THE CHOUANS SET FREE
A letter in a woman's handwriting, addressed to Timoléon de Combray,
Hôtel de la Loi, Rue de Richelieu, its black seal hastily broken,
contains these words: "Alas, my dear cousin, you still continued to hope
when all hope was over.... I cannot leave your mother and I am anxious
about M. de Bonnoeil's condition."
This is all that we can glean of the manner in which Mme. Acquet's
mother and brothers learned of her execution on October 6th. Mme. de
Combray at least displayed a good deal of energy, if not great calmness.
After the winter began, the letters she wrote Timoléon regained their
natural tone. The great sorrow seems to have been forgotten; they all
were leagued together against Acquet, who still reigned triumphant at
Donnay, and threatened to absorb the fortune of the whole family. The
trial had cost an enormous sum. Besides the money stolen in the woods at
Quesnay, which the Marquise had to refund, she had been obliged to spend
money freely in order to "corrupt Licquet," for Chauveau-Lagarde's fee,
for her advocate Maître Gady de la Vigne, and for Ducolombier's journeys
to Paris and Vienna with the little girls,--the whole outlay amounting
to nearly 125,000 francs; and as the farms at Tournebut were
tenantless, while Acquet retained all the estates in lower Normandy and
would not allow them anything, the Marquise and her sons found their
income reduced to almost nothing. There remained not a single crown of
the 25,000 francs deposited in August, 1807, with Legrand. All had been
spent on "necessaries for the prisoners, or in their interests."
Acquet was intractable. When the time for settling up came, he refused
insolently to pay his share of the lawsuit or for his children's
education. "Mme. de Combray, in order to carry out her own frenzied
plots," he stated, "had foolishly used her daughter's money in paying
her accomplices, and now she came and complained that Mme. Acquet lacked
bread and that she supported her, besides paying for the children's
schooling.... Mme. Acquet left her husband's house on the advice of her
mother who wished to make an accomplice of her. They took away the
children, their father did not even know the place of their retreat, and
the very persons who had abducted them came and asked him for the cost
of their maintenance."
This was his plea; to which the Combrays replied: "The fee of Mme.
Acquet's lawyer, the expenses of the journey to Vienna and of the little
girls' stay in Paris that they might beg for their mother's pardon,
devolved, if not on the prisoner's husband, at least on her young
children as her heirs; and in any case Acquet ought to pay the bill."
But the latter, who was placed in a very strong position by the
services he had rendered Réal and by the protection of Pontécoulant,
with whom he had associated himself, replied that Chauveau-Lagarde,
while pretending to plead for Mme. Acquet, had in reality only defended
Mme. de Combray: "All Rouen who heard the counsel's speech bears witness
that the daughter was sacrificed to save the mother.... The real object
of their solicitude had been the Marquise. Certainly they took very
little interest in their sister, and the moment her eyes were closed in
death, were base enough to ask for her funeral expenses in court, and
hastened to denounce her children to the Minister of Public Affairs in
order that they might be forced to pay for the sentence pronounced
against their mother."
The case thus stated, the discussion could only become a scandal.
Bonnoeil disclosed the fact that his brother-in-law, on being asked by
a third person what influences he could bring to bear in order to obtain
Mme. Acquet's pardon, had replied that "such steps offered little chance
of success, and that from the moment the unhappy woman was condemned,
the best way to save her from dying on the scaffold, would be to poison
her in prison." A fresh suit was begun. The correspondence which passed
between the exasperated Combrays and their brother-in-law, who succeeded
in maintaining his self-control, must have made all reconciliation
impossible. A letter in Bonnoeil's handwriting is sufficient to
illustrate the style:
"Is it charitable for an old French chevalier, a defender of the
Faith and of the Throne, to increase the sorrows on which his two
brothers-in-law are feeding in the silence of oblivion? Does he
hope in his exasperation that he will be able to force them into a
repetition of the story of the crimes committed by Desrues,
Cartouche, Pugatscheff, Shinderhannes, and other impostors,
thieves, garrotters and ruffians, who have rendered themselves
famous by their murders, poisonings, cruelties and cowardly
actions? They promise that, once their case is decided, they will
not again trouble Sieur Acquet de Férolles."
