Chapter IV: Part 4

“Never leaving her little room in the rue de la Corderie du Temple, except to buy provisions or to fetch her work, Madame de la Chanterie contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month. Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in the service of a celebrated dressmaker. This precaution proved a wise one. The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and speedily dissipated by him. The former Master of petitions was now one of the most ferocious presidents of the Revolutionary tribunals of that period; he became the terror of Normandy, and was able to satisfy all his passions. Imprisoned in his turn after the fall of Robespierre, the hatred of his department doomed him to certain death.

“Madame de la Chanterie heard of this through a letter of farewell which her husband wrote to her. Instantly, giving her little girl to the care of a neighbor, she went to the town where that wretch was imprisoned, taking with her the few louis which were all that she owned. These louis enabled her to make her way into the prison. She succeeded in saving her husband by dressing him in her own clothes, under circumstances almost identical with those which, sometime later, were so serviceable to Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to death, but the government was ashamed to carry out the sentence; and the Revolutionary tribunal (the one over which her husband had formerly presided) connived at her escape. She returned to Paris on foot, without means, sleeping in farm buildings and fed by charity.”

“Good God!” cried Godefroid.

“Ah! wait,” said Monsieur Alain; “that is nothing. In eight years the poor woman saw her husband three times. The first time he stayed twenty-four hours in the humble lodging of his wife, and carried away with him all her money; having showered her with marks of tenderness and made her believe in his complete conversion. ‘I could not,’ she said, ‘refuse a husband for whom I prayed daily and of whom I thought exclusively.’ On the second occasion, Monsieur de la Chanterie arrived almost dying, and with what an illness! She nursed him and saved his life. Then she tried to bring him to better sentiments and a decent life. After promising all that angel asked, the jacobin plunged back into frightful profligacy, and finally escaped the hands of justice only by again taking refuge with his wife, in whose care he died in safety.

“Oh! but that is nothing!” cried the goodman, seeing the pain on Godefroid’s face. “No one, in the world in which he lived, had known he was a married man. Two years after his death Madame de la Chanterie discovered that a second Madame de la Chanterie existed, widowed like herself, and, like her, ruined. That bigamist had found two angels incapable of discarding him.

“Towards 1803,” resumed Alain after a pause, “Monsieur de Boisfrelon, uncle of Madame de la Chanterie, came to Paris, his name having been erased from the list of _emigres_, and brought Madame the sum of two hundred thousand francs which her father-in-law, the old purveyor, had formerly entrusted to him for the benefit of his son’s children. He persuaded the widow to return to Normandy; where she completed the education of her daughter and purchased on excellent terms and still by the advice of her uncle, a patrimonial estate.”

“Ah!” cried Godefroid.

“All that is still nothing,” said Monsieur Alain; “we have not yet reached the period of storms and darkness. I resume:

“In 1807, after four years of rest and peace, Madame de la Chanterie married her daughter to a gentleman of rank, whose piety, antecedents, and fortune offered every guarantee that could be given,--a man who, to use a popular saying, ‘was after every one’s own heart,’ in the best society of the provincial city where Madame and her daughter passed their winters. I should tell you that this society was composed of seven or eight families belonging to the highest nobility in France: d’Esgrignon, Troisville, Casteran, Nouatre, etc. At the end of eighteen months the baron deserted his wife, and disappeared in Paris, where he changed his name.

“Madame de la Chanterie never knew the causes of this desertion until the lightning of a dreadful storm revealed them. Her daughter, brought up with anxious care and trained in the purest religious sentiments, kept total silence as to her troubles. This lack of confidence in her mother was a painful blow to Madame de la Chanterie. Already she had several times noticed in her daughter indications of the reckless disposition of the father, increased in the daughter by an almost virile strength of will.

“The husband, however, abandoned his home of his own free will, leaving his affairs in a pitiable condition. Madame de la Chanterie is, even to this day, amazed at the catastrophe, which no human foresight could have prevented. The persons she prudently consulted before the marriage had assured her that the suitor’s fortune was clear and sound, and that no mortgages were on his estate. Nevertheless it appeared, after the husband’s departure, that for ten years his debts had exceeded the entire value of his property. Everything was therefore sold, and the poor young wife, now reduced to her own means, came back to her mother. Madame de la Chanterie knew later that the most honorable persons of the province had vouched for her son-in-law in their own interests; for he owed them all large sums of money, and they looked upon his marriage with Mademoiselle de la Chanterie as a means to recover them.

“There were, however, other reasons for this catastrophe, which you will find later in a confidential paper written for the eyes of the Emperor. Moreover, this man had long courted the good-will of the royalist families by his devotion to the royal cause during the Revolution. He was one of Louis XVIII.’s most active emissaries, and had taken part after 1793 in all conspiracies,--escaping their penalties, however, with such singular adroitness that he came, in the end, to be distrusted. Thanked for his services by Louis XVIII., but completely set aside in the royalist affairs, he had returned to live on his property, now much encumbered with debt.

