Let us now see what was happening in Nantes during this night which
began with the death of Joseph Picaut, followed by the arrest of
Monsieur Michel de la Logerie.
Toward nine o'clock that evening a man with his clothes soaked in
water and soiled with mud presented himself at the Prefecture, and on
refusal of the usher in charge to take him to the prefect, he sent in
to that official a card, bearing, as it appeared, some all-powerful
name, for the prefect immediately left his employment to receive this
man, who was no other than the one known to us as Monsieur Hyacinthe.
Ten minutes after their interview a strong force of gendarmes and
police officers was on its way to the house occupied by Maître Pascal
in the rue du Marché, and soon appeared before the door of the house
which opened on the street.
No precaution was taken to dull the sound of the column's advance, or
to mislead any one as to its intentions; so that Maître Pascal, on
becoming aware of its advance, had plenty of time to notice that the
door into the alley was not guarded, and to escape in that way before
the emissaries of the law could burst in the door on the rue du
Marché, which was not opened to them.
He made at once for the rue du Château and entered No. 3. Monsieur
Hyacinthe, whom he had not perceived, hidden as he was behind a stone
block near the entrance of the alley, followed him with all the
practised skill of a hunter stalking the game he covets.
During this preliminary operation, for the success of which Monsieur
Hyacinthe had probably vouched, the authorities had taken strong
military measures; and no sooner had the Jew made his report of what
he had seen to the prefect of the Loire than twelve hundred men
advanced upon the house into which the spy had seen Maître Pascal
disappear. These twelve hundred men were divided into three columns.
The first went down the Cours, leaving sentinels stationed along the
walls of the Archbishop's garden and the adjoining houses, skirted the
castle moat and came in front of No. 3 rue du Château, where it
deployed. The second, following the rue de l'Evêché, crossed the place
Saint-Pierre, went down the main street, and joined the first column
by the rue Basse-du-Château. The third united with the two others from
the upper end of the rue du Château, leaving, like the others, a long
line of sentries with fixed bayonets behind it.
The investment was complete; the whole nest of houses, in the midst of
which was No. 3, was securely surrounded.
The troops entered the ground-floor, preceded by the commissaries of
police, who marched before them, pistol in hand. The soldiers spread
themselves through the house and guarded all the exits; their mission
was then fulfilled. That of the police began.
Four ladies were, apparently, the only occupants of the house. These
ladies, who belonged to the upper aristocracy of Nantes, and were
respected, not only for their social position, but for their honorable
characters, were arrested.
Outside the house a crowd gathered, and formed another cordon behind
that of the soldiers. The whole town seemed to have turned into the
streets; but no sign of royalist sympathy was shown. The crowd was
grave and curious, that was all.
Investigations began inside the house; and their first result
confirmed the authorities in the conviction that Madame la Duchesse de
Berry occupied it. A letter addressed to her Royal Highness was lying
open on a table. The disappearance of Maître Pascal, who was seen to
enter the house and known not to have left it, proved the existence of
some hiding-place within its walls. That hiding-place must be found.
All articles of furniture were opened if the keys were in them; broken
open if they were not. The sappers and masons sounded the walls and
floors with their hammers; builders, who were taken from room to room,
declared it impossible, comparing the internal with the external
construction, that any hiding-place was made in the walls. In several
of the rooms, however, articles were found, such as printed papers,
jewels, articles of silver, which might, to be sure, have belonged to
the owners of the house, but, under the circumstances, seemed to point
to the presence of the princess within the walls. When the garret was
reached the builders declared that there, less than elsewhere, was it
possible for a hiding-place to exist.
The police then searched the neighboring houses, sounding the walls
with such violence that fragments of masonry were detached, and at one
time it was thought that the walls themselves were coming down.
While these things were happening about them the ladies of the house,
who were under arrest, showed the greatest coolness; though kept in
sight by their guards, they calmly sat down to dinner. Two other
women,--and history ought, ere this, to have searched out their names
and preserved them for posterity,--two other women were the special
objects of police investigation; these women, the servants of the
household, named Charlotte Moreau and Marie Boissy, were taken to the
castle, thence to the barracks of the gendarmerie, where, finding that
they resisted all threats, an attempt was made to corrupt them. Large
and still larger sums of money were offered to them, but they answered
steadily that they knew nothing whatever of the Duchesse de Berry.
After these ineffectual efforts the search relaxed; the prefect was
the first to retreat, leaving, by way of precaution, a sufficient
number of men to guard each room in the house, while the commissaries
of police took up their quarters on the ground-floor. The house was
still surrounded and the National Guard sent a detachment to relieve
the troops of the line, who took a rest.
In distributing sentries, two gendarmes were placed in two attic
rooms, which had, of course, been carefully searched. The cold was so
sharp that these men suffered from it. One of them went downstairs and
returned with an armful of peat-fuel, and ten minutes later a fine
fire was blazing in the chimney, the iron back of which was soon
red-hot.
Almost at the same time, although it was scarcely daylight, the work
of the masons began again; their crow-bars and mallets struck the
walls of the attic rooms and made them tremble. In spite of this noisy
racket, one of the gendarmes was fast asleep; his companion, now
comfortably warm, had ceased to keep up the fire, and the masons,
satisfied at last, gave up the search in this part of the house,
which, with the instinct of their trade, they had carefully explored.
The gendarme who was awake, profiting by the silence that followed the
diabolical uproar which had continued since early on the previous
evening, went to sleep himself. His companion soon after waked up
cold. His eyes were scarcely open before he thought of warming
himself, and relighted the fire; but as the peat did not ignite very
readily, he threw into the fireplace a number of copies of the
"Quotidienne" which lay pell-mell upon the table. The flames from the
newspapers produced a thicker smoke and greater heat than the peat had
done at any time. The gendarme, feeling comfortable, was occupying his
time by reading the "Quotidienne," when all of a sudden his
pyrotechnic edifice came tumbling clown, and the peat squares which he
had set against the chimney-back rolled into the room.
At the same instant he heard from behind that back a noise which gave
him an odd idea; he fancied there were rats in the chimney, and that
the heat of his fire had forced them to decamp. On this he woke up his
comrade, and together they made ready to chase the rodents, sabre in
hand.
While their attention was wholly fixed on this new species of game,
one of them noticed a decided movement of the chimney-back, and he
called out:--
"Who's there?"