THE COMBRAYS
At the period of our story there existed in the department of the Eure,
on the left bank of the Seine, beyond Gaillon, a large old manor-house,
backed by the hill that extended as far as Andelys; it was called the
Château de Tournebut. Although its peaked roofs could be seen from the
river above a thicket of low trees, Tournebut was off the main route of
travel, whether by land or water, from Rouen to Paris. Some fairly large
woods separated it from the highroad which runs from Gaillon to
Saint-Cyr-de-Vaudreuil, while the barges usually touched at the hamlet
of Roule, where hacks were hired to take passengers and goods to the
ferry of Muids, thereby saving them the long détour made by the Seine.
Tournebut was thus isolated between these two much-travelled roads. Its
principal façade, facing east, towards the river, consisted of two heavy
turrets, one against the other, built of brick and stone in the style of
Louis XIII, with great slate roofs and high dormer windows. After these
came a lower and more modern building, ending with the chapel. In front
of the château was an old square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy
walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west
front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level
ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A
wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the château, the
farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide morass, stretching from
the foot of the terrace to the Seine, rendered access impossible from
that side.
By the marriage of Geneviève de Bois-l'Evêque, Lady of Tournebut, this
mansion had passed to the family of Marillac, early in the seventeenth
century. The Marshal Louis de Marillac--uncle of Mme. Legras,
collaborator of St. Vincent de Paul--had owned it from 1613 to 1631, and
tradition asserted that during his struggle against Cardinal Richelieu
he had established there a plant for counterfeiting money. To him was
due the construction of the brick wing which remained unfinished, his
condemnation to death for peculation having put a stop to the
embellishments he had intended to make.
There are very few châteaux left in France like this romantic manor of a
dead and gone past, whose stones have endured all the crises of our
history, and to which each century has added a tower, or a legend.
Tournebut, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was a perfect
type of these old dwellings, where there were so many great halls and so
few living rooms, and whose high slate roofs covered intricacies of
framework forming lofts vast as cathedrals. It was said that its thick
walls were pierced by secret passages and contained hiding-places that
Louis de Marillac had formerly used.
In 1804 Tournebut was inhabited by the Marquise de Combray, born
Geneviève de Brunelles, daughter of a President of the Cour des Comptes
of Normandy. Her husband, Jean-Louis-Armand-Emmanuel Hélie de Combray,
had died in 1784, leaving her with two sons and two daughters, and a
great deal of property in the environs of Falaise, in the parishes of
Donnay, Combray, Bonnoeil and other places. Madame de Combray had
inherited Tournebut from her mother, Madeleine Hubert, herself a
daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Normandy. Besides the
château and the farm, which were surrounded by a park well-wooded with
old trees, the domain included the woods that covered the hillside, at
the extremity of which was an old tower, formerly a wind-mill, built
over deep quarries, and called the "Tower of the Burned Mill," or "The
Hermitage." It figures in the ancient plans of the country under the
latter name, which it owes to the memory of an old hermit who lived in
the quarries for many years and died there towards the close of the
reign of Louis XV, leaving a great local reputation for holiness.
Mme. de Combray was of a "haughty and imperious nature; her soul was
strong and full of energy; she knew how to brave danger and public
opinion; the boldest projects did not frighten her, and her ambition was
unbounded." Such is the picture that one of her most irreconcilable
enemies has drawn of her, and we shall see that the principal traits
were faithfully described. But to complete the resemblance one must
first of all plead an extenuating circumstance: Madame de Combray was a
fanatical royalist. Even that, however, would not make her story
intelligible, if one did not make allowance for the Calvary that the
faithful royalists travelled through so many years, each station of
which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the
nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at
first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully
abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some
justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new
order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed
themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many of them, it is true,
had resigned themselves to defeat, but the _Intransigeants_ continued to
struggle obstinately; and to say truth, this tenacious attachment to the
ghost of monarchy was not without grandeur.
