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Updated: June 22, 2025
"I shall go to your mother's to await the King's passing, if I obtain my liberty before his arrival, and I shall have to go to Tournebut in order to have everything repaired and made ready if I am to enjoy this favour. You will write, and wait impatiently." The most heartrending of the letters despatched by the duped old royalist in her joy, is the one destined for the King himself.
He had gone with his mistress to Rouen during the Terror, and since the return to Tournebut she had given the administration of the estate into his hands. In this way he had authority over the domestics at the château, who numbered six, and among whom the chambermaid Querey and the gardener Châtel deserve special mention. Only Soyer and Mlle. Querey accompanied her.
Its isolation also permitted the reception of passing guests without awakening suspicion, while the vast secret rooms where sixty to eighty persons could hide at one time, were well suited for holding secret councils. To make things still safer, Mme. de Combray now acquired a large house, situated about two hundred yards from the walls of Tournebut, and called "Gros-Mesnil" or "Le Petit Château."
At the period of our story there existed in the department of the Eure, on the left bank of the Seine, beyond Gaillon, a large old manor-house, backed by the hill that extended as far as Andelys; it was called the Château de Tournebut.
He let Mme. de Combray hear that Lefebre had fainted during an examination, and was not in a condition to write. But she did not slacken her correspondence, and wrote several letters daily to the lawyer, which greatly increased Licquet's perplexity: "Tell me what has become of my yellow horse. The police are still at Tournebut; now if they hear about the horse you can guess the rest.
Mme. de Combray feared no such dangers, and considered that "no one would be astonished to see 50,000 or 60,000 francs at her disposal." But she approved less of some other points in the affair, not that she was astonished to find her daughter compromised in such an adventure, for how many similar ones had she not helped to prepare in her Château of Tournebut?
This did not prevent Bonnoeil's writing to him the next day, Licquet, as may be imagined, not having informed the prisoners of his arrest. Destroy it all. If you are asked how long it is since M. Delorières was at Tournebut, say he has not been there for nearly two years. Tell this to Collin, to Catin, and to the yard girl...."
On examination it proved to be nothing of the sort, but that all these different pieces of silver bore the arms of branches of the families of Brunelle and Combray; but even though he was obliged to withdraw his first supposition, Licquet was firm in attributing to the owners of Tournebut all the misdeeds that had been committed in the region since the Directory.
That was sufficient to give him the idea of studying the records of the affair of 1807, which no one had consulted before him. A short time after he told me that the tower of Tournebut was still in existence, and that he was anxious for us to visit it, the son-in-law of the owner of the Château of Aubevoye, M. Constantin, having kindly offered to conduct us.
In 1804 Tournebut was inhabited by the Marquise de Combray, born Geneviève de Brunelles, daughter of a President of the Cour des Comptes of Normandy. Her husband, Jean-Louis-Armand-Emmanuel Hélie de Combray, had died in 1784, leaving her with two sons and two daughters, and a great deal of property in the environs of Falaise, in the parishes of Donnay, Combray, Bonnoeil and other places.
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