The House of the Combrays Part 12

"I shall go to your mother's to await the King's pa.s.sing, if I obtain my liberty before his arrival, and I shall have to go to Tournebut in order to have everything repaired and made ready if I am to enjoy this favour. You will write, and wait impatiently."

The most heartrending of the letters despatched by the duped old royalist in her joy, is the one destined for the King himself. Proud of his stratagem, Licquet forwarded it to the police authorities, who retained it. It is written in a thick, masculine hand on large paper--studied, almost solemn at the beginning, then, with the outpouring of her thoughts, ending in an almost illegible scribble. One feels that the poor woman wanted to say everything, to empty her heart, to free herself of eighteen years of mortification, mourning and suppressed indignation. The following is the text of the letter, almost complete:

"_To His Majesty Louis XVIII._

"Sire:--From my prison, where at the age of sixty-six, I as well as my son, have been thrust for the last four months, we have the happiness of offering you our respects and congratulations on your happy accession to your throne. All our wishes are fulfilled, sire....

"The few resources still at our command were devoted to supporting your faithful servants of every cla.s.s, and in saving them from execution. I have to regret the loss of the Chevalier de Margadelle, Raoulle, Tamerlan and the young Tellier, all of whom were carried away by their zeal for your Majesty's cause and fell victims to it at Paris and Versailles. I had hired a house, which I gave up to them with all the hiding-places necessary for their safety. My son had the good fortune to be under the orders of Messieurs de Frotte and Ingant de St. Maur.

"I am sending my letter to M. le Vicomte d'Ache, in order that he may present it to your Majesty and solicit a favour very dear to my heart--that you will condescend to stay at my house on your way to Paris. Sire, you will find my house open, and, they say, surrounded with barricades, consequences of the ill-usage it has received during their different investigations, another of which has recently occurred in the hope of finding M. le Vicomte d'Ache and my daughter, as well as repeated sojourns made by order of the prefect, and an interrogation by his secretary, after having been subjected to an examination lasting eleven hours in this so-called Court of Justice, in order that I might inform them of my correspondence with M. de Ache as well as of a letter I received from him on the 17th of last March. The worst threats have been used such as being confronted with Le Chevalier, and my being sent to Paris to be guillotined, but nothing terrified me, I did not tell them anything about my relations with him or where he was living. I had just left him ten days previously. My reply to this persecution was that M. de Ache was in London, and I concluded by a.s.suring them that I did not fear death, that I would fervently perform my last act of contrition, and that my head would fall without my disclosing this interesting mystery.

"My liberty was promised me six weeks ago, but at the price of a large sum of money, which is, I believe, to be divided between the prefect and his secretary Niquet (_sic_). Half the sum is safely under lock and key in the latter's bureau. I have been a long time trying to collect the sum demanded, as I received little a.s.sistance from those who called themselves my friends. My very property was refused me with arrogant threats, for it was believed that I was to be put to the sword. The only end I hoped to attain by my sacrifices was to save my daughter, upon whose head a price of 6,000 francs had been set at Caen. The family Delaitre, without any other interest in me than that which misfortune inspires have displayed indefatigable zeal in my cause, exposing their lives to great danger in order to remove her from Caen, where the authorities left no stone unturned.

"Three of my servants have been cast into prison, a fourth, named Francois Hebert, commendable for thirty-seven years' faithful service, defended our interests, and for his honesty's sake has been in chains since the month of July. What must he not have suffered during the last eleven years at the hands of the authorities, the tax receivers at Harcourt, Falaise and Caen, and of many others who wished his ruin because at our advice he purposely took the farm on our estate, that he might there save your persecuted followers. He is well known to M. de Frotte whose esteem he enjoyed, and whom he received with twenty-four of his faithful friends, knowing they would be safe in his house. All this anxiety has greatly impaired his health and that of his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and consequently their son, aged eleven, is in very delicate health. The Dartenet (_sic_) family have caused many of our misfortunes by daily denunciations, which they renewed with all their might in January, 1806. It was only by a special providence that we, as well as M. le Vicomte d'Ache, escaped imprisonment. My son hastened to warn him not to return to our cottage, which was part of my dowry, and offended the Dartenets, who wanted this tavern that they might turn it into a special inn for their castle, which is the fruit of their iniquity.