“These antecedents were then obscure (the persons initiated into the secrets of the royal closet kept silence about so dangerous a coadjutor), and he was therefore received with a species of reverence in a city devoted to the Bourbons, where the cruellest deeds of the Chouannerie were accepted as legitimate warfare. The d’Esgrignons, Casterans, the Chevalier de Valois, in short, the whole aristocracy and the Church opened their arms to this royalist diplomat and drew him into their circle. Their protection was encouraged by the desire of his creditors for the payment of his debts. For three years this man, who was a villain at heart, a pendant to the late Baron de la Chanterie, contrived to restrain his vices and assume the appearance of morality and religion.

“During the first months of his marriage he exerted a sort of spell over his wife; he tried to corrupt her mind by his doctrines (if it can be said that atheism is a doctrine) and by the jesting tone in which he spoke of sacred principles. From the time of his return to the provinces this political manoeuvrer had an intimacy with a young man, overwhelmed with debt like himself, but whose natural character was as frank and courageous as the baron’s was hypocritical and base. This frequent guest, whose accomplishments, strong character, and adventurous life were calculated to influence a young girl’s mind, was an instrument in the hands of the husband to bring the wife to adopt his theories. Never did she let her mother know the abyss into which her fate had cast her.

“We may well distrust all human prudence when we think of the infinite precautions taken by Madame de la Chanterie in marrying her only daughter. The blow, when it came to a life so devoted, so pure, so truly religious as that of a woman already tested by many trials, gave Madame de la Chanterie a distrust of herself which served to isolate her from her daughter; and all the more because her daughter, in compensation for her misfortunes, exacted complete liberty, ruled her mother, and was even, at times, unkind to her.

“Wounded thus in all her affections, mistaken in her devotion and love for her husband, to whom she had sacrificed without a word her happiness, her fortune, and her life; mistaken in the education exclusively religious which she had given to her daughter; mistaken in the confidence she had placed in others in the affair of her daughter’s marriage; and obtaining no justice from the heart in which she had sown none but noble sentiments, she united herself still more closely to God as the hand of trouble lay heavy upon her. She was indeed almost a nun; going daily to church, performing cloistral penances, and practising economy that she might have means to help the poor.

“Could there be, up to this point, a saintlier life or one more tried than that of this noble woman, so gentle under misfortune, so brave in danger, and always Christian?” said Monsieur Alain, appealing to Godefroid. “You know Madame now,--you know if she is wanting in sense, judgment, reflection; in fact, she has those qualities to the highest degree. Well! the misfortunes I have now told you, which might be said to make her life surpass all others in adversity, are as nothing to those that were still in store for this poor woman. But now let us concern ourselves exclusively with Madame de la Chanterie’s daughter,” said the old man, resuming his narrative.

“At eighteen years of age, the period of her marriage, Mademoiselle de la Chanterie was a young girl of delicate complexion, brown in tone with a brilliant color, graceful in shape, and very pretty. Above a forehead of great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown eyes and the general gaiety of her expression. A certain daintiness of feature was misleading as to her true character and her almost virile decision. She had small hands and small feet; in fact, there was something fragile about her whole person which excluded the idea of vigor and determination. Having always lived beside her mother, she had a most perfect innocence of thought and behavior and a really remarkable piety. This young girl, like her mother, was fanatically attached to the Bourbons; she was therefore a bitter enemy to the Revolution, and regarded the dominion of Napoleon as a curse inflicted by Providence upon France in punishment of the crimes of 1793.

“The conformity of opinion on this subject between Madame de la Chanterie and her daughter, and the daughter’s suitor, was one of the determining reasons of the marriage.

“The friend of the husband had commanded a body of Chouans at the time that hostilities were renewed in 1799; and it seems that the baron’s object (Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law was a baron) in fostering the intimacy between his wife and his friend was to obtain, through her influence, certain succor from that friend.

“This requires a few words of explanation,” said Monsieur Alain, interrupting his narrative, “about an association which in those days made a great deal of noise. I mean the ‘Chauffeurs.’[*] Every province in the west of France was at that time more or less overrun with these ‘brigands,’ whose object was far less pillage than a resurrection of the royalist warfare. They profited, so it was said, by the great number of ‘refractories,’--the name applied to those who evaded the conscription, which was at that time, as you probably know, enforced to actual abuse.

[*] _Chauffeurs_. This name applies to royalists who robbed
the mail-coaches conveying government funds, and levied
tribute on those who bought the confiscated property of
_emigres_ at the West. When the Thermidorian reaction began,
after the fall of Robespierre, other companies of royalists,
chiefly young nobles who had not emigrated, were formed at
the South and East under various names, such as “The
Avengers,” and “The Company of Jehu,” who stopped the
diligences containing government money, which they
transmitted to Brittany and La Vendee for the support of the
royalist troops. They regarded this as legitimate warfare,
and were scrupulous not to touch private property. When
captured, however, they were tried and executed as
highwaymen.--TR.

“Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even beyond, as far as the banks of the Loire, nocturnal expeditions were organized, which attacked, especially in Normandy, the holders of property bought from the National domain.[*] These armed bands sent terror throughout those regions. I am not misleading you when I ask you to observe that in certain departments the action of the laws was for a long time paralyzed.

[*] The National domain was the name given to the
confiscated property of the _emigres_, which was sold from
time to time at auction to the highest bidder.--TR.

