CHAPTER IV

M. Maurice Duval is made Préfet of the Loire-Inférieure--The Nantais give him a charivari--Deutz's persistent attempts to see Madame--He obtains a first and then a second audience--Besieging of the maison Duguigny--The hiding-place--The police searches--Discovery of the duchess

Some days after Deutz's arrival in Nantes, no doubt in order to combine measures with him, M. Maurice Duval was made préfet of the Loire-Inférieure. This unpopular appointment, the callous dismissal of M. de Saint-Aignan and the manner in which he received the news of his replacement, all elated the spirits of the Nantais; further, M. Maurice Duval's Grenoble reputation preceded him; one alone of these reasons would have been enough to cost him an ordinary charivari: all these reasons together were worth what, under governments by majorities, may be termed the King of Charivaris.

It was on 19 October that the news spread through Nantes of the dismissal of M. de Saint-Aignan and the appointment of M. Maurice Duval, who was to have arrived the same day but did not do so until the following day, the 20th. Soon the most hostile demonstrations began to be shown. Those who had instruments for making a hurly-burly, such as skillets, rattles, whistles, speaking-trumpets which could be heard a mile off, etc. etc., instinctively laid hands on them; those who had none ran to borrow them from their friends; those, finally, who had neither instruments nor friends, used the oddest means of taking part in the great popular concert which was being prepared; some went through the town in search of bells, unfastened them from the very cows which chance led in their way; others seized little bells from a founder's and, with a stick, carried at each end by two men, set up a walking tocsin. A general levy of cow-horns was made and more than six hundred persons were provided with this instrument, which, as every one knows, needs no preparatory study. A dealer in whistles, who, apart from this event, would never have got rid of his wares, established himself in the square and sold everything he had on his stall!

Between four and five o'clock, a party of musicians assembled; in order to do greater honour to the préfet, they decided to go in front of him; consequently, they threaded their way along the road by which the majesty must arrive. The authorities, who had seen the general enthusiasm and were afraid of stopping it in its first inception, satisfied themselves by sending a staff officer to M. Maurice Duval to warn him of the reception being prepared for him. M. Maurice Duval, profiting by the warning, sent his carriage alone and entered the town incognito. He thus momentarily paid his inconvenient visitors tit for tat. Nevertheless, the report soon spread abroad that the préfet had arrived at the _Hôtel de France_ in the place de la Comédie. The charivariseurs burst into the square, but it was too small to hold them all: the body of musicians alone, like one of those huge tarentula spiders, crammed itself into the square and spread its legs out into all the adjacent streets; it was a racket fit to split the head of a deaf man! Persons whose word could be trusted, who lived two leagues from the town, have since declared upon their honour that they had heard the uproar; it is not surprising: there were probably ten thousand musicians, five thousand more than Nero had, who, as we know, made a great fuss of his music. When the concert was at its height, a man on foot forced himself through the popular flood and made vain efforts to enter the _Hôtel de France,_ the doors of which were shut; he was compelled to mingle among the charivariseurs and to join in the chorus with them: it was M. Maurice Duval. Next day he took possession of the préfecture. The news of his installation at least assured the musicians that their pains had not been lost upon the object for whom they were intended. Consequently, about five o'clock, the orchestra banded itself together on the place de la Préfecture; it was larger and noisier than on the previous night! but, as our French character soon tires of everything, even of a charivari, on the third day a large portion of musicians were missing at the call. The powers then thought they could put an end to the serenade. Between six and seven in the evening, squadrons of gendarmerie and infantry of the line issued out on the square and took possession of the surrounding streets. The performers thought with reason it was time to finish, and retired before the troops, continuing to make a row during their retreat, which bore quite the colour of a victory. Next day, perfect calm was restored, and M. Duval made a speech in which he pleaded that he had been misjudged, saying, among other things, that his works bore witness to his patriotism. Now, as the work upon which he counted the most in order to convert people's minds was the capture of the duchess, he began to contrive measures to prevent her escaping. This leads us naturally to Deutz.

