Réal put a man on his track who for ten years had been the closest confidant of the secrets of the police, and had conducted their most delicate affairs. This was Inspector Pasque. With Commissary Beffara, he set off on the search. Licquet, one of the first to be informed of Le Chevalier's escape, immediately showed Mme. Acquet the letter announcing it, taking care to represent it, confidentially, as his own work. He received in return a copious confession from his grateful prisoner. This time she emptied all the corners of her memory, returning to facts already revealed, adding details, telling of all d'Aché's comings and goings, his frequent journeys to England, and of the manner in which David l'Intrépide crossed the channel. Licquet tried more than all to awaken her memories of Le Chevalier's relations with Parisian society. She knew that several official personages were in the "plot," but unfortunately could not recollect their names, "although she had heard them mentioned, notably by Lefebre, with whom Le Chevalier corresponded on this subject." However, as the detective persisted she pronounced these words, which Licquet eagerly noted:
"One of these personages is in the Senate; M. Lefebre knows him. Another was in office during the Terror, and can be recognised by the following indications: he frequently sees Mme. Ménard, sister of the widow, Mme. Flahaut, who has married M. de ——, now ambassador to Holland, it is believed. This lady lives sometimes at Falaise and sometimes in Paris, where she is at present. This individual is small, dark and slightly humped; he has great intellect, and possesses the talent for intrigue in a high degree. The other personages are rich. The declarant cannot state their number. Le Chevalier informed her that affairs were going well in Paris, that they were awaiting news of the Prince's arrival to declare for him."
Licquet compelled Mme. Acquet to repeat these important declarations before the prefect, and on the 23d of December, she signed them in Savoye-Rollin's office. The same evening Licquet tried to put names to all these anonymous persons. With the prisoner by his side and the imperial almanac in his hand, he went over the list of senators, great dignitaries and notabilities of the army and the administration, but without success. "The names that were pronounced before her," he wrote to Réal, "are effaced from her memory; perhaps Lefebre will tell us who they are."
The lawyer, in fact, since he saw things becoming blacker, had been very loquacious with Licquet. He cried with fear when in the prefect's presence, and promised to tell all he knew, begging them to have pity on "the unfortunate father of a family." He spoke so plainly, this time, that Licquet himself was astounded. The lawyer had it indeed from Le Chevalier, that the day the Duc de Berry landed in France, the Emperor would be arrested by two officers "who were always near his person, and who each of them would count on an army of forty thousand men!" And when Lefebre was brought before the prefect to repeat this accusation, and gave the general's names, Savoye-Rollin was so petrified with astonishment that he dared not insert them in the official report of the inquiry; furthermore, he refused to write them with his own hand, and compelled the lawyer himself to put on paper this blasphemy before which official pens recoiled.
"Lefebre insists," wrote Savoye-Rollin to Réal, "that Le Chevalier would never tell him the names of all the conspirators. Lefebre has, however, given two names, one of which is so important and seems so improbable, that I cannot even admit a suspicion of it. Out of respect for the august alliance which he has contracted, I have not put his name in the report of the inquiry; it is added to my letter, in a declaration written and signed by the prisoner." And in his letter there is a note containing these lines over Lefebre's signature: "I declare to Monsieur le Prefect de la Seine Inférieur that the two generals whom I did not name in my interrogation to-day and who were pointed out to me by M. le Chevalier, are the Generals Bernadotte and Masséna."
Bernadotte and Masséna! At the ministry of police they pretended to laugh heartily at this foolish notion; but perhaps some who knew the "true inwardness" of certain old rivalries—Fouché above all—thought it less absurd and impossible than they admitted it to be. This fiend of a man, with his way of searching to the bottom of his prisoners' consciences, was just the one to find out that in France Bonaparte was the sole partisan of the Empire. In any case these were not ideas to be circulated freely, and from that day Réal promised himself that if Pasque and Beffara succeeded in finding Le Chevalier, he should never divulge them before any tribunal.
The two agents had established a system of surveillance on all the roads of Normandy, but without much hope: Le Chevalier, who had escaped so many spies and got out of so many snares during the past eight years, was considered to bear, as it were, a charmed life. He was taken, however, and as his escape had seemed to be the result of the detective's schemes, so in the manner in which he again fell into the hands of Réal's agents was Licquet's handiwork again recognised. The latter, indeed, was the only one who knew enough to make the capture possible. In his long conversation with Mme. Acquet, he had learned that in leaving Caen in the preceding May, Le Chevalier had confided his five-year-old son to his servant Marie Humon, with orders to take him to his friend the Sieur Guilbot at Evreux. At the beginning of August the child had been taken to Paris and placed with Mme. Thiboust, Le Chevalier's sister-in-law.
In what way was the son used to capture the father? We have never been able thoroughly to clear up this mystery. The accounts that have been given of this great detective feat are evidently fantastic, and remain inexplicable without the intervention of a comrade betraying Le Chevalier after having given him unequivocal proofs of devotion. Thus, it has been said that Réal, "having recourse to extraordinary means," could have caused the arrest of "the sister-in-law and daughter of the fugitive, and their incarceration in the prisons of Caen with filthy and disreputable women." Le Chevalier, informed of their incarceration—by whom?—would have offered himself in place of the two women, and the police would have accepted the bargain.
Told in this manner, the story does not at all agree with the documents we have been able to collect. Le Chevalier had no daughter, and no trace is to be found of the transference of Mme. Thiboust to Caen. The other version is no more admissible. Scarcely out of the Temple, we are assured, the outlaw would not have been able to resist the desire to see his son, and would have sent to beg Mme. Thiboust—by whom again?—to bring him to the Passage des Panoramas. Naturally the police would follow the woman and child, and Le Chevalier be taken in their arms. It is difficult to imagine so sharp a man setting such a childish trap for himself, even if his adventurous life had not accustomed him for a long time to live apart from his family.
The truth is certainly far otherwise. It is necessary, first of all, to know who let Le Chevalier out of prison. Mme. de Noël, one of his relations, said later, that "they had offered employment to the prisoner if he would denounce his accomplice," which offer he haughtily refused. As his presence was embarrassing, his gaolers were ordered "to let him go out on parole in the hope that he would not come back," and could then be condemned for escaping. Le Chevalier profited by the favour, but returned at the appointed time. This toleration was not at all surprising in this strange prison, the theatre of so many adventures that will always remain mysteries. Desmarets tells how the concierge Boniface allowed an important prisoner, Sir Sidney Smith, to leave the Temple, "to walk, take baths, dine in town, and even go out hunting;" the commodore never failed to return to sleep in his cell, and "took back his parole in reentering."