The invectives were, to say the least, ill-timed. The Combrays had gone
to law in order to force this man, whom they compared to the most
celebrated assassins, to undertake the education of their sister's three
children. These orphans, for whose schooling at the Misses Dusaussay's
no one was ready to pay, were pitied by all who knew of their situation.
Some pious ladies mentioned it to the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, who
kindly offered to subscribe towards the cost of their education. The
Combrays proudly refused, for which Acquet naturally blamed them. "They
think their nieces would be dishonoured by accepting a favour," he
wrote.
Mme. de Combray might perhaps have yielded, if any one had made her
understand that her granddaughters were the only stake she had left. In
fact, since Mme. Acquet's death, no stone had been left unturned to
obtain the old Marquise's pardon. Ducolombier even went to Navarre to
entreat the help of the Empress Joséphine, whose credit did not stand
very high. We can understand that after the official notification of the
imperial divorce, and as soon as the great event became known, the
Combrays, renouncing their relationship (which was of the very
slightest) with the Tascher de la Pageries, began immediately to count
in advance on the clemency of the future Empress, be she who she might.
When it was certain that an Archduchess was to succeed General
Beauharnais's widow on the throne of France, Ducolombier set out for
Vienna in the hope of outstripping the innumerable host of those who
went there as petitioners. It does not appear that he got farther than
Carlsruhe, and his journey was absolutely fruitless; but it soon became
known that the imperial couple intended making a triumphal progress
through the north of France, ending at Havre or Rouen, and it was then
decided that the little Acquets should appear again.
At three o'clock in the afternoon of May 30th, the Emperor and Empress
arrived at Rouen. Ducolombier, walking in front of the three little
girls, who were escorted by Mlle. Querey, tried to force a passage for
them through the streets leading to the imperial residence, but could
not get into the house, and was obliged to content himself with handing
the petition, drawn up by Chauveau-Legarde, to the King of Westphalia.
He hoped the next day to be able to place the children on the Emperor's
route as he was on his way to visit some spinning mills; but as soon as
he was in the street with the orphans, he learnt that Napoleon had
inspected the factories at half past three in the morning, and that his
departure was fixed for ten o'clock. Branzon, a revenue collector and
friend of Licquet's procured the little Acquets a card from the prefect,
by showing which they were allowed to wait at the door of the Emperor's
residence. We quote the very words of the letter written the same day by
Ducolombier to Bonnoeil and the old Marquise:
"Mlle. Querey and the three little girls were permitted to wait at
the door of the prefecture where, as you must know, they allow no
one. As soon as their Majesties' carriage came out, little Caroline
cried out to the Empress. The Emperor lowered the window to take
the petition, and handed it to the Empress, as it was meant for
her. The Empress bent forward in order to see them...."
This time their confidence was unbounded. The old Marquise was already
congratulated on her approaching liberation; but days passed and nothing
more was heard of it. They waited patiently for a year, their hopes
growing fainter each day, and when it became only too evident that the
petition had had no effect, Timoléon ventured to remind the Empress of
it, and drew up in his own name a fresh request for his mother's pardon,
with no better result than before. A supreme and useless effort was made
on the 30th of August, 1813, when Marie Louise was Empress-Queen-Regent.
At this time Bonnoeil had at length been let out of prison, where he
had been unjustly detained since August, 1807. He had not appeared
before the court, and consequently was not condemned, but was detained
as a "precautionary measure." As his health was much impaired by his
stay at the conciergerie, the prefect took it upon himself to have him
removed, and placed him at Rouen under the supervision of the police.
For there he could at least keep himself informed of what was going on.
