"I went to the coast on the 29th of September," he says, in answer to an interrogatory, "and waited there two nights, without seeing my boat. As the moon was very bright, I withdrew, and returned on the 14th or 15th of the month. I remained till the 24th of the said month. I spent every night in the rocks, but to no purpose; my boat did not come, and by day I went to the Boisé-Lucas'. The same boat, with the same crew, to which Roussel and Quintal belonged, was to come to fetch me. With regard to the precautions taken with Boisé-Lucas the Elder, there were none besides those which I have already enumerated."
The dauntless Armand, landed at a few steps from his paternal fields, as though on the inhospitable coast of Taurida, in vain turned his eyes over the billows, by the light of the moon, in search of the bark which could have saved him. In former days, after I had already left Combourg, with the intention of going to India, I had cast my mournful gaze over the same billows. From the rocks of Saint-Cast where Armand lay, from the cape of the Varde where I had sat, a few leagues of the sea, over which our eyes have wandered in opposite directions, have witnessed the cares and divided the destinies of two men joined by ties of name and blood. It was also in the midst of the same waves that I met Gesril for the last time. Often, in my dreams, I see Gesril and Armand washing the wound in their foreheads in the deep, while, reddened to my very feet, stretches the sea with which we used to play in our childhood[24].
Armand succeeded in embarking in a boat purchased at Saint-Malo, but, driven back by the north-west wind, he was again obliged to put back. At last, on the 6th of January, assisted by a sailor called Jean Brien, he launched a little stranded boat, and got hold of another which was afloat. He thus describes his voyage, which bears an affinity to my star and my adventures, in his examination on the 18th of March:
"From nine o'clock in the evening, when we started, till two o'clock in the morning, the weather favoured us. Judging then that we were not far from the rocks called the 'Mainquiers,' we lay-to on our anchor, intending to wait for daylight; but, the wind having freshened, and fearing that it would grow still stronger, we continued our course. A few minutes later, the sea became very heavy and, our compass having been broken by a wave, we remained uncertain as to the course we were taking. The first land that came into sight on the 7th (it might then be mid-day), was the coast of Normandy, which obliged us to tack about, and we again returned and lay-to near the rocks called 'Écreho,' situated between the coast of Normandy and Jersey. Strong and contrary winds obliged us to remain in that position the whole of the rest of that day and of the next, the 8th. On the morning of the 9th, as soon as it was light, I said to Despagne that it appeared to me that the wind had decreased, seeing that our boat was not working much, and to look which way the wind was blowing. He told me that he no longer saw the rocks near which we had dropped the anchor. I then decided that we were drifting, and that we had lost our anchor. The violence of the storm left us no alternative but to make for the coast. As we saw no land, I did not know at what distance we were from it. It was then that I flung my papers into the sea, having taken the precaution to fasten a stone to them. We then scudded before the wind and made the coast, at about nine o'clock in the morning, at Bretteville-sur-Ay, in Normandy.
"We were received on the coast by the customs officers, who took me out of my boat almost dead; my feet and legs were frozen. We were both lodged with the lieutenant of the brigade of Bretteville. Two days later, Despagne was taken to the prison at Coutances, and I have not seen him since that day. A few days after, I myself was transferred to the gaol at that town; the next day, I was taken by the quarter-master to Saint-Lô, and remained for eight days with the said quarter-master. I appeared once before M. the Prefect of the department, and, on the 26th of January, I left with the captain and quarter-master of the gendarmes to be taken to Paris, where I arrived on the 28th. They took me to the office of M. Desmarets at the ministry of the general police, and from there to the prison of the Grande-Force."
Armand had the wind, the waves and the imperial police against him; Bonaparte was in connivance with the storms. The gods made a very great expenditure of wrath against a paltry existence.
The packet flung into the sea was cast back by it on the beach of Notre-Dame-d'Alloue, near Valognes. The papers contained in this packet served as documents for the conviction: there were thirty-two of them. Quintal, returning to the sands of Brittany with his boat to fetch Armand, had also, through an obstinate fatality, been shipwrecked in Norman waters a few days before my cousin. The crew of Quintal's boat had spoken; the Prefect of Saint-Lô had learnt that M. de Chateaubriand was the leader of the Princes' enterprises. When he heard that a cutter manned with only two men had run ashore, he had no doubt that Armand was one of the two shipwrecked men, for all the fishermen spoke of him as the most fearless man at sea that had ever been known.
Arrest of Armand.
On the 20th of January 1809, the Prefect of the Manche reported Armand's arrest to the general police. His letter commences:
"My conjectures have been completely verified: Chateaubriand is arrested; it was he who landed on the coast at Bretteville and who had taken the name of 'John Fall.'
"Uneasy at finding that, in spite of the very precise orders which I had given, John Fall did not arrive at Saint-Lô, I instructed Quarter-master Mauduit of the gendarmes, a trustworthy and extremely active man, to go to fetch this John Fall, wherever he might be, and bring him before me, in whatever condition he was. He found him at Coutances, at the moment when they were arranging to transfer him to the hospital, to treat him for his legs, which were frozen.
"Fall appeared before me to-day. I had had Lelièvre put in a separate room, from which he could see John Fall arrive without being observed. When Lelièvre saw him come up a flight of steps placed near this apartment, he cried, striking his hands together and changing colour:
"'It's Chateaubriand! However did they catch him?'
"Lelièvre was in no way forewarned. This exclamation was drawn from him by surprise. He asked me afterwards not to say that he had mentioned Chateaubriand's name, because he would be lost.
"I did not let John Fall see that I knew who he was."
Armand, carried to Paris and lodged at the Force, underwent a secret interrogation at the military gaol of the Abbaye. General Hulin, who was now Military Commander of Paris, appointed Bertrand, a captain in the first demi-brigade of veterans, judge-advocate of the military commission instructed, by a decree of the 25th of February, to inquire into Armand's case.