“These last echoes of the civil war made much less noise than you would imagine, accustomed as we are now to the frightful publicity given by the press to every trial, even the least important, whether political or individual. The system of the Imperial government was that of all absolute governments. The censor allowed nothing to be published in the matter of politics except accomplished facts, and those were travestied. If you will take the trouble to look through files of the ‘Moniteur’ and the other newspapers of that time, even those of the West, you will not find a word about the four or five criminal trials which cost the lives of sixty or eighty ‘brigands.’ The term _brigands_, applied during the revolutionary period to the Vendeans, Chouans, and all those who took up arms for the house of Bourbon, was afterwards continued judicially under the Empire against all royalists accused of plots. To some ardent and loyal natures the emperor and his government were the enemy; any form of warfare against them was legitimate. I am only explaining to you these opinions, not justifying them.

“Now,” he said, after one of those pauses which are necessary in such long narratives, “if you realize how these royalists, ruined by the civil war of 1793, were dominated by violent passions, and how some exceptional natures (like that of Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in-law and his friend) were eaten up with desires of all kinds, you may be able to understand how it was that the acts of brigandage which their political views justified when employed against the government in the service of the good cause, might in some cases be committed for personal ends.

“The younger of the two men had been for some time employed in collecting the scattered fragments of Chouannerie, and was holding them ready to act at an opportune moment. There came a terrible crisis in the Emperor’s career when, shut up in the island of Lobau, he seemed about to give way under the combined and simultaneous attack of England and Austria. This was the moment for the Chouan uprising; but just as it was about to take place, the victory of Wagram rendered the conspiracy in the provinces powerless.

“This expectation of exciting civil war in Brittany, La Vendee, and part of Normandy, coincided in time with the final wreck of the baron’s fortune; and this wreck, coming at this time, led him to undertake an expedition to capture funds of the government which he might apply to the liquidation of the claims upon his property. But his wife and friend refused to take part in applying to private interests the money taken by armed force from the Receiver’s offices and the couriers and post-carriages of the government,--money taken, as they thought, justifiably by the rules of war to pay the regiments of ‘refractories’ and Chouans, and purchase the arms and ammunition with which to equip them. At last, after an angry discussion in which the young leader, supported by the wife, positively refused to hand over to the husband a portion of the large sum of money which the young leader had seized for the benefit of the royal armies from the treasury of the West, the baron suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, to avoid arrest for debt, having no means left by which to ward it off. Poor Madame de la Chanterie was wholly ignorant of these facts; but even they are nothing to the plot still hidden behind these preliminary facts.

“It is too late to-night,” said Monsieur Alain, looking at his little clock, “to go on with my narrative, which would take me, in any case, a long time to finish in my own words. Old Bordin, my friend, whose management of the famous Simeuse case had won him much credit in the royalist party, and who pleaded in the well-known criminal affair called that of the Chauffeurs de Mortagne, gave me, after I was installed in this house, two legal papers relating to the terrible history of Madame de la Chanterie and her daughter. I kept them because Bordin died soon after, before I had a chance to return them. You shall read them. You will find the facts much more succinctly stated than I could state them. Those facts are so numerous that I should only lose myself in the details and confuse them, whereas in those papers you have them in a legal summary. To-morrow, if you come to me, I will finish telling you all that relates to Madame de la Chanterie; for you will then know the general facts so thoroughly that I can end the whole story in a few words.”

IX. THE LEGAL STATEMENT

Monsieur Alain placed the papers, yellowed by time, in Godefroid’s hand; the latter, bidding the old man good-night, carried them off to his room, where he read, before he slept, the following document:--

THE INDICTMENT

Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department of the Orne

The attorney-general to the Imperial Court of Caen, appointed to
fulfil his functions before the Special Criminal Court established
by imperial decree under date September, 1809, and sitting at
Alencon, states to the Imperial Court the following facts which
have appeared under the above procedure.

The plot of a company of brigands, evidently long planned with
consummate care, and connected with a scheme for inciting the
Western departments to revolt, has shown itself in certain
attempts against the private property of citizens, but more
especially in an armed attack and robbery committed on the
mail-coach which transported, May --, 18--, the money in the treasury
at Caen to the Treasury of France. This attack, which recalls the
deplorable incidents of a civil war now happily extinguished,
manifests a spirit of wickedness which the political passions of
the present day do not justify.

Let us pass to the facts. The plot is complicated, the details are
numerous. The investigation has lasted one year; but the evidence,
which has followed the crime step by step, has thrown the clearest
light on its preparation, execution, and results.

The conception of the plot was formed by one Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph
Rifoel, calling himself Chevalier du Vissard, born at the Vissard,
district of Saint-Mexme, near Ernee, and a former leader of the rebels.

This criminal, whom H.M. the Emperor and King pardoned at the time
of the general pacification, and who has profited by the
sovereign’s magnanimity to commit other crimes, has already paid
on the scaffold the penalty of his many misdeeds; but it is
necessary to recall some of his actions, because his influence was
great on the guilty persons now before the court, and he is
closely connected with the facts of his case.

This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom
of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place
throughout the departments of the West gathering together the
elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of
Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter,
a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin,
arrondissement of Mortagne. Several of the most horrible events of
the rebellion of 1799 are connected with this strategic point.
Here a bearer of despatches was murdered, his carriage pillaged by
the brigands under command of a woman, assisted by the notorious
Marche-a-Terre. Brigandage appeared to be endemic in that
locality.

