"'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."