THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHÉ
The demesne of Donnay, situated about three leagues from Falaise on the
road to Harcourt, was one of the estates which Acquet de Férolles had
usurped, under pretext of saving them from the Public Treasury and of
taking over the management of the property of his brother-in-law,
Bonnoeil, who was an émigré. Now, the latter had for some time
returned to the enjoyment of his civil rights, but Acquet had not
restored his possessions. This terrible man, acting in the name of his
wife, who was a claimant of the inheritance of the late M. de Combray,
had instituted a series of lawsuits against his brother-in-law. He
proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for
some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray
estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations
drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the
Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions
in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the
period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend upon
was a pension of 2,000 francs which the court had granted to her on
August 1, 1804, for her maintenance pending a definite decision. She
lived alone at the Hôtel de Combray in the Rue du Trepot at Falaise, a
very large house composed of two main buildings, one of which was vacant
owing to the absence of Timoléon who had settled in Paris. Mme. de
Combray had undertaken to assist with her granddaughters' education, and
they had been sent off to a school kept by a Mme. du Saussay at Rouen.
Foreseeing that this state of things could not last forever, Acquet,
despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate
Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests,
chopping the elms into faggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The
very castle whose façade but lately reached to the end of the stately
avenue, suffered from his devastations. It was now nothing but a ruin
with swing-doors and a leaking roof. Here Acquet had reserved a garret
for himself, abandoning the rest of the house to the ravages of time and
the weather. Shut up in this ruin like a wild beast in his lair, he
would not permit the slightest infringement of what he called his
rights. Mme. de Combray wished to spend the harvest season of 1803 at
the château, where the happiest years of her life had been passed, and
where all her children had grown up, but Acquet made the bailiff turn
her out, and the Marquise took refuge in the village parsonage, which
had been sold at the time of the Revolution as national property, and
for which she had supplied half the money, when the Commune bought it
back, to restore it to its original purpose. Since no priest had yet
been appointed she was able to take up her residence there, to the
indignation of her son-in-law, who considered this intrusion as a piece
of bravado.
Two years later Mme. de Combray had still no other shelter at Donnay,
and it was to this parsonage that she brought d'Aché. They arrived there
on the evening of July 17th. A long stay in this conspicuous house,
which was always exposed to the hateful espionage of Acquet, was out of
the question for the exile. He nevertheless spent a fortnight there,
without trying to hide himself, even going so far as to hunt, and
receive several visits, among others one from Mme. Acquet, who came from
Falaise to see her mother, and thus met d'Aché for the first time. At
the beginning of August he quitted Donnay, and Mme. de Combray
accompanied him as far as the country château of a neighbour, M.
Descroisy, where he passed one night. At break of day he set out on
horseback in the direction of Bayeux, Mme. de Combray alone knowing
where he went.
In this neighbourhood d'Aché had the choice of several places of refuge.
He was closely connected by ties of friendship with the family of
Duquesnay de Monfiquet who lived at Mandeville near Trévières. M. de
Monfiquet, a thoroughly loyal but quite unimportant nobleman, having
emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution, his estate at Mandeville
had been sequestrated and his château pillaged and half demolished. Mme.
de Monfiquet, a clever and energetic woman, being left with six
daughters unprovided for, took refuge with the d'Aché's at Gournay,
where she spent the whole period of the Terror. Madame d'Aché even kept
Henriette, one of the little girls who was ill-favoured and hunchbacked
but remarkably clever, with her for five years.
Monsieur de Monfiquet, returning from abroad in the year VII, and having
somewhat reorganised his little estate at Mandeville, lived there in
poverty with his family in the hope that brighter days would dawn for
them with the return of the monarchy. On all these grounds d'Aché was
sure of finding not only a safe retreat but congenial society. The few
persons who were acquainted with what passed at Mandeville were
convinced that Mlle. Henriette possessed a great influence over the
exile, and that she had been his mistress for a long time. According to
general opinion he made her his confidant and she helped him like a
devoted admirer. In fact she arranged several other hiding-places for
him in the neighbourhood of Trévières in case of need;--one at the mill
at Dungy, another with M. de Cantelou at Lingèvres, and a third at a
tanner's named La Pérandeère at Bayeux. And to escort him in his flights
she secured a man of unparalleled audacity who had been a brigand in the
district for ten years, and who had to avenge the death of his two
brothers, who had fallen into an ambush and been shot at Bayeux in 1796.
People called him David the Intrepid. Having been ten times condemned to
death and certain of being shot as soon as he was caught, David had no
settled abode. On stormy nights he would embark in a boat which he
steered himself, and, sure of not being overtaken, he would reach
England where he used to act as an agent for the emigrants. They say
that he was not without influence with the entourage of the Comte
d'Artois. When he stayed in France he lodged with an old lady former
housekeeper to a Councillor of the Parliament of Normandy, who lived
alone in an old house in Bayeux and to whom he had been recommended by
Mlle. Henriette de Monfiquet. David did not take up much room. When he
arrived he set in motion a contrivance of his own by which two steps of
the principal staircase were raised, and slipping into the cavity thus
made, he quickly replaced everything. All the gendarmes in Calvados
could have gone up and down this staircase without suspecting that a man
was hidden in the house, where, however, he was never looked for.
