The House of the Combrays Part 7

Acquet's lover in the village, and if in the absence of any definite testimony, it is possible to save this poor woman's memory from this new accusation, we must still recognise the fact that she exercised an extraordinary influence over this man. He submitted to her blindly "by the rights she had granted him," said a report addressed to the Emperor.

Whatever the reason, she had only to say the word for Joseph Buquet to give her his house, and the six men took possession next day. The Buquets' mother undertook to feed them for four days; they left her at dusk on the 2d June; Joseph showed them the road and even led them a short way.

The poor fellows dragged along till morning, losing themselves often and not daring to ask the way or to follow beaten tracks. They met Allain at dawn, one mile from Falaise, on the edge of a wood near the hamlet of Jalousie; he took them across Aubigny to an isolated inn at the end of the village.

Lefebre had presented Allain to the innkeeper the night before, asking if he would receive "six honest deserters whom the gendarmes tormented,"

for a few days, and the man had replied that he would lodge them with pleasure.

As soon as they arrived at the inn Allain and his men, dropping with fatigue, asked for breakfast and went at once to the room prepared for them. It was half past four in the morning; they lay down on the straw and did not move all day except for meals. The night and all next day pa.s.sed in the same manner. On Thursday June 4th they put some bread, bacon and jugs of cider in their wallets and left about nine in the evening. On Friday Allain appeared at the inn of Aubigny alone; he ordered the servant to take some food to the place where the Caen and Harcourt roads met. Two men were waiting there, who took the food and went off in haste. Allain went to bed about two in the morning; about midday on Sat.u.r.day as he was sitting down to table a carriage stopped at the inn door; Lefebre and Mme. Acquet got out. They brought seven guns which were carried up to the loft. They talked; Mme. Acquet took some lemons from a little basket, and cut them into a bowl filled with white wine and brandy, and she and Lefebre drank while consulting together.

The heat was intolerable and all three were overcome. Mme. Acquet had to be helped to her carriage and Lefebre undertook to conduct her to Falaise. Allain, left alone at Aubigny, ordered supper "for six or seven persons." He was attending to its preparation when a horseman appeared and asked to speak with him. It was Dusaussay who brought news. He had come straight from Argentan where he had seen the coach, laden with chests of silver, enter the yard of the inn of Point-de-France; he described the waggon, the harness and the driver, then remounted and rode rapidly away. Just then the entire band reappeared, led by Flierle.

Arms were distributed, and the men stood round the table eating hastily.

They filled their wallets with bread and cold meat and left at night.

Allain and Flierle accompanied them and returned to the inn after two hours' absence. They did not sleep; they were heard pacing heavily up and down the loft until daylight. On Sunday, June 7, Allain paid the reckoning, bought a short axe and an old gun from the innkeeper, making eight guns in all at the disposal of the band. At seven in the morning he left with Flierle, and three leagues from there, arrived at the wood of Quesnay where his men had pa.s.sed the night.

The waggon destined for the transportation of the funds had been loaded on the 5th at Alencon, in the yard of the house of M. Decres, receiver-general of the Orne, with five heavy chests containing 33,489 francs, 92 centimes. On the 6th, the carrier, Jean Gousset, employed by the manager of stage coaches at Alencon, had harnessed three horses to it, and escorted by two gendarmes had taken the road to Argentan, where he arrived at five in the evening. He stopped at Point-de-France, where he had to take a sixth chest containing 33,000 francs, which was delivered in the evening by the agents of M. Larroc, receiver of finances. The carriage, carefully covered, remained in the inn yard during the night. Gousset, who had been drinking, went to and fro "talking to every one of his charge"; he even called a traveller, M.

