A few months after this stirring event, Baron d’Auerweck, tired of such a stormy existence, and seeing, perhaps, a shadow of the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, determined himself to break away from this life of agitation, and to settle down with a wife. During the last days of the year 1799 he was married at Baden to Mademoiselle Fanny de Gelb, a native of Strasburg, whose father had lately served under Condé; she also had a brother who was an officer in the army of the Princes. But, in spite of a pension which the mother, Madame de Gelb, was paid by England on account of her dead husband’s services, the available resources of the future establishment were very meagre indeed, for the “little Baron” had not learned to practise economy while rushing about Europe; so, as soon as the marriage had been celebrated, the turn of the wheel of fortune forced the young wife to leave the Grand Duchy of Baden and to wander from town to town in Germany and Austria.
They travelled first to Munich and then to Nuremburg, but d’Auerweck’s plans were to establish himself in Austria close to all his belongings. He had the fond hope of obtaining employment from Minister Thugut, to whom he reintroduced himself. But he experienced a bitter disappointment, for on his first attempt to submit to his Excellency the greater part of his last work (in which he had embodied, as the result of desperate toil, his views on the present political situation, the outcome of his conversations with the representatives of the different European states, his reflections and his forecast of events) d’Auerweck found himself unceremoniously dismissed. Thugut flatly refused, if the story is to be believed, to have anything further to do with a man who was still suspected of being an English emissary. Consequently he was obliged to abandon his idea of establishing himself in Austria, and to hunt for other means of existence, more particularly as Madame d’Auerweck had just presented him with his first child at Nuremburg. He turned his steps once again in the direction of the Grand Duchy, and after successive visits to Friburg, Basle, and Baden, he decided to make his home in Schutterwald, a village on the outskirts of the town of Offenburg. There he determined to lead the life of a simple, honest citizen, and renting a very humble peasant’s cottage, he installed his wife and his mother-in-law therein. He himself set to work on the cultivation of his garden, devoting his spare moments to writing, so as not to lose the knack, the sequel to his Philosophical and Historical Reflections.
He soon got to know his neighbours and all the inhabitants of the country very well. He was considered to be a quiet, unenterprising man, “with a positive dislike for politics, although loquacious and vain.” It was impossible to find out anything about his past life, for the prudent Baron considered it inadvisable to talk of this subject, but he was always looked upon “as an argumentative man, who wanted to know all that was going on, whether in reference to agriculture, to thrift, or to politics.” In spite of the apparent tranquillity in which he was allowed to remain, d’Auerweck followed with a certain amount of anxiety all the events which were happening not far from him, on the frontier of the Rhine. Troops were continually passing to and fro in this district; the French were close at hand, and their arrival at Offenburg inspired a feeling of vague unrest in him, although he never recognized, to tell the truth, the danger which threatened him. He had taken the precaution to destroy, before coming to Switzerland, his vast collection of papers: all that mass of correspondence which had been accumulating for the last few years, those reports and instructions, all of which constituted a very compromising record. At last, after a residence of some months, to make matters safe, he contrived, thanks to his marriage, to be enrolled as a freeman of the Grand Duchy; for it seemed to him that as a subject of Baden he would be relieved of all further cause of alarm.
But all d’Auerweck’s fears were reawakened by the much-talked-of news of the Duc d’Enghien’s arrest on March 15, 1804, and by the details of how the Prince had been captured openly in the jurisdiction of Baden, at Ettenheim, that is to say, only a short distance from Offenburg. He absented himself for some days from Schutterwald, so the story goes, and took himself to the mountains.
Just at the same time there arrived at the offices of the Ministry of Police in Paris a succession of memoranda, mostly anonymous, referring to Baron d’Auerweck, and to his presence in the neighbourhood of the Rhine.
Some of them came from Lemaître, Reinhard’s former secretary at Hamburg. Many of them, inexact and inaccurate as they were with regard to the details of the alleged facts, agreed on this point, viz. that the individual “was one of those men, who are so powerful for good or bad, that the security of every Government requires complete information as to their resting-places and their doings.” Then followed a medley of gossiping insinuations, the precise import of which it was difficult to discover.
“I shall never forget,” said one, “that, when d’Auerweck left Hamburg two months before the assassination of the French Ministers in order to take up his quarters only three leagues away from Rastadt, he said: ‘I am about to undertake an operation which will make a great sensation, and which will render great service to the cause of the Coalition.’”
“Now supervenes a whole year, during which his doings and his whereabouts are most carefully concealed,” wrote another; “however, I am certain that he is acting and working pertinaciously against the interests of France. I have heard him make this remark: ‘We shall take some time doing it, but at last we shall conquer you.’” A third added: “His tranquillity and his silence are but masks for his activity, and I, for one, could never be persuaded that he has all of a sudden ceased to correspond with Lord Grenville in London, with the Count de Romanzof, with a certain Nicolai in St. Petersburg, with Prince Belmonte, with the Chevalier de Saint-Andre, with Roger de Damas in Italy, with Dumoustier, who is, I believe, a Hohenlohe Prince in Berlin, and directly with the Count de Lille.” Finally, d’Auerweck, according to the same report, “complaisantly displayed a spot in the shape of the fleur-de-lys, inside his fist, declaring that ‘this is a sign of descent; it is a mark of predestination; I of all men am bound to devote myself and assist in the return of the Bourbons!’”
It would be a fatal mistake to believe that these fairy tales, all vague and absurd as they often were, remained lost and forgotten in the despatch-boxes of the Ministry of Police. The region, near as it was to Rastadt, where d’Auerweck was reported to have made his appearance, was a valuable and important indication, which of itself was sufficient to make the man an object for watchful suspicion. The ominous nature of the times must, of course, be remembered. Fouché, who had just been restored to favour, and had been placed for the second time at the head of the Ministry of Police, was anxious to prove his zeal afresh, to please the Emperor and to deserve his confidence, while his mind was still troubled by the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, by the exploits of Georges Cadoudal, and by the discovery of the English Agency at Bordeaux, which were all fitting reasons for attracting the Minister’s attention and for exciting his curiosity. So, when on October 11, 1804, his Excellency decided to make further searching investigations into d’Auerweck’s case, and gave precise orders to the prefects of the frontier departments of the Grand Duchy, it is doubtful whether he was careful to note in his charge the principal reasons for attaching suspicion upon the Baron, viz. those which had to do with the assassination of the plenipotentiaries at Rastadt.
It was some time before the required information could be obtained, and though the first inquiries about d’Auerweck made by Desportes, the prefect of the Upper Rhine, added little in the way of news, they agreed, nevertheless, in certifying that the Baron lived very quietly in the outskirts of Offenburg—