These were the persons and means made use of by d'Aché in his new
theatre of operations: a poor hunchbacked girl was his council, and his
army was composed of David the Intrepid. He was, moreover, penniless. At
the beginning of the autumn Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis by
Lanoë, a keeper who had been in her service, and who now occupied a
small farm at Glatigny, near to Bretteville-sur-Dives. Lanoë belonged to
that rapacious type of peasant whom even a small sum of money never
fails to attract. Already he had on two occasions acted as guide to the
Baron de Commarque and to Frotté when Mme. de Combray offered them
shelter at Donnay. For this he had been summoned before a military
commission and spent nearly two years in prison, but this had no
effect. For three francs he would walk ten leagues and if he complained
sufficiently of the dangers to which these missions exposed him the sum
was doubled and he would go away satisfied. In the middle of August he
went to Mandeville to fetch d'Aché to Donnay, where he spent ten days
and again passed three weeks at the end of September. He was to have
gone there again in December, but at the moment when he was preparing to
start Bonnoeil suddenly appeared at Mandeville, having come to warn
him not to venture there as Mme. de Combray had been accused of a crime
and was on the point of being arrested.
* * * * *
It was not without vexation that Acquet saw his mother-in-law settling
herself at his very door. Keenly on the lookout for any means of
annoying the Marquise, he was struck by the idea that if an incumbent
were appointed to the vacant curé of Donnay, he would have to live at
the parsonage, half of which belonged to the Commune, and that their
being obliged to live in the same house would be a great inconvenience
to Mme. de Combray. This prospect charmed Acquet, and as he had several
friends in high positions, among them the Baron Darthenay his neighbour
at Meslay, who had lately been elected deputy for Calvados, he had small
difficulty in getting a priest appointed. A few days afterwards a curé,
the Abbé Clérisse, arrived at Donnay, fully determined to carry out the
duties of his ministry faithfully, and very far from foreseeing the
tragic fate in store for him.
Mme. de Combray had made herself quite comfortable at the parsonage,
which she considered in a manner her own property since she had
furnished half the money for its purchase. She now saw herself compelled
to surrender a portion of it, which from the very first embittered her
against the new arrival. Acquet, for his part, fêted his protégé, and
welcoming him cordially put him on his guard against the machinations of
the Marquise, whom he represented as an inveterate enemy of the
conciliatory government to which France owed the Concordat. The Abbé
Clérisse, who, from the construction of the house was obliged to use the
rooms in common with Mme. de Combray, was not long in noticing the
mysterious behaviour of the occupants. There were conferences conducted
in whispers, visitors who arrived at night and left at dawn, secret
comings and goings, in short, all the strange doings of a houseful of
conspirators, so that the good curé one day took Lanoë aside and
recommended him to be prudent, "predicting that he would get himself
into serious difficulties if he did not quit the service of the Marquise
as soon as possible." Mme. de Combray, in her exasperation, called the
Abbé "Concordataire," an epithet which, from her, was equivalent to
renegade. She had the imprudence to add that the reign of the "usurper
would not last forever, and that the princes would soon return at the
head of an English army and restore everything." In her wrath she left
the parsonage, making a great commotion, and went to beg shelter from
her farmer Hébert, who lived in a cottage used as a public house, called
La Bijude, where the road from Harcourt met that from Cesny. Acquet was
triumphant. The astonished Abbé remained passive; and as ill luck would
have it, fell ill and died a few days afterwards. A report was
circulated, emanating from the château, that he had died of grief caused
by Mme. de Combray. Then people began to talk in whispers about a
certain basket of white wine with which she had presented the poor
priest. A week later all those who sided with Acquet were convinced that
the Marquise had poisoned the Abbé Clérisse, "after having been
imprudent enough to take him into her confidence." Feeling ran high in
the village. Acquet affected consternation. The authorities, no doubt
informed by him, began making investigations when a nephew of the
Marquise, M. de Saint Léonard, Mayor of Falaise, who was on very good
terms with the Court, came down to hush up the affair and impose silence
on the mischief-makers.
This first bout between Acquet de Férolles and the family de Combray
resulted in d'Aché's being forbidden the house of his old friend.
Feeling herself in the clutches of an enemy who was always on the watch,
she did not dare to expose to denunciation a man on whose head the fate
of the monarchy rested. D'Aché did not come to La Bijude the whole
winter. Mme. de Combray lived there alone with her son Bonnoeil and
the farmer Hébert. She had the house done up and repainted, but it
distressed her to be so meanly lodged, and she regretted the lofty
halls and the quiet of Tournebut. At the beginning of Lent, 1806, she
sent Lanoë for the last time to Mandeville to arrange with d'Aché some
means of correspondence, and with Bonnoeil she again started for
Gaillon, determined never again to set foot on her estates in Lower
Normandy as long as her son-in-law reigned there, and thoroughly
convinced that the fast approaching return of the King would avenge all
the humiliations she had lately endured. She had, moreover, quarrelled
with her daughter, who had only come to Donnay twice during her mother's
stay, and had there displayed only a very moderate appreciation of
d'Aché's plans, and had seemed entirely uninterested in the annoyance
caused to the Marquise, and her exodus to La Bijude.
