"How are my feet and hands?" she said. "When they become cold, rub them, put burning hot bricks to them and send for a doctor and priest." They assured her she should have the services of both, but she would not have them summoned until the more alarming symptoms set in. However, the sickness stopped and the invalid grew better.
Madame took her meals down on the second floor: to her table were admitted M. de Ménars and Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec—who had joined her—the two ladies Duguigny and, lastly, M. Guibourg, who, after his escape from the prison of Nantes, had also found a refuge in the same house, but only three weeks before the duchess's arrest. Very often, the meals were interrupted by false alarms caused by some detachment of troops coming in or going out of the town; then a bell, which communicated with the room from the ground floor, would give the signal for a retreat.
The duchess passed five months in this way. But the activity with which the Chouans were hunted down left them no chance of rallying together; also, the soul and head of the war was no longer with them. The 56th Regiment, which arrived about the end of June, permitted the military authorities to organise a still more energetic chase and a still stricter look-out; the cantonments were reinforced, moving columns ploughed the country in all senses of the meaning; finally, all hope for the partisans of Henri V. of rekindling a serious war soon vanished.
Meantime, the rumour had gone abroad that the duchess was hidden in Nantes; General Dermoncourt was certain of its truth and had given the higher authorities almost material proofs of the presence of Madame in the town; but, as the fugitive's retreat was only known to a few persons, who were completely devoted to her, whatever credence the civil and military authorities gave to the general's warning, they had small chance of discovering her; besides, the duchess had become the object of extreme watchfulness on the part of her friends, who felt the necessity of isolating her completely in the centre of the town in order to prevent the police agents from getting at her. So she was inaccessible to every one except M. de Bourmont, who exercised his privilege with as much prudence as reserve. It was about this time that the Jew Deutz came to the town.
Hyacinthe-Simon Deutz, was born at Coblenz in January 1802. At the age of eighteen he went to M. Didot as a working printer. A short time later, his brother-in-law, M. Drack, becoming a Catholic, Deutz, being furious at the conversion, threatened him so savagely that Drack warned the police. However, two or three years later, his Judaistic fanaticism softened on this point; he himself showed a desire to embrace the Catholic religion, and, through his brother-in-law, solicited an audience with the Archbishop of Paris. That prelate, thinking his conversion would be quicker and more efficacious at Rome, advised him to go there. Deutz actually made that journey early in 1828; he was recommended in the most pressing manner by M. de Quélen to Cardinal Capellari (afterwards Gregory XIV.), then préfet to the propaganda. Pope Leo XIX. gave him into the care of Father Orioli, of the Collège des Cordeliers, for instruction in the Catholic religion. For some time, and on several occasions, Deutz seemed to have changed his resolution. He wrote in 1828, "I have experienced several days of storm; I was even on the point of returning unbaptized to Paris; it was Judaism dying in me; but, thanks to God, my eyes are entirely unsealed and, ere long, I shall have the happiness of becoming a Christian." Finally judged fit to receive baptism, his godfather was Baron Mortier, first secretary to the Embassy, and his godmother an Italian princess. Thus, by deceiving God, he learned how to betray men. A while after, he was presented to the Pope, who received him with the greatest kindness. A pension of 25 piastres (125 francs) per month had been allowed him since his arrival in Rome from the funds of the propaganda. His brother-in-law Drack, introduced by Baron Mortier to the Duchesse de Berry, had by her been appointed librarian to the Duc de Bordeaux. It was then that the Pope got Deutz entered as a boarder at the Convent des Saints-Apôtres, and he continued publicly to affect the same devotion to religion. Nevertheless, those who lived in intimacy with him had very quickly guessed with what interested motives he had made his abjuration. Most of his early patrons, seeing they were being fooled by him, gradually deserted him; soon, the only supporter he had left was Cardinal Capellari, who, only seeing him occasionally, still kept up the same interest in him.
In 1830, Deutz, under the pretext of not wishing to live on charity, obtained from Pius VIII., then Pope, 300 piastres with which he set out to start, so he said, a bookshop in New York. After he had lived upon the money made by his books he returned to Europe and reached London in the autumn of 1831. He was recommended to the Jesuits established in England, and introduced himself to Abbé Delaporte, almoner to the Chapel of the Émigrés and French Legitimists, who put him into communication with the Marquis Eugène de Montmorency, then resident in London. Deutz got himself noticed by his extraordinary assiduity in attending the chapel services, praying fervently and frequently communicating; he thus secured the kindly notice of M. de Montmorency, a very religious man, who invited him to his table and even to some sort of intimacy.