Lapeyriere, and winking at the chest that was being hoisted on the waggon, said: "If we each had ten times as much our fortunes would be made." He harnessed up at four o'clock on Sunday, the 7th. He had been given a fourth horse, and three gendarmes accompanied him. They made the five leagues between Argentan and Falaise rather slowly, arriving about half past ten. Gousset stopped with Bertaine at the "Cheval Noir,"

where the gendarmes left him; he dined there, and as it was very hot, rested till three in the afternoon, during which time the waggon stayed in front of the inn unguarded. It was noticed that the horses were harnessed three hours before starting, and the conclusion was drawn that Gousset did not want to arrive before night at Langannerie, where he would sleep. In fact, he took his time. At a quarter past three he started, without escort, as all the men of the brigade of Falaise were employed in the recruiting that took place that day. As he left the village he chanced to meet Vinchon, gendarme of the brigade of Langannerie, who was returning home on foot with his nephew, a young boy of seventeen, named Antoine Morin. They engaged in conversation with the carrier, who walked on the left of the waggon, and went with him. These chance companions were in no hurry, and Gousset did not appear to be in any haste to arrive. At the last houses of the suburbs he offered some cider; after some hundred yards the gendarme returned the compliment and they stopped at the "Sauvage." A league further, another stop was made at the "Vieille Cave." Gousset then proposed a game of skittles, which the gendarme and Morin accepted. It was nearly seven in the evening when they pa.s.sed Potigny. The evening was magnificent and the sun still high on the horizon; as they knew they would not see another inn until the next stage was reached, they made a fourth stop there. At last Gousset and his companions started again; they could now reach Langannerie in an hour, where they would stop for the night.

The evening before, Mme. Acquet de Ferolles, returning to Falaise with Lefebre, had gone to bed more sick with fatigue than drink; however, she had returned to Donnay at dawn in the fear that her absence might awaken suspicion. This Sunday, the 7th June, was indeed the Fete-Dieu, and she must decorate the wayside altars as she did each year.

Lanoe, who had arrived the evening before from his farm at Glatigny, worked all the morning hanging up draperies, and covering the walls with green branches. Mme. Acquet directed the arrangements for the procession with feverish excitement, filling baskets with rose leaves, grouping children, placing garlands. Doubtless her thoughts flew from this flowery fete to the wood yonder, where at this minute the men whom she had incited waited under the trees, gun in hand. Perhaps she felt a perverse pleasure in the contrast between the hymns sung among the hedges and the criminal anxiety that wrung her. Did she not confess later that in the confusion of her mind she had not feared to call on G.o.d for the success of "her enterprise"?

When, about five o'clock, the procession was at an end, Mme. Acquet went through the rose-strewn streets to find her confidante, Rosalie Dupont.

Such was her impatience that she soon left this girl, irresistibly drawn to the road where her own fate and that of her lover were being decided. Lanoe, who was returning to Glatigny in the evening, was surprised to meet the chatelaine of La Bijude in a little wood near Clair-Tizon. She was scarcely a league from the place where the men were hidden. From her secluded spot she could, with beating heart, motionless and mute with anguish, hear the noise of shooting, which rung out clear in the silence of the summer evening. It was exactly a quarter to eight.

The waggon had, indeed, left Potigny at seven o'clock. A little way from the village, the road, which had been quite straight for six leagues, descended a low hill at the foot of which is the wood of Quesnay, a low thicket of hazel, topped by a few oaks. Allain had posted his men along the road under the branches; on the edge of the wood towards Falaise stood Flierle, Le Hericey, and Fleur d'epine. Allain himself was with Harel and Coeur-le-Roi, at the end nearest Langannerie. Grand-Charles and Le Lorault were placed in the middle of the wood at equal distances from these two groups.

The eight men had waited since midday for the appearance of the treasure. They began to lose patience and spoke of returning to Aubigny for supper when they heard the rumbling of the waggon descending the hill. It came down rapidly, Gousset not having troubled to put on the brake. They could hear him shouting to the horses. Walking on the left of the waggon he drove them by means of a long rope; his little dog trotted beside him. Vinchon and Morin were, for the moment, left behind by the increased speed of the waggon. The men at the first and second posts allowed it to pa.s.s without appearing; it was now between the two thickets through which the road ran; in a few minutes it attained the edge of the wood near Langannerie, when suddenly, Gousset saw a man in a long greatcoat and top-boots in the middle of the road, with his gun pointed at him; it was Allain.

"Halt, you rascal!" he cried to the carrier.

