As soon as they arrived at the inn Allain and his men, dropping with fatigue, asked for breakfast and went at once to the room prepared for them. It was half past four in the morning; they lay down on the straw and did not move all day except for meals. The night and all next day passed in the same manner. On Thursday June 4th they put some bread, bacon and jugs of cider in their wallets and left about nine in the evening. On Friday Allain appeared at the inn of Aubigny alone; he ordered the servant to take some food to the place where the Caen and Harcourt roads met. Two men were waiting there, who took the food and went off in haste. Allain went to bed about two in the morning; about midday on Saturday as he was sitting down to table a carriage stopped at the inn door; Lefebre and Mme. Acquet got out. They brought seven guns which were carried up to the loft. They talked; Mme. Acquet took some lemons from a little basket, and cut them into a bowl filled with white wine and brandy, and she and Lefebre drank while consulting together. The heat was intolerable and all three were overcome. Mme. Acquet had to be helped to her carriage and Lefebre undertook to conduct her to Falaise. Allain, left alone at Aubigny, ordered supper "for six or seven persons." He was attending to its preparation when a horseman appeared and asked to speak with him. It was Dusaussay who brought news. He had come straight from Argentan where he had seen the coach, laden with chests of silver, enter the yard of the inn of Point-de-France; he described the waggon, the harness and the driver, then remounted and rode rapidly away. Just then the entire band reappeared, led by Flierlé. Arms were distributed, and the men stood round the table eating hastily. They filled their wallets with bread and cold meat and left at night. Allain and Flierlé accompanied them and returned to the inn after two hours' absence. They did not sleep; they were heard pacing heavily up and down the loft until daylight. On Sunday, June 7, Allain paid the reckoning, bought a short axe and an old gun from the innkeeper, making eight guns in all at the disposal of the band. At seven in the morning he left with Flierlé, and three leagues from there, arrived at the wood of Quesnay where his men had passed the night.
The waggon destined for the transportation of the funds had been loaded on the 5th at Alençon, in the yard of the house of M. Decrès, receiver-general of the Orne, with five heavy chests containing 33,489 francs, 92 centimes. On the 6th, the carrier, Jean Gousset, employed by the manager of stage coaches at Alençon, had harnessed three horses to it, and escorted by two gendarmes had taken the road to Argentan, where he arrived at five in the evening. He stopped at Point-de-France, where he had to take a sixth chest containing 33,000 francs, which was delivered in the evening by the agents of M. Larroc, receiver of finances. The carriage, carefully covered, remained in the inn yard during the night. Gousset, who had been drinking, went to and fro "talking to every one of his charge"; he even called a traveller, M. Lapeyrière, and winking at the chest that was being hoisted on the waggon, said: "If we each had ten times as much our fortunes would be made." He harnessed up at four o'clock on Sunday, the 7th. He had been given a fourth horse, and three gendarmes accompanied him. They made the five leagues between Argentan and Falaise rather slowly, arriving about half past ten. Gousset stopped with Bertaine at the "Cheval Noir," where the gendarmes left him; he dined there, and as it was very hot, rested till three in the afternoon, during which time the waggon stayed in front of the inn unguarded. It was noticed that the horses were harnessed three hours before starting, and the conclusion was drawn that Gousset did not want to arrive before night at Langannerie, where he would sleep. In fact, he took his time. At a quarter past three he started, without escort, as all the men of the brigade of Falaise were employed in the recruiting that took place that day. As he left the village he chanced to meet Vinchon, gendarme of the brigade of Langannerie, who was returning home on foot with his nephew, a young boy of seventeen, named Antoine Morin. They engaged in conversation with the carrier, who walked on the left of the waggon, and went with him. These chance companions were in no hurry, and Gousset did not appear to be in any haste to arrive. At the last houses of the suburbs he offered some cider; after some hundred yards the gendarme returned the compliment and they stopped at the "Sauvage." A league further, another stop was made at the "Vieille Cave." Gousset then proposed a game of skittles, which the gendarme and Morin accepted. It was nearly seven in the evening when they passed Potigny. The evening was magnificent and the sun still high on the horizon; as they knew they would not see another inn until the next stage was reached, they made a fourth stop there. At last Gousset and his companions started again; they could now reach Langannerie in an hour, where they would stop for the night.
The evening before, Mme. Acquet de Férolles, returning to Falaise with Lefebre, had gone to bed more sick with fatigue than drink; however, she had returned to Donnay at dawn in the fear that her absence might awaken suspicion. This Sunday, the 7th June, was indeed the Fête-Dieu, and she must decorate the wayside altars as she did each year.
Lanoë, who had arrived the evening before from his farm at Glatigny, worked all the morning hanging up draperies, and covering the walls with green branches. Mme. Acquet directed the arrangements for the procession with feverish excitement, filling baskets with rose leaves, grouping children, placing garlands. Doubtless her thoughts flew from this flowery fête to the wood yonder, where at this minute the men whom she had incited waited under the trees, gun in hand. Perhaps she felt a perverse pleasure in the contrast between the hymns sung among the hedges and the criminal anxiety that wrung her. Did she not confess later that in the confusion of her mind she had not feared to call on God for the success of "her enterprise"?
When, about five o'clock, the procession was at an end, Mme. Acquet went through the rose-strewn streets to find her confidante, Rosalie Dupont. Such was her impatience that she soon left this girl, irresistibly drawn to the road where her own fate and that of her lover were being decided. Lanoë, who was returning to Glatigny in the evening, was surprised to meet the châtelaine of La Bijude in a little wood near Clair-Tizon. She was scarcely a league from the place where the men were hidden. From her secluded spot she could, with beating heart, motionless and mute with anguish, hear the noise of shooting, which rung out clear in the silence of the summer evening. It was exactly a quarter to eight.
The waggon had, indeed, left Potigny at seven o'clock. A little way from the village, the road, which had been quite straight for six leagues, descended a low hill at the foot of which is the wood of Quesnay, a low thicket of hazel, topped by a few oaks. Allain had posted his men along the road under the branches; on the edge of the wood towards Falaise stood Flierlé, Le Héricey, and Fleur d'Épine. Allain himself was with Harel and Cœur-le-Roi, at the end nearest Langannerie. Grand-Charles and Le Lorault were placed in the middle of the wood at equal distances from these two groups.
The eight men had waited since midday for the appearance of the treasure. They began to lose patience and spoke of returning to Aubigny for supper when they heard the rumbling of the waggon descending the hill. It came down rapidly, Gousset not having troubled to put on the brake. They could hear him shouting to the horses. Walking on the left of the waggon he drove them by means of a long rope; his little dog trotted beside him. Vinchon and Morin were, for the moment, left behind by the increased speed of the waggon. The men at the first and second posts allowed it to pass without appearing; it was now between the two thickets through which the road ran; in a few minutes it attained the edge of the wood near Langannerie, when suddenly, Gousset saw a man in a long greatcoat and top-boots in the middle of the road, with his gun pointed at him; it was Allain.