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Updated: June 4, 2025
The task of finding hiding-places in Paris for the conspirators, had been given to Houvel, called Saint-Vincent, whom we have already seen at Saint-Leu. Houvel's real name was Raoul Gaillard. A perfect type of the incorrigible Chouan, he was a fine-looking man of thirty, fresh-complexioned, with white teeth and a ready smile, and dressed in the prevailing fashion.
For the next ten days or so the Prince was engaged in contriving his flight from the gentle Sophie, a second plan which again was spoiled by Sophie's spies. There was something of a fete at Saint-Leu on the 26th, the Prince's saint's day. There was a quarrel between Sophie and the Prince on the morning of the 26th in the latter's bedroom. Sophie had then been back in Saint-Leu for three days.
Louis Napoleon, the Grand-Constable of France, had been appointed Governor of Piedmont by Napoleon; and Hortense, owing to her delicate health, had not been compelled to accompany him, but had been permitted to remain in her little house in Paris, which she could exchange when summer came for her husband's new estate, the castle of Saint-Leu.
At the present moment the young couple had agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the day, and on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during Mass and vespers.
On the evening I speak of there had been a great gathering at Saint-Leu a big dinner, then a drawing- room play, acted by Madame de Feucheres and the Duke's gentlemen. In the audience were many officers of the Royal Guard, and numerous other persons, whose names were known to me from having heard them quoted as being amongst those ardent Conservatives called at that time the "Ultras."
If Sophie, after the election to kingship of Louis-Philippe, found it necessary to be in Paris a great deal to worship at the throne her nephew kept her well informed about the Prince de Conde's activities. The old man, it appeared, had suddenly developed the habit of writing letters. The Prince, then at the chateau of Saint-Leu expressed a desire to remove to Chantilly.
While the white flag floated at the head of a regiment he was found fighting for the royal cause; then, the struggle ended, he retired to England, where he had lived near Louis XVIII., and always at his disposition. Returning to France at the Restoration, he had since resided almost always at Chantilly or at Saint-Leu, without his wife, from whom he had long been separated.
From there, avoiding Beauvais, the son of Leclerc had guided them to the house of Quentin-Rigaud at Auteuil, and on the 29th he had taken them to Massignon, the farmer of Saint-Lubin, who in turn had passed them on, the next day, to his brother Nicolas, charged, as we have seen, to help them cross the Oise and direct them to the wood of La Muette, where Denis Lamotte, the vine-dresser of Saint-Leu, had come to fetch them.
She tried to get him to make over to her in his lifetime those properties which he had left to her in his will, and it is probable enough that she would have forced this request but for the fact that, to raise the legal costs, the property of Saint-Leu would have had to be sold. This was the position of affairs about the middle of August 1830.
He was suspicious, indignant, and calm again by turns. Finally he made his way back into the park of Groslay by a gap in a fence, and slowly walked on to sit down and rest, and meditate at his ease, in a little room under a gazebo, from which the road to Saint-Leu could be seen.
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