G. le Notre - The House of the Combrays

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Transcribers note: A number of spelling errors and inconsistencies
of names have been corrected.

THE HOUSE OF THE COMBRAYS

by

G. LE NOTRE

Translated from the French by Mrs. Joseph B. Gilder

New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1902
Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead & Company
First Edition Published October, 1902

Contents

PREFACE
I. THE TREACHERY OF JEAN-PIERRE QUERELLE
II. THE CAPTURE OF GEORGES CADOUDAL
III. THE COMBRAYS
IV. THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHE
V. THE AFFAIR OF QUESNAY
VI. THE YELLOW HORSE
VII. MADAME ACQUET
VIII. PAYING THE PENALTY
IX. THE FATE OF D'ACHE
X. THE CHOUANS SET FREE

PREFACE

AN OLD TOWER

One evening in the winter of 1868 or 1869, my father-in-law, Moisson,
with whom I was chatting after dinner, took up a book that was lying on
the table, open at the page where I had stopped reading, and said:

"Ah! you are reading Mme. de la Chanterie?"

"Yes," I replied. "A fine book; do you know it?"

"Of course! I even know the heroine."

"Mme. de la Chanterie!"

"---- By her real name Mme. de Combray. I lived three months in her
house."

"Rue Chanoinesse?"

"No, not in the Rue Chanoinesse, where she did not live, any more than
she was the saintly woman of Balzac's novel;--but at her Chateau of
Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon!"

"Gracious, Moisson, tell me about it;" and without further solicitation,
Moisson told me the following story:

"My mother was a Brecourt, whose ancestor was a bastard of Gaston
d'Orleans, and she was on this account a royalist, and very proud of her
nobility. The Brecourts, who were fighting people, had never become
rich, and the Revolution ruined them completely. During the Terror my
mother married Moisson, my father, a painter and engraver, a plebeian
but also an ardent royalist, participating in all the plots for the
deliverance of the royal family. This explains the mesalliance. She
hoped, besides, that the monarchy, of whose reestablishment she had no
doubt, would recognise my father's services by ennobling him and
reviving the name of Brecourt, which was now represented only in the
female line. She always called herself Moisson de Brecourt, and bore me
a grudge for using only my father's name.

"In 1804, when I was eight years old, we were living on the island of
Saint-Louis, and I remember very well the excitement in the quarter, and
above all in our house, caused by the arrest of Georges Cadoudal. I can
see my mother anxiously sending our faithful servant for news; my father
came home less and less often; and at last, one night, he woke me up
suddenly, kissed me, kissed my mother hastily, and I can still hear the
noise of the street door closing behind him. We never saw him again!"

"Arrested?"

"No, we should have known that, but probably killed in flight, or dead
of fatigue and want, or drowned in crossing some river--like many other
fugitives, whose names I used to know. He was to have sent us news as
soon as he was in safety. After a month's waiting, my mother's despair
became alarming. She seemed mad, committed the most compromising acts,
spoke aloud and with so little reserve about Bonaparte, that each time
the bell rang, our servant and I expected to see the police.

"A very different kind of visitor appeared one fine morning. He was, he
said, the business man of Mme. de Combray, a worthy woman who lived in
her Chateau of Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon. She was a fervent
royalist, and had heard through common friends of my father's
disappearance, and compassionating our misfortune placed a house near
her own at the disposal of my mother, who would there find the safety
and peace that she needed, after her cruel sorrows. As my mother
hesitated, Mme. de Combray's messenger urged the benefit to my health,
the exercise and the good air indispensable at my age, and finally she
consented. Having obtained all necessary information, my mother, the
servant and I took the boat two days after, at Saint-Germain, and
arrived by sunset the same evening at Roule, near Aubevoye. A gardener
was waiting with a cart for us and our luggage. A few moments later we
entered the court of the chateau.

"Mme. de Combray received us in a large room overlooking the Seine. She
had one of her sons with her, and two intimate friends, who welcomed my
mother with the consideration due to the widow of one who had served the
good cause. Supper was served; I was drooping with sleep, and the only
remembrance I have of this meal is the voice of my mother, passionate
and excitable as ever. Next morning, after breakfast, the gardener
appeared with his cart, to take us to the house we were to occupy; the
road was so steep and rough that my mother preferred to go on foot,
leading her horse by the bridle. We were in a thick wood, climbing all
the time, and surprised at having to go so far and so high to reach the
habitation that had been offered to us near the chateau. We came to a
clearing in the wood, and the gardener cried, 'Here we are!' and pointed
to our dwelling. 'Oh!' cried my mother, 'it is a donjon!' It was an old
round tower, surmounted by a platform and with no opening but the door
and some loop-holes that served as windows.