If Mme. Acquet de Férolles was really lacking in interest, it was
because a great event had occurred in her own life.
Acquet knew that his wife's suit for a separation must inevitably be
granted. The ill-treatment she had had to endure was only too
well-known, and every one in Falaise took her part. If Acquet lost the
case, it would mean the end of the easy life he was leading at Donnay,
and he not only wished to gain time but secretly hoped that his wife
would commit some indiscretion that would regain for him if not the
sympathies of the public, at least her loss of the suit which if won,
would ruin him. In order to carry out his Machiavellian schemes, he
pretended that he wished to come to an understanding with the Combray
family, and he despatched one of his friends to Mme. Acquet to open
negotiations. This friend, named Le Chevalier, was a handsome young man
of twenty-five, with dark hair, a pale complexion and white teeth. He
had languishing eyes, a sympathetic voice and a graceful figure,
inexhaustible good-humour, despite his melancholy appearance, and
unbounded audacity. As he was the owner of a farm in the Commune of
Saint Arnould in the neighbourhood of Exmes, he was called Le Chevalier
de Saint-Arnould, which gave him the position of a nobleman. He was
moreover related to the nobility.
Less has been written about Le Chevalier than about most of those who
were concerned in the troubles in the west. Nevertheless, his adventures
deserve more than the few lines, often incorrect, devoted to him by some
chroniclers of the revolt of the Chouans. He was a remarkable
personality, very romantic, somewhat of an enigma, and one who by a
touch of gallantry and scepticism was distinguished from his savage and
heroic companions.
Born with a generous temperament and deeply in love with glory, as he
said, he was the son of a councillor, hammer-keeper to the corporation
of the woods and forests of Vire. A stay of several years in Paris where
he took lessons from different masters as much in science as in the arts
and foreign languages, had completed his education. He returned to Saint
Arnould in 1799, uncertain as to the choice of a career, when a chance
meeting with Picot, chief of the Auge division, whose death was
described at the beginning of this story, decided his vocation, and Le
Chevalier became a royalist officer, less from conviction than from
generous feelings which inclined him towards the cause of the vanquished
and oppressed. A pistol shot broke his left arm two or three days after
he was enrolled, and he was scarcely cured of this wound when he again
took the field and was implicated in the stopping of a coach. Three of
his friends were imprisoned, and when he himself was arrested, he
succeeded in proving that on the very day of the attack, in the
neighbourhood of Evreux, he was on a visit to a senator in Paris who had
great friends among the authorities, and the magistrates were compelled
to yield before this indisputable alibi. Le Chevalier, nevertheless,
appeared before the tribunal which was trying the cases of his
companions, and pleaded their cause with the eloquence inspired by the
purest and bravest friendship, and when he heard them condemned to
death, he begged in a burst of feeling which amazed everybody, to be
allowed to share their fate. It was considered a sufficient punishment
to send him to prison at Caen, whence he was liberated a few months
later, though he had to remain in the town under police surveillance. It
was then that the wild romance of his life began.
He possessed an ample fortune. His chivalrous behaviour in the affair at
Evreux had gained for him, among the Chouans such renown that without
knowing him otherwise than from hearsay, Mme. de Combray travelled
across Normandy, as did many other royalist ladies in order to visit the
hero in prison and offer him her services. He had admirers who fawned
on him, flatterers who praised him to the skies, and how could this
rather hot-headed youth of twenty resist such adulation at that strange
epoch when even the wisest lost their balance? At least his folly was
generous.
Scarcely out of prison he was seized with pity for the misery of the
pardoned Chouans, veritable pariahs, who lived by all sorts of
contrivances or were dependent on charity, and he made their care his
special charge. He was always followed by a dozen of these parasites, a
ragged troop of whom filled the Café Hervieux, where he held his court
and which moreover was frequented by teachers of English, mathematics
and fencing, whom he had in his pay, and from whom he took lessons when
not playing faro.
Le Chevalier had a warm heart, and a purse that was never closed. He was
a façile speaker whose eloquence was of a forensic type. His friendships
were passionate. While in prison he received news of the death of one of
his friends, Gilbert, who had been guillotined at Evreux, and when some
one congratulated him on his approaching release he replied: "Ah, my
dear comrade! do you think this is a time to congratulate me? Do you
know so little of my heart and are you so ignorant of the love I bore
Gilbert? The happiness of my life is destroyed forever. Nothing can fill
the void in my heart.... I have lived, ah! far too long. O divine duties
of friendship and honour, how my heart burns to fulfil you! O eternity
or annihilation, how sweet will you seem to me whence once I have
fulfilled them!" Such was Le Chevalier's style and this affection
contrasted singularly with the world in which he lived. His comparative
wealth, his generosity, and an air of mystery about his life, gave him a
certain advantage over the most popular leaders. People knew that he was
dreaming of gigantic projects, and his partisans considered him cut out
for the accomplishment of great things.