Two of his companions, attired only in drawers and s.h.i.+rt, with a coloured handkerchief knotted round the head, came out of the wood, shouldered arms and took aim. With a tremendous effort, Gousset, seized with terror, turned the whole team to the left, and with oaths and blows flung it on to a country road which crossed the main road obliquely a little way from the end of the wood. But in an instant the three men were upon him; they threw him down and held a gun to his head while two others came out of the wood and seized the horses' heads. The struggle was short; they tore off Gousset's cravat and bound his eyes with it, he was searched and his knife taken, then cuffed, pushed into the wood and promised a ball if he moved.

But Vinchon and Morin, who were behind, had seen the waggon disappear in the wood. Morin, not caring to join in the scuffle, hurried across the fields, turned the edge of the wood, and ran towards Langannerie to inform the gendarmes. Vinchon, on the contrary, drew his sabre and advanced towards the road, but he had only taken a few steps when he received a triple discharge from the first post. He fell, with a ball in his shoulder, and rolled in the ditch, his blood flowing. The men then hastened to the waggon; they cut the cords of the tarpaulin with Gousset's knife, uncovered the chests and attacked them with hatchets.

Whilst two of the brigands unharnessed the horses, the others flung the money, handfuls of gold and crowns, pell-mell into their sacks. The first one, bursting with silver, was so heavy that it took three men to hoist it on to the back of a horse; Gousset himself, in spite of his bandaged eyes, was invited to lend a hand and obeyed gropingly. They were smas.h.i.+ng the second chest when the cry, "To arms!" interrupted them. Allain rallied his men, and lined them up along the road.

Morin, on arriving at Langannerie had only found the corporal and one other gendarme there; they mounted immediately and galloped to the wood of Quesnay. It was almost night when they reached the edge of the wood.

A volley of shots greeted them; the corporal was. .h.i.t in the leg, and his horse fell mortally wounded; his companion, who was deaf, did not know which way to turn. Seeing his chief fall, he thought it best to retreat; and ran to the hamlet of Quesnay to get help. The noise of the firing had already alarmed the neighbourhood; the tocsin sounded at Potigny, Ouilly-le-Tesson and Sousmont; peasants flocked to each end of the wood, but they were unarmed and dared not advance. Allain had posted five of his men as advance-guard who fired in the thicket at their own discretion, and kept the most determined of the enemy at bay. Behind this curtain of shooters the noise could be heard of axes breaking open chests, planks torn apart and oaths of the brigands in haste to complete their pillage. This extraordinary scene lasted nearly an hour. At last, at a call, the firing ceased, the robbers plunged into the thicket, and the steps of the heavily-laden horse, urged on by the men, were heard disappearing on the crossroad.

They took the road to Ussy, with their booty and the carrier Gousset, still with his eyes bandaged and led by Grand-Charles. They travelled fast, at night--to avoid pursuit. Less than half a league from Quesnay the road they followed pa.s.sed the hamlet of Aisy, on the outskirts of Sousmont, whose mayor had a chateau there. He was called M. Dupont d'Aisy, and had this very evening entertained Captain Pinteville, commander of the gendarmerie of the district. The party had been broken up by the distant noise of shooting. M. Dupont at once sent his servants to give the alarm at Sousmont; in less than an hour he had mustered thirty villagers and putting himself at their head with Captain Pinteville he marched towards Quesnay. They had not gone a hundred paces when they encountered Allain's men, and the fight began. The brigands kept up a well-sustained fire, which produced no other effect than to disperse the peasants. Dupont d'Aisy and Captain Pinteville himself considered it dangerous to continue the struggle against such determined adversaries; they retired their men, and resolutely turning their backs to the enemy retreated towards Quesnay.

When they arrived in the wood a crowd was already there; from the neighbouring villages where the tocsin still sounded, people came, drawn entirely by curiosity. They laughed at the fine trick played on the government, they thought the affair well managed, and did not hesitate to applaud its success. They surrounded the waggon, half-sunk in the ruts in the road, and searched the little wood for traces of the combat.

