Combray family; France -- History -- Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815
A very few words will suffice to tell the fate of the other actors in
this drama. Licquet was unfortunate; but first of all he asked for the
cross of the Legion of Honour. "I have served the government for twenty
years," he wrote to Real. "I bristle with titles. I am the father of a
family and am looked up to by the authorities. My only ambition is
honour, and I am bold enough to ask for a sign. Will you be kind enough
to obtain it for me?" Did Real not dare to stand sponsor for such a
candidate? Did they think that the cross, given hitherto so
parsimoniously to civilians, was not meant for the police? Licquet was
obliged to wait in patience. In the hope of increasing his claims to the
honour he coveted, he went in quest of new achievements, and had the
good fortune to discover a second attack on a coach, far less
picturesque, as a matter of fact, than the one to which he owed his
fame, but which he undertook to work up like a master, and did it so
well, by dint of disguises, forged letters, surprised confidences, the
invention of imaginary persons, and other melodramatic tricks, that he
succeeded in producing at the Criminal Court at Evreux seven prisoners
against whom the evidence was so well concocted that five at least were
in danger of losing their heads. But when the imperial Procurator
arrived at the place, instead of accepting the work as completed, he
carefully examined the papers referring to the inquiry. Disgusted at the
means used to drag confessions from the accused, and indignant that his
name should have been associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked
for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully
told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of
recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure,
which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent
persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the
Procurator himself generously demanded.
The blow fell all the heavier on Licquet as he was at the time deeply
compromised in the frauds of his friend Branzon, a collector at Rouen,
whose malversations had caused the ruin of Savoye-Rollin. The prefect's
innocence was firmly established, but Branzon, who had already been
imprisoned as a Chouan in the Temple, and whose history must have been a
very varied one, was condemned to twelve years' imprisonment in chains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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