PAYING THE PENALTY
"Le Chevalier is the adored one."
It was thus that Licquet summarised his first conversation with Mme.
Acquet. He had been certain for some time that her unbridled passion for
her hero held such a place in her heart that it had stifled all other
feeling. For his sake she had harboured Allain's men; for him she had so
often gone to brave the scornful reception of Joseph Buquet; and for him
she had so long endured the odious life in Vannier's house. Licquet
decided that so violent a passion, "well handled," might throw some new
light on affairs. This incomparable comedian should have been seen
playing his cruel game. In what manner did he listen to the love-sick
confidences of his prisoner? In what sadly sympathetic tones did he
reply to the glowing pictures she drew of her lover? For she spoke of
little else, and Licquet listened silently until the moment when, in a
burst of feeling, he took both her hands, and as if grieved at seeing
her duped, exclaiming with hypocritical regard: "My poor child! Is it
not better to tell you everything?" made her believe that Le Chevalier
had denounced her. She refused at first to believe it. Why should her
lover have done such an infamous thing? But Licquet gave reasons. Le
Chevalier, while in the Temple had learned, from Vannier or others, of
her relations with Chauvel, and in revenge had set the police on the
track of his faithless friend. And so the man for whom she had
sacrificed her life no longer loved her! Licquet, in order to torture
her, overwhelmed the unhappy woman with the intentionally clumsy
consolation that only accentuates grief. She wept much, and had but one
thing to say.
"I should like to save him in spite of his ingratitude."
This was not at all what the detective wished. He had hoped she would,
in her turn, accuse the man who had betrayed her; but he could gain
nothing on this point. She felt no desire for revenge. The letters she
wrote to Le Chevalier (Licquet encouraged correspondence between
prisoners) are full of the sadness of a broken but still loving heart.
"It is not when a friend is unfortunate that one should reproach him,
and I am far from doing so to you, in spite of your conduct as regards
me. You know I did everything for you,--I am not reproaching you for
it,--and after all, you have denounced me! I forgive you with all my
heart, if that can do you any good, but I know your reason for being so
unjust to me; you thought I had abandoned you, but I swear to you I had
not."
There was not much information in that for Licquet, and in the hope of
learning something, he excited Mme. Acquet strongly against d'Aché.
According to him d'Aché was the one who first "sold them all"; it was
he who caused Le Chevalier to be arrested, to rid himself of a
troublesome rival after having compromised him; it was to d'Aché alone
that the prisoners owed all their misfortunes. And Licquet found a
painful echo of his insinuations in all Mme. Acquet's letters to her
lover; but he found nothing more. "You know that Delorriere d'Aché is a
knave, a scoundrel; that he is the cause of all your trouble; that he
alone made you act; you did not think of it yourself, and he advised you
badly. He alone deserves the hatred of the government. He is abhorred
and execrated as he deserves to be, and there is no one who would not be
glad to give him up or kill him on the spot. He alone is the cause of
your trouble. Recollect this; do not forget it."
It is not necessary to say that these letters never reached Le
Chevalier, who was secretly confined in the tower of the Temple until
Fouché decided his fate. He was rather an embarrassing prisoner; as he
could not be directly accused of the robbery of Quesnay in which he had
not taken part, and as they feared to draw him into an affair to which
his superb gift of speech, his importance as a Chouan gentleman, his
adventurous past and his eloquent professions of faith might give a
political significance similar to that of Georges Cadoudal's trial,
there remained only the choice of setting him at liberty or trying him
simply as a royalist agent. Now, in 1808 they did not wish to mention
royalists. It was understood that they were an extinct race, and orders
were given to no longer speak of them to the public, which must long
since have forgotten that in very ancient days the Bourbons had reigned
in France.
Thus, Réal did not know what was to become of Le Chevalier when Licquet
conceived the idea of giving him a rôle in his comedy. We have not yet
obtained all the threads of this new intrigue. Whether Licquet destroyed
certain over-explicit papers, or whether he preferred in so delicate a
matter to act without too much writing, there remain such gaps in the
story that we have not been able to establish the correlation of the
facts we are about to reveal. It is certain that the idea of exploiting
Mme. Acquet's passion and promising her the freedom of her lover in
exchange for a general confession, was originated by Licquet. He
declares it plainly in a letter addressed to Réal. By this means they
obtained complete avowals from her. On December 12th she gave a detailed
account of her adventurous life from the time of her departure from
Falaise until her arrest; a few days later she gave some details of the
conspiracy of which d'Aché was the chief, to which we shall have to
return. What must be noted at present is this remarkable coincidence: on
the 12th she spoke, after receiving Licquet's formal promise to ensure
Le Chevalier's escape, and on the 14th he actually escaped from the
Temple. Had Licquet been to Paris between these two dates? It seems
probable; for he speaks in a letter of a "pretended absence" which might
well have been real.