The arrival of the mayor and Captain Pinteville restored things to order somewhat. They had brought lanterns, and in the presence of the gendarmes who had now arrived in numbers, the peasants collected the remains of the chests, and replaced in them the coppers that the robbers had scornfully thrown in the gra.s.s. They found the carrier's leather portfolio containing the two bills of lading, in the thicket, and learned therefrom that the government had lost a little over 60,000 francs, and in face of this respectable sum, their respect for the men who had done the deed increased. In the densest part of the wood they found a sort of hut made of branches, and containing bones, empty bottles and gla.s.ses, and the legend immediately grew that the brigands had lived there "for weeks," waiting for a profitable occasion. Those who had taken part in the fight from a distance described "these gentlemen," who numbered twelve, they said; three wore grey overcoats and top-boots; another witness had been struck "by the exceeding smallness of two of the brigands."

At last, the money collected and put in the chests, they harnessed two horses to the waggon and took it to the mayor's. He was now unsparing of attention; he did not leave the waggon which was put in his yard, and locked up the broken chests and money which amounted to 5,404 francs.

And when M. le Comte Caffarelli, prefet of Calvados arrived at dawn, he was received by Dupont-d'Aisy, and after having heard all the witnesses and received all information possible, he sent the minister of police one of the optimistic reports that he prepared with so much a.s.surance.

In this one he informed his Excellency that "after making examination the s.h.i.+pment had been found intact, except the chests containing the government money." M. Caffarelli knew to perfection the delicate art of administrative correspondence and with a great deal of cool water, could slip in the gilded pill of disagreeable truth.

This model functionary spent the day at Aisy waiting for news; the peasants and gendarmes scoured the country with precaution, for, since the night, the legend had grown and it was told, not without fear, how M. Dupont d'Aisy had courageously given battle to an army of brigands.

About midday the searchers returned leading the four horses which they had found tied to a hedge near the village of Placy, and poor Gousset who was found calmly seated in the shade of a tree near a wheat-field.

He said that the band had left him there very early in the morning after having made him march all night with bandaged eyes. At the end of an hour and a half, hearing nothing, he had ventured to unfasten the bandage, and not knowing the country, had waited till some one came to seek him. He could give no information respecting the robbers, except that they marched very fast and gave him terrible blows. M. Caffarelli commiserated the poor man heartily, charged him to take the waggon and smashed chests back to Caen, then, after having warmly congratulated M.

Dupont d'Aisy on his fine conduct, he returned home.

After the scuffle at Aisy, Allain and his companions had marched in haste to Donnay, but missed their way. Crossing the village of Saint-Germain-le-Va.s.son, they seized a young miller who was taking the air on his doorstep, and who consented to guide them, though very much afraid of this band of armed men with heavily-laden wallets. He led them as far as Acqueville and Allain sent him away with ten crowns. It was nearly midnight when they reached Donnay; they pa.s.sed behind the chateau where Joseph Buquet was waiting for them and led them to his house. He and his brother made the eight men enter, enjoined silence, helped them to empty their sacks into a hole that had been made at the end of the garden, then gave them a drink. After an hour's rest Allain gave the signal for departure. He was in haste to get his men out of the department of Calvados, and shelter them from the first pursuit of Caffarelli's police. At daybreak they crossed the Orne by the bridge of La Landelle, threw their guns into a wheat-field and separated after receiving each 200 francs.

This day, the 8th June, pa.s.sed in the most perfect calm for the inhabitants of Donnay. Mme. Acquet did not leave La Bijude. In the afternoon a tanner of Placy, called Brazard, pa.s.sed the house and called to Hebert whom he saw in the garden. He told him that when he got up that morning he had found four horses tied to his hedge. The gendarmes from Langannerie had come and claimed them saying "they belonged to the Falaise-Caen coach which had been attacked in the night by Chouans."

Hebert was much astonished; Mme. Acquet did not believe it; but the report spread and by evening the news was known to the whole village.