In reality Le Chevalier squandered his patrimony recklessly.
The treasury of the party--presided over by an old officer of
Frotté's, Bureau de Placène, who pompously styled himself the
Treasurer-General--was empty, and orders came from "high places,"
without any one exactly knowing whence they emanated, for the faithful
to refill them by pillaging the coffers of the state. The police had
little by little relaxed their supervision of Le Chevalier's conduct,
and he took advantage of this to go away for short periods. It was
remarked that each of his absences generally coincided with the stopping
of a coach--a frequent occurrence in Normandy at this time, and one that
was considered as justifiable by the royalists. Seldom did they feel any
qualms about these exploits. The driver, and often his escort, were
accomplices of the Chouans. A few shots were fired from muskets or
pistols to keep up the pretence of a fight. Some of the men opened the
chests while others kept watch. The money belonging to the government
was divided to the last sou, while that belonging to private individuals
was carefully returned to the strong box. A few hours later the band
returned to Caen and the noisy meetings at the Café Hervieux were not
even interrupted.
What renders the figure of Le Chevalier especially attractive, despite
these mad pranks, which no one of his day considered dishonourable, is
the deep private grief which saddened his adventurous life. In 1801,
when he was twenty-one years of age, and during his detention at Caen,
he had married Lucile Thiboust, a girl somewhat older than himself,
whose father had been overseer of an estate. He was obliged to break out
of prison to spend a few rare hours with the wife whom he dearly loved,
all the more so since his passion was oftenest obliged to expend itself
in ardent letters not devoid of literary merit. In prison he learned of
the birth of a son born of this union, and a week later, of the death of
his adored wife. His grief was terrible, but he was seized with a
passionate love for his child, and it is said that from that day forth
he cared for no one else. He had lived so fast that at the age of
twenty-three he was tired of life; his only anxiety was for the future
of his son, whom he had confided to the care of a good woman named Marie
Hamon. He traced out a line of conduct for this babe in swaddling
clothes: "Let him flee corruption, seduction and all shameful and
violent passions; let him be a friend as they were in ancient Greece, a
lover as in ancient Gaul."
In short his exploits, his captivity, his sorrows, his eloquence, his
courage, his noble bearing, made Le Chevalier a hero of romance, and
this was the man whom Acquet de Férolles deemed it wise to despatch to
his wife. Doubtless he had made his acquaintance through the medium of
some of his Chouan comrades. He received him at Donnay, and in order to
attach him to himself lent him large sums of money, which Le Chevalier
immediately distributed among the crowd of parasites that never left
him. Acquet told him of the separation with which his wife threatened
him, begging him to use all his eloquence to bring about an amicable
settlement.
The poor woman would never have known this peacemaker but for her
husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself
of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from
compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom.
She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning
for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly
into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero--he was so
handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and
politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling
novelties, loved him from the first day with an "ungovernable passion."
She associated herself with his life with an ardour that excluded every
other sentiment, and she so wished to stand well with him that, casting
aside all prudence, she adopted his adventurous mode of living, mixing
with the outcasts who formed the entourage of her lover, and with them
frequenting the inns and cafés of Caen. He succeeded in avoiding the
surveillance of the police, and secretly undertook journeys to Paris
where he said he had friends in the Emperor's immediate circle. He
travelled by those roads in Normandy which were known to all the old
Chouans, talking to them of the good times when they made war on the
Blues, and not hesitating to say that, whenever he wished, he had only
to make a sign and an army would spring up around him. He maintained,
moreover, a small troop of determined men who carried his messages and
formed his staff.
There is not the slightest doubt that their chief resource lay in
carrying off the money of the State which was sent from place to place
in public conveyances, and it was this booty that enriched the coffers
of the party, the treasurer, Placène, having long since grown
indifferent to the source of his supplies. The agreement of certain
dates is singularly convincing. Thus, at the beginning of December,
1805, d'Aché was at Mandeville with the Monfiquets, in a state of such
penury that, as we have seen, Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis d'or
by Lanoë; nevertheless, he was thinking of going to England to fetch
back the princes. He would require a considerable sum to prepare for his
journey, and to guard against all the contingencies of this somewhat
audacious attempt. Mme. Acquet was informed of the situation by her
mother whom she came to visit at Donnay, and on the 22d December, 1805,
the coach from Rouen to Paris was attacked on the slope of Authevernes,
at a distance of only three leagues from the Château of Tournebut. The
travellers noticed that one of the brigands, dressed in a military
costume, and whom his comrades called The Dragon, was so much thinner
and more active than the rest, that he might well have been taken "for a
woman dressed as a man." A fresh attack was made at the same place by
the same band on the 15th February, 1806; and as before the band
disappeared so rapidly, once the blow was struck, that it seemed they
must have taken refuge in one of the neighbouring houses. Suspicion fell
on the Château de Mussegros, situated about three leagues from
Authevernes; but nobody then thought of Tournebut, the owners of which
had been absent for seven months. It was only in March that Mme. de
Combray returned there, and it was in April that d'Aché, having laid in
a good stock of money, decided to cross the channel and convey to the
princes the good wishes of their faithful provinces in the west.