The manner of Le Chevalier's escape is strange enough to be described.
By reason of his excited condition, "which threw him into continual
transports, and which had seemed to the concierge of the prison to be
the delirium of fever," he had been lodged, not in the tower itself, but
in a dependence, one of whose walls formed the outer wall of the prison,
and overlooked the exterior courts. He had been ill for several days,
and being subject to profuse sweats had asked to have his sheets changed
frequently, and so was given several pairs at a time. On December 13th,
at eight in the morning, the keeper especially attached to his person
(Savard) had gone in to arrange the little dressing-room next to Le
Chevalier's chamber. Returning at one o'clock to serve dinner, he found
the prisoner reading; at six in the evening another keeper (Carabeuf),
bringing in a light, saw him stretched on his bed. The next day on going
into his room in the morning, they found that he had fled.
Le Chevalier had made in the wall of his dressing-room, which was two
yards thick, a hole large enough to slip through. They saw that he had
done it with no other tool than a fork; two bits of log, cut like
wedges, had served to dislodge and pull out the stones. The operation
had been so cleverly managed, all the rubbish having been carefully
taken from within, that no trace of demolition appeared on the outside.
The prisoner (Vandricourt) who was immediately below had not noticed any
unwonted noise, although he did not go to bed till eleven o'clock. Le
Chevalier, whose cell was sixteen feet above the level of the court, had
also been obliged to construct a rope to descend by; he had plaited it
with long strips cut from a pair of nankeen breeches and the cover of
his mattress. Having got into the courtyard during the night by this
means, he had to wait till the early morning when bread was brought in
for the prisoners. The concierge of the Temple was in the habit of going
back to bed after having admitted the baker, and the gate remained open
for "a quarter of an hour and longer, while bread was being delivered at
the wickets."
People certainly escaped from the Temple as much as from any other
prison. The history of the old tower records many instances of men
rescued by their friends in the face of gaolers and guard, but
confederates were necessary for the success of these escapes. Given the
topography of the Temple in 1807, it would seem impossible for one man
alone, with no outside assistance, to have pierced a wall six feet thick
in a few hours, and to have crossed the old garden of the grand prior,
where in order to reach the street he would either have had to climb the
other wall of the enclosure, or to pass the palace and courts to get to
the door--that of the Rue du Temple--which, as stated in the official
report, remained open every morning for twenty minutes during the
baker's visit. The impossibility of success leads us to think that if Le
Chevalier triumphed over so many obstacles, it was because some one made
it easy for him to do so.
Réal put a man on his track who for ten years had been the closest
confidant of the secrets of the police, and had conducted their most
delicate affairs. This was Inspector Pasque. With Commissary Beffara,
he set off on the search. Licquet, one of the first to be informed of
Le Chevalier's escape, immediately showed Mme. Acquet the letter
announcing it, taking care to represent it, confidentially, as his own
work. He received in return a copious confession from his grateful
prisoner. This time she emptied all the corners of her memory, returning
to facts already revealed, adding details, telling of all d'Aché's
comings and goings, his frequent journeys to England, and of the manner
in which David l'Intrépide crossed the channel. Licquet tried more than
all to awaken her memories of Le Chevalier's relations with Parisian
society. She knew that several official personages were in the "plot,"
but unfortunately could not recollect their names, "although she had
heard them mentioned, notably by Lefebre, with whom Le Chevalier
corresponded on this subject." However, as the detective persisted she
pronounced these words, which Licquet eagerly noted:
"One of these personages is in the Senate; M. Lefebre knows him. Another
was in office during the Terror, and can be recognised by the following
indications: he frequently sees Mme. Ménard, sister of the widow, Mme.
Flahaut, who has married M. de ----, now ambassador to Holland, it is
believed. This lady lives sometimes at Falaise and sometimes in Paris,
where she is at present. This individual is small, dark and slightly
humped; he has great intellect, and possesses the talent for intrigue in
a high degree. The other personages are rich. The declarant cannot state
their number. Le Chevalier informed her that affairs were going well in
Paris, that they were awaiting news of the Prince's arrival to declare
for him."
Licquet compelled Mme. Acquet to repeat these important declarations
before the prefect, and on the 23d of December, she signed them in
Savoye-Rollin's office. The same evening Licquet tried to put names to
all these anonymous persons. With the prisoner by his side and the
imperial almanac in his hand, he went over the list of senators, great
dignitaries and notabilities of the army and the administration, but
without success. "The names that were pronounced before her," he wrote
to Réal, "are effaced from her memory; perhaps Lefebre will tell us who
they are."