If the newspapers gave but little news, he could still collect the
rumours of the town. Doubtless he was the first to advise his mother to
submit to her fate; and from this very moment the Marquise displayed an
astonishing serenity, as if she in fact foresaw the fall of him whom she
considered her personal enemy. She had accustomed herself very quickly
to life in the prison to which she had been transferred in 1813. The
rules were not very strict for those inmates who had a little money to
spend; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board
and her book of rules, and calmly awaited the long-hoped-for
thunderbolt.
It fell at length, and the old Chouan must have flushed with triumph
when she heard that Bonaparte was crushed. What a sudden change! In less
than a day, the prisoner became again the venerable Marquise de Combray,
a victim to her devotion to the royal cause, a heroine, a martyr, a
saint; while at the other end of Normandy, Acquet de Férolles, who had
at last decided to take in his three children, felt the ground tremble
under his feet, and hurriedly made his preparations for flight. In their
eagerness to make themselves acceptable to the Combrays, people "who
would not have raised a finger to help them when they were overwhelmed
with misfortune," now revealed to them things that had hitherto been
hidden from them; and thus the Marquise and her sons learned how Senator
Pontécoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin,"
had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Férolles," to hand over
d'Aché to assassins. Proscribed royalists emerged on all sides from the
holes where they had been burrowing for the last fifteen years. There
was a spirit of retaliation in the air. Every one was making up his
account and writing out the bill. In this home of the Chouannerie, where
hatred ran rife and there were so many bitter desires for revenge, a
terrible reaction set in. The short notes, which the Marquise exchanged
with her sons and servants during the last few days of her captivity,
expressed neither joy at the Princes' return nor happiness at her own
restoration to liberty. They might be summed up in these words: "It is
our turn now," and the germ of the dark history of the Restoration and
the revolutions which followed it is contained in the outpourings of
this embittered heart, which nothing save vengeance could henceforth
satisfy.
On Sunday, May 1st, 1814, at the hour when Louis XVIII was to enter
Saint Ouen, the doors of the prison were opened for the Marquise de
Combray, who slept the following night at her house in the Rue des
Carmélites. The next day at 1.30 p.m. she set out for Tournebut
with Mlle. Querey; her bailiff, Leclerc, came as far as Rouen to fetch
her in his trap. All the public conveyances were overcrowded; on the
roads leading to Paris there was an uninterrupted stream of vehicles of
all sorts, of cavaliers and of foot passengers, all hurrying to see the
King's return to his capital. Bonnoeil, who was at last delivered from
police supervision, had to set out on foot for Tournebut; he walked the
distance during the night, and arrived in the morning to find his mother
already installed there and making an inspection of the despoiled old
château which she had never thought to see again. The astonishing
reversions of fate make one think of the success which the opera "La
Dame Blanche" had some years later. This charming work sang their own
history to these nobles who were still smarting, and recalled to them
their ruined past. The abandoned "Château d'Avenel," the "poor Dame
Marguerite" spinning in the deserted halls and dreaming of her masters,
the mysterious being who watched over the destinies of the noble family,
and the amusing revival of those last vestiges of feudal times, the
bailiff, the bell in the turret, the gallant paladin, the knight's
banner--all these things saddened our grandmothers by arousing the
melancholy spectre of the good old times.
At the beginning of August, 1814, Guérin-Bruslart, who had become M. le
Chevalier de Bruslard, Field Marshal in the King's army, attracted his
Majesty's attention to the survivors of the affair of Quesnay. He took
Le Chevalier's son, aged twelve years, to the Tuileries, and the King
accorded him a pension and a scholarship at one of the royal colleges.
The very same day Louis XVIII signed a royal pardon, which the Court of
Rouen ratified a few days later, by which Mme. de Combray's sentence was
annulled. On September 5th the Marquise saw her wildest dream realised
and was presented to the King--a fact which was mentioned in the
_Moniteur_ of the following day.
This signal favour rallied many to the Combrays. Denunciations of Acquet
and his friends were heard on all sides. The letters written at this
period from Bonnoeil to his brother testify to the astonishment they
felt at these revelations. They made a fresh discovery every day. "M.
