So everything seemed to confirm Cormier in his intention. On June 25, 1792, he begged his colleague, M. de Grandchamp, to represent him as President--“for a fortnight;” and, by way of excuse, he pointed out that it was the first time he had been away for four years. We then lose sight of him for some days, and when we next encounter him, he is settled, from the end of July onwards, in Brittany, at Gaël, near Montfort. It would be difficult to account for this sojourn in a remote locality if we did not recollect that the sometime Crown Prosecutor had inherited several estates from his father in that neighbourhood; and where could he have found a safer or more tranquil retreat than in one of these, during that troublous period which followed June 20, when the proclamation of the “Country in Danger” disturbed the whole of France, and drums were beating in all the towns and countrysides--when, in a word, the _Tenth of August_ was at hand? Just before that bloody dawn, there arrived at Madame Cormier’s house an official-looking personage, escorted by a quartermaster of the National Gendarmerie. She had been anticipating something of the kind for so long that she knew at once what her visitors wanted. In reply to her questions, the stranger, who was no other than a Commissary of the Place Vendôme section, displayed a warrant for arrest from the Surveillance Committee of the National Assembly, issued in due form against the President of the Colonial Club. “He had not expected any such visit, and was away from home, at Calais,” answered “the lady his wife;” and that being so, the Commissary, to make up for it, had to request that he might be taken to M. Cormier’s room, and, once there, proceeded to make a thorough search in every corner of it. When he had made a clean sweep of all the papers he found, tied them up in bundles, and deposited them in two band-boxes, he took it into his head to move away the fire-screen. In the grate a heap of blackened paper was still smoking. He had been too late for that, also. Cormier had clearly been happily inspired to get off in time. Although he could not exactly have been accused of conspiring against the public safety, still the mere fact of his position makes it doubtful that, once arrested, he would have escaped the “Septemberers,” who in a few weeks’ time were to commence the chapter of their exploits.