The lawyer, in fact, since he saw things becoming blacker, had been very
loquacious with Licquet. He cried with fear when in the prefect's
presence, and promised to tell all he knew, begging them to have pity on
"the unfortunate father of a family." He spoke so plainly, this time,
that Licquet himself was astounded. The lawyer had it indeed from Le
Chevalier, that the day the Duc de Berry landed in France, the Emperor
would be arrested by two officers "who were always near his person, and
who each of them would count on an army of forty thousand men!" And when
Lefebre was brought before the prefect to repeat this accusation, and
gave the general's names, Savoye-Rollin was so petrified with
astonishment that he dared not insert them in the official report of the
inquiry; furthermore, he refused to write them with his own hand, and
compelled the lawyer himself to put on paper this blasphemy before
which official pens recoiled.
"Lefebre insists," wrote Savoye-Rollin to Réal, "that Le Chevalier would
never tell him the names of all the conspirators. Lefebre has, however,
given two names, one of which is so important and seems so improbable,
that I cannot even admit a suspicion of it. Out of respect for the
august alliance which he has contracted, I have not put his name in the
report of the inquiry; it is added to my letter, in a declaration
written and signed by the prisoner." And in his letter there is a note
containing these lines over Lefebre's signature: "I declare to Monsieur
le Prefect de la Seine Inférieur that the two generals whom I did not
name in my interrogation to-day and who were pointed out to me by M. le
Chevalier, are the Generals Bernadotte and Masséna."
Bernadotte and Masséna! At the ministry of police they pretended to
laugh heartily at this foolish notion; but perhaps some who knew the
"true inwardness" of certain old rivalries--Fouché above all--thought it
less absurd and impossible than they admitted it to be. This fiend of a
man, with his way of searching to the bottom of his prisoners'
consciences, was just the one to find out that in France Bonaparte was
the sole partisan of the Empire. In any case these were not ideas to be
circulated freely, and from that day Réal promised himself that if
Pasque and Beffara succeeded in finding Le Chevalier, he should never
divulge them before any tribunal.
The two agents had established a system of surveillance on all the
roads of Normandy, but without much hope: Le Chevalier, who had escaped
so many spies and got out of so many snares during the past eight years,
was considered to bear, as it were, a charmed life. He was taken,
however, and as his escape had seemed to be the result of the
detective's schemes, so in the manner in which he again fell into the
hands of Réal's agents was Licquet's handiwork again recognised. The
latter, indeed, was the only one who knew enough to make the capture
possible. In his long conversation with Mme. Acquet, he had learned that
in leaving Caen in the preceding May, Le Chevalier had confided his
five-year-old son to his servant Marie Humon, with orders to take him to
his friend the Sieur Guilbot at Evreux. At the beginning of August the
child had been taken to Paris and placed with Mme. Thiboust, Le
Chevalier's sister-in-law.
In what way was the son used to capture the father? We have never been
able thoroughly to clear up this mystery. The accounts that have been
given of this great detective feat are evidently fantastic, and remain
inexplicable without the intervention of a comrade betraying Le
Chevalier after having given him unequivocal proofs of devotion. Thus,
it has been said that Réal, "having recourse to extraordinary means,"
could have caused the arrest of "the sister-in-law and daughter of the
fugitive, and their incarceration in the prisons of Caen with filthy and
disreputable women." Le Chevalier, informed of their incarceration--by
whom?--would have offered himself in place of the two women, and the
police would have accepted the bargain.
Told in this manner, the story does not at all agree with the documents
we have been able to collect. Le Chevalier had no daughter, and no trace
is to be found of the transference of Mme. Thiboust to Caen. The other
version is no more admissible. Scarcely out of the Temple, we are
assured, the outlaw would not have been able to resist the desire to see
his son, and would have sent to beg Mme. Thiboust--by whom again?--to
bring him to the Passage des Panoramas. Naturally the police would
follow the woman and child, and Le Chevalier be taken in their arms. It
is difficult to imagine so sharp a man setting such a childish trap for
himself, even if his adventurous life had not accustomed him for a long
time to live apart from his family.
The truth is certainly far otherwise. It is necessary, first of all, to
know who let Le Chevalier out of prison. Mme. de Noël, one of his
relations, said later, that "they had offered employment to the prisoner
if he would denounce his accomplice," which offer he haughtily refused.
As his presence was embarrassing, his gaolers were ordered "to let him
go out on parole in the hope that he would not come back," and could
then be condemned for escaping. Le Chevalier profited by the favour, but
returned at the appointed time. This toleration was not at all
surprising in this strange prison, the theatre of so many adventures
that will always remain mysteries. Desmarets tells how the concierge
Boniface allowed an important prisoner, Sir Sidney Smith, to leave the
Temple, "to walk, take baths, dine in town, and even go out hunting;"
the commodore never failed to return to sleep in his cell, and "took
back his parole in reentering."