"The situation itself was not displeasing. A plateau cleared in the
woods, surrounded by large trees with a vista towards the Seine, and a
fine view extending some distance. The gardener had a little hut near
by, and there was a small kitchen-garden for our use. In fact one would
have been easily satisfied with this solitude, after the misfortunes of
the Isle Saint-Louis, if the tower had been less forbidding. To enter it
one had to cross a little moat, over which were thrown two planks, which
served as a bridge. By means of a cord and pulley this could be drawn up
from the inside, against the entrance door, thus making it doubly
secure. 'And this is the drawbridge!' said my mother, mockingly.

"The ground floor consisted of a circular chamber, with a table, chairs,
a sideboard, etc. Opposite the door, in an embrasure of the wall, about
two yards in thickness, a barred window lighted this room, which was to
serve as sitting-room, kitchen and dining-room at the same time; but
lighted it so imperfectly that to see plainly even in the daytime one
had to leave the door open. On one side was the fireplace, and on the
other the wooden staircase that led to the upper floors; under the
staircase was a trap-door firmly closed by a large lock.

"'It is the cellar,' said the gardener, 'but it is dangerous, as it is
full of rubbish. I have a place where you can keep your drink.' 'And our
food?' said the servant.

"The gardener explained that he often went down to the chateau in his
cart and that the cook would have every facility for doing her marketing
at Aubevoye. As for my mother, Mme. de Combray, thinking that the
journey up and down hill would be too much for her, would send a donkey
which would do for her to ride when we went to the chateau in the
afternoon or evening. On the first floor were two rooms separated by a
partition; one for my mother and me, the other for the servant, both
lighted only by loop-holes. It was cold and sinister.

"'This is a prison!' cried my mother.

"The gardener remarked that we should only sleep there; and seeing my
mother about to go up to the next floor, he stopped her, indicating the
dilapidated condition of the stairs. 'This floor is abandoned,' he said;
'the platform above is in a very bad state, and the staircase
impracticable and dangerous. Mme. de Combray begs that you will never go
above the first landing, for fear of an accident.' After which he went
to get our luggage.

"My mother then gave way to her feelings. It was a mockery to lodge us
in this rat-hole. She talked of going straight back to Paris; but our
servant was so happy at having no longer to fear the police; I had found
so much pleasure gathering flowers in the wood and running after
butterflies; my mother herself enjoyed the great calm and silence so
much that the decision was put off till the next day. And the next day
we renounced all idea of going.

"Our life for the next two months was untroubled. We were at the longest
days of the year. Once a week we were invited to supper at the chateau,
and we came home through the woods at night in perfect security.
Sometimes in the afternoon my mother went to visit Mme. de Combray, and
always found her playing at cards or tric-trac with friends staying at
the chateau or passing through, but oftenest with a stout man, her
lawyer. No existence could be more commonplace or peaceful. Although
they talked politics freely (but with more restraint than my mother),
she told me later that she never for one moment suspected that she was
in a nest of conspirators. Once or twice only Mme. de Combray, touched
by the sincerity and ardour of her loyalty, seemed to be on the point of
confiding in her. She even forgot herself so far as to say:--'Oh! if you
were not so hot-headed, one would tell you certain things!'--but as if
already regretting that she had said so much, she stopped abruptly.

"One night, when my mother could not sleep, her attention was attracted
by a dull noise down-stairs, as if some one were shutting a trap-door
clumsily. She lay awake all night uneasily, listening, but in vain. Next
morning we found the room down-stairs in its usual condition; but my
mother would not admit that she had been dreaming, and the same day
spoke to Mme. de Combray, who joked her about it, and sent her to the
gardener. The latter said he had made the noise. Passing the tower he
had imagined that the door was not firmly closed, and had pushed against
it to make sure. The incident did not occur again; but several days
later there was a new, and this time more serious, alarm.