Acquet had remained invisible for a month; his instinct of hatred and some information slyly obtained, warned him that his wife was working her own ruin, and he would do nothing to stop her good work. Some days before, Aumont, his gardener, had remarked one morning that the dew was brushed off the gra.s.s of the lawn, and showed footsteps leading to the cellar of the chateau, but Acquet did not seem to attach any importance to these facts.

He learned from his servant of the robbery of the coach. The next day, Redet, the butcher of Meslay, said that ten days previously, when he was pa.s.sing the ruins of the Abbey of Val "his mare s.h.i.+ed, frightened at the sight of seven or eight men, who came out from behind a hedge;" they asked him the way to Rouen. Redet, without answering, made off, and as he told every one of this encounter, Hebert the liegeman of Mme. de Combray, had instantly begged him not to spread it about. If Acquet had retained any doubt, this would have satisfied him. He hurried to Meslay to consult with his friend Darthenay, and the next day, he wrote to the commandant of gendarmerie inviting him to search the Chateau of Donnay.

The visit took place on Friday, 12th June, and was conducted by Captain Pinteville. Acquet offered to guide him, and the search brought some singular discoveries. Certain doors of this great house, long abandoned, were found with strong locks recently put on; others were nailed up and had to be broken in. "In a dark, retired loft that it was difficult to enter" (Acquet conducted the gendarmes) "a pile of hay still retained the impress of six men who had slept on it"; some fresh bones, sc.r.a.ps of bread and meat, and the dirt bore witness that the band had lived there; some sheets of paper belonging to a memoir printed by Hely de Bonnoeil, brother of Mme. Acquet were rolled into cartridges and hidden in a corner under the tiles. They also found the sacks that the Buquets had hidden there after the theft; in the floor of the cellar a hole, "two and a half feet square, and of the same depth had been dug to hold the money;" they had taken the precaution to tear up the flooring above so that the depot could be watched from there. The idea of hiding the treasure here had been abandoned, as we know, in favour of Buquets'; but the discovery was important and Pinteville drew up a report of it.

But things went no further. What suspicion could attach to the owners of Donnay? The brigands, it is true, had made use of their house, but there were no grounds for an accusation of complicity in that. Neither Pinteville nor Caffarelli, who transmitted the report to the minister, thought of pus.h.i.+ng their enquiries any further.

Fouche knew no more about it, but he thought that the affair was being feebly conducted. It seemed evident that the attempt at Quesnay would swell the already long list of thefts of public funds, by those who would forever remain unpunished. Real, instinctively scenting d'Ache in the business, remembered Captain Manginot who at the time of Georges Cadoudal's plot, had succeeded in tracing the stages of the conspirators between Biville and Paris, and to whom they owed the discovery of the role played by d'Ache in the conspiracy.

Manginot then received an order to proceed to Calvados immediately. On the 23d June he arrived at Caffarelli's bearing this letter of introduction: "The skill, the zeal and good fortune of this officer in these cases, is well known; they were proved in a similar affair, and I ask you to welcome him as he deserves to be welcomed." The prefet was quite willing; he knew too well the habits of the Chouans, and their cleverness in disappearing to have any personal illusions as to the final result of the adventure, but he said nothing and on the contrary showed the greatest confidence in the dexterity of a man who stood so well at court.

Manginot began with a fresh search at Donnay; and, as his reputation obliged him to be successful, and as he was not unwilling to astonish the authorities of Calvados by the quickness of his perceptions, he caused Acquet de Ferolles to be arrested. It was he who had first warned the gendarmes of the sojourn of the brigands at Donnay, and this seemed exceedingly suspicious; the same day he gave the order to take Hebert.

Several people in the village insinuated that Acquet and Hebert were irreconcilable enemies and that Manginot was on the wrong track; but the detective's head was now swelled with importance and he would not draw back. Following his extravagant deductions he decided that the complicity of Gousset, convicted of drinking and playing skittles the whole way, was undoubted, and the poor man was arrested in his village where he had returned to his wife and children to recover from his excitement. At last Manginot, evidently animated by his blunders, took it into his head that Dupont d'Aisy himself might well have kept Pinteville at dinner and excited the peasants in order to secure the retreat of the brigands, and issued a warrant against him to the stupefaction of Caffarelli who thus saw imprisoned all those whose conduct he had praised, and whom he had given as examples of devotion.

