CHAPTER III

La Duchesse de Berry returns to Nantes disguised as a peasant woman--The basket of apples--The house Duguigny--Madame in her hiding-place--Simon Deutz--His antecedents--His mission--He enters into treaty with MM. Thiers and Montalivet--He starts for la Vendée

Meantime, they learnt in Paris of the arrest of the Duchesse de Berry, at Nantes. It would have needed less news than this to divert the public indignation raised against me on account of the unlucky _Fils de l'Émigré._ We left Madame la duchesse de Berry with M. Berryer in a poor Vendéen cottage, where she lived under the name of M. Charles; we saw her giving way to the entreaties of the famous barrister, and promising to quit France; she was to rejoin M. Berryer at noon the same day at a given spot, to return with him to Nantes, to cross through France by coach--thanks to the passport he brought for her--and to return to Italy by the Mont Cenis route. M. Berryer had waited for an hour at the arranged meeting-place, when he received a dispatch from Madame, who told him that too many interests were bound up with hers for her to abandon them. She therefore remained in la Vendée; only, the taking up of arms, fixed for 24 May, was deferred till the 3rd or 4th of June. We shall not be suspected of any intention of giving the history of the Civil War of 1832. The object of these Memoirs is not to relate official matters, but details which certain advantages of position or of friendship have put us in the way of knowing.

Now, who captured the Duchesse de Berry? General Dermoncourt, my old friend. Who was his secretary? The very same Rusconi who has been my secretary for twenty-one years, and who received from the hands of M. de Ménars the famous historical hat that was momentarily deflected from its habitual use by Madame la duchesse de Berry.

We will take up our narrative again at the moment when Madame, driven on all sides by events at Maisdon, at la Caraterie, Chêne, la Pénissière and at Riaillé, resolved to return to Nantes. This plan, which at first seemed foolhardy, was, however, the one which offered most security. When at Nantes, the Duchesse de Berry would find safe shelter; she therefore only had to find a means of getting there without discovery. She cut the knot herself by announcing that she would return to Nantes on foot clad as a peasant and followed only by Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec. They had scarcely three leagues to walk. M. de Ménars and M. de Bourmont left after them, and entered Nantes undisguised although they were very well known; they crossed the Loire in a boat opposite the meadow des Mauves.[1] At the end of a quarter of an hour's walk, the huge shoes and cotton stockings to which the duchess was unused hurt her feet. She tried, however, to walk on: but, deeming that if she kept to her footwear, she could not continue her journey, she sat down on the bank of a ditch, took off her shoes and stockings, stuffed them into her great pockets and began to walk barefoot. Soon, however, noticing from the peasant women who passed by that the fineness of her skin and the aristocratic whiteness of her legs might betray her, she went to one of the low hills by the roadside and, with some of the dark-coloured earth, she made her legs brown with it and pursued her journey. There were still two good leagues to go. It must, indeed, have been a wonderful subject for philosophic thought for those who accompanied her, this spectacle of the woman who, two years before, had her position as queen mother at the Tuileries and possessed Chambord and Bagatelle, drove out in her carriages with six horses, escorted by bodyguards brilliant in gold and silver; who went to spectacles she had commanded, preceded by runners shaking torches; who filled the hall with her presence alone, and, when she returned to the château and regained her splendid chambers, walked over doubly thick Persian and Turkey carpets for fear the parquetted floor should hurt her childish feet;--to-day, this same woman, still smirched with the powder of battlefields, surrounded by dangers, outlawed, having no escort or courtiers beside one young girl, went to seek a shelter which might, perhaps, close its doors to her, clothed in the dress of a peasant woman, walking barefooted on the sharp sand and angular pebbles of the road. It was a singular thing that, at this date, nearly every country had its kings running barefoot along its highways!

However, the journey was made, and as they came nearer to Nantes all fears disappeared. The duchess was clothed in her costume and the farmers she had passed had not noticed that the little peasant woman running slowly past them was anything but what her clothes indicated: it was much, indeed, to have deceived the inquisitive instincts of country people, who have no rivals, possibly no equals, in this respect, unless it be soldiers.

At last they arrived in sight of Nantes: and Madame put on her shoes and stockings again before entering the town. When crossing the bridge of Pyrmile, she fell into the midst of a detachment of soldiers which was coming off duty under the command of an officer whom she recognised perfectly well, having seen him in former days doing duty at the Château. She reminded MM. de Ménars and Bourmont of this coincidence when they arrived some hours after her.

"I think the officer in command of that detachment on the bridge has recognised me: he looked hard at me," she said; "if it be so, and happy days come to me, his lot will be fortunate, he will be rewarded!"

