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Updated: June 8, 2025
He was somewhat gloomy, and seemed to care for nothing but to talk with a very faded and wrinkled old woman in a tall goffered cap, who was an object of veneration to everybody. This was Mlle. Querey. All were aware she had been Mme. de Combray's confidante and knew all the Marquise's secrets: and she was often seen talking at great length to Bonnoeil about the past.
Bonnoeil disclosed the fact that his brother-in-law, on being asked by a third person what influences he could bring to bear in order to obtain Mme. Acquet's pardon, had replied that "such steps offered little chance of success, and that from the moment the unhappy woman was condemned, the best way to save her from dying on the scaffold, would be to poison her in prison." A fresh suit was begun.
He left the same day, after having chosen a yellow horse from the stables of the château. He put on top-boots and an overcoat belonging to Bonnoeil, and left by a little door in the wall of the park. Soyer led him as far as the Moulin des Quatre-Vents on the highroad. Lefebre took the Neubourg road so as to avoid Evreux and Louviers.
Doubtless the days passed slowly for this man accustomed to an active life; he and his old friend dreamt of the return of the King, and Bonnoeil, who spent part of the year at Tournebut, read to them a funeral oration of the Duc d'Enghien, a virulent pamphlet that the royalists passed from hand to hand, and of which he had taken a copy.
We find him first of all during the autumn of 1806, at La Bijude, where Mme. de Combray, who had remained at Tournebut had charged Bonnoeil and Mme. Acquet to go and receive him. There was some question of providing him with a messenger familiar with the haunts of the Chouans and the dangers connected with the task. To fulfil this duty Mme.
Bonnoeil, 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 next letter from Bonnoeil to Soyer contained this sentence: "Put the small curtains on the window of the place where I told you to bury the nail...." We can imagine Licquet with his head in his hands trying to solve this enigma. The muslin fichu, the little curtains, the nail was this a cipher decided on in advance between the prisoners?
He was to have gone there again in December, but at the moment when he was preparing to start Bonnoeil suddenly appeared at Mandeville, having come to warn him not to venture there as Mme. de Combray had been accused of a crime and was on the point of being arrested. It was not without vexation that Acquet saw his mother-in-law settling herself at his very door.
Some pretended that d'Aché sent the manifesto to Mme. de Combray, and that it was clandestinely printed in the cellars at Tournebut; others maintain that towards March 15th Bonnoeil returned from Paris, bringing with him the correspondence of the secret royalist committee which was to be sent to the English Cabinet via Mandeville.
They determined to start then, and about July 15, 1805, the Marquise left Tournebut with her son Bonnoeil, in a cabriolet that d'Aché drove, disguised as a postillion.
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