An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed
for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel.

It was in this district that an interview took place, in April,
1808, between Rifoel and a certain Boislaurier, a leader known by
the name of August in the baneful rebellions of the West, who
instigated the affair now before the court.

The somewhat obscure point of the relations between these two
leaders is cleared up by the testimony of numerous witnesses, and
also by the judgment of the court which condemned Rifoel.

From that time Boislaurier had an understanding with Rifoel, and
they acted in concert.

They communicated to each other, at first secretly, their infamous
plans, encouraged by the absence of His Imperial and Royal Majesty
with the armies in Spain. Their scheme was to obtain possession of
the money of the Treasury as the fundamental basis of future
operations.

Some time after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary
to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley--commonly called “The
Laborer,” long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences--to
give information as to the men who could safely be relied upon.

It was thus by means of Hiley that the plotters obtained, from the
beginning, the co-operation of one Herbomez, otherwise called
General Hardi, a former rebel of the same stamp as Rifoel, and
like him faithless to his pledges under the amnesty.

Herbomez and Hiley recruited from the surrounding districts seven
brigands whose names are:--

1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest brigands of
the corps formed by Montauran in the year VII., and a participator
in the attack upon the courier of Mortagne and his murder.

2. Francois Lisieux, called Grand-Fils, refractory of the
department of the Mayenne.

3. Charles Grenier, called Fleur-de-Genet, deserter from the 69th
brigade.

4. Gabriel Bruce, called Gros-Jean, one of the most ferocious
Chouans of Fontaine’s division.

5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant in the same
brigade, one of the confederates of Tinteniac, well-known for his
participation in the expedition to Quiberon.

6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, former huntsman to the
Sieur Carol of Alencon.

7. Louis Minard, refractory.

These confederates were lodged in three different districts, in
the houses of the following named persons: Binet, Melin, and
Laraviniere, innkeepers or publicans, and all devoted to Rifoel.

The necessary arms were supplied by one Jean-Francois Leveille,
notary; an incorrigible assistant of the brigands, and their
go-between with certain hidden leaders; also by one Felix Courceuil,
commonly called Confesseur, former surgeon of the rebel armies of
La Vendee; both these men are from Alencon.

Eleven muskets were hidden in a house belonging to the Sieur
Bryond in the faubourg of Alencon, where they were placed without
his knowledge.

When the Sieur Bryond left his wife to pursue the fatal course she
had chosen, these muskets, mysteriously taken from the said house,
were transported by the woman Bryond in her own carriage to the
chateau of Saint-Savin.

It was then that the acts of brigandage in the department of the
Orne and the adjacent departments took place,--acts that amazed
both the authorities and the inhabitants of those regions, which
had long been entirely pacificated; acts, moreover, which proved
that these odious enemies of the government and the French Empire
were in the secret of the coalition of 1809 through communication
with the royalist party in foreign countries.

The notary Leveille, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, Herbomez of
Mayenne, Boislaurier of Mans, and Rifoel, were therefore the heads
of the association, which was composed of certain guilty persons
already condemned to death and executed with Rifoel, certain
others who are the accused persons at present under trial, and a
number more who have escaped just punishment by flight or by the
silence of their accomplices.

It was Dubut who, living near Caen, notified the notary Leveille
when the government money contained in the local tax-office would
be despatched to the Treasury.

We must remark here that after the time of the removal of the
muskets, Leveille, who went to see Bruce, Grenier, and Cibot in
the house of Melin, found them hiding the muskets in a shed on the
premises, and himself assisted in the operation.

A general rendezvous was arranged to take place at Mortagne, in
the hotel de l’Ecu de France. All the accused persons were present
under various disguises. It was then that Leveille, the woman
Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier and Hiley (the ablest of the
secondary accomplices, as Cibot was the boldest) obtained the
co-operation of one Vauthier, called Vieux-Chene, a former servant
of the famous Longuy, and now hostler of the hotel. Vauthier
agreed to notify the woman Bryond of the arrival and departure of
the diligence bearing the government money, which always stopped
for a time at the hotel.

The woman Bryond collected the scattered brigands at the chateau
de Saint-Savin, a few miles from Mortagne, where she had lived
with her mother since the separation from her husband. The
brigands, with Hiley at their head, stayed at the chateau for
several days. The woman Bryond, assisted by her maid Godard,
prepared with her own hands the food of these men. She had already
filled a loft with hay, and there the provisions were taken to
them. While awaiting the arrival of the government money these
brigands made nightly sorties from Saint-Savin, and the whole
region was alarmed by their depredations. There is no doubt that
the outrages committed at la Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the
chateau of Saint-Seny, were committed by this band, whose boldness
equals their criminality, though they were able to so terrify
their victims that the latter have kept silence, and the
authorities have been unable to obtain any testimony from them.

While thus putting under contribution those persons in the
neighborhood who had purchased lands of the National domain, these
brigands carefully explored the forest of Chesnay which they
selected as the theatre of their crime.