Opposite the Bouffai, the duchess felt her shoulder touched. She trembled and turned round. The person who had just taken that liberty was a worthy old woman, who, having put her basket of apples on the ground, could not replace it on her head by herself.

"My children," she said to the duchess and Mile, de Kersabiec, "help me to lift up my basket and I will give you each an apple."

Madame soon took hold of one handle and signed to her companion to take hold of the other, the basket was balanced on the good woman's head, and she went away without giving the promised reward; but the duchess stopped her by the arm--

"Well, mother, where is my apple?" she asked. The apple-seller gave her one, and Madame was eating it with an appetite sharpened by a three leagues' walk, when, lifting her head, her eyes fell on a placard bearing these three words in big letters:--

"ÉTAT DE SIÈGE"

It was the Government notice which put four of the départements of la Vendée outside the pale of common law. The duchess went up to the bill and calmly read it right through, in spite of the entreaties of Mlle. de Kersabiec, who pressed her to gain the house at which she was to be received; but Madame observed that it was too interesting a matter for her not to acquaint herself with it. At last she resumed her journey, and, a few minutes later, she reached the house where she was expected, and where she took off her muddy garments, which were preserved as a memento of the event. Soon, she left this first refuge to go to the ladies Duguigny, at No. 3 rue Haute-du-Château.

The position of the Duguigny's house was pleasant, it looked out over the château gardens and beyond to the Loire and the meadows which bordered it. They had prepared her a room with a secret hiding in it. The room was no more than a third storey attic, the secret place was a nook by the fireplace in a corner: it was reached by the back of the chimney and opened with a spring. It had been used since the first Vendéen Wars to save priests and other outlaws. M. de Ménars lived in this house with the duchess. One would have thought that, after many journeys and fatigues, on finding a quiet, safe retreat she could have taken some rest and returned to her favourite occupation of tapestry and flowerpainting, talents in which she excelled; but, after the plans she had meditated carrying out, which had, in some measure, given her more masculine tastes, those futile pursuits were no longer to her liking, and did not suffice for that active spirit.

She resumed a correspondence, which she had dropped for some time, with the Legitimists of France and abroad, the principal object of which correspondence was positively to inform them that in case of an invasive war against France, which then seemed threatening, her son should never put himself in the train of foreigners, and to ask them, if need arose, to unite their efforts to those of all other Frenchmen to repulse them. The papers found in the secret room testified to the aim and to the magnitude of the work she had set herself to do. Her letters amounted to over nine hundred in number; they were nearly all in her own handwriting, with the exception of a few by M. de Ménars. She had twenty-four different ciphers in which to correspond with the various parties in France; she wrote in cipher with remarkable ease.

One of the distractions with which she provided herself, with M. Ménars' assistance, was to paste up the whole of the grey paper which to-day forms the decoration of the attic. During the duchess's stay in Nantes, cholera made some ravages and daily she saw from her windows soldiers or inhabitants being carried to the cemetery. One night she was seized with colic and vomiting, causing the greatest anxiety to those around her. She herself was alarmed.

"How are my feet and hands?" she said. "When they become cold, rub them, put burning hot bricks to them and send for a doctor and priest." They assured her she should have the services of both, but she would not have them summoned until the more alarming symptoms set in. However, the sickness stopped and the invalid grew better.

Madame took her meals down on the second floor: to her table were admitted M. de Ménars and Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec--who had joined her--the two ladies Duguigny and, lastly, M. Guibourg, who, after his escape from the prison of Nantes, had also found a refuge in the same house, but only three weeks before the duchess's arrest. Very often, the meals were interrupted by false alarms caused by some detachment of troops coming in or going out of the town; then a bell, which communicated with the room from the ground floor, would give the signal for a retreat.

The duchess passed five months in this way. But the activity with which the Chouans were hunted down left them no chance of rallying together; also, the soul and head of the war was no longer with them. The 56th Regiment, which arrived about the end of June, permitted the military authorities to organise a still more energetic chase and a still stricter look-out; the cantonments were reinforced, moving columns ploughed the country in all senses of the meaning; finally, all hope for the partisans of Henri V. of rekindling a serious war soon vanished.

Meantime, the rumour had gone abroad that the duchess was hidden in Nantes; General Dermoncourt was certain of its truth and had given the higher authorities almost material proofs of the presence of Madame in the town; but, as the fugitive's retreat was only known to a few persons, who were completely devoted to her, whatever credence the civil and military authorities gave to the general's warning, they had small chance of discovering her; besides, the duchess had become the object of extreme watchfulness on the part of her friends, who felt the necessity of isolating her completely in the centre of the town in order to prevent the police agents from getting at her. So she was inaccessible to every one except M. de Bourmont, who exercised his privilege with as much prudence as reserve. It was about this time that the Jew Deutz came to the town.

