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Updated: June 10, 2025
Mme. de Combray had applied to the woman Delaitre for this "safe and intelligent man," and the latter had, at Licquet's instance, offered the services of her husband, an honest royalist, who in reality did not exist, but was to be personated by a man whom Licquet had ready to send in search of the horse as soon as its whereabouts should be determined.
It was a poor room under the roof, lighted by two small casements, the furniture being of the shabbiest. Chauvel came to see her there the following day, and there it was that she learnt of the expected arrival of Captain Delaitre, sent by Mme. de Combray to save her, and secure her the means of going to England. Mme. Acquet manifested neither regret nor joy.
Acquet no longer talked; her excitement of yesterday had given place to a kind of stupor, so that Delaitre, who in the darkness could not see that her great dark eyes were open, thought that she had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
Licquet even cut off some of its hairs and sent them, carefully wrapped up, to Mme. de Combray, implying that they came from the faithful Delaitre, to whom the Marquise had confided the task of disposing of the compromising animal. The same evening the Marquise, completely reassured, wrote the following note to the lawyer: "You see that my commissioner was speedy. I have had certain proof.
She was never tired of praising this worthy fellow, who only existed, as every one knew, in her own imagination; she admitted that she did not know him personally, but had corresponded with him through the medium of the woman Delaitre, who had been placed near her; but she knew that he was the woman's husband, captain of a boat at Saint Valery-en-Caux, and, in addition, a relation of poor Raoul Gaillard, whom the Marquise remembered even in her own troubles.
She was silent for "more than two minutes"; then she said as if she were making a great effort: "One must obey one's mother's orders. Well, Monsieur, I will go with you. Will you not wait till to-morrow evening?" Captain Delaitre at first demurred at the idea of deferring his journey; but at last their departure was fixed for the following day, October 3d, at nightfall. A heated discussion ensued.
Thus it was that on the 1st of October, Licquet, now sure of success, put the false Captain Delaitre in the coach leaving for Caen, having given him as assistants, a nephew of the same name and a servant, both carefully chosen from amongst the wiliest of his assistants.
There was in the Conciergerie at Rouen a woman named Delaitre, who had been there for six years. This woman was employed in the infirmary; she had good enough manners, expressed herself well, and was about the same age as Mme. Acquet. It was easy to believe that, in return for some remission of her sentence, she would act as Licquet's spy.
It is to be regretted that we have no details of this expedition. In what costume did Licquet appear at Caen? What personality did he assume? How did he carry out his manoeuvres between Mme. Acquet's friends, his confederate Delaitre and the Prefect Caffarelli, without arousing any one's suspicion or wounding their susceptibilities?
The woman Delaitre seemed to be identical with the spy whom Licquet had so cleverly utilised. Joseph Paulin died in 1842; his wife survived him twenty years, dying at last in the Rue Croix de Fer at the age of ninety-one. Up to the time of her death she received a small pension from the town. As to Licquet, he lived to one hundred but without any decoration in his lodging in the Rue Saint-Lé.
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