Mme. de Combray, who was at last enlightened as to the kind of interest taken in her by Licquet, and awakened from the illusions that the detective had so cleverly nourished, had been able to communicate directly with her family. Her son Timoléon had never approved of her political actions and since the Revolution had stayed away from Tournebut; but as soon as he heard of their arrest he hurried to Rouen to be near his mother and brother in prison. The letters he exchanged with Bonnœil, as soon as it was permitted, show a strong sense of the situation on the part of both, irreproachable honesty and profound friendship. This family, whom it suited Licquet to represent as consisting of spiteful, dissolute or misguided people, appears in a very different light in this correspondence. The two brothers were full of respect for their mother, and tenderly attached to their sister: unfortunate and guilty as she was, they never reproached her, nor made any allusion to facts well-known and forgiven. They were all leagued against the common enemy, Acquet, whom they considered the cause of all their suffering. This man had returned from the Temple strengthened by the cowardly service he had rendered, and entered Donnay in triumph; he did not try to conceal his joy at all the catastrophes that had overtaken the Combrays, and treated them as vanquished enemies. The family held a council. The advice of Bonnœil and Timoléon, as well as of the Marquise, was to sacrifice everything to save Mme. Acquet. They knew that her husband's denunciations made her the chief culprit, and that the accusation would rest almost entirely on her. They determined to appeal to Chauveau-Lagarde, whom the perilous honour of defending Marie-Antoinette before the Revolutionary tribunal had rendered illustrious. The great advocate undertook the defence of Mme. Acquet and sent a young secretary named Ducolombier, who usually lived with him, to Rouen to study the case—"an intriguer calling himself doctor," wrote Licquet scornfully. Ducolombier stayed in Rouen and set himself to examine the condition of the Combrays' fortune. Mme. de Combray had consented some years back to the sale of a part of her property, and Timoléon, in the hope of averting financial disaster and being of use to his mother by diminishing her responsibility, had succeeded in having a trustee appointed for her.
The matter was brought to Rouen and it was there that, "for the safety of the State," the trial took place that excited all Normandy in advance. Curiosity was greatly aroused by the crime committed by "ladies of the château," and surprising revelations were expected, the examination having lasted more than a year and having brought together an army of witnesses from around Falaise and Tournebut. Mme. de Combray's house in the Rue des Carmélites had become the headquarters of the defence. Mlle. Querey had come out of prison after several weeks' detention, and was there looking after the little Acquets, who had been kept at the pension Du Saussay in ignorance of what was going on around them: the three children still suffered from the ill-treatment they had received in infancy. Timoléon also lived in the Rue des Carmélites when the interests of his family did not require his presence in Falaise or Paris. There, also, lived Ducolombier, who had organised a sort of central office in the house where the lawyers of the other prisoners could come and consult. Mme. de Combray had chosen Maître Gady de la Vigne of Rouen to defend her; Maître Denise had charge of Flierlé's case, and Maître le Bouvier was to speak for Lefebre and Placène.
Chauveau-Lagarde arrived in Rouen on December 1, 1808. He had scarcely done so when he received a long epistle from Acquet de Férolles, in which the unworthy husband tried to dissuade him from undertaking the defence of his wife, and to ruin the little testimony for the defence that Ducolombier had collected. It seems that this scoundrelly proceeding immediately enlightened the eminent advocate as to the preliminaries of the drama, for from this day he proved for the Combray family not only a brilliant advocate, but a friend whose devotion never diminished.
The trial opened on December 15th in the great hall of the Palais. A crowd, chiefly peasants, collected as soon as the doors were opened in the part reserved for the public. A platform had been raised for the twenty-three prisoners, among whom all eyes searched for Mme. Acquet, very pale, indifferent or resigned, and Mme. de Combray, very much animated and with difficulty induced by her counsel to keep silent. Besides the president, Carel, the court was composed of seven judges, of whom three were military; the imperial and special Procurer-General, Chopais-Marivaux, occupied the bench.