Bruslard told me the other day that La Vaubadon wished to have him
arrested, but that he took care not to fall into the trap she had set
for him." "With regard to Licquet, he knew d'Aché well and had made up
to him before the affair with Georges, believing at that time that there
would be a change of government." "It is quite certain that it was
Senator Pontécoulant who had d'Aché killed; Frotté's death was partly
due to him." "With regard to Acquet, M. de Rivoire told Placène that he
had been seen in the temple about six years ago, and that every one
there considered him a spy and an informer...."
Thus, little by little Mme. de Combray arrived at the conclusion that
all her misfortunes had been caused by her enemies' hatred. In 1815 a
biographer published a life of the Marquise, which was preceded by a
dedication to herself which she had evidently dictated, and which placed
her high up in the list of royalist martyrs.
This halo pleased her immensely. She was present at the fêtes given at
the Rouen prefecture, where she walked triumphantly--still holding
herself very erect and wearing lilies in her hair--through the very
halls into which she had once been dragged handcuffed by Savoye-Rollin's
gaolers. At dinners where she was an honoured guest she would recount,
with astonishing calmness, her impressions of the pillory and the
prisons. She sent a confidential agent to Donnay "to obtain news of the
Sieur Acquet," who was not at all satisfied and by no means at ease, as
we can well imagine. It was said that he had sent for his sister to come
and take care of his three children, the eldest of whom was nearly
twenty years of age. Acquet pretended to be ill in order to defer his
departure from Donnay. He finally quitted Normandy early in the autumn
of 1814, taking with him his three daughters, "whom he counted on
marrying off in his own home." "He is without house or home," wrote Mme.
de Combray, "and possesses nothing but the shame by which he is
covered." Acquet de Férolles settled at Saint-Hilaire-de-Tulmont, where
he died on April 6th, 1815.
With the Hundred Days came another sudden change. At the first rumour of
Bonaparte's landing, Mme. de Combray set out for the coast and crossed
to England. If the alarm was intense, it lasted but a short time. In
July, 1815, the Marquise returned to Tournebut, which she busied herself
with repairing. She found scope for her energy in directing the workmen,
in superintending to the smallest detail the administration of her
estate, and in looking after her household with the particularity of
former times. Although Louis XVIII's Jacobinism seems to have been the
first thing that disillusioned the old royalist, she was none the less
the Lady of Tournebut, and within the limits of her estate she could
still believe that she had returned to the days before 1789. She still
had her seat at church, and her name was to be found in 1819 inscribed
on the bell at Aubevoye of which she was patroness.
Mme. de Combray never again quitted Tournebut, where she lived with her
son Bonnoeil, waited upon by Catherine Querey, who had been faithful
to her in her misfortunes. Except for this faithful girl, the Marquise
had made a clean sweep of all her old servants. None of them are to be
found among the persons who surrounded her during the Restoration. These
were a maid, Henriette Lerebour, a niece of Mlle. Querey; a cook, a
coachman and a footman. During the years that followed, there was an
incessant coming and going of workmen at Tournebut. In 1823 the château
and its surrounding walls were still undergoing repairs. In the middle
of October of the same year, Mme. de Combray, who was worn out, took to
her bed. On the morning of Thursday, the 23d, it was reported that she
was very ill, and two village women were engaged to nurse her. At eight
o'clock in the evening the tolling of the bells announced that the
Marquise was no more.
Her age was eighty-one years and nine months. When the judge called on
Friday, at Bonnoeil's special request, to affix seals to her effects,
he asked to be taken first into the chamber of death, where he saw the
Marquise lying in her painted wooden bed, hung with chintz curtains. The
funeral took place at the church of Aubevoye, the poor of the village
forming an escort to the coffin which the men carried on their
shoulders. After the service it was laid in a grave dug under a large
dark tree at the entrance to the cemetery. The tomb, which is carefully
kept, bears to this day a quite legible inscription setting forth in
clumsy Latin the Marquise de Combray's extraordinary history.
