four.
When he had seen the termination of the interview of which his
detective's instinct showed him the importance, Petit, who had remained
at a distance, followed Joyaut, and did not lose sight of him till he
arrived at the Place Maubert. Suspecting that Georges was in the
neighbourhood he posted policemen at the Place du Panthéon, and at the
narrow streets leading to it; then he returned to watch Léridant, who
lodged with a young man called Goujon, in the cul-de-sac of the
Corderie, behind the old Jacobins Club. The next day, March 9th, Petit
learned through his spies that Goujon had hired out a cab, No. 53, for
the entire day. He hastened to the Prefecture and informed his
colleague, Destavigny, who, with a party of inspectors took up his
position on the Place Maubert. If, as Petit supposed, Georges was hidden
near there, if the cab was intended for him, it would be obliged to
cross the place where the principal streets of the quarter converged.
The order was given to let it pass if it contained only one person, but
to follow it with most extreme care.
The night had arrived, and nothing had happened to confirm the
hypotheses of Petit, when, a little before seven o'clock, a cab appeared
on the Place, coming from the Rue Galande. Only one man was on it,
holding the reins. The spies in different costumes, who hung about the
fountain, recognised him as Léridant. The cab was numbered 53, and had
only the lantern at the left alight. It went slowly up the steep Rue de
la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève; the police, hugging the walls, followed it
far off. Petit, the Inspector Caniolle, and the officer of the peace,
Destavigny, kept nearer to it, expecting to see it stop before one of
the houses in the street, when they would only have to take Georges on
the threshold. But to their great disappointment the cab turned to the
right, into the narrow Rue des Amandiers, and stopped at a porte cocherè
near the old Collège des Grassins. As the lantern shed a very brilliant
light, the three detectives concealed themselves in the lanes near by.
They saw Léridant descend from the cab. He went through a door, came
out, went in again and stayed for a quarter of an hour. Then he turned
his horse round, and got up on the seat again.
The cab turned again into the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, and
went slowly down it; it went across the Place Saint-Etienne-du-Mont,
following the houses. Caniolle walked behind it, Petit and Destavigny
followed at a distance. Just as the carriage arrived at the corner of
the Rue des Sept-Voies, four individuals came out from the shadow. One
of them seized the apron, and helping himself up by the step, flung
himself into the cab, which had not stopped, and went off at full
speed....
The police had recognised Georges, disguised as a market-porter.
Caniolle, who was nearest, rushed forward; the three men who had
remained on the spot, and who were no other than Joyaut, Burban and
Raoul Gaillard, tried to stop him. Caniolle threw them off, and chased
the cab which had disappeared in the Rue Saint-Etienne-des-Grès. He
caught up to it, just as it was entering the Passage des Jacobins.
Seizing the springs, he was carried along with it. The two officers of
the peace, less agile, followed crying, "Stop! Stop!"
Georges, seated on the right of Léridant, who held the reins, had turned
to the back of the carriage and tried to follow the fortunes of the
pursuit through the glass. The moment that he had jumped into the
carriage, he had seen the detectives, and said to Léridant: "Whip him,
whip him hard!"
"To go where?" asked the other.
"I do not know, but we must fly!"
And the horse, tingling with blows, galloped off.
At the end of the Passage des Jacobins, which at a sharp angle ended in
the Rue de la Harpe, Léridant was obliged to slow up in order to turn on
the Place Saint-Michel, and not miss the entrance to the Rue des
Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince. He turned towards the Rue du Four, hoping,
thanks to the steepness of the Rue des Fossés, to distance the
detectives and arrive at Caron's before they caught up with the
carriage.
From where he was Georges could not, through the little window, see
Caniolle crouched behind the hood. But he saw others running with all
their might. Destavigny and Petit had indeed continued the pursuit, and
their cries brought out all the spies posted in the quarter. Just as
Léridant wildly dashed into the Rue des Fossés, a whole pack of
policemen rushed upon him.
At the approach of this whirlwind the frightened passers-by shrank into
the shelter of the doorways. Their minds were so haunted by one idea
that at the sight of this cab flying past in the dark with the noise of
whips, shouts, oaths, and the resonant clang of the horse's hoofs on the
pavement, a single cry broke forth, "Georges! Georges! it is Georges!"
Anxious faces appeared at the windows, and from every door people came
out, who began to run without knowing it, drawn along as by a
waterspout. Did Georges see in this a last hope of safety? Did he
believe he could escape in the crowd? However that may be, at the top of
the Rue Voltaire he jumped out into the street. Caniolle, at the same
moment, left the back of the cab--which Petit, and another policeman
called Buffet, had at last succeeded in outrunning,--threw himself on
the reins, and allowing himself to be dragged along, mastered the horse,
which stopped, exhausted. Buffet took one step towards Georges, who
stretched him dead with a pistol shot; with a second ball the Chouan rid
himself, for a moment at least, of Caniolle. He still thought, probably,
that he could hide himself in the crowd; and perhaps he would have
succeeded, for Destavigny, who had run up, "saw him before him, standing
with all the tranquillity of a man who has nothing to fear, and three or
four people near him appeared not to be thinking more about Georges than
anything else." He was going to turn the corner of the Rue de
l'Observance when Caniolle, who was only wounded, struck him with his
club. In an instant Georges was surrounded, thrown down, searched and
bound. The next morning more than forty individuals, among them several
women, made themselves known to the judge as being each "the principal
author" of the arrest of the "brigand" chief.