From the beginning it was evident that orders had been given to suppress everything that could give political colour to the affair. As neither d'Aché, Le Chevalier, Allain nor Bonnœil was present, nor any of the men who could claim the honour of being treated as conspirators and not as brigands, the judges only had the small fry of the plot before them, and the imperial commissary took care to name the chiefs only with great discretion. He did it by means of epithets, and in a melodramatic tone that caused the worthy people who jostled each other in the hall to shiver with terror.
Never had the gilded panels, which since the time of Louis XII had formed the ceiling of the great hall of the Palais, heard such astonishing eloquence; for three hours the Procurer Chopais-Marivaux piled up his heavy sentences, pretentious to the point of unintelligibility. When, after having recounted the facts, the magistrate came to the flight of Mme. Acquet and her sojourn with the Vanniers and Langelley, and it was necessary without divulging Licquet's proceedings to tell of her arrest, he became altogether incomprehensible. He must have thought himself lucky in not having before him, on the prisoners' bench, a man bold enough to show up the odious subterfuges that had been used in order to entrap the conspirators and obtain their confessions; there is no doubt that such a revelation would have gained for the two guilty women, if not the leniency of the judges, the sympathy at least of the public, who all over the province were awaiting with anxious curiosity the slightest details of the trial. The gazettes had been ordered to ignore it; the Journal de Rouen only spoke of it once to state that, as it lacked space to reproduce the whole trial, it preferred to abstain altogether; and but for a few of Licquet's notes, nothing would be known of the character of the proceedings.
The interrogation of the accused and the examination of the witnesses occupied seven sittings. On Thursday, December 22d, the Procurer-General delivered his charge. The prosecution tried above all to show up the antagonism existing between Mme. de Combray and M. Acquet de Férolles. The latter's denunciations had borne fruit; the Marquise was represented as having tried "to get rid of her son-in-law by poisoning his drink." And the old story of the bottles of wine sent to Abbé Clarisse and of his inopportune death were revived; all the unpleasant rumours that had formerly circulated around Donnay were amplified, made grosser, and elevated to the position of accomplished facts. It was decided that poison "was a weapon familiar to the Marquise of Combray," and as, after having replied satisfactorily to all the first questions asked her, she remained mute on this point, a murmur of disapprobation ran round the audience, to the great joy of Licquet. "The prisoner," he notes, "whose sex and age at first rendered her interesting, has lost to-day every vestige of popularity."
We know nothing of Mme. Acquet's examination, and but little of Chauveau-Lagarde's pleading; a leaf that escaped from his portfolio and was picked up by Mme. de Combray gives a few particulars. This paper has some pencilled notes, and two or three questions written to Mme. Acquet on the prisoners' bench, to which she scrawled a few words in reply. We find there a sketch of the theme which the advocate developed, doubtless to palliate his client's misconduct.
"Mme. Acquet is reproached with her liaisons with Le Chevalier; she can answer—or one can answer for her—that she suffered ill-treatment of all kinds for four years from a man who was her husband only from interest, so much so that he tried to get rid of her.... Fearful at one time of being poisoned, at another of having her brains dashed out,... her suit for separation had brought her in touch with Le Chevalier, whom she had not known until her husband let him loose on her in order to bring about an understanding...."
During the fifteen sittings of the court a restless crowd filled the hall, the courts of the Palais, and the narrow streets leading to it. At eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel, declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions." Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the magistrates. The verdict was immediately pronounced. Capital punishment was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierlé, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles, Fleur d'Épine, Le Héricey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years' imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, called Bornet, Vannier and Bureau-Placène. The others were acquitted, but had to be detained "for the decision of his Excellency, the minister-of-police." The Marquise was, besides, to restore to the treasury the total sum of money taken. Whilst the verdict was being read, the people crowded against the barriers till they could no longer move, eagerly scanning the countenances of the two women. The old Marquise, much agitated, declaimed in a loud voice against the Procurer-General: "Ah! the monster! The scoundrel! How he has treated us!"