Hyacinthe-Simon Deutz, was born at Coblenz in January 1802. At the age of eighteen he went to M. Didot as a working printer. A short time later, his brother-in-law, M. Drack, becoming a Catholic, Deutz, being furious at the conversion, threatened him so savagely that Drack warned the police. However, two or three years later, his Judaistic fanaticism softened on this point; he himself showed a desire to embrace the Catholic religion, and, through his brother-in-law, solicited an audience with the Archbishop of Paris. That prelate, thinking his conversion would be quicker and more efficacious at Rome, advised him to go there. Deutz actually made that journey early in 1828; he was recommended in the most pressing manner by M. de Quélen to Cardinal Capellari (afterwards Gregory XIV.), then préfet to the propaganda. Pope Leo XIX. gave him into the care of Father Orioli, of the Collège des Cordeliers, for instruction in the Catholic religion. For some time, and on several occasions, Deutz seemed to have changed his resolution. He wrote in 1828, "I have experienced several days of storm; I was even on the point of returning unbaptized to Paris; it was Judaism dying in me; but, thanks to God, my eyes are entirely unsealed and, ere long, I shall have the happiness of becoming a Christian." Finally judged fit to receive baptism, his godfather was Baron Mortier, first secretary to the Embassy, and his godmother an Italian princess. Thus, by deceiving God, he learned how to betray men. A while after, he was presented to the Pope, who received him with the greatest kindness. A pension of 25 piastres (125 francs) per month had been allowed him since his arrival in Rome from the funds of the propaganda. His brother-in-law Drack, introduced by Baron Mortier to the Duchesse de Berry, had by her been appointed librarian to the Duc de Bordeaux. It was then that the Pope got Deutz entered as a boarder at the Convent des Saints-Apôtres, and he continued publicly to affect the same devotion to religion. Nevertheless, those who lived in intimacy with him had very quickly guessed with what interested motives he had made his abjuration. Most of his early patrons, seeing they were being fooled by him, gradually deserted him; soon, the only supporter he had left was Cardinal Capellari, who, only seeing him occasionally, still kept up the same interest in him.

In 1830, Deutz, under the pretext of not wishing to live on charity, obtained from Pius VIII., then Pope, 300 piastres with which he set out to start, so he said, a bookshop in New York. After he had lived upon the money made by his books he returned to Europe and reached London in the autumn of 1831. He was recommended to the Jesuits established in England, and introduced himself to Abbé Delaporte, almoner to the Chapel of the Émigrés and French Legitimists, who put him into communication with the Marquis Eugène de Montmorency, then resident in London. Deutz got himself noticed by his extraordinary assiduity in attending the chapel services, praying fervently and frequently communicating; he thus secured the kindly notice of M. de Montmorency, a very religious man, who invited him to his table and even to some sort of intimacy.

About this time Madame de Bourmont was preparing, with her daughters, to rejoin her husband in Italy. M. de Bourmont recommended Deutz to her as a wise and reliable man, who might be useful to her on her journey; he was, besides, devoted body and soul to the Legitimist cause and to religion. Deutz went the journey with Madame de Bourmont and behaved himself so well that, on her arrival, she in her turn recommended him warmly to the Duchesse de Berry. When the princess went to Rome, the Pope also spoke to her of Deutz as a man to be relied upon, capable of carrying out intelligently the most important and delicate missions. He notified that she could make use of him with entire confidence when occasion required. Such occasion was not long in offering itself. Just when the duchess was preparing to make her descent upon France, Deutz arrived at Massa and offered his services to Madame; he came from Rome and was going to Portugal to fulfil various missions which the Holy Father had entrusted to him, amongst others, that of taking, on his journey to Genoa, a dozen Jesuits to don Miguel, who had asked for them in order to found a college. Madame received him kindly and, knowing that he would cross Spain to reach Portugal, she accepted his offer with pleasure and willingness, telling him she would take advantage of his kindness and his devotion, and giving him her orders from time to time. So great was her idea of Deutz's delicate sensitiveness at the time, such interest had he roused in her, that she said one day to one of the French people round her--

"I believe poor Deutz is in want of money. I have none at the moment, and he is so sensitive I dare not give him this jewel to sell, which is, I believe, worth 6000 francs. Kindly sell it for me and give him the money without telling him what I am obliged to do to procure it."