D'Aché had not wasted his time during his stay at Mandeville. It was a
difficult enterprise in existing circumstances to arrange his crossings
with any chance of success. The embarkation was easy enough, and David
the Intrepid had undertaken to see to it; but it was especially
important to secure a safe return, and a secret landing on the French
coast, lined as it was by patrols, watched day and night by custom-house
officers, and guarded by sentinels at every point where a boat could
approach the shore, offered almost insuperable difficulties. D'Aché
selected a little creek at the foot of the rocks of Saint Honorine,
scarcely two leagues from Trévières and David, who knew all the coast
guards in the district, bribed one of them to become an accomplice.
It was on a stormy night at the end of April, 1806, that d'Aché put to
sea in a boat seventeen feet long, which was steered by David the
Intrepid. After tossing about for fifty hours, they landed in England.
David immediately stood out to sea again, while d'Aché took the road to
London.
One can easily imagine what the feelings of these royalist fanatics must
have been when they approached the princes to whom they had devoted so
many years of their lives, hunted over France and pursued like
malefactors; how they must have anticipated the welcome in London that
their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by
the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who
were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The
deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of
its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many
false Chouans--spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each
brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining money made off
and were never seen again--that distrust at last had taken the place of
the unsuspecting confidence of former days. Every Frenchman who arrived
in London was considered an adventurer, and as far as we can gather from
this closed page of history,--for those, who tried the experiment of a
visit to the exiled princes, have respectfully kept silence on the
subject of their discomfiture--it appears that terrible mortifications
were in store for the militant royalists who approached the emigrant
leaders. D'Aché did not escape disillusionment, and though he did not
disclose the incidents of his stay in London, we know that at first he
was thrown into prison, and that for two months he could not succeed in
obtaining an interview with the Comte d'Artois, much less with the
exiled King.
M. de la Chapelle, the most influential man at the little court at
Hartwell, sent for him and questioned him about his plans, but was
opposed to his being received by the princes, though he put him in
communication with King George's ministers, every person who brought
news of any plot against Napoleon's government being sure of a welcome
and a hearing from the latter.
After three weeks of conferences the expedition which was to support a
general rising of the peasants in the West, was postponed till the
spring of 1807. A feigned attack on Port-en-Bessin would allow of their
surprising the islands of Tahitou and Saint-Marcouf as well as Port-Bail
on the western slope of the Cotentin. The destruction of the roads,
which protect the lower part of the peninsula, would insure the success
of the undertaking by cutting off Cherbourg which, attacked from behind,
would easily be carried, resistance being impossible. The invading army,
concentrating under the forts of the town, in which they would have a
safe retreat, would descend by Carenton on Saint-Lô and Caen to meet the
army of peasants and malcontents whose cooperation d'Aché guaranteed.
He undertook to collect twenty thousand men; the English government
offered the same number of Russian and Swedish soldiers, and to provide
for their transportation to the coast of France. Pending this, d'Aché
was given unlimited credit on the banker Nourry at Caen.
His stay in London lasted nearly three months. Towards the end of July
an English frigate took him to the fleet where Admiral Saumarez received
him with great deference, and equipped a brig with fourteen cannon to
convey him to the shore. When, at night, they were within a gunshot of
the coast of Saint-Honorine, d'Aché himself made the signals agreed
upon, which were quickly answered by the coast guard on shore. An hour
afterwards David the Intrepid's boat hailed the English brig, and before
daybreak d'Aché was back at Mandeville, sharing with his hosts the joy
he felt at the success of his voyage. They began to make plans
immediately. It was decided on the spot that the Château de Monfiquet
should shelter the King during the first few days after he landed. Eight
months were to elapse before the beginning of the campaign, and as money
was not lacking this time was sufficient for d'Aché to prepare for
operations.
We may as well mention at once that the English Cabinet, while playing
on the fanaticism of d'Aché, as they had formerly done on that of
Georges Cadoudal and so many others, had not the slightest intention of
keeping their promises. Their hatred of Napoleon suggested to them the
infamous idea of exciting the naïve royalists of France by raising
hopes they never meant to satisfy. They abandoned them once they saw
their dupes so deeply implicated that there was no drawing back, caring
little if they helped them to the scaffold, desirous only of maintaining
agitations in France and of driving them into such desperate straits
that some assassin might arise from among them who would rid the world
of Bonaparte. Here lies, doubtless, one of the reasons why the exiled
princes so obstinately refused to encourage their partisans' attempts.
Did they know of the snares laid for these unhappy creatures? Did they
not dare to put them on their guard for fear of offending the English
government? Was this the rent they paid for Hartwell? The history of the
intrigues which played around the claimant to the throne is full of
mystery. Those who were mixed up in them, such as Fauche-Bonel or Hyde
de Neuville were ruined, and it required the daylight of the Restoration
to open the eyes of the persons most interested to the fact that certain
professions of devotion had been treacherous.