The liquidation of her debts, which followed on her decease and the
division of her property, brought Acquet de Férolles' daughters to
Tournebut, all three of whom were well married. In making an inventory
of the furniture in the château, they found amongst things forgotten in
the attic the harp on which their mother had played when as a young girl
she had lived at Tournebut, and a saddle which the "dragoon" may have
used on her nocturnal rides towards the hill of Authevernes in pursuit
of coaches.
Mme. de Combray's sons kept Tournebut, and Bonnoeil continued to live
there. There are many people in Aubevoye who remember him. He was a tall
old man, with almost the figure of an athlete, though quite bowed and
bent. His eyebrows were grizzled and bushy, his eyes large and very
dark, his complexion sunburned. He was somewhat gloomy, and seemed to
care for nothing but to talk with a very faded and wrinkled old woman in
a tall goffered cap, who was an object of veneration to everybody. This
was Mlle. Querey. All were aware she had been Mme. de Combray's
confidante and knew all the Marquise's secrets: and she was often seen
talking at great length to Bonnoeil about the past.
Bonnoeil died at Tournebut in 1846, at the age of eighty-four, and the
manor of Marillac did not long outlast him. Put up for sale in 1856, it
was demolished in the following year and replaced by a large and
splendid villa. While the walls of the old château were being
demolished, the peasants of Aubevoye, who had so often listened to the
legends concerning it, displayed great curiosity as to the mysteries
which the demolition would disclose. Nothing was discovered but a partly
filled up subterranean passage, which seemed to run towards the small
château. The secret of the other hiding-places had long been known. A
careful examination of the old dwelling produced only one surprise. A
portmanteau containing 3,000 francs in crowns and double-louis was found
in a dark attic. Mme. de Combray's grandchildren knew so little of the
drama of their house, that no one thought of connecting this find with
the affairs of Quesnay, of which they had scarcely ever heard. It seems
probable that this portmanteau belonged to the lawyer Lefebre and was
hidden by him, unknown to the Marquise, in the hope of being able to
recover it later on.
A very few words will suffice to tell the fate of the other actors in
this drama. Licquet was unfortunate; but first of all he asked for the
cross of the Legion of Honour. "I have served the government for twenty
years," he wrote to Réal. "I bristle with titles. I am the father of a
family and am looked up to by the authorities. My only ambition is
honour, and I am bold enough to ask for a sign. Will you be kind enough
to obtain it for me?" Did Réal not dare to stand sponsor for such a
candidate? Did they think that the cross, given hitherto so
parsimoniously to civilians, was not meant for the police? Licquet was
obliged to wait in patience. In the hope of increasing his claims to the
honour he coveted, he went in quest of new achievements, and had the
good fortune to discover a second attack on a coach, far less
picturesque, as a matter of fact, than the one to which he owed his
fame, but which he undertook to work up like a master, and did it so
well, by dint of disguises, forged letters, surprised confidences, the
invention of imaginary persons, and other melodramatic tricks, that he
succeeded in producing at the Criminal Court at Evreux seven prisoners
against whom the evidence was so well concocted that five at least were
in danger of losing their heads. But when the imperial Procurator
arrived at the place, instead of accepting the work as completed, he
carefully examined the papers referring to the inquiry. Disgusted at the
means used to drag confessions from the accused, and indignant that his
name should have been associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked
for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully
told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of
recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure,
which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent
persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the
Procurator himself generously demanded.
The blow fell all the heavier on Licquet as he was at the time deeply
compromised in the frauds of his friend Branzon, a collector at Rouen,
whose malversations had caused the ruin of Savoye-Rollin. The prefect's
innocence was firmly established, but Branzon, who had already been
imprisoned as a Chouan in the Temple, and whose history must have been a
very varied one, was condemned to twelve years' imprisonment in chains.