It was necessary then, for some one to undertake to get Le Chevalier out
of the Temple, as he would not break his parole when he was outside; and
this explains the simulated escape. What cannot be established,
unfortunately, is the part taken by Fouché and Réal. Were they the
instigators or the dupes? Did they esteem it better to feign ignorance,
or was it in reality the act of subalterns working unknown to their
chiefs? In any case, no one for a moment believed in the wall two yards
thick bored through in one night by the aid of a fork, any more than in
the rope-ladder made from a pair of nankeen breeches. Réal, in revenge,
dismissed the concierge of the prison, put the gaoler Savard in irons,
and exacted a report on "all the circumstances that could throw any
light on the acquaintances the prisoner must have had in the prison to
facilitate his escape."
It seems very probable that Licquet, either directly or through an agent
like Perlet, in whom Le Chevalier had the greatest confidence, had had a
hand in this escape. As soon as the prisoner was free, as soon as Mme.
Acquet had given up all her secrets as the price of her lover's liberty,
it only remained to secure him again, and the means employed to gain
this end must have been somewhat discreditable, for in the reports sent
to the Emperor, who was daily informed of the progress of the affair,
things were manifestly misrepresented. The following facts cannot be
questioned: Le Chevalier had found in Paris "an impenetrable retreat
where he could boldly defy all the efforts of the police;" Fouché,
guessing at the feelings of the fugitive, issued a warrant against Mme.
Thiboust. By whom was Le Chevalier informed in his hiding-place of his
sister-in-law's arrest? It is here, evidently, that a third person
intervened. However that may be, the outlaw wrote to Fouché "offering to
show himself as soon as the woman who acted as a mother to his son
should be set at liberty." Fouché had Mme. Thiboust brought before him,
and gave her a safe conduct of eight days for Le Chevalier, with
positive and reiterated assurance that he would give him a passport for
England as soon as he should deliver himself up.
Mme. Thiboust returned home to the Rue des Martyrs, where Le Chevalier
came to see her; it was the evening of the 5th of January, 1808. He
covered his little son with kisses and put him in bed: the child always
remembered the caresses he received that evening. Mme. Thiboust, who did
not put much faith in Fouché's promises, begged her brother-in-law to
flee. "No, no," he replied; and later on she reported his answer thus:
"The minister has kept his promise in setting you at liberty and I must
keep mine--honour demands it; to hesitate would be weak, and to fail
would be a crime." On the morning of the 6th, persuaded--or pretending
to be--that Fouché was going to assist his crossing to England, he
embraced his child and sister-in-law.
"Come," he said, "it is Twelfth-Night, and it is a fine day; have a mass
said for us, and get breakfast ready. I shall be back in two hours."
Two hours later Inspector Pasque restored him to the Temple, and saw
that he was put "hands and feet in irons, in the most rigorous
seclusion, under the surveillance of a police agent who was not to leave
him day or night."
The same evening Fouché sent the Emperor a report which contained no
mention of the chivalrous conduct of Le Chevalier; it said that "the
police had seized this brigand at the house of a woman with whom he had
relations, and that they had succeeded in throwing themselves upon him
before he could use his weapons." On the morning of the 9th, Commandant
Durand, of the staff, presented himself at the Temple, and had the irons
removed from the prisoner, who appeared at noon before a military
commission in a hall in the staff office, 7 Quoi Voltaire. This
expeditious magistracy was so sparing of its paper and ink that it took
no notes. It played, in the social organisation, the rôle of a trap into
which were thrust such people as were found embarrassing. Some were
condemned whose fate is only known because their names have been found
scribbled on a torn paper that served as an envelope for police reports.
Le Chevalier was condemned to death; he left the office of the staff at
four o'clock and was thrown into the Abbaye to await execution. While
the preparations were being made he wrote the following letter to Mme.
Thiboust who had been three days without news, and it reached the poor
woman the next day.
"_Saturday_, 9 January, 1808.
"I am going to die, my sister, and I bequeath you my son. I do not
doubt that you will show him all a mother's tenderness and care. I
beg you also to have all the firmness and vigilance that I should
have had in forming his character and heart.
"Unfortunately, in leaving you the child that is so dear to me, I
cannot also leave you a fortune equal to that which I inherited
from my parents. I reproach myself, more than for any other fault
in my life, for having diminished the inheritance they transmitted
to me. Bring him up according to his actual fortune, and make him
an artisan, if you must, rather than commit him to the care of
strangers.
"One of my greatest regrets in quitting this life, is leaving it
without having shown my gratitude to you and your daughter.
"Good-bye; I shall live, I hope, in your remembrance, and you will
keep me alive in that of my son.
"Le Chevalier."
