Summoned to La Bijude he presented himself there one morning towards the end of October. D'Aché arrived there the same evening while they were at dinner. They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of their old Chouan comrades. In spite of his decided German accent Flierlé was inexhaustible on this theme. He and d'Aché slept in the same room, and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was decided that Flierlé should be employed as a messenger at a salary of fifty crowns a month. That same night, Lanoë conducted d'Aché two leagues from La Bijude and left him on the road to Arjentan.
Here is a new landmark: on November 26th, Veyrat, the inspector of police, hastily informed Desmarets that d'Aché, whom they had been seeking for two years, had arrived the night before in Paris, getting out of the coach from Rennes in the company of a man named Durand. The latter, leaving his trunk at the office, spent the night at a house in the Rue Montmartre, whence he departed the next morning for Boulogne. As for d'Aché, wrote Veyrat, he had neither box nor parcel, and disappeared as soon as he got out of the carriage. Search was made in all the furnished lodgings and hotels in the neighbourhood, but without result. Desmarets set all his best men to work, but in vain: d'Aché was not to be found.
He was at Tournebut, where he spent a month. It is probable that a pressing need of money was the cause of this journey to Paris and his visit to Mme. de Combray. By this time d'Aché had exhausted his credit at the banker Nourry's. Believing that this source would never be exhausted, he had drawn on it largely. His disappointment was therefore cruel when he heard that his account was definitely closed. He found himself again without money, and by a coincidence which must be mentioned, the diligence from Paris to Rouen was robbed, during his stay at Tournebut, in November, 1806, at the Mill of Monflaines, about a hundred yards from Authevernes, where the preceding attacks had taken place. The booty was not large this time, and when d'Aché again took the road to Mandeville his resources consisted of six hundred francs.
He was obliged to spend the winter in torturing idleness; there is no indication of his movements till February, 1807. The time fixed for the great events was drawing near, and it was important to make them known. He decided on the plan of a manifesto which was to be widely circulated through the whole province, and would not allow any one to assist in drawing it up. This proclamation, written in the name of the princes, stipulated a general amnesty, the retention of those in authority, a reduction of taxation, and the abolition of conscription. Lanoë, summoned to Mandeville, received ten louis and the manuscript of the manifesto, with the order to get it printed as secretly as possible. The crafty Norman promised, slipped the paper into the lining of his coat, and after a fruitless—and probably very feeble—attempt on a printer's apprentice at Falaise, returned it to Flierlé, with many admonitions to be prudent, but only refunded five louis. Flierlé first applied to a bookseller in the Froide Rue at Caen. The latter, as soon as he found out what it contained, refused his assistance.
An incident now occurred, the importance of which it is difficult to discover, but which seems to have been great, to judge from the mystery in which it is shrouded. Whether he had received some urgent communication from England, or whether, in his state of destitution, he had thought of claiming the help of his friends at Tournebut, d'Aché despatched Flierlé to Mme. de Combray, and gave him two letters, advising him to use the greatest discretion. Flierlé set out on horseback from Caen in the morning of March 13th. At dawn next day he arrived at Rouen, and immediately repaired to the house of a Mme. Lambert, a milliner in the Rue de l'Hôpital, to whom one of the letters was addressed. "I gave it to her," he said, "on her staircase, without speaking to her, as I had been told to do, and set out that very morning for Tournebut, where I arrived between two and three o'clock. I gave Mme. de Combray the other letter, which she threw in the fire after having read it."
Flierlé slept at the château. Next day Bonnœil conducted him to Louviers, and there intrusted a packet of letters to him addressed to d'Aché. Both directed their steps to Rouen, and the German fetched from the Rue de l'Hôpital, the milliner's reply, which she gave him herself without saying a word.
He immediately continued his journey, and by March 20th was back at Mandeville, and placed the precious mail in d'Aché's hands. The latter had scarcely read it before he sent David word to get his boat ready, and without losing a moment, the letters which had arrived from Rouen were taken out to sea to the English fleet, to be forwarded to London.
We are still ignorant of the contents of these mysterious despatches, and inquiry on this point is reduced to supposition. Some pretended that d'Aché sent the manifesto to Mme. de Combray, and that it was clandestinely printed in the cellars at Tournebut; others maintain that towards March 15th Bonnœil returned from Paris, bringing with him the correspondence of the secret royalist committee which was to be sent to the English Cabinet via Mandeville. D'Aché certainly attached immense importance to this expedition, which ought, according to him, to make the princes decide on the immediate despatch of funds, and to hasten the preparation for the attack on the island of Tahitou. But days passed and no reply came. In the agony of uncertainty he decided to approach Le Chevalier, whom he only knew by reputation as being a shrewd and resolute man. The meeting took place at Trévières towards the middle of April, 1807. Le Chevalier brought one of his aides-de-camp with him, but d'Aché came alone.
The names of these two men are so little known, they occupy such a very humble place in history, that we can hardly imagine, now that we know how pitifully their dreams miscarried, how without being ridiculous they could fancy that any result whatever could come of their meeting. The surroundings made them consider themselves important: d'Aché was—or thought he was—the mouthpiece of the exiled King; as for Le Chevalier, whether from vainglory or credulity he boasted of an immense popularity with the Chouans, and spoke mysteriously of the royalist committee which, working in Paris, had succeeded, he said, in rallying to the cause men of considerable importance in the entourage of the Emperor himself.
Since he had been Mme. Acquet's adored lover, Le Chevalier's visits to the Café Hervieux had become rarer; his parasites had dispersed, and although he still kept up his house in the Rue Saint-Sauveur at Caen, he spent the greater part of his time either at Falaise or at La Bijude, where his devoted mistress alternately lived. The police of Count Caffarelli, Prefect of Calvados, had ceased keeping an eye on him, and he even received a passport for Paris, whither he went frequently. He always returned more confident than before, and in the little group amongst whom he lived at Falaise—consisting of his cousin, Dusaussay, two Chouan comrades, Beaupaire and Desmontis; a doctor in the Frotté army, Révérend; and the Notary of the Combray family, Maître Febre—he was never tired of talking in confidence about the secret Royalist Committee, and the near approach of the Restoration. The revolution which was to bring it about, was to be a very peaceful one, according to him. Bonaparte, taken prisoner by two of his generals, each at the head of 40,000 men, was to be handed over to the English and replaced by "a regency, the members of which were to be chosen from among the senators who could be trusted." The Comte d'Artois was then to be recalled—or his son, the Duc de Berry—to take possession of the kingdom as Lieutenant-General.