This also was a blow to Licquet. Realising, during the early days of the
Restoration, that the game he had played had brought him more enemies
than friends, he thought it wise to leave Rouen, and like so many others
lose himself among the police in Paris. Doubtless he was not idle while
he was there, and if the fire of 1871 had not destroyed the archives of
the prefecture, it would have been interesting to search for traces of
him. We seem to recognise his methods in the strangely dubious affair of
the false dauphin, Mathurin Bruneau. This obscure intrigue was connected
with Rouen; his friend Branzon, who was detained at Bicêtre, was the
manager of it. A certain Joseph Paulin figured in it--a strange person,
who boasted of having received the son of Louis XVI at the door of the
temple and, for this reason, was a partisan of two dauphins. Joseph
Paulin was, in my opinion, a very cunning detective, who was, moreover,
charged with the surveillance of the believers, sincere or otherwise,
in the survival of Louis XVII. In order the better to gain their
confidence, he pretended to have had a hand in the young King's flight.
With the exception of a few plausible allegations, the accounts he gave
of his wonderful adventures do not bear investigation. What makes us
think that he was Licquet's pupil, or that at least he had some
connection with the police of Rouen, is that in 1817, at the time of the
Bruneau intrigue, we find him marrying the woman, Delaitre, aged
forty-six, and living on an allowance from the parish and a sum left him
"by a person who had died at Bicêtre." The woman Delaitre seemed to be
identical with the spy whom Licquet had so cleverly utilised.
Joseph Paulin died in 1842; his wife survived him twenty years, dying at
last in the Rue Croix de Fer at the age of ninety-one. Up to the time of
her death she received a small pension from the town. As to Licquet, he
lived to one hundred--but without any decoration--in his lodging in the
Rue Saint-Lé. The old man's walks in the streets which were so familiar
to him, must have been rich in memories. The "Gros-Horloge" under which
the tumbrils had passed; the "Vieux-Marché," where so many heads had
fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where
the graves of his victims grew green; Bicêtre, the old conciergerie, the
palace itself, which he could see from his windows,--all these objects
must have called up to his mind painful recollections. The certificate
of his death, which bears the date February 7, 1855, simply describes
him as an ex-advocate.
Querelle, whose denunciation ruined Georges Cadoudal, was set at liberty
at the end of a year. Besides his life, Desmarets had promised him the
sum of 80,000 francs to pay his debts with, but as they were in no hurry
to hand him the money, his creditors lost patience and had him shut up
in Sainte-Pelagie. Desmarets at last decided to pay up, and Querelle was
sent to Piémont, where he lived on a small pension from the government.
In 1814 we find those of Georges' accomplices who had escaped the
scaffold--among whom were Hozier and Amand Gaillard,--scattered among
the prisons of the kingdom, in the fortresses of Ham, Joux, and
Bouillon. Others who had been sent under surveillance forty leagues from
Paris and the seacoast, reappeared, ruined by ten years of enforced
idleness, threats and annoyances. Vannier the lawyer died in prison at
Brest; Bureau de Placène, who was let out of prison at the Restoration,
assisted Bruslard in the distribution of the rewards granted by the King
to those who had helped on the good cause. Allain, who had been
condemned to death for contumacy by the decree of Rouen, gave himself up
in 1815. He was immediately set free, and a pension granted him. Seeing
which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented
himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the
43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived
"rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's
confidante, she was kept in prison till 1814. Being released on the
King's return she immediately took refuge in a convent where she spent
the rest of her life.
Mme. de Vaubadon, who lived disguised under the name of Tourville, which
had been her mother's, died in misery in a dirty lodging-house at
Belleville on January 23, 1848; her body was borne on the following day
to the parish cemetery, where the old register proves that no one bought
a corner of ground for her where she could rest in peace. M. de Vaubadon
had died eight years previously, having pardoned her some years before.