Night had come--a cold misty winter night--when the cab that was to take
the prisoner to his execution arrived at the door of the Abbaye. It was
a long way from Saint-Germain-des-Près to the barriers by way of the Rue
du Four and Rue de Grenelle, the Avenue de l'École Militaire, and the
tortuous way that is now the Rue Dupleix. The damp fog made the night
seem darker; few persons were about, and the scene must have been
peculiarly gloomy and forbidding. The cab stopped in the angle formed
by the barrier of Grenelle, and on the bare ground the condemned man
stood with his back to the wall of the enclosure. It was the custom at
night executions to place a lighted lantern on the breast of the victim
as a target for the men.
It was all over at six o'clock. While the troop was returning to town
the grave-diggers took the corpse which had fallen beneath the wall and
carried it to the cemetery of Vaugirard; a neighbouring gardener and an
old man of eighty, whom curiosity had led to the corpse of this unknown
Chouan, served as witnesses to the death certificate.
The death of Le Chevalier put an end to the prosecution of the affair of
Quesnay. He was one of those prisoners of whom the grand judge said
"that they could not be set at liberty, but that the good of the State
required that they should not appear before the judges"; and they feared
that by pushing the investigations farther they might bring on some
great political trial that would agitate the whole west of France,
always ready for an insurrection, and shown in the reports to be
organised for a new Chouan outburst. It is certain that d'Aché's capture
would have embarrassed Fouché seriously, and in default of causing him
to disappear like Le Chevalier, he would much have preferred to see him
escape the pursuit of his agents. The absence of these two leaders in
the plot would enable him to represent the robbery of June 7th, as a
simple act of brigandage which had no political significance whatever.
They therefore imposed silence on the gabblings of Lefebre, who had
become a prey to such incontinence of denunciations that he only stopped
them to lament his fate and curse those who had drawn him into the
adventure; they moderated Licquet's zeal, and the prefect confided to
him the drawing up of the general report of the affair, a task of which
he acquitted himself so well that his voluminous work seemed to Fouché
"sufficiently luminous and circumstantial to be submitted as it was to
his Majesty."
Then they began, but in no haste, to concern themselves with the trial
of the other prisoners. It was necessary, according to custom, to
interrogate and confront the forty-seven persons imprisoned; of this
number the prosecution only held thirty-two, of whom twenty-three were
present. These were Flierlé, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Épine and Le
Héricey who by Allain's orders had attacked the waggon; the Marquise de
Combray, her daughter and Lefebre, instigators of the crime; Gousset the
carrier; Alexandre Buquet, Placène, Vannier, Langelley, who had received
the money; Chauvel and Lanoë as accomplices, and the innkeepers of
Louvigny, d'Aubigny and elsewhere who had entertained the brigands.
Those absent were d'Aché, Allain, Le Lorault called "La Jeunesse,"
Joseph Buquet, the Dupont girl, and the friends of Le Chevalier or
Lefebre who were compromised by the latter's revelations--Courmaceul,
Révérend, Dusaussay, etc., Grenthe, called "Coeur-le-Roi," had died in
the conciergerie during the enquiry. Mme. de Combray's gardener,
Châtel, had committed suicide a few days after his arrest. As to Placide
d'Aché and Bonnoeil, it was decided not to bring them to trial but to
take them later before a military commission. Everything was removed
that could give the trial political significance.
Mme. de Combray, who was at last enlightened as to the kind of interest
taken in her by Licquet, and awakened from the illusions that the
detective had so cleverly nourished, had been able to communicate
directly with her family. Her son Timoléon had never approved of her
political actions and since the Revolution had stayed away from
Tournebut; but as soon as he heard of their arrest he hurried to Rouen
to be near his mother and brother in prison. The letters he exchanged
with Bonnoeil, as soon as it was permitted, show a strong sense of the
situation on the part of both, irreproachable honesty and profound
friendship. This family, whom it suited Licquet to represent as
consisting of spiteful, dissolute or misguided people, appears in a very
different light in this correspondence. The two brothers were full of
respect for their mother, and tenderly attached to their sister:
unfortunate and guilty as she was, they never reproached her, nor made
any allusion to facts well-known and forgiven. They were all leagued
against the common enemy, Acquet, whom they considered the cause of all
their suffering. This man had returned from the Temple strengthened by
the cowardly service he had rendered, and entered Donnay in triumph; he
did not try to conceal his joy at all the catastrophes that had
overtaken the Combrays, and treated them as vanquished enemies. The
family held a council. The advice of Bonnoeil and Timoléon, as well as
of the Marquise, was to sacrifice everything to save Mme. Acquet. They
knew that her husband's denunciations made her the chief culprit, and
that the accusation would rest almost entirely on her. They determined
to appeal to Chauveau-Lagarde, whom the perilous honour of defending
Marie-Antoinette before the Revolutionary tribunal had rendered
illustrious. The great advocate undertook the defence of Mme. Acquet and
sent a young secretary named Ducolombier, who usually lived with him, to
Rouen to study the case--"an intriguer calling himself doctor," wrote
Licquet scornfully. Ducolombier stayed in Rouen and set himself to
examine the condition of the Combrays' fortune. Mme. de Combray had
consented some years back to the sale of a part of her property, and
Timoléon, in the hope of averting financial disaster and being of use to
his mother by diminishing her responsibility, had succeeded in having a
trustee appointed for her.
