The descent of a French prince on the Norman coast would in d'Aché's opinion, group all these malcontents. Thoroughly persuaded that to persuade one of them to cross the channel it would suffice to tell M. le Comte d'Artois or one of his sons that his presence was desired by the faithful population in the West, he thought of going himself to England with the invitation. Perhaps they would be able to persuade the King to put himself at the head of the movement, and be the first to land on French soil. This was d'Aché's secret conviction, and in the ardour of his credulous enthusiasm he was certain that on the announcement, Napoleon's Empire would crumble of itself, without the necessity of a single blow.
Such was the eternal subject of conversation between Mme. de Combray and her guest, varied by interminable parties of cards of tric-trac. In their feverish idleness, isolated from the rest of the world, ignorant of new ideas and new manners, they shut themselves up with their illusions, which took on the colour of reality. And while the exile studied the part of the coast where, followed by an army of volunteers with white plumes, he would go to receive his Majesty, the old Marquise put the last touches to the apartments long ago prepared for the reception of the King and his suite on their way to Paris. And in order to perpetuate the remembrance of this visit, which would be the most glorious page in the history of Tournebut, she had caused the old part of the château, left unfinished by Marillac, to be restored and ornamented.
In July, 1805, after more than a year passed in this solitude, d'Aché judged that the moment to act had arrived. The Emperor was going to take the field against a new coalition, and the campaign might be unfavourable to him. It only needed a defeat to shake to its foundations the new Empire whose prestige a victorious army alone maintained. It was important to profit by this chance should it arrive. And in order to be within reach of the English cruiser d'Aché had to be near Cotentin; he had many devoted friends in this region and was sure of finding a safe retreat. Mme. de Combray, taking advantage of the fair of Saint-Clair which was held every year in mid-July, near the Château of Donnay, could conduct her guest beyond Falaise without exciting suspicion. They determined to start then, and about July 15, 1805, the Marquise left Tournebut with her son Bonnœil, in a cabriolet that d'Aché drove, disguised as a postillion.
In this equipage, the man without any resource but his courage, and his royalist faith, whose dream was to change the course of the world's events, started on his campaign; and one is obliged to think, in face of this heroic simplicity, of Cervantes' hero, quitting his house one fine morning, and armed with an old shield and lance, encased in antiquated armour and animated by a sublime but foolish faith, going forth to succour the oppressed, and declare war on Giants.
CHAPTER IV
THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHÉ
The demesne of Donnay, situated about three leagues from Falaise on the road to Harcourt, was one of the estates which Acquet de Férolles had usurped, under pretext of saving them from the Public Treasury and of taking over the management of the property of his brother-in-law, Bonnœil, who was an émigré. Now, the latter had for some time returned to the enjoyment of his civil rights, but Acquet had not restored his possessions. This terrible man, acting in the name of his wife, who was a claimant of the inheritance of the late M. de Combray, had instituted a series of lawsuits against his brother-in-law. He proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend upon was a pension of 2,000 francs which the court had granted to her on August 1, 1804, for her maintenance pending a definite decision. She lived alone at the Hôtel de Combray in the Rue du Trepot at Falaise, a very large house composed of two main buildings, one of which was vacant owing to the absence of Timoléon who had settled in Paris. Mme. de Combray had undertaken to assist with her granddaughters' education, and they had been sent off to a school kept by a Mme. du Saussay at Rouen.
Foreseeing that this state of things could not last forever, Acquet, despite Bonnœil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests, chopping the elms into faggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The very castle whose façade but lately reached to the end of the stately avenue, suffered from his devastations. It was now nothing but a ruin with swing-doors and a leaking roof. Here Acquet had reserved a garret for himself, abandoning the rest of the house to the ravages of time and the weather. Shut up in this ruin like a wild beast in his lair, he would not permit the slightest infringement of what he called his rights. Mme. de Combray wished to spend the harvest season of 1803 at the château, where the happiest years of her life had been passed, and where all her children had grown up, but Acquet made the bailiff turn her out, and the Marquise took refuge in the village parsonage, which had been sold at the time of the Revolution as national property, and for which she had supplied half the money, when the Commune bought it back, to restore it to its original purpose. Since no priest had yet been appointed she was able to take up her residence there, to the indignation of her son-in-law, who considered this intrusion as a piece of bravado.