From the very beginning of the Revolution the Marquise de Combray had
numbered herself among the unchangeable royalists. Her husband, a
timorous and quiet man, who employed in reading the hours that he did
not consecrate to sleep, had long since abandoned to her the direction
of the household and the management of his fortune. Widowhood had but
strengthened the authority of the Marquise, who reigned over a little
world of small farmers, peasants and servants, more timid, perhaps, than
devoted.
She exacted complete obedience from her children. The eldest son, called
the Chevalier de Bonnoeil, after a property near the Château of
Donnay, in the environs of Falaise, supported the maternal yoke
patiently; he was an officer in the Royal Dragoons at the time of the
Revolution. His younger brother, Timoléon de Combray, was of a less
docile nature. On leaving the military school, as his father was just
dead he solicited from M. de Vergennes a mission in an uncivilised
country and set sail for Morocco. Timoléon was a liberal-minded man, of
high intellectual culture, and a philosophical scepticism that fitted
ill with the Marquise's authoritative temper; although a devoted and
respectful man, it was to get away from his mother's tutelage that he
expatriated himself. "Our diversity of opinion," he said later on, "has
kept me from spending two consecutive months with her in seventeen
years." From Morocco he went to Algiers and thence to Tunis and Egypt.
He was about to penetrate to Tartary when he heard of the outbreak of
the Revolution; and immediately started for France where he arrived at
the beginning of 1791.
Of Mme. de Combray's two daughters the eldest had married, in 1787, at
the age of twenty-two, Jacques-Philippe-Henri d'Houël; the youngest
Caroline-Madeleine-Louise-Geneviève, was born in 1773, and consequently
was only eleven years old when her father died. This child is the
heroine of the drama we are about to relate.
In August, 1791, Mme. de Combray inscribed herself and her two sons on
the list of the hostages of Louis XVI which the journalist Durosay had
conceived. It was a courageous act, for it was easy to foresee that the
six hundred and eleven names on "this golden book of fidelity," would
soon all be suspected. While hope remained for the monarchy the two
brothers struggled bravely. Timoléon stayed near the King till August
10, and only went to England after he had taken part in the defence of
the Tuileries; Bonnoeil had emigrated the preceding year, and served
in the army of the Princes. Mme. de Combray, left alone with her two
daughters--the husband of the elder had also emigrated,--left Tournebut
in 1793, and settled in Rouen, where, although she owned much real
estate in the town, she rented in the Rue de Valasse, Faubourg
Bouvreuil, "an isolated, unnumbered house, with an entrance towards the
country." She gave her desire to finish the education of her younger
daughter who was entering her twentieth year as a reason for her
retreat.
Caroline de Combray was very small,--"as large as a dog sitting," they
said,--but charming; her complexion was delicately pure, her black hair
of extraordinary length and abundance. She was loving and sensible, very
romantic, full of frankness and vivacity; the great attraction of her
small person was the result of a piquant combination of energy and
gentleness. She had been brought up in the convent of the Nouvelles
Catholiques de Caen, where she stayed six years, receiving lessons from
"masters of all sorts of accomplishments, and of different languages."
She was a musician and played the harp, and as soon as they were settled
in Rouen her mother engaged Boiëldieu as her accompanist, "to whom she
long paid six silver francs per lesson," a sum that seemed fabulous in
that period of paper-money, and territorial mandates.
Madame de Combray, besides, was much straightened. As both her sons had
emigrated, all the property that they inherited from their father was
sequestrated. Of the income of 50,000 francs possessed by the family
before the Revolution, scarcely fifty remained at her disposal, and she
had been obliged to borrow to sustain the heavy expenses of her house in
Rouen.
Besides her two daughters and the servants, she housed half a dozen nuns
and two or three Chartreux, among them a recusant friar called
Lemercier, who soon gained great influence in the household. By reason
of his refractoriness Père Lemercier was doomed, if discovered, to
death, or at least to deportation, and it will be understood that he
sympathised but feebly with the Revolution that consigned him, against
his will, to martyrdom. He called down the vengeance of heaven on the
miscreants, and not daring to show himself, with unquenchable ardour
preached the holy crusade to the women who surrounded him.