The matter was brought to Rouen and it was there that, "for the safety
of the State," the trial took place that excited all Normandy in
advance. Curiosity was greatly aroused by the crime committed by "ladies
of the château," and surprising revelations were expected, the
examination having lasted more than a year and having brought together
an army of witnesses from around Falaise and Tournebut. Mme. de
Combray's house in the Rue des Carmélites had become the headquarters
of the defence. Mlle. Querey had come out of prison after several weeks'
detention, and was there looking after the little Acquets, who had been
kept at the pension Du Saussay in ignorance of what was going on around
them: the three children still suffered from the ill-treatment they had
received in infancy. Timoléon also lived in the Rue des Carmélites when
the interests of his family did not require his presence in Falaise or
Paris. There, also, lived Ducolombier, who had organised a sort of
central office in the house where the lawyers of the other prisoners
could come and consult. Mme. de Combray had chosen Maître Gady de la
Vigne of Rouen to defend her; Maître Denise had charge of Flierlé's
case, and Maître le Bouvier was to speak for Lefebre and Placène.
Chauveau-Lagarde arrived in Rouen on December 1, 1808. He had scarcely
done so when he received a long epistle from Acquet de Férolles, in
which the unworthy husband tried to dissuade him from undertaking the
defence of his wife, and to ruin the little testimony for the defence
that Ducolombier had collected. It seems that this scoundrelly
proceeding immediately enlightened the eminent advocate as to the
preliminaries of the drama, for from this day he proved for the Combray
family not only a brilliant advocate, but a friend whose devotion never
diminished.
The trial opened on December 15th in the great hall of the Palais. A
crowd, chiefly peasants, collected as soon as the doors were opened in
the part reserved for the public. A platform had been raised for the
twenty-three prisoners, among whom all eyes searched for Mme. Acquet,
very pale, indifferent or resigned, and Mme. de Combray, very much
animated and with difficulty induced by her counsel to keep silent.
Besides the president, Carel, the court was composed of seven judges, of
whom three were military; the imperial and special Procurer-General,
Chopais-Marivaux, occupied the bench.
From the beginning it was evident that orders had been given to suppress
everything that could give political colour to the affair. As neither
d'Aché, Le Chevalier, Allain nor Bonnoeil was present, nor any of the
men who could claim the honour of being treated as conspirators and not
as brigands, the judges only had the small fry of the plot before them,
and the imperial commissary took care to name the chiefs only with great
discretion. He did it by means of epithets, and in a melodramatic tone
that caused the worthy people who jostled each other in the hall to
shiver with terror.
Never had the gilded panels, which since the time of Louis XII had
formed the ceiling of the great hall of the Palais, heard such
astonishing eloquence; for three hours the Procurer Chopais-Marivaux
piled up his heavy sentences, pretentious to the point of
unintelligibility. When, after having recounted the facts, the
magistrate came to the flight of Mme. Acquet and her sojourn with the
Vanniers and Langelley, and it was necessary without divulging Licquet's
proceedings to tell of her arrest, he became altogether
incomprehensible. He must have thought himself lucky in not having
before him, on the prisoners' bench, a man bold enough to show up the
odious subterfuges that had been used in order to entrap the
conspirators and obtain their confessions; there is no doubt that such a
revelation would have gained for the two guilty women, if not the
leniency of the judges, the sympathy at least of the public, who all
over the province were awaiting with anxious curiosity the slightest
details of the trial. The gazettes had been ordered to ignore it; the
_Journal de Rouen_ only spoke of it once to state that, as it lacked
space to reproduce the whole trial, it preferred to abstain altogether;
and but for a few of Licquet's notes, nothing would be known of the
character of the proceedings.
The interrogation of the accused and the examination of the witnesses
occupied seven sittings. On Thursday, December 22d, the Procurer-General
delivered his charge. The prosecution tried above all to show up the
antagonism existing between Mme. de Combray and M. Acquet de Férolles.
The latter's denunciations had borne fruit; the Marquise was represented
as having tried "to get rid of her son-in-law by poisoning his drink."
And the old story of the bottles of wine sent to Abbé Clarisse and of
his inopportune death were revived; all the unpleasant rumours that had
formerly circulated around Donnay were amplified, made grosser, and
elevated to the position of accomplished facts. It was decided that
poison "was a weapon familiar to the Marquise of Combray," and as,
after having replied satisfactorily to all the first questions asked
her, she remained mute on this point, a murmur of disapprobation ran
round the audience, to the great joy of Licquet. "The prisoner," he
notes, "whose sex and age at first rendered her interesting, has lost
to-day every vestige of popularity."