We have said what vigilance surrounded Madame; she herself had even decided it was necessary to become invisible to her friends when it was not indispensable to receive them: this circumstance nearly brought failure upon the treacherous schemes. Deutz knew very well that the duchess was in Nantes, but the whole city was equally well informed of that. The house she lived in was the important thing to know and this Deutz did not know. He succeeded in getting his arrival known to her; but the duchess, fearing at first that this was a snare of the police or that some other man than Deutz might present himself under his name, refused to receive him, at least until he had entrusted his dispatches to a third party. Deutz sent reply that he was going to spend a few days at Paimbeuf, and, on his return, he proposed to do himself the honour, with the hope of being more fortunate, of soliciting Madame afresh for the audience he had asked of her. He did really leave Nantes with his companion, M. Joly, attached to his person as a police constable or guard. Both went to Paimbeuf, one posing as a capitalist anxious to buy land, and the other as a surveyor. The journey lasted upwards of a week or ten days. On his return, Deutz renewed his instances, but without any greater success; he then determined to send to the duchess the important dispatches which he was entrusted to hand to her. On receiving the papers Madame was thoroughly convinced of his identity, and no longer hesitated to receive him. There, on Wednesday, 28 October, at seven in the evening, Deutz was conducted to the house of the ladies Duguigny, where he was introduced without knowing either the street or the place of interview. After an hour and a half's interview he took leave of the duchess, convinced that she left the house the same time as he did and that she had received him at the house of some devoted persons and not at her own. He could not, therefore, either give sufficiently accurate information as to locality, nor swear positively enough in what place they were certain to find the fugitive, for them to risk an attempted arrest which might have no other result than that of putting the duchess on her guard.

Deutz asked for a second interview, pretending that he had been so much agitated in the princess's presence that he had forgotten to communicate things of the highest importance. The duchess and those round her did not think she ought to receive him a second time; not out of distrust of him, but for fear that, being a stranger to Nantes, he might be observed and followed by the police. They therefore replied that they would send for the dispatches which he had for the duchess, but that she refused to receive him personally. So positively expressed a refusal threw all the agents of the superior and inferior police into a state of alarm. They discovered a nun who had, and deserved, Madame's complete confidence; Deutz, under his guise of piety, easily deceived the good sister and persuaded her that he had really most important matters to communicate to the duchess, which he had forgotten through emotion during his first interview with her. The sister, convinced that the demanded audience must be of great concern to Madame, hastened to entreat her to see him. Meanwhile, Deutz and his companions applauded themselves on their happy idea of making piety and trust the accomplices of their treachery. The good nun returned triumphant, bringing the promise for an audience on 6 November. That errand, made with the best intentions, is said to have since cost her many tears!

Deutz rushed to give notice to the police. Nothing could have been easier than for the duchess to leave Nantes: more than a hundred and fifty of her followers, well known and seriously compromised since the taking up of arms, had left France, and not a single one had been arrested. The duchess knew this very well. She often said, "I can leave when I like!" Her friends urged her to leave France, where her presence could be no longer of service to her cause; to persuade her to do so, they represented to her that the chiefs of her party, who were most deeply complicated on her account, were daily exposed, because, attached to her fortunes by their pledges and feelings of honour, they would not leave their country whilst she herself remained in France and incurred dangers. A safe means was proposed by M. Guibourg; a vessel was found and equipped; finally, the duchess consented to fly; she was to take with her M. de Ménars and Petit-Paul (Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec), This decision was taken on 4 November, and the day of departure was fixed for the 14th.

On 6 November, at four in the afternoon, Deutz was brought to the duchess, but clever agents watched all his proceedings and followed his track. Scarcely had he entered the maison Duguigny before he recognised the locality; it was therefore probable that the duchess lived here. When Deutz was admitted to the princess, he rehearsed to her with much skill and in moving tones a story he had concocted upon the important matters he had forgotten concerning her dear Henri and good Louise; he spoke with enthusiasm of his great admiration for Madame's courage and of his devotion to her noble cause. He was interrupted in the expression of his sentiments by the arrival of a letter which the duchess gave to M. de Ménars. It was written in white ink; M. de Ménars wet it with some prepared water which made the characters become readable, and then handed it to the duchess, who read it aloud before Deutz. The writer recommended Madame not to neglect any precaution; and said they knew she would be betrayed by a person in whom she had entire confidence. Turning towards Deutz, Madame then said--

"You hear, Deutz? they tell me I shall be betrayed by some one in whom I have entire confidence. Will that be you?"