By way of the Carrefour de la Comédie, the Rues des Fossés Saint-Germain
and Dauphine, Georges, tied with cords, was taken to the Prefecture. A
growing mob escorted him, more out of curiosity than anger, and one can
imagine the excitement at police headquarters when they heard far off on
the Quai des Orfèvres, the increasing tumult announcing the event, and
when suddenly, from the corps de garde in the salons of the Prefect
Dubois the news came, "Georges is taken!"
A minute later the vanquished outlaw was pushed into the office of
Dubois, who was still at dinner. In spite of his bonds he still showed
so much pride and coolness that the all-powerful functionary was almost
afraid of him. Desmaret, who was present, could not himself escape this
feeling.
"Georges, whom I saw for the first time," he said, "had always been to
me a sort of Old Man of the Mountain, sending his assassins far and
near, against the powers. I found, on the contrary, an open face, bright
eyes, fresh complexion, and a look firm but gentle, as was also his
voice. Although stout, his movements and manner were easy; his head
quite round, with short curly hair, no whiskers, and nothing to indicate
the chief of a mortal conspiracy, who had long dominated the _landes_ of
Brittany. I was present when Comte Dubois, the prefect of police,
questioned him. His ease amidst all the hubbub, his answers, firm,
frank, cautious and couched in well-chosen language, contrasted greatly
with my ideas about him.
"Indeed his first replies showed a disconcerting calm. One may be
quoted. When Dubois, not knowing where to begin, rather foolishly
reproached him with the death of Buffet, 'the father of a family,'
Georges smilingly gave him this advice:--'Next time, then, have me
arrested by bachelors.'"
His courageous pride did not fail him either in the interrogations he
had to submit to, or before the court of justice. His replies to the
President are superb in disdain and abnegation. He assumed all
responsibility for the plot, and denied knowledge of any of his friends.
He carried his generosity so far as to behave with courteous dignity
even to those who had betrayed him; he even tried to excuse the
indifference of the princes whose selfish inertia had been his ruin. He
remained great until he reached the scaffold; eleven faithful Chouans
died with him, among the number being Louis Picot, Joyaut and Burban,
whose names have appeared in this story.
Thus ended the conspiracy. Bonaparte came out of it emperor. Fouché,
minister of police, and his assistants were not going to be useless, for
if in the eyes of the public, Georges' death seemed the climax, it was
in reality but one incident in a desperate struggle. The depths sounded
by the investigation had revealed the existence of an incurable evil.
The whole west of France was cankered with Chouannerie. From Rouen to
Nantes, from Cherbourg to Poitiers, thousands of peasants, bourgeois and
country gentlemen remained faithful to the old order, and if they were
not all willing to take up arms in its cause, they could at least do
much to upset the equilibrium of the new government. And could not
another try to do what Georges Cadoudal had attempted? If some one with
more influence over the princes than he possessed should persuade one of
them to cross the Channel, what would the glory of the parvenu count
for, balanced against the ancient prestige of the name of Bourbon,
magnified and as it were sanctified by the tragedies of the Revolution?
This fear haunted Bonaparte; the knowledge that in France these
Bourbons, exiled, without soldiers or money, were still more the masters
then he, exasperated him. He felt that he was in their home, and their
nonchalance, contrasted with his incessant agitation, indicated both
insolence and disdain.
The police, as a matter of fact, had unearthed only a few of the
conspirators. Many who, like Raoul Gaillard, had played an important
part in the plot, had succeeded in escaping all pursuit; they were
evidently the cleverest, therefore the most dangerous, and among them
might be found a man ambitious of succeeding Cadoudal. The capture to
which Fouché and Réal attached the most importance was that of d'Aché,
whose presence at Biville and Saint-Leu had been proved. For three
months, in Paris even, wherever the police had worked, they had struck
the trail of this same d'Aché, who appeared to have presided over the
whole organisation of the plot. Thus, he had been seen at Verdet's in
the Rue du Puits-de-l'Hermite, while Georges was there; he had met Raoul
Gaillard several times; in making an inventory of the papers of a young
lady called Margeot, with whom Pichegru had dined, two rather
enigmatical notes had been found, in which d'Aché's name appeared.
Mme. d'Aché 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 Traversière-Saint-Honoré, at
the Hôtel des Treize-Cantons, and Réal 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'Aché had to be abandoned.
Another way was thought of, and on March 22d the order to open all the
gates was given. Fouché 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 passed." 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 Alençon. 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 assist 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. Réal, 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'Aché,
the principal 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 gratitude, 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 Réal. Was this not
d'Aché? 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'Aché no trace at all, and in spite of the fierceness that
Réal'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.