Thus, in a region where he had only to touch, so to say, to catch a criminal, Captain Manginot was unlucky enough to incarcerate only the innocent, and to complete the irony, these innocent prisoners made such a poor face before the court of enquiry that his suspicions were justified. Acquet was very anxious to denounce his wife, but he would not speak without certainty and the magistrate before whom he appeared at Falaise notes that in the course of interrogations "he contradicted himself; his replies were far from satisfactory, though he arranged them with the greatest care and reflected long before speaking." At the first insinuation he made against Mme. de Combray and her daughter, the judge indignantly silenced him, and sent him well-guarded to Caen where he was put in close custody. As to Hebert, not wis.h.i.+ng to compromise the ladies of La Bijude to whom he was completely devoted, he scarcely replied to the questions put to him; all, even to Dupont d'Aisy lent themselves to the suspicions of Manginot. Sixty guns were found at the mayor's house, which seemed an excessive number, even for the great sportsman he prided himself on being, and here again all indications tended to convince Manginot that he was on the right track.

Mme. Acquet, meanwhile feigned the greatest security. Seeing things straying from the right way, she might indeed imagine that she was removed from all danger, and she had besides, other anxieties. The Chevalier had been waiting in Paris since the 7th of June for the money he so urgently needed, and as nothing appeared in spite of his reiterated demands, he decided to come and fetch it himself; he did not dare, however, to appear near Falaise, so arranged a meeting at Laigle with Lefebre, earnestly entreating him to bring him all the money he possibly could. But the Buquets, with whom the 60,000 francs had been left on the 7th June, obstinately refused to give it up in spite of Mme.

Acquet's entreaties; they had removed the money from their garden and hidden it in various places which they jealously kept secret. However, through her influence over Joseph, Mme. Acquet succeeded in obtaining 3,300 francs which she gave the lawyer to take to Le Chevalier, but Lefebre, as soon as he got hold of the money, declared that he had been promised 12,000 francs for his a.s.sistance, and that he would keep this on account. He went to meet Le Chevalier at Laigle however, and to calm his impatience told him that Dusaussay was going to start for Paris immediately with 60,000 francs which he would give him intact. Mme.

Acquet was desperate; prudence forbade her trying to overcome the Buquets' obstinacy, and they, in order to keep the money, a.s.serted that it belonged to the royal exchequer, and they were responsible for it; so the unhappy woman found that she had committed a crime that the obstinacy of these rapacious peasants rendered useless. She was ready to abandon all in order to rejoin Le Chevalier, ready even to expatriate herself with him, when they heard that Mme. de Combray, hearing rumours of what had happened in Lower Normandy, had decided to come to Falaise, to plead the cause of her farmer, Hebert. She had left Tournebut on the 13th July and taken the Caen coach to Evreux.

Mme. Acquet had gone to Langannerie to meet her mother, and when Mme. de Combray descended from the coach the young woman threw herself into her arms. As the Marquise seemed rather surprised at this display of feeling to which she had become unaccustomed, her daughter said in a low voice, sobbing:

"Save me, mama, save me!"

Mother and daughter resumed the affectionate confidence of former days.

While the horses were being changed and the postillions were taking a drink in the inn, they seated themselves beneath a tree near the road.

Mme. Acquet made a full confession. She told how her love for Le Chevalier had led her to join in the affair of June 7th, to keep Allain and his men, and to hide the stolen money with the Buquets. If it should be found there she was lost, and it was important to get it from the Buquets and send it to the leaders of the party for whom it was intended. She did not dare to mention Le Chevalier this time, but she argued that for fear of her husband's spies she could neither take the money to her own house, nor change it at any bankers in Caen and Falaise; the whole country knew she was reduced to the last expedients.