"Oh! Madame," replied Deutz, with that aplomb peculiar to great traitors, "Your Royal Highness cannot imagine such infamy on my part! I, who have given many unmistakable proofs of my fidelity! But certainly too many precautions cannot be taken."

The duchess dismissed Deutz, after an hour's interview, showering tokens of confidence and kindness upon him. He soon flew off to the préfet's house. Whilst passing the dining-room, he had glanced through the half-opened door and counted seven places laid at the table; he knew that the Demoiselles Duguigny lived by themselves in the house: it was therefore evident that the duchess was going to dine there. Deutz told M. Maurice Duval what he had seen, and urged him to hurry so that they might arrive in the middle of dinner, as he was uncertain whether the duchess was stopping in the house.

The préfet, who, since morning, had been planning measures with the military authorities, to whom the state of siege gave ruling power, quickly repaired to Comte d'Erlon, after he had previously entrusted Deutz to the care of a policeman, who was not to leave him whilst they were making sure of the truth of his statement. General Dermoncourt was immediately informed by Comte d'Erlon, and, ten minutes later, all the military preparations were arranged and orders given to the commander of the town, Colonel Simon Lorrière.

Quite a large body of troops was necessary, for two reasons: first, because there might be a revolt among the population; secondly, because they had to surround quite a block of houses. Consequently, nearly twelve hundred men were on foot. They had had orders to be ready since the morning. The two battalions were divided into three columns, commanded by General Dermoncourt, who was accompanied by Comte d'Erlon and the préfet, who directed operations. The first column, headed by the commandant of the fort, went down le Cours, leaving sentinels one by one along the walls of the bishop's garden and the houses contiguous to it, passed along by the château fosses and reached the front of the maison Duguigny, where it deployed. The second and third columns, with General Dermoncourt at their head, crossed the place Saint-Pierre and there divided: one with the general remaining at its head went down the high street, made a turn by the rue des Ursulines and rejoined M. Simon Lorrière's column by the rue Basse-du-Château; the other, after the general left it, went straight down the rue Haute-du-Château and, under the leadership of Colonel Lafeuille of the 56th, and of Commandant Vairés, joined the two first and united with them opposite the maison Duguigny. Thus the investment was complete.

It was about six o'clock in the evening and a beautiful night. Through the windows of the apartment where the duchess was, she could look out on a calm sky and the rising moon and see, cut out clear against the light, like a dark silhouette, the massive, motionless and silent towers of the ancient château. There are moments when nature seems so gentle and friendly that it is impossible to believe a threatening danger lurks in the midst of such calm! The fears awakened by the letter the duchess had received from Paris vanished before this scene, when, suddenly, M. Guibourg, upon going nearer to the window, saw bayonets glitter as the column led by Colonel Simon Lorrière advanced towards the house. Instantly, he flung himself backwards, crying, "Save yourself, Madame, save yourself!" Madame rushed at once to the staircase and every one followed her. The hiding-place had been tried; it was known that it could only hold a certain number, and those of a certain size, and this order was adopted. It could, at a pinch, hold four persons, during the time of an ordinary visit. When they reached it and opened the door in the chimney, M. de Ménars entered, and was followed by M. Guibourg; there remained Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec, who did not want to go in before Madame. The duchess laughingly said to her--

"By the rules of good strategy, Stylite, when a retreat is being made the commander should remain to the last."

Mademoiselle Stylite then went in and the duchess behind her.

The soldiers opened the street door as that of the hiding-place was shut; they invaded the _rez-de-chaussée,_ preceded by inspectors of police from Paris and Nantes, who marched pistols in hand: one of them, in his inexperience of the use of that weapon, fired and wounded his hand. The band spread over the house. The general's duty was to surround it, and he had done it: the duty of the police was to search it, and he let them do it. M. Joly perfectly recognised the interior from the details Deutz had given him. He found the table, which had not yet been sat down to, with its seven covers laid, although the two Demoiselles Duguigny, Madame Charette and Mademoiselle Céleste de Kersabiec were, apparently, the only inhabitants of the room. He began by quietening the minds of these ladies and, going upstairs like a man accustomed to the house, he went straight to the attic, recognized it, and said in a voice loud enough for the duchess to hear--

"This is the audience chamber."

