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Within six days after the committal of the crime all the guilty persons were followed and watched with an intelligence which showed the most accurate knowledge of the plans, and of the individuals concerned in them. The immediate arrest, trial, and execution of Rifoel and his accomplices are the proof of this. We repeat, the chancellor knows even more than we do on this subject.

Serious differences now arose between the newly married pair, and the young wife had occasion to know the depraved habits, the political and religious atheism and shall I say the word? the infamy of the man to whom her life had been so fatally united. Bryond, forced to let his wife into the secret of the royalist plots, gave a home in his house to their chief agent, Rifoel du Vissard.

Bryond pushed Rifoel to crime; he instigated the attacks of armed men upon the mail-coaches bearing the moneys of the government, and the levying of a heavy tribute from the purchasers of the National domain; a tax he enforced by means of tortures invented by him which carried terror through five departments.

He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion, with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on the scaffold for his plots against the State.

"You alone can quell a tumult which has broken out, I don't know why, among the leaders. They talk of abandoning the king's cause. I think that devil of a Rifoel is at the bottom of it. Such quarrels are always caused by some mere nonsense. Madame du Gua reproached him, so I hear, for coming to the ball ill-dressed." "That woman must be crazy," cried the marquis, "to try to "

This unexpected refusal was given at a moment when an urgent want of money was felt among the accomplices, if only for the purposes of escape. Rifoel was always clamorous for money. Hiley, Cibot, and Leveille began to suspect the Chaussards. Here comes in a new incident, which calls for the rigor of the law.

The somewhat obscure point of the relations between these two leaders is cleared up by the testimony of numerous witnesses, and also by the judgment of the court which condemned Rifoel. From that time Boislaurier had an understanding with Rifoel, and they acted in concert.

An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel. It was in this district that an interview took place, in April, 1808, between Rifoel and a certain Boislaurier, a leader known by the name of August in the baneful rebellions of the West, who instigated the affair now before the court.

When he met with resistance on the part of his wife and Rifoel, and saw the contempt his proposal inspired in upright minds who were acting only from party spirit, he determined to bring them both under the rigor of the law in the next occasion of their committing a crime.

The young Chevalier de Vissard, better known under his patronymic of Rifoel, was silent before the general of the Catholic armies. "What is all this about, gentlemen?" asked the marquis, examining the faces round him.