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Updated: May 24, 2025
He had bravely served the cause; he plumed himself on having merited the surname of "toutou of the Princes," and in Mme. de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal to any number of references. Acquet was in reality an adventurer. If we were to take account here of all the evil deeds he is credited with, we should be suspected of wantonly blackening the character of this melodramatic figure.
Chauvel explained that he had walked from Falaise that afternoon, and that in order to get off, he had pretended to his chiefs that private business took him to Bayonne. The false Delaitre immediately handed him Mme. de Combray's two letters which Chauvel read absently. "Let us go down," he said; "the lady is near and awaits us."
Mme. de Combray's house in the Rue des Carmélites had become the headquarters of the defence. Mlle. Querey had come out of prison after several weeks' detention, and was there looking after the little Acquets, who had been kept at the pension Du Saussay in ignorance of what was going on around them: the three children still suffered from the ill-treatment they had received in infancy.
Evidently this tower, planned as were all Mme. de Combray's abodes, was one of the many refuges arranged by the Chouans from the coast of Normandy to Paris and known only to themselves. But why was Mme. Moisson accommodated there without being taken into her hostess's confidence?
In the absence of Lefebre, who could have solved the enigma, and whom Caffarelli had not decided to arrest, there remained one way of discovering Mme. de Combray's secret an odious way, it is true, but one that Licquet, in his bewilderment, did not hesitate to employ. This was to put a spy with her, who would make her speak.
It seemed most probable that the affair of Quesnay and the great plot of which it was an off-shoot, were going to join many others of the same kind, whose originators Fouché's police had despaired of finding, when an unexpected event reawakened Licquet's fervour and suggested to him a new machination. Seclusion, isolation and trouble had in no way softened the Marquise de Combray's harsh nature.
A key was made by this pattern, and when night came the Marquise de Combray's daughter stole down holding her breath and walking noiselessly to the tax collector's office, and vainly tried to open the door.
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