"My son and I both crave your Majesty's protection and that of the princes of the blood.

"I respectfully remain,

"Your Majesty's very humble and obedient servant,

"De Combray."

It was, as we see, a general confession. What must have been the Marquise's grief and rage on learning that she had been deceived? At what moment did Licquet cease to play a double part with her? With what invectives must she not have overwhelmed him when he ceased? How did Mme. de Combray learn that her n.o.blest illusions had been worked upon to make her give up her daughter and betray all her friends? These are things Licquet never explained, either because he was not proud of the dubious methods he employed, or, more probably, because he did not care what his victims thought of them. Besides, his mind was occupied with other things. Mme. de Combray had hinted to Delaitre that d'Ache usually stayed in the neighbourhood of Bayeux, without stating more precisely where, as she was certain he would easily be found beside the newly landed King. Licquet, therefore, went in search of him, and his men scoured the neighbourhood. Placene, for his part, annoyed at finding that Allain did not keep his word and made no attempt to deliver his imprisoned comrades, gave some hints. In order to communicate with Allain and d'Ache, one was, according to him, obliged to apply to an innkeeper at Saint-Exupere. This man was in correspondence with a fellow named Richard, who acted as courier to the two outlaws. "Between Bayeux and Saint-Lo is the coal mine of Litre, and the vast forest of Serisy is almost contiguous to it. This mine employed five or six hundred workmen, and as Richard was employed there one was inclined to think that the subterranean pa.s.sages might serve as a refuge to Allain and d'Ache, whether they were there in the capacity of miners, or were hidden in some hut or disused ditch."

The information was too vague to be utilised, and Licquet thought it wiser to direct his batteries on another point. He had under his thumb one victim whom as yet he had not tortured, and from whom he hoped much: this was Mme. Acquet. "She is," he wrote, "a second edition of her mother for hypocrisy, but surpa.s.ses her in maliciousness and ill-nature.... Her children seem to interest her but little; she never mentions them to any one, and her heart is closed to all natural sentiments."

But I believe that it was to excuse himself in his chief's eyes that Licquet painted such a black picture of the prisoner. His own heart was closed to all compa.s.sion, and we find in this man the inexorable impa.s.sibility of a Laffemas or a Fouquier Tinville, with a refined irony in addition which only added to the cruelty. The moral torture to which he subjected Mme. Acquet is the product of an inquisitor's mind. "At present," he remarked, "as the subject is somewhat exhausted, I shall turn my attention to setting our prisoners against one another. The little encounter may give us some useful facts."

The little encounter broke the prisoner's heart, and deprived her of the only consoling thought so many misfortunes had left her.

CHAPTER VIII

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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion, "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 ingrat.i.tude."

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'Ache.

According to him d'Ache 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'Ache 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'Ache 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 Fouche decided his fate. He was rather an embarra.s.sing 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, Real did not know what was to become of Le Chevalier when Licquet conceived the idea of giving him a role 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 pa.s.sion 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 Real. 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'Ache 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 a.s.sistance, 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 pa.s.s 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.

Real 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'Ache's comings and goings, his frequent journeys to England, and of the manner in which David l'Intrepide 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 p.r.o.nounced 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. Menard, sister of the widow, Mme.

Flahaut, who has married M. de ----, now amba.s.sador 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 p.r.o.nounced before her," he wrote to Real, "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 Real, "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 Inferieur 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 Ma.s.sena."

Bernadotte and Ma.s.sena! 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--Fouche 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 Real 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 Real'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 Real, "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 doc.u.ments 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 a.s.sured, 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 Pa.s.sage 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 Noel, 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 embarra.s.sing, 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 Fouche and Real. 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. Real, in revenge, dismissed the concierge of the prison, put the gaoler Savard in irons, and exacted a report on "all the circ.u.mstances 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;" Fouche, 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 Fouche "offering to show himself as soon as the woman who acted as a mother to his son should be set at liberty." Fouche had Mme. Thiboust brought before him, and gave her a safe conduct of eight days for Le Chevalier, with positive and reiterated a.s.surance that he would give him a pa.s.sport 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 Fouche'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 Fouche was going to a.s.sist his crossing to England, he embraced his child and sister-in-law.