We know nothing of Mme. Acquet's examination, and but little of
Chauveau-Lagarde's pleading; a leaf that escaped from his portfolio and
was picked up by Mme. de Combray gives a few particulars. This paper has
some pencilled notes, and two or three questions written to Mme. Acquet
on the prisoners' bench, to which she scrawled a few words in reply. We
find there a sketch of the theme which the advocate developed, doubtless
to palliate his client's misconduct.
"Mme. Acquet is reproached with her liaisons with Le Chevalier; she can
answer--or one can answer for her--that she suffered ill-treatment of
all kinds for four years from a man who was her husband only from
interest, so much so that he tried to get rid of her.... Fearful at one
time of being poisoned, at another of having her brains dashed out,...
her suit for separation had brought her in touch with Le Chevalier, whom
she had not known until her husband let him loose on her in order to
bring about an understanding...."
During the fifteen sittings of the court a restless crowd filled the
hall, the courts of the Palais, and the narrow streets leading to it. At
eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel,
declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions."
Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the
magistrates. The verdict was immediately pronounced. Capital punishment
was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierlé, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles,
Fleur d'Épine, Le Héricey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre
Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years'
imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, called Bornet, Vannier and
Bureau-Placène. The others were acquitted, but had to be detained "for
the decision of his Excellency, the minister-of-police." The Marquise
was, besides, to restore to the treasury the total sum of money taken.
Whilst the verdict was being read, the people crowded against the
barriers till they could no longer move, eagerly scanning the
countenances of the two women. The old Marquise, much agitated,
declaimed in a loud voice against the Procurer-General: "Ah! the
monster! The scoundrel! How he has treated us!"
Mme. Acquet, pale and impassive, seemed oblivious of what was going on
around her. When she heard sentence of death pronounced against her, she
turned towards her defender, and Chauveau-Lagarde, rising, asked for a
reprieve for his client. Although she had been in prison for fourteen
months, she was, he said, "in an interesting condition." There was a
murmur of astonishment in the hall, and while, during the excitement
caused by this declaration, the court deliberated on the reprieve, one
of the condemned, Le Héricey, leapt over the bar, fell with all his
weight on the first rows of spectators, and by kicks and blows, aided by
the general bewilderment, made a path for himself through the crowd, and
amid shouts and shoves had already reached the door when a gendarme
nabbed him in passing and threw him back into the hall, where, trampled
on and overcome with blows, he was pushed behind the bar and taken away
with the other condemned prisoners. The reprieve asked for Mme. Acquet
was pronounced in the midst of the tumult, the crush at the door of the
great hall being so great that many were injured.
The verdict, which soon became known all over the town, was in general
ill received. If the masses showed a dull satisfaction in the punishment
of the Combray ladies, saying "that neither rank nor riches had counted,
and that, guilty like the others, they were treated like the others,"
the bourgeois population of Rouen, still very indulgent to the
royalists, disapproved of the condemnation of the two women, who had
only been convicted of a crime by which neither of them had profited.
The reprieve granted to Mme. Acquet, "whose declaration had deceived no
one," seemed a good omen, indicating a commutation of her sentence. The
nine "brigands" condemned to death received no pity. Lefebre was not
known in Rouen, and his attitude during the trial had aroused no
sympathy; the others were but vulgar actors in the drama, and only
interested the populace hungry for a spectacle on the scaffold. The
executions would take place immediately, the judgments pronounced by the
special court being without appeal, like those of the former
revolutionary tribunals.
The nine condemned men were taken to the conciergerie. It was night when
their "toilet" was begun. The high-executioner, Charles-André Ferey, of
an old Norman family of executioners, had called on his cousins Joanne
and Desmarets to help him, and while the scaffold was being hastily
erected on the Place du Vieux-Marché, they made preparations in the
prison. In the anguish of this last hour on earth Flierlé's courage
weakened. He sent a gaoler to the imperial procurer to ask "if a
reprieve would be granted to any one who would make important
revelations." On receiving a negative reply the German seemed to resign
himself to his fate. "Since that is the case," he said, "I will carry my
secret to the tomb with me."
The doors of the conciergerie did not open until seven in the evening.
By the light of torches the faces of the condemned were seen in the
cart, moving above the crowds thronging the narrow streets. The usual
route from the prison to the scaffold was by the Rue du Gros-Horloge,
and this funeral march by torchlight and execution at midnight in
December must have been a terrifying event. The crowd, kept at a
distance, probably saw nothing but the glimmering light of the torches
in the misty air, and the shadowy forms moving on the platform.