Not far from this forest is the village of Louvigney. An inn is
kept there by the brothers Chaussard, formerly game-keepers on the
Troisville estate, which inn was made the final rendezvous of the
brigands. These brothers knew beforehand the part they were to
play in the affair. Courceuil and Boislaurier had long made
overtures to them to revive their hatred against the government of
our august Emperor, telling them that among the guests who would
be sent to them would be certain men of their acquaintance, the
dreaded Hiley and the not less dreaded Cibot.

Accordingly, on the 6th, the seven bandits, under Hiley, arrived
at the inn of the brothers Chaussard, and there they spent two
days. On the 8th Hiley led off his men, saying they were going to
a palace about nine miles distant, and asking the brothers to send
provisions for them to a certain fork in the road not far distant
from the village. Hiley himself returned and slept at the inn.

Two persons on horseback, who were undoubtedly Rifoel and the
woman Bryond (for it is stated that this woman accompanied Rifoel
on these expeditions on horseback and dressed as a man), arrived
during the evening and conversed with Hiley.

The next day Hiley wrote a letter to the notary Leveille, which
one of the Chaussard brothers took to the latter, bringing back
his answer.

Two hours later Rifoel and the woman Bryond returned and had an
interview with Hiley.

It was then found necessary to obtain an axe to open, as we shall
see, the cases containing the money. The notary went with the
woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, where they searched in vain for an
axe. The notary returned alone; half way back he met Hiley, to
whom he stated that they could not obtain an axe.

Hiley returned to the inn, where he ordered supper for ten
persons; seven of them being the brigands, who had now returned,
fully armed. Hiley made them stack their arms in the military
manner. They then sat down to table and supped in haste. Hiley
ordered provisions prepared to take away with him. Then he took
the elder Chaussard aside and asked him for an axe. The innkeeper
who, if we believe him, was surprised, refused to give one.
Courceuil and Boislaurier arrived; the night wore on; the three
men walked the floor of their room discussing the plot. Courceuil,
called “Confesseur,” the most wily of the party, obtained an axe;
and about two in the morning they all went away by different
paths.

Every moment was of value; the execution of the crime was fixed
for that night. Hiley, Courceuil, and Boislaurier led and placed
their men. Hiley hid in ambush with Minard, Cabot, and Bruce at
the right of the Chesnay forest; Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau
took the centre; Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux occupied the
ravine to the left of the wood. All these positions are indicated
on the ground-plan drawn by the engineer of the government
survey-office, which is here subjoined.

The diligence, which had left Mortagne about one in the morning,
was driven by one Rousseau, whose conduct proved so suspicious
that his arrest was judged necessary. The vehicle, driven slowly,
would arrive about three o’clock in the forest of Chesnay.

A single gendarme accompanied the diligence, which would stop for
breakfast at Donnery. Three passengers only were making the trip,
and were now walking up the hill with the gendarme.

The driver, who had driven very slowly to the bridge of Chesnay at
the entrance of the wood, now hastened his horses with a vigor and
eagerness remarked by the passengers, and turned into a
cross-road, called the road of Senzey. The carriage was thus out of
sight; and the gendarme with the three young men were hurrying to
overtake it when they heard a shout: “Halt!” and four shots were
fired at them.

The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sabre and rushed in the
direction of the vehicle. He was stopped by four armed men, who
fired at him; his eagerness saved him, for he ran toward one of
the three passengers to tell him to make for Chesnay and ring the
tocsin. But two brigands followed him, and one of them, taking
aim, sent a ball through his left shoulder, which broke his arm,
and he fell helpless.

The shouts and firing were heard in Donnery. A corporal stationed
there and one gendarme ran toward the sounds. The firing of a
squad of men took them to the opposite side of the wood to that
where the pillage was taking place. The noise of the firing
prevented the corporal from hearing the cries of the wounded
gendarme; but he did distinguish a sound which proved to be that
of an axe breaking and chopping into cases. He ran toward the
sound. Meeting four armed bandits, he called out to them,
“Surrender, villains!”

They replied: “Stay where you are, or you are a dead man!” The
corporal sprang forward; two shots were fired and one struck him;
a ball went through his left leg and into the flank of his horse.
The brave man, bathed in blood, was forced to give up the unequal
fight; he shouted “Help! the brigands are at Chesnay!” but all in
vain.

The robbers, masters of the ground thanks to their numbers,
ransacked the coach. They had gagged and bound the driver by way
of deception. The cases were opened, the bags of money were thrown
out; the horses were unharnessed and the silver and gold loaded on
their backs. Three thousand francs in copper were rejected; but a
sum in other coin of one hundred and three thousand francs was
safely carried off on the four horses.

The brigands took the road to the hamlet of Menneville, which is
close to Saint-Savin. They stopped with their plunder at an
isolated house belonging to the Chaussard brothers, where the
Chaussards’ uncle, one Bourget, lived, who was knowing to the
whole plot from its inception. This old man, aided by his wife,
welcomed the brigands, charged them to make no noise, unloaded the
bags of money, and gave the men something to drink. The wife
performed the part of sentinel. The old man then took the horses
through the wood, returned them to the driver, unbound the latter,
and also the young men, who had been garotted. After resting for a
time, Courceuil, Hiley, and Boislaurier paid their men a paltry
sum for their trouble, and the whole band departed, leaving the
plunder in charge of Bourget.