About this time Madame de Bourmont was preparing, with her daughters, to rejoin her husband in Italy. M. de Bourmont recommended Deutz to her as a wise and reliable man, who might be useful to her on her journey; he was, besides, devoted body and soul to the Legitimist cause and to religion. Deutz went the journey with Madame de Bourmont and behaved himself so well that, on her arrival, she in her turn recommended him warmly to the Duchesse de Berry. When the princess went to Rome, the Pope also spoke to her of Deutz as a man to be relied upon, capable of carrying out intelligently the most important and delicate missions. He notified that she could make use of him with entire confidence when occasion required. Such occasion was not long in offering itself. Just when the duchess was preparing to make her descent upon France, Deutz arrived at Massa and offered his services to Madame; he came from Rome and was going to Portugal to fulfil various missions which the Holy Father had entrusted to him, amongst others, that of taking, on his journey to Genoa, a dozen Jesuits to don Miguel, who had asked for them in order to found a college. Madame received him kindly and, knowing that he would cross Spain to reach Portugal, she accepted his offer with pleasure and willingness, telling him she would take advantage of his kindness and his devotion, and giving him her orders from time to time. So great was her idea of Deutz's delicate sensitiveness at the time, such interest had he roused in her, that she said one day to one of the French people round her—
"I believe poor Deutz is in want of money. I have none at the moment, and he is so sensitive I dare not give him this jewel to sell, which is, I believe, worth 6000 francs. Kindly sell it for me and give him the money without telling him what I am obliged to do to procure it."
So he set off on his mission, passing by way of Catalonia and Madrid. In that city, upon the letter of introduction of a minister plenipotentiary of the Italian States to whom the Pope had sent him, he obtained an introduction to one of the princes of the Royal Family of Spain, from whom he managed to extract money, although he was abundantly supplied with it by both the Holy Father and the Duchesse de Berry. That little act of fraud, of which he boasted when he returned to Madrid from Portugal, proves that Deutz was already treacherous, and that any means seemed good to him that satisfied his thirst after gold. As he travelled under the auspices of the Court of Rome, he mostly stayed in convents, where he was well received, and got himself noticed for his fervent zeal for the Catholic faith. Upon his arrival in Portugal, although well provided with letters from the Pope, he could not obtain an audience with don Miguel except after great difficulties and several months' stay. It was, I think, in connection with some loan don Miguel wanted to contract at the time in Paris that a banker of that capital, who knew of this project and desired to derive profit out of it for the duchess, wrote or caused to be written, in the current August, to Deutz, then in Portugal, that he would willingly undertake the loan on condition don Miguel would allow the deduction of ten per cent, in favour of the Duchesse de Berry, and, knowing him to be devoted to the cause and interests of the princess, he would let him negotiate the business, hoping he would employ every means his sagacity could think of to bring it about successfully. But it appears Deutz did not succeed in this enterprise. About the month of September 1832, he returned from Portugal to Madrid, and had several interviews with the French Legitimists, whose confidence in the scamp was countenanced by the duchess's example. He, however, committed various indiscretions of conduct in Portugal, which might have inspired them with doubts, but the certain knowledge that Madame had proved his fidelity allayed all uneasiness. Upon his departure for France, he was charged with important dispatches, the contents whereof would have seriously compromised those who had written them and those to whom they were addressed. One of the French Legitimists who was then in Madrid having declared his intention of accompanying him as courier, Deutz told him it would not be safe for the secretary to the Embassy at Madrid to travel with a Frenchman. This circumstance at first aroused no suspicion; but a part of the letters confided to Deutz, and principally those he had been advised to leave at Bordeaux, to be addressed from there with greater safety to the duchess and other persons, never reaching their destination, it has since been imagined that he gave them up to the Paris police upon his return to France, and that the supposed secretary to the Embassy was none other than an agent who accompanied him and who, no doubt, served him as intermediary to transmit to the police the information he got from the knave.
It appears that, just about this time, they had not put much energy into the discovery of Madame's hiding-place, because they hoped the adventurous princess, seeing the uselessness of her attempts and all her resources being exhausted, would decide to leave French soil and thus rid the Government of a great difficulty; but, when they saw that she persisted in remaining in a country still in a state of fermentation, where her presence was dangerous, they set themselves seriously to find means of seizing her person at no matter what price.