Mme. de Combray's royalist enthusiasm did not need this inspiration; a
wise man would have counselled resignation, or at least patience, but
unhappily, she was surrounded only by those whose fanaticism encouraged
and excused her own. Enthusiastic frenzy had become the habitual state
of these people, whose overheated imaginations were nourished on
legendary tales, and foolish hopes of imminent reprisals. They welcomed
with unfailing credulity the wildest prophecies, announcing terrible
impending massacres, to which the miraculous return of the Bourbon
lilies would put an end, and as illusions of this kind are strengthened
by their own deceptions, the house in the Rue de Valasse soon heard
mysterious voices, and became the scene "of celestial apparitions,"
which, on the invitation of Père Lemercier predicted the approaching
destruction of the blues and the restoration of the monarchy.
On a certain day in the summer of 1795, a stranger presented himself to
Père Lemercier, armed with a password, and a very warm recommendation
from a refractory priest, who was in hiding at Caen. He was a Chouan
chief, bearing the name and title of General Lebret; of medium stature,
with red hair and beard, and cold steel-coloured eyes. Introduced to
Mme. de Combray by Lemercier, he admitted that his real name was Louis
Acquet d'Hauteporte, Chevalier de Férolles. He had come to Rouen, he
said, to transmit the orders of the Princes to Mallet de Créçy, who
commanded for the King in Upper Normandy.
We can judge of the welcome the Chevalier received. Mme. de Combray, her
daughters, the nuns and the Chartreux friars used all their ingenuity to
satisfy the slightest wish of this man, who modestly called himself "the
agent general of His Majesty." They arranged a hiding-place for him in
the safest part of the house, and Père Lemercier blessed it. Acquet
stayed there part of the day, and in the evening joined in the usual
pursuits of the household, and related the story of his adventures by
way of entertainment.
According to him, he possessed large estates in the environs of the
Sables-d'Olonne, of which place he was a native. An officer in the
regiment of Brie infantry before the Revolution, being at Lille in 1791
he had taken advantage of his nearness to the frontier to incite his
regiment to insurrection and emigrate to Belgium. He had then put
himself at the disposal of the Princes, and had enlisted men for the
royal army in Veudée, Poitou and Normandy, helping priests to emigrate,
and saving whole villages from the fury of the blues. He named Charette,
Frotté and Puisaye as his most intimate friends, and these names
recalled the chivalrous times of the wars in the west in which he had
taken a glorious part. Sometimes he disappeared for several days, and on
his return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he
had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to
a successful termination. In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Férolles
had become the idol of the little group of naïve royalists among whom he
had found refuge. He had bravely served _the cause_; he plumed himself
on having merited the surname of "_toutou_ of the Princes," and in Mme.
de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal to any number of references.
Acquet was in reality an adventurer. If we were to take account here of
all the evil deeds he is credited with, we should be suspected of
wantonly blackening the character of this melodramatic figure. A few
facts gathered by the Combrays will serve to describe him. As an officer
at Lille he was about to be imprisoned as the result of an odious
accusation, but deserted and escaped to Belgium, not daring to join the
army of the émigrés. He stopped at Mons, then went to the west of
France, and became a Chouan, but politics had nothing to do with this
act. He associated himself with some bravos of his stripe, and plundered
travellers, and levied contributions on the purchasers of national
property. In the Eure, where he usually pursued his operations, he
assassinated with his own hand two defenceless gamekeepers whom his
little band had encountered.
He delighted in taking the funds of the country school-teachers, and to
give a colour of royalism to the deed, he would nightly tear down the
trees of liberty in the villages in which he operated. Tired at last of
"an occupation where there was nothing but blows to receive, and his
head to lose," he went to seek his fortune in Rouen; and before he
presented himself to Mme. de Combray, had without doubt made enquiries.
