At three o'clock in the afternoon of May 30th, the Emperor and Empress arrived at Rouen. Ducolombier, walking in front of the three little girls, who were escorted by Mlle. Querey, tried to force a passage for them through the streets leading to the imperial residence, but could not get into the house, and was obliged to content himself with handing the petition, drawn up by Chauveau-Legarde, to the King of Westphalia. He hoped the next day to be able to place the children on the Emperor's route as he was on his way to visit some spinning mills; but as soon as he was in the street with the orphans, he learnt that Napoleon had inspected the factories at half past three in the morning, and that his departure was fixed for ten o'clock. Branzon, a revenue collector and friend of Licquet's procured the little Acquets a card from the prefect, by showing which they were allowed to wait at the door of the Emperor's residence. We quote the very words of the letter written the same day by Ducolombier to Bonnœil and the old Marquise:
"Mlle. Querey and the three little girls were permitted to wait at the door of the prefecture where, as you must know, they allow no one. As soon as their Majesties' carriage came out, little Caroline cried out to the Empress. The Emperor lowered the window to take the petition, and handed it to the Empress, as it was meant for her. The Empress bent forward in order to see them...."
This time their confidence was unbounded. The old Marquise was already congratulated on her approaching liberation; but days passed and nothing more was heard of it. They waited patiently for a year, their hopes growing fainter each day, and when it became only too evident that the petition had had no effect, Timoléon ventured to remind the Empress of it, and drew up in his own name a fresh request for his mother's pardon, with no better result than before. A supreme and useless effort was made on the 30th of August, 1813, when Marie Louise was Empress-Queen-Regent. At this time Bonnœil had at length been let out of prison, where he had been unjustly detained since August, 1807. He had not appeared before the court, and consequently was not condemned, but was detained as a "precautionary measure." As his health was much impaired by his stay at the conciergerie, the prefect took it upon himself to have him removed, and placed him at Rouen under the supervision of the police.
For there he could at least keep himself informed of what was going on. If the newspapers gave but little news, he could still collect the rumours of the town. Doubtless he was the first to advise his mother to submit to her fate; and from this very moment the Marquise displayed an astonishing serenity, as if she in fact foresaw the fall of him whom she considered her personal enemy. She had accustomed herself very quickly to life in the prison to which she had been transferred in 1813. The rules were not very strict for those inmates who had a little money to spend; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board and her book of rules, and calmly awaited the long-hoped-for thunderbolt.
It fell at length, and the old Chouan must have flushed with triumph when she heard that Bonaparte was crushed. What a sudden change! In less than a day, the prisoner became again the venerable Marquise de Combray, a victim to her devotion to the royal cause, a heroine, a martyr, a saint; while at the other end of Normandy, Acquet de Férolles, who had at last decided to take in his three children, felt the ground tremble under his feet, and hurriedly made his preparations for flight. In their eagerness to make themselves acceptable to the Combrays, people "who would not have raised a finger to help them when they were overwhelmed with misfortune," now revealed to them things that had hitherto been hidden from them; and thus the Marquise and her sons learned how Senator Pontécoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin," had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Férolles," to hand over d'Aché to assassins. Proscribed royalists emerged on all sides from the holes where they had been burrowing for the last fifteen years. There was a spirit of retaliation in the air. Every one was making up his account and writing out the bill. In this home of the Chouannerie, where hatred ran rife and there were so many bitter desires for revenge, a terrible reaction set in. The short notes, which the Marquise exchanged with her sons and servants during the last few days of her captivity, expressed neither joy at the Princes' return nor happiness at her own restoration to liberty. They might be summed up in these words: "It is our turn now," and the germ of the dark history of the Restoration and the revolutions which followed it is contained in the outpourings of this embittered heart, which nothing save vengeance could henceforth satisfy.
On Sunday, May 1st, 1814, at the hour when Louis XVIII was to enter Saint Ouen, the doors of the prison were opened for the Marquise de Combray, who slept the following night at her house in the Rue des Carmélites. The next day at 1.30 p.m. she set out for Tournebut with Mlle. Querey; her bailiff, Leclerc, came as far as Rouen to fetch her in his trap. All the public conveyances were overcrowded; on the roads leading to Paris there was an uninterrupted stream of vehicles of all sorts, of cavaliers and of foot passengers, all hurrying to see the King's return to his capital. Bonnœil, who was at last delivered from police supervision, had to set out on foot for Tournebut; he walked the distance during the night, and arrived in the morning to find his mother already installed there and making an inspection of the despoiled old château which she had never thought to see again. The astonishing reversions of fate make one think of the success which the opera "La Dame Blanche" had some years later. This charming work sang their own history to these nobles who were still smarting, and recalled to them their ruined past. The abandoned "Château d'Avenel," the "poor Dame Marguerite" spinning in the deserted halls and dreaming of her masters, the mysterious being who watched over the destinies of the noble family, and the amusing revival of those last vestiges of feudal times, the bailiff, the bell in the turret, the gallant paladin, the knight's banner—all these things saddened our grandmothers by arousing the melancholy spectre of the good old times.
At the beginning of August, 1814, Guérin-Bruslart, who had become M. le Chevalier de Bruslard, Field Marshal in the King's army, attracted his Majesty's attention to the survivors of the affair of Quesnay. He took Le Chevalier's son, aged twelve years, to the Tuileries, and the King accorded him a pension and a scholarship at one of the royal colleges. The very same day Louis XVIII signed a royal pardon, which the Court of Rouen ratified a few days later, by which Mme. de Combray's sentence was annulled. On September 5th the Marquise saw her wildest dream realised and was presented to the King—a fact which was mentioned in the Moniteur of the following day.
This signal favour rallied many to the Combrays. Denunciations of Acquet and his friends were heard on all sides. The letters written at this period from Bonnœil to his brother testify to the astonishment they felt at these revelations. They made a fresh discovery every day. "M. Bruslard told me the other day that La Vaubadon wished to have him arrested, but that he took care not to fall into the trap she had set for him." "With regard to Licquet, he knew d'Aché well and had made up to him before the affair with Georges, believing at that time that there would be a change of government." "It is quite certain that it was Senator Pontécoulant who had d'Aché killed; Frotté's death was partly due to him." "With regard to Acquet, M. de Rivoire told Placène that he had been seen in the temple about six years ago, and that every one there considered him a spy and an informer...."
Thus, little by little Mme. de Combray arrived at the conclusion that all her misfortunes had been caused by her enemies' hatred. In 1815 a biographer published a life of the Marquise, which was preceded by a dedication to herself which she had evidently dictated, and which placed her high up in the list of royalist martyrs.
This halo pleased her immensely. She was present at the fêtes given at the Rouen prefecture, where she walked triumphantly—still holding herself very erect and wearing lilies in her hair—through the very halls into which she had once been dragged handcuffed by Savoye-Rollin's gaolers. At dinners where she was an honoured guest she would recount, with astonishing calmness, her impressions of the pillory and the prisons. She sent a confidential agent to Donnay "to obtain news of the Sieur Acquet," who was not at all satisfied and by no means at ease, as we can well imagine. It was said that he had sent for his sister to come and take care of his three children, the eldest of whom was nearly twenty years of age. Acquet pretended to be ill in order to defer his departure from Donnay. He finally quitted Normandy early in the autumn of 1814, taking with him his three daughters, "whom he counted on marrying off in his own home." "He is without house or home," wrote Mme. de Combray, "and possesses nothing but the shame by which he is covered." Acquet de Férolles settled at Saint-Hilaire-de-Tulmont, where he died on April 6th, 1815.