From that moment, Madame had no longer any doubt that the treachery of which the letter from Paris spoke came from Deutz.[1] That letter lay open upon the table; M. Joly took possession of it and thus gained the proof that Madame was in the house; he had but to find her. Sentinels were posted in every room, whilst soldiers closed all means of egress. The people collected in a crowd and formed a second circle round the soldiers. The whole town had come out into the squares and streets, but not a single royalist sign was shown, only grave curiosity; every person felt the importance of the event about to happen.

Search was begun inside the house, furniture was opened when the keys were discovered, broken into when they were missing. Sappers and masons sounded the floors and walls with great blows from axes and hammers. Architects, taken into every room, declared it was impossible, after comparing the internal construction with the external for them to enclose a hiding-place or, indeed, to discover it if they did; in one of the rooms they found various articles, such as prints, jewellery, silver, belonging to the ladies Duguigny, which, at that juncture, added to the certainty of the princess's residence in the house. When the architects reached the attic, whether from ignorance or from generosity on their part, they declared that here, less than any other place, there could not be a secret hiding-place. They then passed on to the neighbouring houses, where the search was continued; after an instant the duchess heard the blows of a hammer being struck at the wall of the room next to her hiding-place; they were hit with such force that pieces of plaster were loosened and fell on the captives and, for a moment, they were afraid that the whole wall would crash down upon them. Madame also heard the abuse and swearing of the tired soldiers enraged at the fruitlessness of their searchings.

"We shall be cut to pieces," she said, "that will be the end of us, my poor children!"

Then, addressing her companions, she said--

"It is for my sake you are in this terrible situation!"

Whilst these things were going on above, the ladies Duguigny had displayed great nerve and, although kept in sight by the soldiers, they had sat down to table, inviting Madame Charette and Mademoiselle Céleste de Kersabiec to do the same. Two other women were even more particularly the objects of surveillance on the part of the police: these were the lady's-maid, Charlotte Moreau, whom Deutz had pointed out as very devoted to the duchess's interests, and the cook, Marie Bossy. The latter was taken to the château and from there to the barracks of the gendarmerie, where, seeing she withstood all threats, they tried bribery: bigger and bigger sums were successively offered her, but she persisted that she did not know where the Duchesse de Berry was. As for Baroness Charette, she was first of all mistaken for one of the Kersabiec ladies, and taken after the dinner with her supposed sister to the latter's house, which is thirty or forty yards higher up the same street.

Well, after fruitless searchings through half the night, they began to slacken their efforts; they thought the duchess had escaped, and two or three other useless descents attempted in other localities seemed to point to the same conclusion. The préfet, therefore, gave the signal for a retreat, leaving a sufficient number of men to occupy every room in the house, out of precaution, whilst police agents established themselves on the ground floor; the surrounding of the house was continued and the National Guard came to relieve half the troops of the line whilst they took a little rest. This distribution of sentinels left two gendarmes in the attic which contained the hiding-place; the hiders were, therefore, obliged to keep motionless, fatiguing as was the position for four persons crowded into a space three and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide at one end and eight to ten inches at the other. The men experienced one more discomfort still, the place was narrower in the highest part, thus leaving them scarcely room to stand upright, even if they put their heads among the rafters; in addition to this, it was a damp night and the fog filtered in through the slates and on the prisoners; but no one dared complain, as the princess did not do so. The cold was so keen that the gendarmes who were in the room could not stand it; one of them went downstairs and came back with some blocks of peat and, ten minutes later, a magnificent fire was blazing in the fireplace against the door behind which the duchess was concealed. This fire, which was only lit for the benefit of two persons, was soon of advantage to six; and, frozen as they were, the prisoners at first congratulated themselves; but the comfort the fire brought soon changed to insufferable discomfort: the door and the wall of the chimney-place, becoming warm, communicated an ever increasing heat to the little retreat; soon the wall was so hot they could not bear to touch it, and the door became red-hot at the same time; furthermore, although it was not yet dawn, the work of the searchers began again; iron bars and planks of wood struck the wall of the hiding-place with redoubled blows till it shook; it seemed to the prisoners as though they were knocking down the maison Duguigny and the neighbouring houses. The duchess had then no other chance of hope; if she withstood the flames, she would be crushed beneath the ruins. Still, her courage and cheerfulness never left her through it all, and several times, as she has since told, she could not keep herself from laughing at the free soldierly conversation of the two guardian gendarmes; one of them made a hint that was more than slight upon the effect produced by camp--beds; the duchess made a mental note of this suggestion, and we shall see with what result. But the conversation soon dragged; one of the gendarmes was asleep, in spite of the fearful din they were making close to him in the next houses; for, for the twentieth time, the search was concentrated round their hiding-place. His companion, warmed for the moment, had ceased attending to the fire and the door and wall grew cold again. M. de Ménars had managed to loosen several slates from the roof and the outer air had freshened the internal atmosphere. All fears turned on the demolishers; they hammered on the wall next the prisoners with great blows and against a cupboard near the fireplace; at each blow the plaster was loosened and fell in dust inside; at last, they thought they were lost, but the workman left that part of the house which, from the instinct of destroyers, they had explored very minutely. The prisoners breathed again and the duchess thought she was saved. But that hope did not last long.