He knew he would find a rich heiress, whose two brothers, emigrated,
would probably never return, and from the first he set to work to
flatter the royalist hobby of the mother, and the romantic imagination
of the young girl. Père Lemercier was himself conquered; Acquet, to
catch him, pretended the greatest piety and most scrupulous devotion.
A note of Bonnoeil's informs us of the way this tragic intrigue
ended. "Acquet employed every means of seduction to attain his end. The
young girl, fearing to remain long unmarried because of the unhappy
times, listened to him, in spite of the many reasons for waiting and for
refusing the proposals of a man whose name, country and fortune were
unknown to them. The mother's advice was unfortunately not heeded, and
she found herself obliged to consent to the marriage, the laws of that
period giving the daughters full liberty, and authorising them to shake
off the salutary parental yoke."
The dates of certain papers complete the discreet periphrases of
Bonnoeil. The truth is that Acquet "declared his passion" to Mlle. de
Combray and as she, a little doubtful though well-disposed to allow
herself to be loved, still hesitated, the Chevalier signed a sort of
mystic engagement dated January 1, 1796, where, "in sight of the Holy
Church and at the pleasure of God," he pledged himself to marry her on
demand. She carefully locked up this precious paper, and a little less
than ten months later, the 17th October, the municipal agent of
Aubevoye, in which is situated the Château of Tournebut, inscribed the
birth of a daughter, born to the citizeness Louise-Charlotte de Combray,
"wife of the citizen Louis Acquet." Here, then, is the reason that the
Marquise "found herself obliged to consent to the marriage," which did
not take place until the following year, mention of it not being made in
the registry of Rouen until the date 17th June, 1797.
Acquet had thus attained his wish; he had seduced Mlle. de Combray to
make the marriage inevitable, and this accomplished, under pretext of
preventing their sale, he caused the estates of the Combrays situated at
Donnay near Falaise, and sequestrated by the emigration of Bonnoeil,
to be conveyed to him. Scarcely was this done when he began to pillage
the property, turning everything into money, cutting down woods, and
sparing neither thickets nor hedges. "The domain of Donnay became a sort
of desert in his hands." Stopped in his depredations by a complaint of
his two brothers-in-law he tried to attack the will of the Marquis de
Combray, pretending that his wife, a minor at the time of her father's
death, had been injured in the division of property. This was to declare
open war on the family he had entered, and to compel his wife to espouse
his cause he beat her unmercifully. A second daughter was born of this
unhappy union, and even the children did not escape the brutality of
their father. A note on this subject, written by Mme. Acquet, is of
heart-breaking eloquence:
"M. Acquet beat the children cruelly every day; he ill-treated me also
unceasingly: he often chastised them with sticks, which he always used
when he made the children read; they were continually black and blue
with the blows they received. He gave me such a severe blow one day that
blood gushed from my nose and mouth, and I was unconscious for some
moments.... He went to get his pistols to blow out my brains, which he
would certainly have done if people had not been present.... He was
always armed with a dagger."
In January, 1804, Mme. Acquet resolved to escape from this hell.
Profiting by her husband's absence in La Veudée she wrote to him that
she refused to live with him longer, and hastened to Falaise to ask a
shelter from her brother Timoléon, who had lately returned to France.
Timoléon, in order to prevent a scandal, persuaded his sister to return
to her husband's house. She took this wise advice, but refused to see M.
Acquet, who, returning in haste and finding her barricaded in the
château, called the justice of the peace of the canton of Harcourt,
aided by his clerk and two gendarmes, to witness that his wife refused
to receive him. Having, one fine morning, "found her desk forced and all
her papers taken," she returned to Falaise, obtained a judgment
authorising her to live with her brother, and lodged a petition for
separation.
Things were at this point when the trial of Georges Cadoudal was in
progress. Acquet, exasperated at the resistance to his projects, swore
that he would have signal vengeance on his wife and all the Combrays.
