Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Réal had taken the precaution to have an escort of gendarmes for the prisoner whom Georges and his followers might try to rescue. The detachment was commanded by a zealous and intelligent officer, Lieutenant Manginot, assisted by a giant called Pasque, an astute man celebrated for the sureness of his attack. They left Paris at dawn by the Saint-Denis gate and took the road to l'Isle-Adam.
They returned towards Taverny by Ermont, le Plessis-Bouchard and the Château de Boissy. Querelle, who knew that his life was at stake, showed a feverish eagerness which was not shared by Pasque nor Manginot, who were now fully persuaded that the prisoner had only wanted to gain time, or some chance of escape.
Sixty guns were found at the mayor's house, which seemed an excessive number, even for the great sportsman he prided himself on being, and here again all indications tended to convince Manginot that he was on the right track. Mme. Acquet, meanwhile feigned the greatest security.
In twelve days, always accompanied by Querelle, Manginot had ended his quest, and put into the hands of Réal such a mass of depositions that it was possible, as we shall show, to reconstruct the voyage of Georges and his companions to Paris from the sea.
There was something unexplained, and Licquet was not satisfied. His tricks had brought no result. D'Aché was not found; Mme. Acquet had disappeared; her description had in vain been sent to all the brigades. Manginot, in despair of finding her, had renounced the search, and Savoye-Rollin himself was "determined to suspend all action." Such was the situation during the last days of September.
Manginot had unearthed a nest of Chouans, and only when he learned that the description of d'Aché was singularly like that of the mysterious Beaumont who had been seen with Georges at La Poterie, Aumale and Feuquières, did he understand the importance of his discovery.
When the tide was full Horné went down to the beach to watch for the sloop. The password was "Jacques," to which the men in the boat replied "Thomas." Manginot, as may well be imagined, arrested all who in any way had assisted the conspirators, and hurried them off to Paris.
At four o'clock in the morning he arrived at the house of Jean-Baptiste, who, surprised in jumping out of bed, remembered that he had put up some men that his brother-in-law, Quentin-Rigaud, a cultivator at Auteuil, had brought there. Pasque now held four links of the chain, and Manginot started for the country to follow the track of the conspirators to the sea.
At last Manginot, evidently animated by his blunders, took it into his head that Dupont d'Aisy himself might well have kept Pinteville at dinner and excited the peasants in order to secure the retreat of the brigands, and issued a warrant against him to the stupefaction of Caffarelli who thus saw imprisoned all those whose conduct he had praised, and whom he had given as examples of devotion.
While waiting for chance or more treachery to reveal the refuge of Georges Cadoudal, the discovery of the organisers of the plot was most important, and this seemed well-nigh impossible, although Manginot had reason to think that the centre of the conspiracy was near Aumale or Feuquières.
Word Of The Day