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Updated: June 12, 2025
At the beginning of August he quitted Donnay, and Mme. de Combray accompanied him as far as the country château of a neighbour, M. Descroisy, where he passed one night. At break of day he set out on horseback in the direction of Bayeux, Mme. de Combray alone knowing where he went. In this neighbourhood d'Aché had the choice of several places of refuge.
Since no priest had yet been appointed she was able to take up her residence there, to the indignation of her son-in-law, who considered this intrusion as a piece of bravado. Two years later Mme. de Combray had still no other shelter at Donnay, and it was to this parsonage that she brought d'Aché. They arrived there on the evening of July 17th.
Dressed as a beggar, she took the road to Donnay where formerly she had ruled as sovereign mistress; she saw again the long avenues at the end of which the façade of the château, imposing still despite its decay, commanded a view of the three terraces of the park; she walked along by the walls to reach the Buquets' cottage where Joseph, who was hiding in the neighbouring woods, occasionally returned to watch over his treasure.
M. de Revoire, an old habitué of the prison, who spent the whole of the Imperial period in captivity told the Combray family after the Restoration, that all the prisoners considered Acquet "as a spy, an informer, the whole time he was in the Temple." After a week's imprisonment and three weeks' surveillance in Paris, he was set at liberty and returned to Donnay.
They were all leagued against the common enemy, Acquet, whom they considered the cause of all their suffering. This man had returned from the Temple strengthened by the cowardly service he had rendered, and entered Donnay in triumph; he did not try to conceal his joy at all the catastrophes that had overtaken the Combrays, and treated them as vanquished enemies. The family held a council.
Seeing which, Joseph Buquet, who was in the same predicament, presented himself, and being acquitted immediately, returned to Donnay, dug up the 43,000 francs remaining over from the sum stolen in 1807, and lived "rich and despised." As to the girl Dupont, who had been Mme. Acquet's confidante, she was kept in prison till 1814.
Acquet was to go to Donnay again and try to soften the peasant; if he refused to show where the money was hidden, Allain was to spring on him and strangle him. They set out from Caen one morning, about the 25th of September. Mme. Acquet had arranged to meet Joseph at the house of a farmer named Halbout, which was situated at some distance from the village of Donnay.
He crowded his café by letting poets whom nobody had heard of and whose destiny some of them, Maurice Donnay for one as staid Academicians nobody could have foreseen, try their verses for the first time in public; by giving the same splendid opportunity to musicians as obscure then, whatever heights at least two Charpentier and Debussy were afterwards to reach; and by allowing the artist, while the poet was the interpreter in beautiful words and the musician in beautiful sound, to show his wonderful little dramas in black-and-white, the Ombres Chinoises that were the crowning glory of the night's performance.
M. Caffarelli commiserated the poor man heartily, charged him to take the waggon and smashed chests back to Caen, then, after having warmly congratulated M. Dupont d'Aisy on his fine conduct, he returned home. After the scuffle at Aisy, Allain and his companions had marched in haste to Donnay, but missed their way.
They had scarcely arrived when Mme. de Combray ordered Lanoë to get a carriage at Donnay and prepare for a journey of several days. Lanoë objected a little, said it was harvest time, and that he had important work to finish, but all that mattered little to the Marquise, who was firm and expected to be obeyed. Mme.
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