They were, unhappily, to give his hatred too good an opportunity of
showing itself.
After passing three years in Rouen, Mme. de Combray returned to
Tournebut in the spring of 1796, with her royalist passions and
illusions as strong as ever. She had declared war on the Revolution, and
believed that victory was assured at no distant period. It is a not
uncommon effect of political passion to blind its subjects to the point
of believing that their desires and hopes are imminent realities. Mme.
de Combray anticipated the return of the King so impatiently that one of
her reasons for returning to the château was to prepare apartments for
the Princes and their suite in case the debarkation should take place on
the coast of Normandy. Once before, in 1792, Gaillon had been designated
as a stopping-place for Louis XVI in case he should again make the
attempt that had been frustrated at Varennes. The Château de Gaillon was
no longer habitable in 1796, but Tournebut, in the opinion of the
Marquise, offered the same advantages, being about midway between the
coast and Paris. Its isolation also permitted the reception of passing
guests without awakening suspicion, while the vast secret rooms where
sixty to eighty persons could hide at one time, were well suited for
holding secret councils. To make things still safer, Mme. de Combray now
acquired a large house, situated about two hundred yards from the walls
of Tournebut, and called "Gros-Mesnil" or "Le Petit Château." It was a
two-story building with a high slate roof; the court in front was
surrounded by huts and offices; a high wall enclosed the property on all
sides, and a pathway led from it to one of the doors in the wall
surrounding Tournebut.
As soon as she was in possession of the Petit Château, Mme. de Combray
had some large secret places constructed in it. For this work she
employed a man called Soyer who combined the functions of intendant,
maître d'hôtel and valet-de-chambre at Tournebut. Soyer was born at
Combray, one of the Marquise's estates in Lower Normandy, and entered
her service in 1791, at the age of sixteen, in the capacity of scullion.
He had gone with his mistress to Rouen during the Terror, and since the
return to Tournebut she had given the administration of the estate into
his hands. In this way he had authority over the domestics at the
château, who numbered six, and among whom the chambermaid Querey and the
gardener Châtel deserve special mention. Each year, about Easter, Mme.
de Combray went to Rouen, where under pretext of purchases to make and
rents to collect, she remained a month. Only Soyer and Mlle. Querey
accompanied her. Besides her patrimonial house in the Rue Saint-Amand,
she had retained the quiet house in the Faubourg Bouvreuil which still
served as a refuge for the exiles sought by the police of the Directory,
and as a depôt for the refractories who were sure of finding supplies
there and means of rejoining the royalist army. Tournebut itself,
admirably situated between Upper and Lower Normandy, became the refuge
for all the partisans whom a particularly bold stroke had brought to the
attention of the authorities on either bank of the river, totally
separated at this time by the slowness and infrequency of communication,
and also by the centralisation of the police which prevented direct
intercourse between the different departmental authorities. It was in
this way that Mme. de Combray, having become from 1796 to 1804, the
chief of the party with the advantage of being known as such only to
the party itself, sheltered the most compromised of the chiefs of Norman
Chouannerie, those strange heroes whose mad bravery has brought them a
legendary fame, and whose names are scarcely to be found, doubtfully
spelled, in the accounts of historians.
Among those who sojourned at Tournebut was Charles de Margadel, one of
Frotté's officers, who had organised a royalist police even in Paris.
Thence he had escaped to deal some blows in the Eure under the orders of
Hingant de Saint-Maur, another habitué of Tournebut who was preparing
there his astonishing expedition of Pacy-sur-Eure. Besides Margadel and
Hingant, Mme. de Combray had oftenest sheltered Armand Gaillard, and his
brother Raoul, whose death we have related. Deville, called "Tamerlan";
the brothers Tellier; Le Bienvenu du Buc, one of the officers of
Hingant; also another, hidden under the name of Collin, called
"Cupidon"; a German bravo named Flierlé, called "Le Marchand," whom we
shall meet again, were also her guests, without counting
"Sauve-la-Graisse," "Sans-Quartier," "Blondel," "Perce-Pataud"--actors
in the drama, without name or history, who were always sure of finding
in the "cachettes" of the great château or the Tour de l'Ermitage,
refuge and help.