So he set off on his mission, passing by way of Catalonia and Madrid. In that city, upon the letter of introduction of a minister plenipotentiary of the Italian States to whom the Pope had sent him, he obtained an introduction to one of the princes of the Royal Family of Spain, from whom he managed to extract money, although he was abundantly supplied with it by both the Holy Father and the Duchesse de Berry. That little act of fraud, of which he boasted when he returned to Madrid from Portugal, proves that Deutz was already treacherous, and that any means seemed good to him that satisfied his thirst after gold. As he travelled under the auspices of the Court of Rome, he mostly stayed in convents, where he was well received, and got himself noticed for his fervent zeal for the Catholic faith. Upon his arrival in Portugal, although well provided with letters from the Pope, he could not obtain an audience with don Miguel except after great difficulties and several months' stay. It was, I think, in connection with some loan don Miguel wanted to contract at the time in Paris that a banker of that capital, who knew of this project and desired to derive profit out of it for the duchess, wrote or caused to be written, in the current August, to Deutz, then in Portugal, that he would willingly undertake the loan on condition don Miguel would allow the deduction of ten per cent, in favour of the Duchesse de Berry, and, knowing him to be devoted to the cause and interests of the princess, he would let him negotiate the business, hoping he would employ every means his sagacity could think of to bring it about successfully. But it appears Deutz did not succeed in this enterprise. About the month of September 1832, he returned from Portugal to Madrid, and had several interviews with the French Legitimists, whose confidence in the scamp was countenanced by the duchess's example. He, however, committed various indiscretions of conduct in Portugal, which might have inspired them with doubts, but the certain knowledge that Madame had proved his fidelity allayed all uneasiness. Upon his departure for France, he was charged with important dispatches, the contents whereof would have seriously compromised those who had written them and those to whom they were addressed. One of the French Legitimists who was then in Madrid having declared his intention of accompanying him as courier, Deutz told him it would not be safe for the secretary to the Embassy at Madrid to travel with a Frenchman. This circumstance at first aroused no suspicion; but a part of the letters confided to Deutz, and principally those he had been advised to leave at Bordeaux, to be addressed from there with greater safety to the duchess and other persons, never reaching their destination, it has since been imagined that he gave them up to the Paris police upon his return to France, and that the supposed secretary to the Embassy was none other than an agent who accompanied him and who, no doubt, served him as intermediary to transmit to the police the information he got from the knave.

It appears that, just about this time, they had not put much energy into the discovery of Madame's hiding-place, because they hoped the adventurous princess, seeing the uselessness of her attempts and all her resources being exhausted, would decide to leave French soil and thus rid the Government of a great difficulty; but, when they saw that she persisted in remaining in a country still in a state of fermentation, where her presence was dangerous, they set themselves seriously to find means of seizing her person at no matter what price.

The police, fertile in strategies, thought they could make use of Deutz and of the correspondence he carried to make the duchess fall into a trap and so fall into the hands of the Government agents. Consequently, they made overtures to this traitor; he had been presented at Court; he had seen renegades become illustrious; he was conscious of his strength and the means and power at his disposal; he knew that it was in the salons of ministers that perfidy and State reasons met together; he wished, then, to treat with the Government alone. He therefore obtained an audience with M. de Montalivet, and it was in the cabinet of his Excellency that they settled the price of an infamous piece of treachery.

What passed during that interview, what promises were made, what offers accepted, remains a secret between the minister and Deutz; for I presume Providence does not interfere in these affairs seeing they succeed. Still, they hesitated to make use of the instrument when they had found it, and great was the embarrassment at the château. The Duchesse de Berry, arrested, would become answerable before a Court of Assizes which might very easily condemn her to death; the king, it is true, had his right of pardon; but there are moments when that right is as difficult to exercise as is the right of death. On the other side, to leave the duchess alone was not without its inconvenience; the Chamber was stupid enough to grow tired of civil war as of anything else, and to demand a stop to it; in short, M. de Montalivet was exceedingly embarrassed by his traitor, not knowing what to do and almost in despair at having been so clever.

About this time ministerial changes took place; M. de Montalivet passed on to the civil list, and M. Thiers to the Home Office. The young minister saw in this change of place a means of getting rid of his Judas by sending him elsewhere to ask for his thirty pieces of silver; but Deutz raised difficulties; he had begun the business with the count and wished to conclude it with him; he knew M. de Montalivet, and did not know M. Thiers. Finally, after much parleying, M. de Montalivet persuaded him to accompany him in his carriage to M. Thiers. M. Thiers had too much tact and finesse not to seize upon the occasion to make his appointment less unpopular, and he was too clever not to try by a grand _coup_ to get himself forgiven. The capture of the Duchesse de Berry would draw the Chamber to him and the Chamber pretty well meant the nation. M. Thiers would thence become a national hero.

Deutz left for la Vendée, accompanied by Joly, the inspector of police, and arrived there under the name of Hyacinthe de Gonzaque.

[Footnote 1: See, for fuller details, _La Vendée et Madame,_ an account written by me from Dermoncourt's notes.]