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Abandoned by the count before very long, she had died miserably, leaving a child named Gertrude, who had been rescued by the Sisters of the Convent of Poor Clares, the Mother Superior of which was Mademoiselle de Saint-Savin, the countess's aunt.
Some time after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley commonly called "The Laborer," long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences to give information as to the men who could safely be relied upon.
This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place throughout the departments of the West gathering together the elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter, a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin, arrondissement of Mortagne.
The cases were opened, the bags of money were thrown out; the horses were unharnessed and the silver and gold loaded on their backs. Three thousand francs in copper were rejected; but a sum in other coin of one hundred and three thousand francs was safely carried off on the four horses. The brigands took the road to the hamlet of Menneville, which is close to Saint-Savin.
He wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those bold Chouans.
The head of one of the richest families in France, he had considerably increased the revenues of his great estates by marrying seven months before the night on which this history begins, Jeanne de Saint-Savin, a young lady who, by a not uncommon chance in days when people were killed off like flies, had suddenly become the representative of both branches of the Saint-Savin family.
"And what did Louis XVIII. do?" asked Godefroid. "He restored two hundred thousand francs in money to Madame de la Chanterie, for the estate of Saint-Savin had been sold to pay the costs of the trial.
At that moment the moonlight fell full upon her, and enabled Etienne to note the points of her resemblance to his mother, the late duchess. Like Jeanne de Saint-Savin, Beauvouloir's daughter was slender and delicate; in her, as in the duchess, sadness and suffering conveyed a mysterious charm.
The house of Herouville was discarding its own glory. Incapable of anger the gentle Jeanne de Saint-Savin could only bless and weep, but often she raised her eyes to heaven, asking it to account for this singular doom.
It suffices here to note that this woman left Mortagne to go to Saint-Savin the evening before the crime; that after the crime she met her daughter on the high-road, and they both returned to Mortagne; that on the following day Leveille, informed by Hiley of the success of the plot, goes from Alencon to Mortagne, and there visits the two women; later he persuades them to deposit the sums obtained with such difficulty from the Chaussards and Bourget in a house in Alencon, of which we shall speak presently, that of the Sieur Pannier, merchant.
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