Combray family; France -- History -- Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815
There was not much information in that for Licquet, and in the hope of
learning something, he excited Mme. Acquet strongly against d'Ache.
According to him d'Ache was the one who first "sold them all"; it was
he who caused Le Chevalier to be arrested, to rid himself of a
troublesome rival after having compromised him; it was to d'Ache alone
that the prisoners owed all their misfortunes. And Licquet found a
painful echo of his insinuations in all Mme. Acquet's letters to her
lover; but he found nothing more. "You know that Delorriere d'Ache is a
knave, a scoundrel; that he is the cause of all your trouble; that he
alone made you act; you did not think of it yourself, and he advised you
badly. He alone deserves the hatred of the government. He is abhorred
and execrated as he deserves to be, and there is no one who would not be
glad to give him up or kill him on the spot. He alone is the cause of
your trouble. Recollect this; do not forget it."
It is not necessary to say that these letters never reached Le
Chevalier, who was secretly confined in the tower of the Temple until
Fouche decided his fate. He was rather an embarrassing prisoner; as he
could not be directly accused of the robbery of Quesnay in which he had
not taken part, and as they feared to draw him into an affair to which
his superb gift of speech, his importance as a Chouan gentleman, his
adventurous past and his eloquent professions of faith might give a
political significance similar to that of Georges Cadoudal's trial,
there remained only the choice of setting him at liberty or trying him
simply as a royalist agent. Now, in 1808 they did not wish to mention
royalists. It was understood that they were an extinct race, and orders
were given to no longer speak of them to the public, which must long
since have forgotten that in very ancient days the Bourbons had reigned
in France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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