"I had noticed on top of the tower a blackbird's nest, which could
easily be reached from the platform, but, faithful to orders, I had
never gone up there. This time, however, the temptation was too strong.
I watched until my mother and the servant were in our little garden, and
then climbed nimbly up to take the nest. On the landing of the second
floor, curious to get a peep at the uninhabited rooms, I pushed open the
door, and saw distinctly behind the glass door in the partition that
separated the two rooms, a green curtain drawn quickly. In a great
fright I rushed down-stairs head over heels, and ran into the garden,
calling my mother and shouting, 'There is some one up-stairs in the
room!' She did not believe it and scolded me. As I insisted she followed
me up-stairs with the servant. From the landing my mother cried, 'Is any
one there?' Silence. She pushed open the glass door. No one to be
seen--only a folding-bed, unmade. She touched it; it was warm! Some one
had been there, asleep,--dressed, no doubt. Where was he? On the
platform? We went up. No one was there! He had no doubt escaped when I
ran to the garden!

"We went down again quickly and our servant called the gardener. He had
disappeared. We saddled the donkey, and my mother went hurry-scurry to
the chateau. She found the lawyer at the eternal tric-trac with Mme. de
Combray, who frowned at the first word, not even interrupting her game.

"'More dreams! The room is unoccupied! No one sleeps there!'

"'But the curtain!'

"'Well, what of the curtain? Your child made a draught by opening the
door, and the curtain swung.'

"'But the bed, still warm!'

"'The gardener has some cats that must have been lying there, and ran
away when the door was opened, and that's all about it!'

"'And yet--'

"'Well, have you found this ghost?'

"'No.'

"'Well then?' And she shook her dice rather roughly without paying any
more attention to my mother, who after exchanging a curt good-night with
the Marquise, returned to the tower, so little convinced of the presence
of the cats that she took two screw-rings from one of our boxes, fixed
them on to the trap-door, closed them with a padlock, took the key and
said, 'Now we will see if any one comes in that way.' And for greater
security she decided to lift the drawbridge after supper. We all three
took hold of the rope that moved with difficulty on the rusty pulley. It
was hard; we made three attempts. At last it moved, the bridge shook,
lifted, came right up. It was done! And that evening, beside my bed, my
mother said:

"'We will not grow old in her Bastille!'

"Which was true, for eight days later we were awakened in the middle of
the night by a terrible hubbub on the ground floor. From our landing we
heard several voices, swearing and raging under the trap-door which they
were trying to raise, to which the padlock offered but feeble
resistance, for a strong push broke it off and the door opened with a
great noise. My mother and the servant rushed to the bureau, pushed and
dragged it to the door, whilst some men came out of the cellar, walked
to the door, grumbling, opened it, saw the drawbridge up, unfastened the
rope and let it fall down with a loud bang, and then the voices grew
fainter till they disappeared in the wood. But go to sleep after all
that! We stayed there waiting for the dawn, and though all danger was
over, not daring to speak aloud!

"At last the day broke. We moved the bureau, and my mother, brave as
ever, went down first, carrying a candle. The yawning trap-door exposed
the black hole of a cellar, the entrance door was wide open and the
bridge down. We called the gardener, who did not answer, and whose hut
was empty. My mother did not wait till afternoon this time, but jumped
on her donkey and went down to the chateau.

"Mme. de Combray was dressing. She expected my mother and knew her
object in coming so well that without waiting for her to tell her story,
she flew out like most people, who, having no good reason to give,
resort to angry words, and cried as soon as she entered the room:

"'You are mad; mad enough to be shut up! You take my house for a resort
of bandits and counterfeiters! I am sorry enough that I ever brought you
here!'

"'And I that I ever came!'

"'Very well, then--go!'

"'I am going to-morrow. I came to tell you so.'

"'A safe return to you!' On which Mme. de Combray turned her back, and
my mother retraced her steps to the tower in a state of exasperation,
fully determined to take the boat for Paris without further delay.

"Early next morning we made ready. The gardener was at the door with his
cart, coming and going for our luggage, while the servant put the soup
on the table. My mother took only two or three spoonfuls and I did the
same, as I hate soup. The servant alone emptied her plate! We went down
to Roule where the gardener had scarcely left us when the servant was
seized with frightful vomiting. My mother and I were also slightly
nauseated, but the poor girl retained nothing, happily for her, for we
returned to Paris convinced that the gardener, being left alone for a
moment, had thrown some poison into the soup."

"And did nothing happen afterwards?"

"Nothing."

"And you heard nothing more from Tournebut?"

"Nothing, until 1808, when we learned that the mail had been attacked
and robbed near Falaise by a band of armed men commanded by Mme. de
Combray's daughter, Mme. Acquet de Ferolles, disguised as a hussar!
Then, that Mme. Acquet had been arrested as well as her lover (Le
Chevalier), her husband, her mother, her lawyer and servants and those
of Mme. de Combray at Tournebut; and finally that Mme. de Combray had
been condemned to imprisonment and the pillory, Mme. Acquet, her lover,
the lawyer (Lefebre) and several others, to death."