As far as d'Aché was concerned it seems fairly certain that he did not
receive any promise from the princes, and was not even admitted to their
presence; the English ministers alone encouraged him to embark on this
extraordinary adventure, in which they were fully determined to let him
ruin himself. Therefore the "unlimited" credit opened at the banker
Nourry's was only a bait: while making the conspirators think they would
never want for money, the credit was limited beforehand to 30,000
francs, a piece of duplicity which enraged even the detectives who,
later on, discovered it.
It is not easy to follow d'Aché in the mysterious work upon which he
entered: the precautions he took to escape the police have caused him to
be lost to posterity as well. Some slight landmarks barely permit our
following his trail during the few years which form the climax of his
wonderful career.
We find him first of all during the autumn of 1806, at La Bijude, where
Mme. de Combray, who had remained at Tournebut had charged Bonnoeil
and Mme. Acquet to go and receive him. There was some question of
providing him with a messenger familiar with the haunts of the Chouans
and the dangers connected with the task. To fulfil this duty Mme. Acquet
proposed a German named Flierlé whom Le Chevalier recommended. Flierlé
had distinguished himself in the revolt of the Chouans; a renowned
fighter, he had been mixed up in every plot. He was in Paris at the time
of the eighteenth Fructidor; he turned up there again at the moment when
Saint-Réjant was preparing his infernal machine; he again spent three
months there at the time of Georges' conspiracy. For the last two years,
whilst waiting for a fresh engagement, he had lived on a small pension
from the royal treasury, and when funds were low, he made one of his
more fortunate companions in old days put him up; and thus he roamed
from Caen to Falaise, from Mortain to Bayeux or Saint-Lô, even going
into Mayenne in his wanderings. Although he would never have
acknowledged it, we may say that he was one of the men usually employed
in attacking public vehicles: in fact, he was an adept at it and went by
the name of the "Teisch."
Summoned to La Bijude he presented himself there one morning towards the
end of October. D'Aché arrived there the same evening while they were at
dinner. They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of
their old Chouan comrades. In spite of his decided German accent Flierlé
was inexhaustible on this theme. He and d'Aché slept in the same room,
and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was
decided that Flierlé should be employed as a messenger at a salary of
fifty crowns a month. That same night, Lanoë conducted d'Aché two
leagues from La Bijude and left him on the road to Arjentan.
Here is a new landmark: on November 26th, Veyrat, the inspector of
police, hastily informed Desmarets that d'Aché, whom they had been
seeking for two years, had arrived the night before in Paris, getting
out of the coach from Rennes in the company of a man named Durand. The
latter, leaving his trunk at the office, spent the night at a house in
the Rue Montmartre, whence he departed the next morning for Boulogne. As
for d'Aché, wrote Veyrat, he had neither box nor parcel, and disappeared
as soon as he got out of the carriage. Search was made in all the
furnished lodgings and hotels in the neighbourhood, but without result.
Desmarets set all his best men to work, but in vain: d'Aché was not to
be found.
He was at Tournebut, where he spent a month. It is probable that a
pressing need of money was the cause of this journey to Paris and his
visit to Mme. de Combray. By this time d'Aché had exhausted his credit
at the banker Nourry's. Believing that this source would never be
exhausted, he had drawn on it largely. His disappointment was therefore
cruel when he heard that his account was definitely closed. He found
himself again without money, and by a coincidence which must be
mentioned, the diligence from Paris to Rouen was robbed, during his stay
at Tournebut, in November, 1806, at the Mill of Monflaines, about a
hundred yards from Authevernes, where the preceding attacks had taken
place. The booty was not large this time, and when d'Aché again took the
road to Mandeville his resources consisted of six hundred francs.
He was obliged to spend the winter in torturing idleness; there is no
indication of his movements till February, 1807. The time fixed for the
great events was drawing near, and it was important to make them known.
He decided on the plan of a manifesto which was to be widely circulated
through the whole province, and would not allow any one to assist in
drawing it up. This proclamation, written in the name of the princes,
stipulated a general amnesty, the retention of those in authority, a
reduction of taxation, and the abolition of conscription. Lanoë,
summoned to Mandeville, received ten louis and the manuscript of the
manifesto, with the order to get it printed as secretly as possible. The
crafty Norman promised, slipped the paper into the lining of his coat,
and after a fruitless--and probably very feeble--attempt on a printer's
apprentice at Falaise, returned it to Flierlé, with many admonitions to
be prudent, but only refunded five louis. Flierlé first applied to a
bookseller in the Froide Rue at Caen. The latter, as soon as he found
out what it contained, refused his assistance.
An incident now occurred, the importance of which it is difficult to
discover, but which seems to have been great, to judge from the mystery
in which it is shrouded. Whether he had received some urgent
communication from England, or whether, in his state of destitution, he
had thought of claiming the help of his friends at Tournebut, d'Aché
despatched Flierlé to Mme. de Combray, and gave him two letters,
advising him to use the greatest discretion. Flierlé set out on
horseback from Caen in the morning of March 13th. At dawn next day he
arrived at Rouen, and immediately repaired to the house of a Mme.
Lambert, a milliner in the Rue de l'Hôpital, to whom one of the letters
was addressed. "I gave it to her," he said, "on her staircase, without
speaking to her, as I had been told to do, and set out that very morning
for Tournebut, where I arrived between two and three o'clock. I gave
Mme. de Combray the other letter, which she threw in the fire after
having read it."