These were compromising tenants, and it is quite easy to imagine what
amusements at Tournebut served to fill the leisure of these men so long
unaccustomed to regular occupation, and to whom strife and danger had
become absolute necessaries. Some statistics, rather hard to prove, will
furnish hints on this point. In September, 1800, the two coaches from
Caen to Paris were stopped between Evreux and Pacy, at a place called
Riquiqui, by two hundred armed brigands, and 48,000 livres belonging to
the State taken. Again, in 1800, the coach from Rouen to Pont-Audemer
was attacked by twenty Chouans and a part of the funds carried off. In
1801 a coach was robbed near Evreux; some days later the mail from Caen
to Paris was plundered by six brigands. On the highroad on the right
bank of the Seine attacks on coaches were frequent near Saint-Gervais,
d'Authevernes, and the old mill of Mouflaines. It was only a good deal
later, when the château of Tournebut was known as an avowed retreat of
the Chouans, that it occurred to the authorities that "by its position
at an equal distance from the two roads to Paris by Vernon and by
Magny-en-Vexin, where the mail had so often been stopped," it might well
have served as a centre of operations, and as the authors of these
outrages remained undiscovered, they credited them all to Mme. de
Combray's inspiration, and this accusation without proof is none too
bold. The theft of state funds was a bagatelle to people whom ten years
of implacable warfare had rendered blasé about all brigandage. Moreover,
it was easily conceivable that the snare laid by Bonaparte for Frotté,
who was so popular in Normandy, the summary execution of the General and
his six officers, the assassination of the Duc d'Enghien, the death of
Georges Cadoudal (almost a god to the Chouans) and of his brave
companions, following so many imprisonments without trial, acts of
police treachery, traps and denunciations paid for and rewarded, had
exasperated the vanquished royalists, and envenomed their hatred to the
point of believing any expedient justifiable. Such was the state of mind
of Mme. de Combray in the middle of 1804, at which date we have stopped
the recital of the marital misfortunes of Mme. Acquet de Férolles, and
it justified Bonald's saying: "Foolish deeds done by clever men,
extravagances uttered by men of intellect, crimes committed by honest
people--such is the story of the revolution."
* * * * *
D'Aché 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 passage 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'Aché. He was related to Mme. de
Combray, and before the Revolution, when he was on furlough, he had made
long visits there while "grandmère 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 château then, to celebrate the
marriage of M. du Hasey, proprietor of a château near Gaillon. Du Hasey
was aide-de-camp to Guérin de Bruslard, the famous Chouan whom Frotté
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'Aché 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 régime,
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 Cæsar in the name of God.
It was, however, just at this time that d'Aché, an exile, concealed in
the Château 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'Aché'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 factitious greatness was at the
mercy of a well-directed and fortunate blow.
Fouché's police had not given up hopes of finding the fugitive. They
looked for him in Paris, Rouen, Saint-Denis-du-Bosguérard, near
Bourgthéroulde, 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'Aché 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'Aché, 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 "Deslorières," 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 curé of the parish was invited to celebrate mass
every Sunday in the chapel of the château, and d'Aché could thus be
present at the celebration without showing himself in the village.
Doubtless the days passed 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 passed from hand to hand, and of which he had taken a copy.
How many times must d'Aché 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'Aché received any visitors, except Mme. Levasseur 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'Aché 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
classes, 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 assistance 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 Frotté's bands, exasperated by the
rigours of the new régime, and the ill-treatment of the gendarmes.
The descent of a French prince on the Norman coast would in d'Aché'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'Aché'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 château, left unfinished by Marillac, to be restored and
ornamented.
In July, 1805, after more than a year passed in this solitude, d'Aché
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'Aché 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 Château 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'Aché 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.