Achille, the elder, devoted himself entirely to his father, but the old man was not to enjoy much longer the peace he had at length secured for himself. The loss of almost all his income forced him, moreover, to quit his residence in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart, and to betake himself to a modest pension in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, in which he occupied a single room, in which he kept only a few items from the furniture of his old home--some rose-wood chairs, a writing-table, a desk with a marble top, a _prie-dieu_, and a small wooden desk, “_dit à la Tronchin_.” The rest of his furniture he sold. It was in this humble lodging that he died on April 16, 1805, aged sixty-five. Some months later Mme. Cormier died at the house in Rue Basse-du-Rempart. It is strange to reflect that Lady Atkyns, in the course of her many visits to Paris, should not have ever sought to meet again her old friend. The Emperor’s rule was gaining in strength from day to day. Of those who had played notable parts in the Revolution, some, won over to the new Government, were doing their utmost to merit by their zeal the confidence reposed in them; the others, irreconcilable, but crushed by the remorseless watchfulness of a police force unparalleled in its powers, lived on forgotten, and afraid to take any step that might attract attention to them. This, perhaps, is the explanation of the silence of the various actors in the drama of the Temple, once the Empire had been established. CHAPTER VII THE “LITTLE BARON” Cormier’s departure did not for a single moment interrupt the fiery activity of Baron d’Auerweck, nor his co-operation in the most audacious enterprises of the agents of Princes and of the Princes themselves. He lost, it is true, a mentor whose advice was always worthy of attention, and who had guided him up to the present time with a certain amount of success; but the ingenious fellow was by no means at the end of his resources. The life which he had led for the past five years was one which exactly suited him. A practically never-ending list might be drawn up of acquaintances made in the course of his continual comings and goings, of encounters in this army of emissaries serving the counter-Revolution, and of particularly prosperous seasons. Besides the d’Antraigues, the Fauche-Borels, and the Dutheils, there was a regular army of subordinates, bustling about Europe as though it were a vast anthill.