Flierlé slept at the château. Next day Bonnoeil conducted him to
Louviers, and there intrusted a packet of letters to him addressed to
d'Aché. Both directed their steps to Rouen, and the German fetched from
the Rue de l'Hôpital, the milliner's reply, which she gave him herself
without saying a word.
He immediately continued his journey, and by March 20th was back at
Mandeville, and placed the precious mail in d'Aché's hands. The latter
had scarcely read it before he sent David word to get his boat ready,
and without losing a moment, the letters which had arrived from Rouen
were taken out to sea to the English fleet, to be forwarded to London.
We are still ignorant of the contents of these mysterious despatches,
and inquiry on this point is reduced to supposition. Some pretended that
d'Aché sent the manifesto to Mme. de Combray, and that it was
clandestinely printed in the cellars at Tournebut; others maintain that
towards March 15th Bonnoeil returned from Paris, bringing with him the
correspondence of the secret royalist committee which was to be sent to
the English Cabinet via Mandeville. D'Aché certainly attached immense
importance to this expedition, which ought, according to him, to make
the princes decide on the immediate despatch of funds, and to hasten the
preparation for the attack on the island of Tahitou. But days passed and
no reply came. In the agony of uncertainty he decided to approach Le
Chevalier, whom he only knew by reputation as being a shrewd and
resolute man. The meeting took place at Trévières towards the middle of
April, 1807. Le Chevalier brought one of his aides-de-camp with him, but
d'Aché came alone.
The names of these two men are so little known, they occupy such a very
humble place in history, that we can hardly imagine, now that we know
how pitifully their dreams miscarried, how without being ridiculous they
could fancy that any result whatever could come of their meeting. The
surroundings made them consider themselves important: d'Aché was--or
thought he was--the mouthpiece of the exiled King; as for Le Chevalier,
whether from vainglory or credulity he boasted of an immense popularity
with the Chouans, and spoke mysteriously of the royalist committee
which, working in Paris, had succeeded, he said, in rallying to the
cause men of considerable importance in the entourage of the Emperor
himself.
Since he had been Mme. Acquet's adored lover, Le Chevalier's visits to
the Café Hervieux had become rarer; his parasites had dispersed, and
although he still kept up his house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur at Caen, he
spent the greater part of his time either at Falaise or at La Bijude,
where his devoted mistress alternately lived. The police of Count
Caffarelli, Prefect of Calvados, had ceased keeping an eye on him, and
he even received a passport for Paris, whither he went frequently. He
always returned more confident than before, and in the little group
amongst whom he lived at Falaise--consisting of his cousin, Dusaussay,
two Chouan comrades, Beaupaire and Desmontis; a doctor in the Frotté
army, Révérend; and the Notary of the Combray family, Maître Febre--he
was never tired of talking in confidence about the secret Royalist
Committee, and the near approach of the Restoration. The revolution
which was to bring it about, was to be a very peaceful one, according to
him. Bonaparte, taken prisoner by two of his generals, each at the head
of 40,000 men, was to be handed over to the English and replaced by "a
regency, the members of which were to be chosen from among the senators
who could be trusted." The Comte d'Artois was then to be recalled--or
his son, the Duc de Berry--to take possession of the kingdom as
Lieutenant-General.
Did Le Chevalier believe in this Utopia? It has been said that in
propagating it "he only sought to intoxicate the people and excite them
to acts of pillage, the profits of which would come to him without any
of the danger." This accusation fits in badly with the chivalrous
loyalty of his character. It seems more probable that on one of his
journeys to Paris he fell into the trap set by the spy Perlet who, paid
by the princes to be their chief intelligence agent, sold their
correspondence to Fouché and handed over to the police the royalists who
brought the letters. This Perlet had invented, as a bait for his trap, a
committee of powerful persons who, he boasted, he had won over to the
royal cause, and doubtless Le Chevalier was one of his only too numerous
victims. Whatever it was, Le Chevalier took a pride in his high
commissions, and went to meet d'Aché as an equal, if not a rival.
At the beginning, the conference was more than cold. These two men, so
different in appearance and character, both aspired to play a great part
and were instinctively jealous of each other. Their own personal
feelings divided them. One was the lover of Mme. Acquet de Férolles, the
other was the friend of Mme. de Combray, and the latter blamed her
daughter for her misconduct, and had forbidden her ever to come back to
Tournebut. Le Chevalier, after the usual civilities, refused to continue
the conversation till he was informed of the exact nature of the powers
conferred by the King on his interlocutor, and the authority with which
he was invested. Now, d'Aché had never had any written authority, and
arrogantly intrenched himself behind the confidence which the princes
had shown in him from the very first days of the revolution. He stated
that he was expecting a regular commission from them. Whereupon Le
Chevalier, seizing the advantage, called him an "agent of the English,"
and placing his pistols on the table "invited him to blow out his brains
immediately." They both grew calmer, however, and explained their plans.