The gendarme who kept watch, seeing the noise had definitely stopped and wishing to take advantage of the moment of silence, shook his comrade so that he could have his turn of sleep. The other had grown cold during his sleep and woke up frozen. He had hardly opened his eyes before he set to work to get himself warm again: consequently, he relit the fire and, as the peat did not burn up fast enough, he used a huge bundle of _Quotidienne_ newspapers which had been thrown under the table in the room to light up the fire, which again sparkled in the fireplace. The fire produced by the papers gave out a thick smoke and a more lively heat than the peat had done the first time. Hence arose now a very real danger to the prisoners. The smoke penetrated through the cracks in the chimney-wall, which had been shaken by the hammerings, and the door, which was not yet cold, was soon as red-hot as a forge. The air of the hiding-place became less and less fit to breathe; those inside were obliged to put their mouths to the cracks between the slates in order to breathe the fresh air in place of the fiery air inside. The duchess suffered the most, for, having been the last to enter, she had to lean against the door. Each of her companions offered repeatedly to change places with her, but she would not consent. Meanwhile, to the danger of being suffocated was added a new one, that of being burned alive. The door, as we have said, was red-hot and the bottom of the ladies' clothing threatened to catch fire. Already, two or three times the fire had caught the duchess's dress and she had put it out with her hands, burning them so that for a long time after she bore the marks of the bums. Every minute the air inside became rarer and the outer air which came through the holes in the roof was too small in quantity to refresh it. The prisoners grew more and more stifled. To remain ten minutes longer in that furnace would be to endanger the duchess's life. Each of them begged her to go out, but she alone did not wish to do so. Great tears of anger rolled down from her eyes and were dried on her eyelids by the hot air. The fire again burnt her dress and again she extinguished it. But the movement she made in getting up lifted the latch of the door and it opened a little way. Mlle. de Kersabiec at once put out her hand to draw it back into its place and burnt herself very severely. The movement of the door had rolled away the turfs leant against it, and had roused the attention of the gendarme, who was relieving his boredom by reading the _Quotidienne,_ and who thought he had built up his pyrotechnic edifice with great firmness. The sound produced by Mlle. de Kersabiec's efforts caused a strange notion to spring into his head: he imagined there were rats in the chimney and, thinking the heat was going to compel them to come out, he awoke his comrade and both put themselves in readiness to give chase to them with their sabres. All this time the heat and smoke were increasing the tortures of the prisoners more and more. The door moved and one of the gendarmes said, "Who is there?" Mlle. Stylite replied--

"We will give ourselves up: we are going to open the door; take away the fire."

The two men sprang to the fire which they at once kicked aside. The duchess came out first; she was obliged to put her feet and hands on the burning hearth; her companions followed her. It has half-past nine in the morning, and for sixteen hours they had been shut up in the hiding-place without any food.

[Footnote 1: Amongst the men in Paris whom King Louis-Philippe believed to be most devoted to him, persons who kept him informed of all that went on at the Tuileries and in the Government, were friends pledged to the duchess; it would, indeed, be very interesting to mention the names of those who had sent this warning to Madame, if the naming of them were not on my part a denunciation.]