When they reached a lonely place called Champ-Landry, these
criminals, obeying the impulse which leads all malefactors into
the blunders and miscalculations of crime, threw their guns into a
wheat-field. This action, done by all of them, is a proof of their
mutual understanding. Struck with terror at the boldness of their
act, and even by its success, they dispersed.

The robbery now having been committed, with the additional
features of assault and assassination, other facts and other
actors appear, all connected with the robbery itself and with the
disposition of the plunder.

Rifoel, concealed in Paris, whence he pulled every wire of the
plot, transmits to Leveille an order to send him instantly fifty
thousand francs.

Courceuil, knowing to all the facts, sends Hiley to tell Leveille
of the success of the attempt, and say that he will meet him at
Mortagne. Leveille goes there.

Vauthier, on whose fidelity they think they can rely, agrees to go
to Bourget, the uncle of the Chaussards, in whose care the money
was left, and ask for the booty. The old man tells Vauthier that
he must go to his nephews, who have taken large sums to the woman
Bryond. But he orders him to wait outside in the road, and brings
him a bag containing the small sum of twelve hundred francs, which
Vauthier delivers to the woman Lechantre for her daughter.

At Leveille’s request, Vauthier returns to Bourget, who this time
sends for his nephews. The elder Chaussard takes Vauthier to the
wood, shows him a tree, and there they find a bag of one thousand
francs buried in the earth. Leveille, Hiley, and Vauthier make
other trips, obtaining only trifling sums compared with the large
sum known to have been captured.

The woman Lechantre receives these sums at Mortagne; and, on
receipt of a letter from her daughter, removes them to
Saint-Savin, where the woman Bryond now returns.

This is not the moment to examine as to whether the woman
Lechantre had any anterior knowledge of the plot.

It suffices here to note that this woman left Mortagne to go to
Saint-Savin the evening before the crime; that after the crime she
met her daughter on the high-road, and they both returned to
Mortagne; that on the following day Leveille, informed by Hiley of
the success of the plot, goes from Alencon to Mortagne, and there
visits the two women; later he persuades them to deposit the sums
obtained with such difficulty from the Chaussards and Bourget in a
house in Alencon, of which we shall speak presently,--that of the
Sieur Pannier, merchant.

The woman Lechantre writes to the bailiff at Saint-Savin to come
and drive her and her daughter by the cross-roads towards Alencon.

The funds now in their possession amount to twenty thousand
francs; these the girl Godard puts into the carriage at night.

The notary Leveille had given exact instructions. The two women
reach Alencon and stop at the house of a confederate, one Louis
Chargegrain, in the Littray district. Despite all the precautions
of the notary, who came there to meet the women, witnesses were at
hand who saw the portmanteaux and bags containing the money taken
from the carriole.

At the moment when Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were
consulting in the square at Alencon with the Sieur Pannier
(treasurer of the rebels since 1794, and devoted to Rifoel) as to
the best means of conveying to Rifoel the sum he asked for, the
woman Lechantre became alarmed on hearing at the inn where she
stopped of the suspicions and arrests already made. She fled
during the night, taking her daughter with her through the byways
and cross-roads to Saint-Savin, in order to take refuge, if
necessary, in certain hiding-places prepared at the chateau de
Saint-Savin. Courceuil, Boislaurier, and his relation Dubut,
clandestinely changed two thousand francs in silver money for
gold, and fled to Brittany and England.

On arriving at Saint-Savin, the women Lechantre and Bryond heard
of the arrest of Bourget, that of the driver of the diligence, and
that of the two refractories.

The magistrates and the gendarmerie struck such sure blows that it
was thought advisable to place the woman Bryond beyond the reach
of human justice; for she appears to have been an object of great
devotion on the part of these criminals, who were captivated by
her. She left Saint-Savin, and was hidden at first in Alencon,
where her followers deliberated, and finally placed her in the
cellar of Pannier’s house.

Here new incidents develop themselves.

After the arrest of Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refuse to
give up any more of the money, declaring themselves betrayed. This
unexpected refusal was given at a moment when an urgent want of
money was felt among the accomplices, if only for the purposes of
escape. Rifoel was always clamorous for money. Hiley, Cibot, and
Leveille began to suspect the Chaussards.

Here comes in a new incident, which calls for the rigor of the
law.

Two gendarmes, detailed to discover the woman Bryond, succeeded in
tracking her to Pannier’s. There a discussion is held; and these
men, unworthy of the trust reposed in them, instead of arresting
the woman Bryond, succumb to her seductions. These unworthy
soldiers, named Ratel and Mallet, showed this woman the utmost
interest and offered to take her to the Chaussards and force them
to make restitution.

The woman Bryond starts on horseback, disguised as a man,
accompanied by Ratel, Mallet, and the girl Godard. She makes the
journey by night. She has a conference alone with one of the
brothers Chaussard, an excited conference. She is armed with a
pistol, and threatens to blow out the brains of her accomplice if
he refuses the money. Then he goes with her into the forest, and
they return with a heavy bag of coin. In the bag are copper coins
and twelve-sous silver pieces to the amount of fifteen hundred
francs.

When the woman Bryond returns to Alencon the accomplices propose
to go in a body to the Chaussards’ house and torture them until
they deliver up the whole sum.

When Pannier hears of this failure he is furious. He threatens.
The woman Bryond, though threatening him in return with Rifoel’s
wrath, is forced to fly.