"And the husband?"

"Released; he was a spy."

"Was your mother called as a witness?"

"No, happily, they knew nothing about us. Besides, what would she have
said?"

"Nothing, except that the people who frightened you so much, must surely
have belonged to the band; that they had forced the trap-door, after a
nocturnal expedition, on which they had been pursued as far as a
subterranean entrance, which without doubt led to the cellar."

After we had chatted a while on this subject Moisson wished me
good-night, and I took up Balzac's chef d'oeuvre and resumed my
reading. But I only read a few lines; my imagination was wandering
elsewhere. It was a long distance from Balzac's idealism to the realism
of Moisson, which awakened in me memories of the stories and melodramas
of Ducray-Duminil, of Guilbert de Pixerecourt--"Alexis, ou la Maisonette
dans les Bois," "Victor, ou l'Enfant de la Foret,"--and many others of
the same date and style so much discredited nowadays. And I thought that
what caused the discredit now, accounted for their vogue formerly; that
they had a substratum of truth under a mass of absurdity; that these
stories of brigands in their traditional haunts, forests, caverns and
subterranean passages, charmed by their likelihood the readers of those
times to whom an attack on a coach by highwaymen with blackened faces
was as natural an occurrence as a railway accident is to us, and that in
what seems pure extravaganza to us they only saw a scarcely exaggerated
picture of things that were continually happening under their eyes. In
the reports published by M. Felix Rocquain we can learn the state of
France during the Directory and the early years of the Commune. The
roads, abandoned since 1792, were worn into such deep ruts, that to
avoid them the waggoners made long circuits in ploughed land, and the
post-chaises would slip and sink into the muddy bogs from which it was
impossible to drag them except with oxen. At every step through the
country one came to a deserted hamlet, a roofless house, a burned farm,
a chateau in ruins. Under the indifferent eyes of a police that cared
only for politics, and of gendarmes recruited in such a fashion that a
criminal often recognised an old comrade in the one who arrested him,
bands of vagabonds and scamps of all kinds had been formed; deserters,
refractories, fugitives from the pretended revolutionary army, and
terrorists without employment, "the scum," said Francois de Nantes, "of
the Revolution and the war; 'lanterneurs' of '91, 'guillotineurs' of
'93, 'sabreurs' of the year III, 'assommeurs' of the year IV,
'fusilleurs' of the year V." All this canaille lived only by rapine and
murder, camped in the forests, ruins and deserted quarries like that at
Gueudreville, an underground passage one hundred feet long by thirty
broad, the headquarters of the band of Orgeres, a thoroughly organised
company of bandits--chiefs, subchiefs, storekeepers, spies, couriers,
barbers, surgeons, dressmakers, cooks, preceptors for the "gosses," and
cure!

And this brigandage was rampant everywhere. There was so little safety
in the Midi from Marseilles to Toulon and Toulouse that one could not
travel without an escort. In the Var, the Bouches-du-Rhone, Vaucluse,
from Digne and Draguignan, to Avignon and Aix, one had to pay ransom. A
placard placed along the roads informed the traveller that unless he
paid a hundred francs in advance, he risked being killed. The receipt
given to the driver served as a passport. Theft by violence was so much
the custom that certain villages in the Lower Alps were openly known as
the abode of those who had no other occupation. On the banks of the
Rhone travellers were charitably warned not to put up at certain
solitary inns for fear of not reappearing therefrom. On the Italian
frontier they were the "barbets"; in the North the "garroteurs"; in the
Ardeche the "bande noire"; in the Centre the "Chiffoniers"; in Artois,
Picardie, the Somme, Seine-Inferieure, the Chartrain country, the
Orleanais, Loire-Inferieure, Orne, Sarthe, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine,
etc., and Ile-de-France to the very gates of Paris, but above all in
Calvados, Finistere and La Manche where royalism served as their flag,
the "chauffeurs" and the bands of "Grands Gars" and "Coupe et Tranche,"
which under pretence of being Chouans attacked farms or isolated
dwellings, and inspired such terror that if one of them were arrested
neither witness nor jury could be found to condemn him. Politics
evidently had nothing to do with these exploits; it was a private war.
And the Chouans professed to wage it only against the government. So
long as they limited themselves to fighting the gendarmes or national
guards in bands of five or six hundred, to invading defenceless places
in order to cut down the trees of liberty, burn the municipal papers,
and pillage the coffers of the receivers and school-teachers--(the State
funds having the right to return to their legitimate owner, the King),
they could be distinguished from professional malefactors. But when they
stopped coaches, extorted ransom from travellers and shot constitutional
priests and purchasers of the national property, the distinction became
too subtle. There was no longer any room for it in the year VIII and IX
when, vigorous measures having almost cleared the country of the bands
of "chauffeurs" and other bandits who infested it, the greater number of
those who had escaped being shot or guillotined joined what remained of
the royalist army, last refuge of brigandage.