According to the _Journal de Rouen_ of the next day, Flierlé mounted
first, then Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Épine and Le Héricey who took
part with him in the attack on June 7th. Lefebre "passed" sixth. The
knife struck poor Gautier-Boismale badly, as well as Alexandre Buquet,
who died last. The agony of these two unfortunates was horrible,
prolonged as it was by the repairs necessary for the guillotine to
continue its work. The bloody scene did not end till half-past eight in
the morning.
The next day, December 31st, the exhibition on the scaffold of Mme. de
Combray, Placène, Vannier, and Lerouge, all condemned to twenty-two
years' imprisonment, was to take place. But when they went to the old
Marquise's cell she was found in such a state of exasperation, fearful
crises of rage being succeeded by deep dejection, that they had to give
up the idea of removing her. The three men alone were therefore tied to
the post, where they remained for six hours. As soon as they returned to
the conciergerie they were sent in irons to the House of Detention at
the general hospital, whence they were to go to the convict prison.
The Marquise had not twenty-two years to live. The thought of ending her
days in horrible Bicêtre with thieves, beggars and prostitutes; the
humiliation of having been defeated, deceived and made ridiculous in the
eyes of all Normandy; and perhaps more than all, the sudden
comprehension that it had all been a game, that the Revolution would
triumph in the end, that she, a great and powerful lady--noble, rich, a
royalist--was treated the same as vulgar criminals, was so cruel a blow,
that it was the general impression that she would succumb to it. It is
impossible nowadays to realise what an effect these revelations must
have produced on a mind obstinately set against all democratic
realities. For nearly a month the Marquise remained in a state of
stupefaction; from the day of her condemnation till January 15th it was
impossible to get her to take any kind of nourishment. She knew that
they were watching for the moment when she would be strong enough to
stand the pillory, and perhaps she had resolved to die of hunger. There
had been some thought--and this compassionate idea seems to have
originated with Licquet--of sparing the aged woman this supreme agony,
but the Procurer-General showed such bitter zeal in the execution of the
sentence, that the prefect received orders from Réal to proceed. He
writes on January 29th: "I am informed of her condition daily. She now
takes light nourishment, but is still extremely feeble; we could not
just now expose this woman to the pillory without public scandal."
What was most feared was the indignation of the public at sight of the
torture uselessly inflicted on an old woman who had already been
sufficiently punished. The prefect's words, "without scandal," showed
how popular feeling in Rouen had revolted at the verdict. More than one
story got afloat. As the details of the trial were very imperfectly
known, no journal having published the proceedings, it was said that the
Marquise's only crime was her refusal to denounce her daughter, and
widespread pity was felt for this unhappy woman who was considered a
martyr to maternal love and royalist faith. Perhaps some of this
universal homage was felt even in the prison, for towards the middle of
February the Marquise seemed calmer and morally strengthened. The
authorities profited by this to order her punishment to proceed. It was
February the 17th, and as one of her "attacks" was feared, they
prudently took her by surprise. She was told that Dr. Ducolombier,
coming from Chauveau-Lagarde, asked to see her at the wicket. She went
down without suspicion and was astonished to find in place of the man
she expected, two others whom she had never seen. One was the
executioner Ferey, who seized her hands and tied her. The doors opened,
and seeing the gendarmes, the cart and the crowd, she understood, and
bowed her head in resignation.
On the Place du Vieux-Marché the scaffold was raised, and a post to
which the text of the verdict was affixed. The prisoner was taken up to
the platform; she seemed quite broken, thin, yet very imposing, with her
still black hair, and her air of "lady of the manor." She was dressed in
violet silk, and as she persisted in keeping her head down, her face was
hidden by the frills of her bonnet. To spare her no humiliation Ferey
pinned them up; he then made her sit on a stool and tied her to the
post, which forced her to hold up her head.
What she saw at the foot of the scaffold brought tears of pride to her
eyes. In the first row of the crowd that quietly and respectfully filled
the place, ladies in sombre dresses were grouped as close as possible to
the scaffold, as if to take a voluntary part in the punishment of the
old Chouanne; and during the six hours that the exhibition lasted the
ladies of highest rank and most distinguished birth in the town came by
turns to keep her company in her agony; some of them even spread flowers
at the foot of the scaffold, thus transforming the disgrace into an
apotheosis.
The heart of the Marquise, which had not softened through seventeen
months of torture and anxiety, melted at last before this silent homage;
tears were seen rolling down her thin cheeks, and the crowd was touched
to see the highest ladies in the town sitting round this old unhappy
woman, and saluting her with solemn courtesies.
At nightfall Mme. de Combray was taken back to the conciergerie; later
in the evening she was sent to Bicêtre, and several days afterwards
Chopais-Marivaux, thinking he had served the Master well, begged as the
reward of his zeal for the cross of the Legion of Honour.