Certain of the inhabitants of Saint-Lô still remember the tall old man,
always gloomy and with a pale complexion, who seemed to have only one
idea, and who, to the last day of his life, loved and defended the woman
to whom he had given his name. As for Foison, the murderer, he was made
a lieutenant and received the cross of the Legion of Honour. Caffarelli,
to whose lot it fell to present it to him, excused himself on a plea of
necessary absence. M. Lance, the Secretary-General for the prefecture,
who was obliged to take his place, could not, as he bestowed the
decoration, refrain "from letting him observe the disgust he felt for
his person, and the shame he experienced at seeing the star of the brave
thus profaned." M. Lance was dismissed at the instance of Foison, who,
soon afterwards, was made an officer, and despatched to the army in
Spain, whither his reputation had preceded him. Tradition assures us
that an avenger had reserved for him a death similar to d'Aché's, and
that he was found on the road one morning pierced with bullets. Nothing
is farther from the truth. Foison became a captain and lived till 1843.
D'Aché's family, which returned to Gournay after Georges Cadoudal's
execution, was disturbed afresh at Mme. de Combray's arrest. As we have
said before, Licquet had had Jean Baptiste de Caqueray (who had married
Louise d'Aché in 1806) brought handcuffed into Rouen, but had scarcely
examined him. "Caqueray," he wrote, "is quite innocent; he quarrelled
with his father-in-law;" and he dismissed him with this remark: "If only
he had known the prey he was allowing to escape!" Up to 1814 Caqueray
did not again attract the attention of the police. At the Restoration he
was made a captain of gendarmes. His wife Louise d'Aché was in 1815
appointed lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Bourbon, by whom she had in
part been brought up, being on her mother's side the niece of the gentle
Vicomte de Roquefeuille, who had previously "consoled the Duchess so
tenderly for the desertion of her inconstant husband." Louise d'Aché
died in 1817, and her sister Alexandrine, who was unmarried, was in her
turn summoned to the Princess, and took the title of Comtesse d'Aché. In
spite of the Princes' favour, Caqueray remained a captain of gendarmes
till he left the service in 1830. It was only then made known that in
1804, at the time of Querelle's disclosures and of the journey
undertaken by Savary to Biville, to surprise a fourth landing of
conspirators, it was he, Jean-Baptiste de Caqueray, who, warned by a
messenger from Georges that "all were compromised," started from Gournay
on horseback, reached the farm of La Poterie in twelve hours, crossed
three lines of gendarmes, and signalled to the English brig which was
tacking along the coast, to stand out to sea. Caqueray immediately
remounted his horse, endured the fire of an ambuscade, flung himself
into the forest of Eu, and succeeded in reaching Gournay before his
absence had been noticed, and just in time to receive a visit from
Captain Manginot, who, as we have already related, sent him to the
Temple with Mme. d'Aché and Louise.
Caqueray died in 1834, leaving several children quite unprovided for.
They were, however, adopted by their grandmother, d'Aché's widow, who
survived her daughters and son-in-law. She was small and had never been
pretty, but had very distinguished and imposing manners. She is said to
have made the following answer to a great judge who, at the time of her
arrest, asked her where her husband was: "You doubtless do not know,
Monsieur, whom you are addressing." From that time they ceased
questioning her. She lived on till 1836. She was never heard to
complain, though she and her family had lived in great poverty and known
constant anxiety. She had lost her money, and her husband had died at
the hand of a treacherous assassin. All her children had gone before
her, and in spite of all her misfortunes, and old though she was, she
still strove to bring up her grandchildren "to love their lawful King,"
for whose sake she had now nothing left to sacrifice.
Perhaps in the course of that tragic night when the defeated Napoleon
found himself alone in deserted Fontainebleau, the great Emperor's mind
may have reverted jealously to those stubborn royalists whom neither
their Princes' apathy nor the certainty of never being rewarded could
daunt. At that very moment the generals whom he had loaded with titles
and wealth were hastening to meet the Bourbons. He had not one friend
left among the hundred million people he had governed in the day of his
power. His mameluke had quitted him, his valet had fled. And if he
thought of Georges guillotined in the Place de la Grève, of Le Chevalier
who fell at the wall at Grenelle, of d'Aché stabbed on the road, he must
also have thought of the speech ascribed to Cromwell: "Who would do the
like for me?"
And perhaps of all his pangs this was the cruellest and most vengeful.
His cause must, in its turn, be sanctified by misfortune to gain its
fanatics and its martyrs.