In such a time Moisson's adventure was not at all extraordinary. We can
only accuse it of being too simple. It was the mildest scene of a huge
melodrama in which he and his mother had played the part of supers. But
slight as was the episode, it had all the attraction of the unknown for
me. Of Tournebut and its owners I knew nothing. Who, in reality, was
this Mme. de Combray, sanctified by Balzac? A fanatic, or an
intriguer?--And her daughter Mme. Acquet? A heroine or a lunatic?--and
the lover? A hero or an adventurer?--And the husband, the lawyer and the
friends of the house? Mme. Acquet more than all piqued my curiosity. The
daughter of a good house disguised as a hussar to stop the mail like
Choppart! This was not at all commonplace! Was she young and pretty?
Moisson knew nothing about it; he had never seen her or her lover or
husband, Mme. de Combray having quarrelled with all of them.

I was most anxious to learn more, but to do that it would be necessary
to consult the report of the trial in the record office at Rouen. I
never had time. I mentioned it to M. Gustave Bord, to Frederic Masson
and M. de la Sicotiere, and thought no more about it even after the
interesting article published in the _Temps_, by M. Ernest Daudet, until
walking one day with Lenotre in the little that is left of old Paris of
the Cite, the house in the Rue Chanoinesse, where Balzac lodged Mme. de
la Chanterie, reminded me of Moisson, whose adventure I narrated to
Lenotre, at that time finishing his "Conspiration de la Rouerie." 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 Chateau of Aubevoye, M. Constantin, having kindly offered to conduct
us.

On a fine autumn morning the train left us at the station that served
the little village of Aubevoye, whose name has twice been heard in the
Courts of Justice, once in the trial of Mme. de Combray and once in that
of Mme. de Jeufosse. Those who have no taste for these sorts of
excursions cannot understand their charm. Whether it be a little
historical question to be solved, an unknown or badly authenticated fact
to be elucidated, this document hunt with its deceptions and surprises
is the most amusing kind of chase, especially in company with a delver
like Lenotre, endowed with an admirable _flair_ that always puts him on
the right track. There was, moreover, a particular attraction in this
old forgotten tower, in which we alone were interested, and in examining
into Moisson's story!

Of the chateau that had been built by the Marechal de Marillac, and
considerably enlarged by Mme. de Combray, nothing, unhappily, remains
but the out-buildings, a terrace overlooking the Seine, the court of
honour turned into a lawn, an avenue of old limes and the ancient fence.
A new building replaced the old one fifty years ago. The little chateau,
"Gros-Mesnil," near the large one has recently been restored.

But the general effect is the same as in 1804. Seeing the great woods
that hug the outer wall so closely, one realises how well they lent
themselves to the mysterious comings and goings, to the secret councils,
to the role destined for it by Mme. de Combray, preparing the finest
room for the arrival of the King or the Comte d'Artois, and in both the
great and little chateau, arranging hiding-places, one of which alone
could accommodate forty armed men.

The tower is still there, far from the chateau, at the summit of a
wooded hill in the centre of a clearing, which commands the river
valley. It is a squat, massive construction, of forbidding aspect, such
as Moisson described, with thick walls, and windows so narrow that they
look more like loopholes. It seems as if it might originally have been
one of the guard-houses or watch-towers erected on the heights from
Nantes to Paris, like the tower of Montjoye whose ditch is recognisable
in the Forest of Marly, or those of Montaigu and Hennemont, whose ruins
were still visible in the last century. Some of these towers were
converted into mills or pigeon-houses. Ours, whose upper story and
pointed roof had been demolished and replaced by a platform at an
uncertain date, was flanked by a wooden mill, burnt before the
Revolution, for it is not to be found in Cassini's chart which shows
all in the region. The tower and its approaches are still known as the
"burnt mill."

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