The House of the Combrays | Page 5

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and the early years of the Commune. The roads, abandoned since 1792,
were worn into such deep ruts, that to avoid them the waggoners made
long circuits in ploughed land, and the post-chaises would slip and sink
into the muddy bogs from which it was impossible to drag them except
with oxen. At every step through the country one came to a deserted
hamlet, a roofless house, a burned farm, a château in ruins. Under the
indifferent eyes of a police that cared only for politics, and of
gendarmes recruited in such a fashion that a criminal often recognised
an old comrade in the one who arrested him, bands of vagabonds and
scamps of all kinds had been formed; deserters, refractories, fugitives
from the pretended revolutionary army, and terrorists without
employment, "the scum," said François de Nantes, "of the Revolution
and the war; 'lanterneurs' of '91, 'guillotineurs' of '93, 'sabreurs' of the
year III, 'assommeurs' of the year IV, 'fusilleurs' of the year V." All this
canaille lived only by rapine and murder, camped in the forests, ruins
and deserted quarries like that at Gueudreville, an underground passage
one hundred feet long by thirty broad, the headquarters of the band of
Orgères, a thoroughly organised company of bandits--chiefs, subchiefs,
storekeepers, spies, couriers, barbers, surgeons, dressmakers, cooks,
preceptors for the "gosses," and curé!
And this brigandage was rampant everywhere. There was so little
safety in the Midi from Marseilles to Toulon and Toulouse that one
could not travel without an escort. In the Var, the Bouches-du-Rhône,
Vaucluse, from Digne and Draguignan, to Avignon and Aix, one had to

pay ransom. A placard placed along the roads informed the traveller
that unless he paid a hundred francs in advance, he risked being killed.
The receipt given to the driver served as a passport. Theft by violence
was so much the custom that certain villages in the Lower Alps were
openly known as the abode of those who had no other occupation. On
the banks of the Rhône travellers were charitably warned not to put up
at certain solitary inns for fear of not reappearing therefrom. On the
Italian frontier they were the "barbets"; in the North the "garroteurs"; in
the Ardèche the "bande noire"; in the Centre the "Chiffoniers"; in
Artois, Picardie, the Somme, Seine-Inférieure, the Chartrain country,
the Orléanais, Loire-Inférieure, Orne, Sarthe, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine,
etc., and Ile-de-France to the very gates of Paris, but above all in
Calvados, Finistère and La Manche where royalism served as their flag,
the "chauffeurs" and the bands of "Grands Gars" and "Coupe et
Tranche," which under pretence of being Chouans attacked farms or
isolated dwellings, and inspired such terror that if one of them were
arrested neither witness nor jury could be found to condemn him.
Politics evidently had nothing to do with these exploits; it was a private
war. And the Chouans professed to wage it only against the
government. So long as they limited themselves to fighting the
gendarmes or national guards in bands of five or six hundred, to
invading defenceless places in order to cut down the trees of liberty,
burn the municipal papers, and pillage the coffers of the receivers and
school-teachers--(the State funds having the right to return to their
legitimate owner, the King), they could be distinguished from
professional malefactors. But when they stopped coaches, extorted
ransom from travellers and shot constitutional priests and purchasers of
the national property, the distinction became too subtle. There was no
longer any room for it in the year VIII and IX when, vigorous measures
having almost cleared the country of the bands of "chauffeurs" and
other bandits who infested it, the greater number of those who had
escaped being shot or guillotined joined what remained of the royalist
army, last refuge of brigandage.
In such a time Moisson's adventure was not at all extraordinary. We
can only accuse it of being too simple. It was the mildest scene of a
huge melodrama in which he and his mother had played the part of

supers. But slight as was the episode, it had all the attraction of the
unknown for me. Of Tournebut and its owners I knew nothing. Who, in
reality, was this Mme. de Combray, sanctified by Balzac? A fanatic, or
an intriguer?--And her daughter Mme. Acquet? A heroine or a
lunatic?--and the lover? A hero or an adventurer?--And the husband,
the lawyer and the friends of the house? Mme. Acquet more than all
piqued my curiosity. The daughter of a good house disguised as a
hussar to stop the mail like Choppart! This was not at all commonplace!
Was she young and pretty? Moisson knew nothing about it; he had
never seen her or her lover or husband, Mme. de Combray having
quarrelled with all of them.
I was most