Mme. de Combray feared no such dangers, and considered that "no one would be astonished to see 50,000 or 60,000 francs at her disposal." But she approved less of some other points in the affair, not that she was astonished to find her daughter compromised in such an adventure, for how many similar ones had she not helped to prepare in her Chateau of Tournebut? Had she not inoculated her daughter with her political fanaticism in representing men like Hingant de Saint-Maur, Raoul Gaillard and Saint-Rejant as martyrs? And by what right could she be severe, when she herself, daughter of the President of the Cour des Comptes of Normandy, had been ready to join in a theft which, "the sanct.i.ty of the cause," rendered praiseworthy in her eyes? The Marquise de Combray, without knowing it, was a Jacobite reversed; she accepted brigandage as the terrorists formerly accepted the guillotine; the hoped-for end justified the means.

And so she did not pour out reproaches; she grew angry at the mention of Le Chevalier whom she hated, but Mme. Acquet calmed her with the a.s.surance that her lover had acted under the express orders of d'Ache and that everything had been arranged between the two men. As long as her hero was concerned in the affair, Mme. de Combray was happy to take a hand. That evening she reached Falaise, and leaving her daughter in the Rue du Tripot, she asked hospitality from one of her relations, Mme.

de Treprel. Next morning she sent for Lefebre. Mme. Acquet, before introducing him, coached him thus, "Say as little as possible about Le Chevalier, and insist that d'Ache arranged everything." On this ground Lefebre found Mme. de Combray most conciliating, and he had neither to employ prayers nor entreaties, to obtain her promise to get the 60,000 francs from the Buquets; "she consented without any difficulty or adverse opinion; she seemed very zealous and pleased at the turn things had taken, and offered herself to take the money to Caen, and lodge it with Nourry, d'Ache's banker." Mme. Acquet here observed that she was not at liberty to dispose of the funds thus. She had only taken part in the affair from love, and cared little for the royalist exchequer; she only cared that her devotion should profit the man she adored, and if the money was sent to d'Ache, all her trouble would be useless. She tried to insist, saying that Dusaussay would take the money to the royalist treasurer in Paris, that Le Chevalier was waiting for it in order to go to Poitou where his presence was indispensable. But Mme. de Combray was inflexible on this point; the entire sum should be delivered to d'Ache's banker, or she would withdraw her a.s.sistance. Mme. Acquet was obliged to yield with a heavy heart, and they began at once to consider the best means of transporting it. The Marquise sent Jouanne, the son of the old cook at Glatigny, to tell Lanoe that she wished to see him at once. Jouanne made the six leagues between Falaise and Glatigny at one stretch, and returned without taking breath, with Lanoe, who put him up behind him on his horse. They had scarcely arrived when Mme. de Combray ordered Lanoe to get a carriage at Donnay and prepare for a journey of several days. Lanoe objected a little, said it was harvest time, and that he had important work to finish, but all that mattered little to the Marquise, who was firm and expected to be obeyed.

Mme. Acquet also insisted saying, "You know that mama only feels safe when you drive her and that you are always well paid for it." This decided Lanoe who started for Bijude where he slept that night. Mme. de Combray did not spare her servants, and distance was not such an obstacle to those people, accustomed to marching and riding, as it is nowadays. This fact will help to explain some of the incidents that are to follow.

On Thursday, July 16th, Lanoe returned to Falaise with a little cart that a peasant of Donnay had lent him, to which he had harnessed his horse and another lent him by Desjardins, one of Mme. de Combray's farmers. The two women got in and started for La Bijude, Lefebre accompanying them to the suburbs. He arranged a meeting with them at Caen two days later, and gave them a little plan he had drawn which would enable them to avoid the more frequented highroad.

Mme. de Combray and her daughter slept that night at La Bijude. The next day was spent in arguing with the Buquets who did not dare to resist the Marquise's commands, and at night they delivered, against their will, two sacks containing 9,000 francs in crowns which she caused to be placed in the cart, which was housed in the barn. It was impossible to take more the first time, and Mme. Acquet rejoiced, hoping that the rest of the sum would remain at her disposal. The Marquise had judged it prudent to send Lanoe away to the fair at Saint-Clair which was held in the open country about a league away, and they only saw him again at the time fixed for their departure on Sat.u.r.day. He has left an account of the journey, which though evidently written in a bad temper, is rather picturesque.