The House of the Combrays | Page 7

how one could get into the cellar
from outside. We had two excellent guides; our kind host, M.
Constantin, and M. l'Abbé Drouin, the curé of Aubevoye, who knew all
the local traditions. They mentioned the "Grotto of the Hermit!" O
Ducray-Duminil!--Thou again!
The grotto is an old quarry in the side of the hill towards the Seine,
below the tower and having no apparent communication with it, but so
situated that an underground passage of a few yards would unite them.
The grotto being now almost filled up, the entrance to this passage has
disappeared. Looking at it, so innocent in appearance now under the
brush and brambles, I seemed to see some Chouan by star-light, eye
and ear alert, throw himself into it like a rabbit into its hole, and creep
through to the tower, to sleep fully dressed on the pallet on the second
floor. Evidently this tower, planned as were all Mme. de Combray's
abodes, was one of the many refuges arranged by the Chouans from the
coast of Normandy to Paris and known only to themselves.
But why was Mme. Moisson accommodated there without being taken
into her hostess's confidence? If Mme. de Combray wished to avert
suspicion by having two women and a child there, she might have told
them so; and if she thought Mme. Moisson too excitable to hear such a
confession, she should not have exposed her to nocturnal mysteries that
could only tend to increase her excitement! When Phélippeaux was
questioned, during the trial of Georges Cadoudal, about Moisson's
father, who had disappeared, he replied that he lived in the street and

island of Saint-Louis near the new bridge; that he was an engraver and
manager of a button factory; that Mme. Moisson had a servant named
R. Petit-Jean, married to a municipal guard. Was it through fear of this
woman's writing indiscreetly to her husband that Mme. de Combray
remained silent? But in any case, why the tower?
However this may be, the exactness of Moisson's reminiscences was
proved. But the trap-door had not been forced, as he believed, by
Chouans fleeing after some nocturnal expedition. This point was
already decided by the first documents that Lenôtre had collected for
this present work. There was no expedition of the sort in the
neighbourhood of Tournebut during the summer of 1804. They would
not have risked attracting attention to the château where was hidden the
only man whom the Chouans of Normandy judged capable of
succeeding Georges, and whom they called "Le Grand Alexandre"--the
Vicomte Robert d'Aché. Hunted through Paris like all the royalists
denounced by Querelle, he had managed to escape the searchers, to go
out in one of his habitual disguises when the gates were reopened, to
get to Normandy by the left bank of the Seine and take refuge with his
old friend at Tournebut, where he lived for fourteen months under the
name of Deslorières, his presence there never being suspected by the
police.
He was certainly, as well as Bonnoeil, Mme. de Combray's eldest son,
one of the three guests with whom Moisson took supper on the evening
of his arrival. The one who was always playing cards or tric-trac with
the Marquise, and whom she called her lawyer, might well have been
d'Aché himself. As to the stealthy visitors at the tower, given the
presence of d'Aché at Tournebut, it is highly probable that they were
only passing by there to confer with him, taking his orders secretly in
the woods without even appearing at the château, and then disappearing
as mysteriously as they had come.
For d'Aché in his retreat still plotted and made an effort to resume, with
the English minister, the intrigue that had just failed so miserably,
Moreau having withdrawn at the last minute. The royalist party was
less intimidated than exasperated at the deaths of the Duke d'Enghien,

Georges and Pichegru, and did not consider itself beaten even by the
proclamation of the Empire, which had not excited in the
provinces--above all in the country--the enthusiasm announced in the
official reports.
In reality it had been accepted by the majority of the population as a
government of expediency, which would provisionally secure
threatened interests, but whose duration was anything but certain. It
was too evident that the Empire was Napoleon, as the Consulate had
been Bonaparte--that everything rested on the head of one man. If an
infernal machine removed him, royalty would have a good opportunity.
His life was not the only stake; his luck itself was very hazardous.
Founded on victory, the Empire was condemned to be always
victorious. War could undo what war had done. And this uneasiness is
manifest in contemporary memoirs and correspondence. More of the
courtiers of the new régime than one imagines were as sceptical