These facts rest on the confession of Ratel.

Mallet, pitying the woman Bryond’s position, offers her an asylum.
Then Mallet and Ratel, accompanied by Hiley and Cibot, go at night
to the brothers Chaussard; this time they find these brothers have
left the place and have taken the rest of the money with them.

This was the last effort of the accomplices to recover the
proceeds of the robbery.

It now becomes necessary to show the exact part taken by each of
the actors in this crime.

Dubut, Boislaurier, Herbomez, Courceuil, and Hiley were the
ringleaders. Some deliberated and planned, others acted.

Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three fugitives from
justice and outlawed, are addicted to rebellion, fomenters of
trouble, implacable enemies of Napoleon the Great, his victories,
his dynasty, and his government, haters of our new laws and of the
constitution of the Empire.

Herbomez and Hiley audaciously executed that which the three
former planned.

The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime, namely, Cibot,
Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and Minard, is evident; it
appears from the confessions of those of them who are now in the
hands of justice; Lisieux died during the investigation, and Bruce
has fled the country.

The conduct of Rousseau, who drove the coach, marks him as an
accomplice. His slow method of driving, his haste at the entrance
of the wood, his persistent declaration that his head was covered,
whereas the passengers testify that the leader of the brigands
told him to take the handkerchief off his head and recognize them;
all these facts are strong presumptive evidence of collusion.

As for the woman Bryond and the notary Leveille, could any
co-operation be more connected, more continuous than theirs? They
repeatedly furnished means for the crime; they were privy to it,
and they abetted it. Leveille travelled constantly. The woman
Bryond invented scheme after scheme; she risked all, even her
life, to recover the plunder. She lent her house, her carriage;
her hand is seen in the plot from the beginning; she did not
dissuade the chief leader of all, Rifoel, since executed, although
through her guilty influence upon him she might have done so. She
made her waiting-woman, the girl Godard, an accomplice. As for
Leveille, he took an active part in the actual perpetration of the
crime by seeking the axe the brigands asked for.

The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, the woman
Lechantre, Mallet and Ratel, all participated in the crime in
their several degrees, as did the innkeepers Melin, Binet,
Laraviniere, and Chargegrain.

Bourget has died during the investigation, after making a
confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by
Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that
of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his motives are easy to
understand.

The Chaussards knowingly fed and lodged the brigands, they saw
them armed, they witnessed all their arrangements and knew the
object of them; and lastly, they received the plunder, which they
hid, and as it appears, stole from their accomplices.

Pannier, the former treasurer of the rebels, concealed the woman
Bryond in his house; he is one of the most dangerous accomplices
of this crime, which he knew from its inception. In him certain
mysterious relations which are still obscure took their rise; the
authorities now have these matters under investigation. Pannier
was the right hand of Rifoel, the depositary of the secrets of the
counter-revolutionary party of the West; he regretted that Rifoel
introduced women into the plot and confided in them; it was he who
received the stolen money from the woman Bryond and conveyed it to
Rifoel.

As for the conduct of the two gendarmes Ratel and Mallet, it
deserves the severest penalty of the law. They betrayed their
duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed suicide, but not
until he had made important revelations. The other, Mallet, denies
nothing, his tacit admissions preclude all doubt, especially as to
the guilt of the woman Bryond.

The woman Lechantre, in spite of her constant denials, was privy
to all. The hypocrisy of this woman, who attempts to shelter her
assumed innocence under the mask of a false piety, has certain
antecedents which prove her decision of character and her
intrepidity in extreme cases. She alleges that she was misled by
her daughter, and believed that the plundered money belonged to
the Sieur Bryond,--a common excuse! If the Sieur Bryond had
possessed any property, he would not have left the department on
account of his debts. The woman Lechantre claims that she did not
suspect a shameful theft, because she saw the proceedings approved
by her ally, Boislaurier. But how does she explain the presence of
Rifoel (already executed) at Saint-Savin; the journeys to and fro;
the relations of that young man with her daughter; the stay of the
brigands at Saint-Savin, where they were served by her daughter
and the girl Godard? She alleges sleep; declares it to be her
practice to go to bed at seven in the evening; and has no answer
to make when the magistrate points out to her that if she rises,
as she says she does, at dawn, she must have seen some signs of
the plot, of the sojourn of so many persons, and of the nocturnal
goings and comings of her daughter. To this she replies that she
was occupied in prayer. This woman is a mass of hypocrisy. Lastly,
her journey on the day of the crime, the care she takes to carry
her daughter to Mortagne, her conduct about the money, her
precipitate flight when all is discovered, the pains she is at to
conceal herself, even the circumstances of her arrest, all go to
prove a long-existing complicity. She has not acted like a mother
who desires to save her daughter and withdraw her from danger, but
like a trembling accomplice. And her complicity is not that of a
misguided tenderness; it is the fruit of party spirit, the
inspiration of a well-known hatred against the government of His
Imperial and Royal Majesty. Misguided maternal tenderness, if that
could be fairly alleged in her defence, would not, however, excuse
it; and we must not forget that consentment, long-standing and
premeditated, is the surest sign of guilt.

Thus all the elements of the crime and the persons committing it
are fully brought to light.

