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He found the Marquise wild with anxiety. Truffault's boy had told her of the arrest of the Buquets, and she had not gone to bed, expecting to see the gendarmes appear; her only idea was to fly to Tournebut and hide herself there with her daughter; she begged the lawyer to accompany them, and while excitedly talking, tied a woollen shawl round her head.
She was drawn there by the fact that the son, Victor Chauvel, was one of the gendarmes who had been at Donnay the night before, and she wanted to find out from him if the Buquets had denounced her. She went to the Chauvels' under pretence of getting Captain Manginot's address. The gendarme was at supper.
Whatever the reason, she had only to say the word for Joseph Buquet to give her his house, and the six men took possession next day. The Buquets' mother undertook to feed them for four days; they left her at dusk on the 2d June; Joseph showed them the road and even led them a short way.
They also found the sacks that the Buquets had hidden there after the theft; in the floor of the cellar a hole, "two and a half feet square, and of the same depth had been dug to hold the money;" they had taken the precaution to tear up the flooring above so that the depôt could be watched from there.
On this ground Lefebre found Mme. de Combray most conciliating, and he had neither to employ prayers nor entreaties, to obtain her promise to get the 60,000 francs from the Buquets; "she consented without any difficulty or adverse opinion; she seemed very zealous and pleased at the turn things had taken, and offered herself to take the money to Caen, and lodge it with Nourry, d'Aché's banker."
But the Buquets, with whom the 60,000 francs had been left on the 7th June, obstinately refused to give it up in spite of Mme. Acquet's entreaties; they had removed the money from their garden and hidden it in various places which they jealously kept secret. However, through her influence over Joseph, Mme.
The idea of hiding the treasure here had been abandoned, as we know, in favour of Buquets'; but the discovery was important and Pinteville drew up a report of it. But things went no further. What suspicion could attach to the owners of Donnay? The brigands, it is true, had made use of their house, but there were no grounds for an accusation of complicity in that.
Lefebre led the conversation round to the "treasure," for the money hidden at the Buquets had excited much cupidity.
From Flierlé's partial revelations and the little that had been learned from the Buquets, they inferred that d'Aché was at the head of it, and recommended all the authorities to search well, but quietly. In spite of these exhortations, Caffarelli seemed to lose all interest in the plot, which he had finally analysed as "vast but mad," and unworthy of any further attention on his part.
He came at the appointed hour; but as he was approaching carefully, fearing an ambuscade, he caught sight of Allain hiding behind a hedge, and taking fright made off as fast as his legs could carry him. They had to go back to Caen empty-handed and face the anger of Vannier, who accused his lodger of complicity with the Buquets to make their attempts miscarry.
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