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Updated: June 11, 2025
His grandfather, Jerome Duvillard, son of a petty advocate of Poitou, had come to Paris as a notary's clerk in 1788, when he was eighteen; and very keen, intelligent and hungry as he was, he had gained the family's first three millions at first in trafficking with the emigres' estates when they were confiscated and sold as national property, and later, in contracting for supplies to the imperial army.
Pleased with their comfortable quarters, they jogged on from day to day, and would have done so for years, had they been permitted. But he suddenly dismissed them all, with the exception of the Italian Prelati, and the physician of Poitou. These he retained to aid him to discover the secret of the philosopher's stone by a bolder method.
An inhabitant of Rochelle, at any rate, wrote to inform the queen-mother that a great plot was being hatched amongst certain powerful lords, of La Marche, Saintonge, Angoumois, and perhaps others, to decline doing homage to the new Count of Poitou, and thus to enter into rebellion against the king himself. The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail.
These were all written down, and then the two leaders, with their eight men-at-arms, rode towards the gates of Niort, a white flag being raised on one of the lances. "We have made an excellent haul," Francois said as, while awaiting the answer to their signal, they looked down the list of names. "Among the gentlemen are several connected with some of the most important Catholic families of Poitou.
On the contrary, they see that we do not suffer any of those who have shown a zeal in that cause which we seem to make our own to come freely into any place in which the allies obtain any footing. If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to see what it is they expect. We have had a proposal from the Royalists of Poitou.
Here is the story: "It was on the fifteenth of October, 1854 I shall remember that date as long as I live. "I left Rouen on horseback, followed by my dog Bock, a big Dalmatian hound from Poitou, full-chested and with a heavy jaw, which could retrieve among the bushes like a Pont-Andemer spaniel. "I was carrying my satchel slung across my back and my gun diagonally across my chest.
I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger threatened. I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without passing any one who recognized me.
Once there I led them at a trot along the white, dusty track. We were in the angle formed by the Mable and the Veude, and here, where Poitou slopes towards the sea, the country still retains, with a roughness like unto that of Auvergne, all the freshness of La Marche. Far south was a dreary plain, but around us the land billowed into low hillocks, that stood over long stretches of stunted forest.
"Well, Poitou, does it go better?" he said cheerfully, "or must we try them of the other sex and somewhat younger, as I at first proposed?" He let the door slip back, and the action of a powerful spring shut out Astarte.
I'll do it! An 'if'? We say 'ifs' to fools. Was I a fool to turn the lickshoe of Charles the Bully into the Prince of Talmont? Was I a fool to grope in the mud for a Seneschal of Poitou? Am I a fool now I, who have held the strings of all Europe in my hand for thirty years, and loosed or ravelled them as suited the greatness of France? God be my witness, all has been for the greatness of France!
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