We see the madness of faction combining with pillage and greed; we
see assassination advised by party spirit, under whose aegis these
criminals attempt to justify themselves for the basest crimes. The
leaders give the signal for the pillage of the public money, which
money is to be used for their ulterior crimes; vile stipendiaries
do this work for a paltry price, not recoiling from murder; then
the fomenters of rebellion, not less guilty because their own
hands have neither robbed nor murdered, divide the booty and
dispose of it. What community can tolerate such outrages? The law
itself is scarcely rigorous enough to duly punish them.

It is upon the above facts that this Court of Criminal and Special
Justice is called upon to decide whether the prisoners Herbomez,
Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, Binet,
Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, the woman
Bourget, Vauthier, Chaussard the elder, Pannier, the widow
Lechantre, Mallet, all herein named and described, and arraigned
before this court; also Boislaurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, the
younger Chaussard, Chargegrain, and the girl Godard,--these latter
being absent and fugitives from justice,--are or are not guilty of
the crimes charged in this indictment.

Done at Caen, this 1st of December, 180-.

(Signed) Baron Bourlac, Attorney-General.

X. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU

This legal paper, much shorter and more imperative than such indictments are these days, when they are far more detailed and more precise, especially as to the antecedent life of accused persons, affected Godefroid deeply. The dryness of the statement in which the official pen narrated in red ink the principal details of the affair stirred his imagination. Concise, abbreviated narratives are to some minds texts into the hidden meaning of which they love to burrow.

In the middle of the night, aided by the silence, by the darkness, by the terrible relation intimated by the worthy Alain between the facts of that document and Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid applied all the forces of his intellect to decipher the dreadful theme.

Evidently the name Lechantre stood for la Chanterie; in all probably the aristocracy of the name was intentionally thus concealed during the Revolution and under the Empire.

Godefroid saw, in imagination, the landscape and the scenes where this drama had taken place. The forms and faces of the accomplices passed before his eyes. He pictured to himself not “one Rifoel” but a Chevalier du Vissard, a young man something like the Fergus of Walter Scott, a French Jacobite. He developed the romance of an ardent young girl grossly deceived by an infamous husband (a style of romance then much the fashion); loving the young and gallant leader of a rebellion against the Empire; giving herself, body and soul, like another Diana Vernon, to the conspiracy, and then, once launched on that fatal incline, unable to stop herself. Had she rolled to the scaffold?

The young man saw in his own mind a whole world, and he peopled it. He wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those bold Chouans. His mind conceived the state of that wild country where lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of the Marquis de Montauran--of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had told him.

This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid. When he remembered that this drama must relate to the dignified, noble, deeply religious old woman whose virtue was acting upon him so powerfully as to be upon the point of metamorphosing him, Godefroid was seized with a sort of terror, and turned hastily to the second document which Monsieur Alain had given him. This was entitled:--

Summary on behalf of Madame Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres,
nee Lechantre de la Chanterie.

“No longer any doubt!” murmured Godefroid.

We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign had reason
to exercise his right of clemency it is surely in a case like
this.

Here is a young woman, about to become a mother, and condemned to
death.

From a prison cell, with the scaffold before her, this woman will
tell the truth.

The trial before the Criminal Court of Alencon had, as in all
cases where there are many accused persons in a conspiracy
inspired by party-spirit, certain portions which were seriously
obscure.

The Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty knows now the
truth about the mysterious personage named Le Marchand, whose
presence in the department of the Orne was not denied by the
government during the trial, but whom the prosecution did not
think proper to call as witness, and whom the defence had neither
the power nor the opportunity to find.

That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of
Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well
know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the
correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille,--known elsewhere
as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian
police under the name of Contenson.

He is notorious. His youth and name were degraded by vices so
imperative, an immorality so profound, conduct so criminal, that
his infamous life must have ended on the scaffold if he had not
possessed the ability to play a double part, as indicated by his
names. Hereafter, as his passions rule him more and more, he will
end by falling to the depths of infamy in spite of his
incontestable ability and a remarkable mind.

When the Comte de Lille became aware of this man’s character he no
longer permitted him to take part in the royalist councils or to
handle the money sent to France; he thus lost the resources
derived from these masters, whose service had been profitable to
him.

It was then that he returned to his country home, crippled with
debt.

His traitorous connection with the intrigues of England and the
Comte de Lille, won him the confidence of the old families
attached to the cause now vanquished by the genius of our immortal
Emperor. He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion,
with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at
the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain
relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of
this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on
the scaffold for his plots against the State. Through him Bryond
was able to penetrate once more into the secrets of that party
which has misunderstood both the glory of H.M. the Emperor
Napoleon I. and the true interests of the nation united in his
august person.

At the age of thirty-five, this man, then known under his true
name of des Tours-Minieres, affecting a sincere piety, professing
the utmost devotion to the interests of the Comte de Lille and a
reverence for the memory of the insurgents who lost their lives at
the West, disguising with great ability the secrets of his
exhausted youth, and powerfully protected by the silence of
creditors, and by the spirit of caste which exists among all
country _ci-devants_,--this man, truly a whited sepulchre, was
introduced, as possessing every claim for consideration, to Madame
Lechantre, who was supposed to be the possessor of a large
fortune.