"She asked which of the two gendarmes had slept on the camp-bed from midnight to four in the morning. I said it was I: then she turned to my companion and asked if it was so? and he replied that it was. Then she held out the bag to me and told me to take it."
"It was a joke," said the préfet.
"I think so too," said the poor gendarme, casting a last glance on the heap of gold; "so you see I brought it to you."
The préfet put the 13,000 francs to the other 17,000 and took it all away to the préfecture.
When, a year later, I wrote La Vendée et Madame, and the Duchesse de Berry heard that the 13,000 francs had been taken from her protégé, she wrote to the general to inform him that, by the same post, she was writing to the Government to call upon it to render up the 13,000 francs to its rightful owner. The gendarme was then at Limoges. They sent him the 13,000 francs, but they expelled him from the army.
Hardly was the visit about the money and the papers over before the Comte d'Erlon arrived, and he exercised towards Madame all that courteousness of a man of the world which the préfet had thought it unnecessary to employ. The duchess leant towards the general—
"You have promised not to leave me," she said to him in a whisper.
"I will keep my word to Your Highness," replied the general.
The duchess then rose quickly and went up to the Comte d'Erlon, saying—