Joseph Paulin died in 1842; his wife survived him twenty years, dying at last in the Rue Croix de Fer at the age of ninety-one. Up to the time of her death she received a small pension from the town. As to Licquet, he lived to one hundred—but without any decoration—in his lodging in the Rue Saint-Lé. The old man's walks in the streets which were so familiar to him, must have been rich in memories. The "Gros-Horloge" under which the tumbrils had passed; the "Vieux-Marché," where so many heads had fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where the graves of his victims grew green; Bicêtre, the old conciergerie, the palace itself, which he could see from his windows,—all these objects must have called up to his mind painful recollections. The certificate of his death, which bears the date February 7, 1855, simply describes him as an ex-advocate.
Querelle, whose denunciation ruined Georges Cadoudal, was set at liberty at the end of a year. Besides his life, Desmarets had promised him the sum of 80,000 francs to pay his debts with, but as they were in no hurry to hand him the money, his creditors lost patience and had him shut up in Sainte-Pelagie. Desmarets at last decided to pay up, and Querelle was sent to Piémont, where he lived on a small pension from the government. In 1814 we find those of Georges' accomplices who had escaped the scaffold—among whom were Hozier and Amand Gaillard,—scattered among the prisons of the kingdom, in the fortresses of Ham, Joux, and Bouillon. Others who had been sent under surveillance forty leagues from Paris and the seacoast, reappeared, ruined by ten years of enforced idleness, threats and annoyances. Vannier the lawyer died in prison at Brest; Bureau de Placène, who was let out of prison at the Restoration, assisted Bruslard in the distribution of the rewards granted by the King to those who had helped on the good cause. Allain, who had been condemned to death for contumacy by the decree of Rouen, gave himself up in 1815. He was immediately set free, and a pension granted him. Seeing which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the 43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived "rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's confidante, she was kept in prison till 1814. Being released on the King's return she immediately took refuge in a convent where she spent the rest of her life.
Mme. de Vaubadon, who lived disguised under the name of Tourville, which had been her mother's, died in misery in a dirty lodging-house at Belleville on January 23, 1848; her body was borne on the following day to the parish cemetery, where the old register proves that no one bought a corner of ground for her where she could rest in peace. M. de Vaubadon had died eight years previously, having pardoned her some years before.
Certain of the inhabitants of Saint-Lô still remember the tall old man, always gloomy and with a pale complexion, who seemed to have only one idea, and who, to the last day of his life, loved and defended the woman to whom he had given his name. As for Foison, the murderer, he was made a lieutenant and received the cross of the Legion of Honour. Caffarelli, to whose lot it fell to present it to him, excused himself on a plea of necessary absence. M. Lance, the Secretary-General for the prefecture, who was obliged to take his place, could not, as he bestowed the decoration, refrain "from letting him observe the disgust he felt for his person, and the shame he experienced at seeing the star of the brave thus profaned." M. Lance was dismissed at the instance of Foison, who, soon afterwards, was made an officer, and despatched to the army in Spain, whither his reputation had preceded him. Tradition assures us that an avenger had reserved for him a death similar to d'Aché's, and that he was found on the road one morning pierced with bullets. Nothing is farther from the truth. Foison became a captain and lived till 1843.
D'Aché's family, which returned to Gournay after Georges Cadoudal's execution, was disturbed afresh at Mme. de Combray's arrest. As we have said before, Licquet had had Jean Baptiste de Caqueray (who had married Louise d'Aché in 1806) brought handcuffed into Rouen, but had scarcely examined him. "Caqueray," he wrote, "is quite innocent; he quarrelled with his father-in-law;" and he dismissed him with this remark: "If only he had known the prey he was allowing to escape!" Up to 1814 Caqueray did not again attract the attention of the police. At the Restoration he was made a captain of gendarmes. His wife Louise d'Aché was in 1815 appointed lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Bourbon, by whom she had in part been brought up, being on her mother's side the niece of the gentle Vicomte de Roquefeuille, who had previously "consoled the Duchess so tenderly for the desertion of her inconstant husband." Louise d'Aché died in 1817, and her sister Alexandrine, who was unmarried, was in her turn summoned to the Princess, and took the title of Comtesse d'Aché. In spite of the Princes' favour, Caqueray remained a captain of gendarmes till he left the service in 1830. It was only then made known that in 1804, at the time of Querelle's disclosures and of the journey undertaken by Savary to Biville, to surprise a fourth landing of conspirators, it was he, Jean-Baptiste de Caqueray, who, warned by a messenger from Georges that "all were compromised," started from Gournay on horseback, reached the farm of La Poterie in twelve hours, crossed three lines of gendarmes, and signalled to the English brig which was tacking along the coast, to stand out to sea. Caqueray immediately remounted his horse, endured the fire of an ambuscade, flung himself into the forest of Eu, and succeeded in reaching Gournay before his absence had been noticed, and just in time to receive a visit from Captain Manginot, who, as we have already related, sent him to the Temple with Mme. d'Aché and Louise.
Caqueray died in 1834, leaving several children quite unprovided for. They were, however, adopted by their grandmother, d'Aché's widow, who survived her daughters and son-in-law. She was small and had never been pretty, but had very distinguished and imposing manners. She is said to have made the following answer to a great judge who, at the time of her arrest, asked her where her husband was: "You doubtless do not know, Monsieur, whom you are addressing." From that time they ceased questioning her. She lived on till 1836. She was never heard to complain, though she and her family had lived in great poverty and known constant anxiety. She had lost her money, and her husband had died at the hand of a treacherous assassin. All her children had gone before her, and in spite of all her misfortunes, and old though she was, she still strove to bring up her grandchildren "to love their lawful King," for whose sake she had now nothing left to sacrifice.
Perhaps in the course of that tragic night when the defeated Napoleon found himself alone in deserted Fontainebleau, the great Emperor's mind may have reverted jealously to those stubborn royalists whom neither their Princes' apathy nor the certainty of never being rewarded could daunt. At that very moment the generals whom he had loaded with titles and wealth were hastening to meet the Bourbons. He had not one friend left among the hundred million people he had governed in the day of his power. His mameluke had quitted him, his valet had fled. And if he thought of Georges guillotined in the Place de la Grève, of Le Chevalier who fell at the wall at Grenelle, of d'Aché stabbed on the road, he must also have thought of the speech ascribed to Cromwell: "Who would do the like for me?"
And perhaps of all his pangs this was the cruellest and most vengeful. His cause must, in its turn, be sanctified by misfortune to gain its fanatics and its martyrs.