A note of Bonnœil's informs us of the way this tragic intrigue ended. "Acquet employed every means of seduction to attain his end. The young girl, fearing to remain long unmarried because of the unhappy times, listened to him, in spite of the many reasons for waiting and for refusing the proposals of a man whose name, country and fortune were unknown to them. The mother's advice was unfortunately not heeded, and she found herself obliged to consent to the marriage, the laws of that period giving the daughters full liberty, and authorising them to shake off the salutary parental yoke."
The dates of certain papers complete the discreet periphrases of Bonnœil. The truth is that Acquet "declared his passion" to Mlle. de Combray and as she, a little doubtful though well-disposed to allow herself to be loved, still hesitated, the Chevalier signed a sort of mystic engagement dated January 1, 1796, where, "in sight of the Holy Church and at the pleasure of God," he pledged himself to marry her on demand. She carefully locked up this precious paper, and a little less than ten months later, the 17th October, the municipal agent of Aubevoye, in which is situated the Château of Tournebut, inscribed the birth of a daughter, born to the citizeness Louise-Charlotte de Combray, "wife of the citizen Louis Acquet." Here, then, is the reason that the Marquise "found herself obliged to consent to the marriage," which did not take place until the following year, mention of it not being made in the registry of Rouen until the date 17th June, 1797.
Acquet had thus attained his wish; he had seduced Mlle. de Combray to make the marriage inevitable, and this accomplished, under pretext of preventing their sale, he caused the estates of the Combrays situated at Donnay near Falaise, and sequestrated by the emigration of Bonnœil, to be conveyed to him. Scarcely was this done when he began to pillage the property, turning everything into money, cutting down woods, and sparing neither thickets nor hedges. "The domain of Donnay became a sort of desert in his hands." Stopped in his depredations by a complaint of his two brothers-in-law he tried to attack the will of the Marquis de Combray, pretending that his wife, a minor at the time of her father's death, had been injured in the division of property. This was to declare open war on the family he had entered, and to compel his wife to espouse his cause he beat her unmercifully. A second daughter was born of this unhappy union, and even the children did not escape the brutality of their father. A note on this subject, written by Mme. Acquet, is of heart-breaking eloquence:
"M. Acquet beat the children cruelly every day; he ill-treated me also unceasingly: he often chastised them with sticks, which he always used when he made the children read; they were continually black and blue with the blows they received. He gave me such a severe blow one day that blood gushed from my nose and mouth, and I was unconscious for some moments.... He went to get his pistols to blow out my brains, which he would certainly have done if people had not been present.... He was always armed with a dagger."
In January, 1804, Mme. Acquet resolved to escape from this hell. Profiting by her husband's absence in La Veudée she wrote to him that she refused to live with him longer, and hastened to Falaise to ask a shelter from her brother Timoléon, who had lately returned to France. Timoléon, in order to prevent a scandal, persuaded his sister to return to her husband's house. She took this wise advice, but refused to see M. Acquet, who, returning in haste and finding her barricaded in the château, called the justice of the peace of the canton of Harcourt, aided by his clerk and two gendarmes, to witness that his wife refused to receive him. Having, one fine morning, "found her desk forced and all her papers taken," she returned to Falaise, obtained a judgment authorising her to live with her brother, and lodged a petition for separation.
Things were at this point when the trial of Georges Cadoudal was in progress. Acquet, exasperated at the resistance to his projects, swore that he would have signal vengeance on his wife and all the Combrays. They were, unhappily, to give his hatred too good an opportunity of showing itself.
After passing three years in Rouen, Mme. de Combray returned to Tournebut in the spring of 1796, with her royalist passions and illusions as strong as ever. She had declared war on the Revolution, and believed that victory was assured at no distant period. It is a not uncommon effect of political passion to blind its subjects to the point of believing that their desires and hopes are imminent realities. Mme. de Combray anticipated the return of the King so impatiently that one of her reasons for returning to the château was to prepare apartments for the Princes and their suite in case the debarkation should take place on the coast of Normandy. Once before, in 1792, Gaillon had been designated as a stopping-place for Louis XVI in case he should again make the attempt that had been frustrated at Varennes. The Château de Gaillon was no longer habitable in 1796, but Tournebut, in the opinion of the Marquise, offered the same advantages, being about midway between the coast and Paris. Its isolation also permitted the reception of passing guests without awakening suspicion, while the vast secret rooms where sixty to eighty persons could hide at one time, were well suited for holding secret councils. To make things still safer, Mme. de Combray now acquired a large house, situated about two hundred yards from the walls of Tournebut, and called "Gros-Mesnil" or "Le Petit Château." It was a two-story building with a high slate roof; the court in front was surrounded by huts and offices; a high wall enclosed the property on all sides, and a pathway led from it to one of the doors in the wall surrounding Tournebut.
As soon as she was in possession of the Petit Château, Mme. de Combray had some large secret places constructed in it. For this work she employed a man called Soyer who combined the functions of intendant, maître d'hôtel and valet-de-chambre at Tournebut. Soyer was born at Combray, one of the Marquise's estates in Lower Normandy, and entered her service in 1791, at the age of sixteen, in the capacity of scullion. He had gone with his mistress to Rouen during the Terror, and since the return to Tournebut she had given the administration of the estate into his hands. In this way he had authority over the domestics at the château, who numbered six, and among whom the chambermaid Querey and the gardener Châtel deserve special mention. Each year, about Easter, Mme. de Combray went to Rouen, where under pretext of purchases to make and rents to collect, she remained a month. Only Soyer and Mlle. Querey accompanied her. Besides her patrimonial house in the Rue Saint-Amand, she had retained the quiet house in the Faubourg Bouvreuil which still served as a refuge for the exiles sought by the police of the Directory, and as a depôt for the refractories who were sure of finding supplies there and means of rejoining the royalist army. Tournebut itself, admirably situated between Upper and Lower Normandy, became the refuge for all the partisans whom a particularly bold stroke had brought to the attention of the authorities on either bank of the river, totally separated at this time by the slowness and infrequency of communication, and also by the centralisation of the police which prevented direct intercourse between the different departmental authorities. It was in this way that Mme. de Combray, having become from 1796 to 1804, the chief of the party with the advantage of being known as such only to the party itself, sheltered the most compromised of the chiefs of Norman Chouannerie, those strange heroes whose mad bravery has brought them a legendary fame, and whose names are scarcely to be found, doubtfully spelled, in the accounts of historians.
Among those who sojourned at Tournebut was Charles de Margadel, one of Frotté's officers, who had organised a royalist police even in Paris. Thence he had escaped to deal some blows in the Eure under the orders of Hingant de Saint-Maur, another habitué of Tournebut who was preparing there his astonishing expedition of Pacy-sur-Eure. Besides Margadel and Hingant, Mme. de Combray had oftenest sheltered Armand Gaillard, and his brother Raoul, whose death we have related. Deville, called "Tamerlan"; the brothers Tellier; Le Bienvenu du Buc, one of the officers of Hingant; also another, hidden under the name of Collin, called "Cupidon"; a German bravo named Flierlé, called "Le Marchand," whom we shall meet again, were also her guests, without counting "Sauve-la-Graisse," "Sans-Quartier," "Blondel," "Perce-Pataud"—actors in the drama, without name or history, who were always sure of finding in the "cachettes" of the great château or the Tour de l'Ermitage, refuge and help.