The poor woman would never have known this peacemaker but for her husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom. She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero--he was so handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling novelties, loved him from the first day with an "ungovernable passion." She associated herself with his life with an ardour that excluded every other sentiment, and she so wished to stand well with him that, casting aside all prudence, she adopted his adventurous mode of living, mixing with the outcasts who formed the entourage of her lover, and with them frequenting the inns and cafes of Caen. He succeeded in avoiding the surveillance of the police, and secretly undertook journeys to Paris where he said he had friends in the Emperor's immediate circle. He travelled by those roads in Normandy which were known to all the old Chouans, talking to them of the good times when they made war on the Blues, and not hesitating to say that, whenever he wished, he had only to make a sign and an army would spring up around him. He maintained, moreover, a small troop of determined men who carried his messages and formed his staff.