Le Chevalier knew most of the Norman Chouans, either from having fought
by their side, or from having made their acquaintance in the various
prisons in Caen or Evreux, wherein he had been confined. He therefore
undertook the enrollment and management of the army, the command of
which he would assign to two men who were devoted to him. The name of
one is not published; they say he was an ex-chief of Staff to Charette.
The other was famous through the whole revolt of the Chouans under the
pseudonym of General Antonio; his real name was Allain, and he had been
working with Le Chevalier since the year IX. The latter was sure also
of the cooperation of his friend M. de Grimont, manager of the stud at
Argentan, who would furnish the prince's army with the necessary
cavalry; besides which he offered to go to Paris for the "great event,"
and took upon himself with the assistance of certain accomplices "to
secure the imperial treasury." D'Aché, for his part, was to go to
England to fetch the King, and was to preside over the disembarkation
and lead the Russo-Swedish army through insurgent Normandy to the gates
of the capital.
Their work thus assigned, the two men parted allies, but not friends.
D'Aché was offended at Le Chevalier's pretensions; the latter returning
to Mme. Acquet, did not disguise the fact that, in his opinion, d'Aché
was nothing but a common intriguer and an agent of England.
There still remained the question of money which, for the moment, took
precedence of all others. They had agreed that it was necessary to
pillage the coffers of the state whilst waiting the arrival of subsidies
from England, but neither d'Aché nor Le Chevalier expressed himself
openly; each wished to leave the responsibility of the theft to the
other. Later, they both obstinately rejected it, Le Chevalier affirming
that d'Aché had ordered the stopping of public conveyances in the King's
name, while d'Aché disowned Le Chevalier, accusing him of having brought
the cause into disrepute by employing such means. The dispute is of
little interest. The money was lacking, and not only were the royal
coffers empty, but what was of more immediate importance, Le Chevalier
and his friends were without resources. In consequence of leading a wild
life and sacrificing himself for his party, he had spent his entire
fortune, and was overwhelmed with debts. The lawyer Vanièr, who was
entrusted with the management of his business affairs, lost his head at
the avalanche of bills, protests and notes of hand which poured into his
office, and which it was impossible to meet. The lawyer Lefebre, a fat
and sensual free-liver, was equally low in funds, and laid on the
government the blame of the confusion into which his affairs had fallen,
though it had been entirely his own fault. As for Le Chevalier himself,
he attributed his ruin, not without justice, to his disinterestedness
and devotion to the royal cause, which was his excuse for the past and
the future. Mme. Acquet, who loved him blindly, had given her last louis
to provide for his costly liberality. Touching letters from her are
extant, proving how attached she was to him:
"I am herewith sending you a letter from Mme. Blins" (a creditor).
"My only regret is that I have not the sum. It would have given me
great pleasure to pay it for you, and then you would never have
known.... I love you with all my heart. I am entirely yours, and
there is nothing I would not do for you.... Love me as I love you.
I embrace you tenderly."
"There is nothing I would not do for you,"--and the poor woman was
wretched in the knowledge that the hero whom she idolised was hampered
for want of small sums of money. She could not ward off the trouble,
since her demand for a separation had recently been refused. Acquet was
triumphant. She was reduced to living on a modest pension of 2,000
francs, and not able to sell what she had inherited from her father. One
evening, when she and Lanoë were alone in the Hôtel de Combray, in the
Rue du Tripot at Falaise, one part of which was rented to the collector
of taxes, she heard through the wall the chinking of the money, which
they were packing into bags. On hearing it she fell into a sort of
delirium, thinking that here was the wherewithal to satisfy her lover's
fancies....
"Lanoë," she said suddenly, "I must have some money; I only want 10,000
francs."
The terrified Lanoë gave her no answer then, but a few days later, when
he was driving her back in her cabriolet to Falaise from La Bijude, she
returned to the charge, and gave him a piece of yellow wax wrapped up in
cotton telling him to go and take an impression of the tax collector's
lock as soon as they arrived at the Rue du Tripot. Lanoë excused
himself, saying that the house belonged to M. Timoléon, and that
disagreeable consequences might arise. But she insisted. "I must have
the impression," she said. "I do not tell you why I want it, but I will
have it." Lanoë, to get out of a task he did not like, went away and
secretly took an impression of the lock of the hayloft. A key was made
by this pattern, and when night came the Marquise de Combray's daughter
stole down--holding her breath and walking noiselessly--to the tax
collector's office, and vainly tried to open the door.
* * * * *
About the same time Le Chevalier, who had just returned from a journey
to Paris, heard from the lawyer Vanièr, who was quite as much in debt as
his client, that the pecuniary situation was desperate. "I dread," wrote
Vanièr, "the accomplishment of the psalm: Unde veniet auxilium nobis
quia perimus." To which Le Chevalier replied, as he invariably did: "In
six weeks, or perhaps less, the King will be again on his throne.
Brighter days will dawn, and we shall have good posts. Now is the time
to show our zeal, for those who have done nothing will, as is fair, have
nothing to expect." He added that the hour was propitious, "since
Bonaparte was in the middle of Germany with his whole army."
He loved to talk this way, as it made him appear, as it were, Napoleon's
rival, raising him to the place he held in his own imagination.