While I was lamenting over the unexpected departure of my husband and son, Driver-Cooper, for his part, was loudly complaining, and wanting to force me to go back to his house, which he still kept on calling his château at Bellevue, his beautiful château of Colonnes.
Maintaining that, as I had been, and was still, his boarder, he said, the usual meals were being served every day for me and my people.
He was eating them by himself—without much trouble, probably!—but still protested, none the less, that I ought to pay him 25,000 francs a year for dinners I refused to eat; and talked a lot of other nonsense.
I wanted to put an end to these impudent molestations, and, as a clause in each of our two famous Ferney agreements submitted any difficulty that might arise to arbitrators, amicably chosen by us, or, in default of that, by the Tribunals of the Seine, I had recourse to the last means.
The arbitrators were appointed, and I explained to them the clever way in which the perfidious Cooper had blinded me, as well as his iniquitous fashion of fulfilling his obligations; I especially brought to their notice that, by the terms of the contract, his lease was to last only for the time taken up by my great affair; and that this had legally come to an end since my revocation of the powers I had given him.
The first decision of the arbitrators, given on September 30, 1828, was in my favour, and annulled the agreement as to the letting of the manoir of Bellevue at the rent of 25,000 francs; but, to my great surprise, I found myself sentenced to pay 16,000 of it as a compensation for the time I had spent in that wretched hole and for other expenses I knew nothing about for the most part; an indispensable condition for obtaining the restitution of my effects.
When I had done this, I fixed a day for them to be fetched, and the holder undertook to give them up.
Fresh matter for astonishment.
My servant presents himself and is informed that the removal is opposed at the request of M. Huré, furniture-dealer, in whose favour the honest Cooper had backed my bills.
Luckily for me, the President suspected some intrigue and ordered a severe examination of the books and registers of the opposer, who, less disreputable than his corrupter and not daring to play his part to the end, frankly owned to his odious rôle of catspaw.