Chapter 9

At the moment when Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were consulting in the square at Alencon with the Sieur Pannier (treasurer of the rebels since 1794, and devoted to Rifoel) as to the best means of conveying to Rifoel the sum he asked for, the woman Lechantre became alarmed on hearing at the inn where she stopped of the suspicions and arrests already made. She fled during the night, taking her daughter with her through the byways and cross-roads to Saint-Savin, in order to take refuge, if necessary, in certain hiding-places prepared at the chateau de Saint-Savin. Courceuil, Boislaurier, and his relation Dubut, clandestinely changed two thousand francs in silver money for gold, and fled to Brittany and England.

On arriving at Saint-Savin, the women Lechantre and Bryond heard of the arrest of Bourget, that of the driver of the diligence, and that of the two refractories.

The magistrates and the gendarmerie struck such sure blows that it was thought advisable to place the woman Bryond beyond the reach of human justice; for she appears to have been an object of great devotion on the part of these criminals, who were captivated by her. She left Saint-Savin, and was hidden at first in Alencon, where her followers deliberated, and finally placed her in the cellar of Pannier’s house.

Here new incidents develop themselves.

After the arrest of Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refuse to give up any more of the money, declaring themselves betrayed. This unexpected refusal was given at a moment when an urgent want of money was felt among the accomplices, if only for the purposes of escape. Rifoel was always clamorous for money. Hiley, Cibot, and Leveille began to suspect the Chaussards.

Here comes in a new incident, which calls for the rigor of the law.

Two gendarmes, detailed to discover the woman Bryond, succeeded in tracking her to Pannier’s. There a discussion is held; and these men, unworthy of the trust reposed in them, instead of arresting the woman Bryond, succumb to her seductions. These unworthy soldiers, named Ratel and Mallet, showed this woman the utmost interest and offered to take her to the Chaussards and force them to make restitution.

The woman Bryond starts on horseback, disguised as a man, accompanied by Ratel, Mallet, and the girl Godard. She makes the journey by night. She has a conference alone with one of the brothers Chaussard, an excited conference. She is armed with a pistol, and threatens to blow out the brains of her accomplice if he refuses the money. Then he goes with her into the forest, and they return with a heavy bag of coin. In the bag are copper coins and twelve-sous silver pieces to the amount of fifteen hundred francs.

When the woman Bryond returns to Alencon the accomplices propose to go in a body to the Chaussards’ house and torture them until they deliver up the whole sum.

When Pannier hears of this failure he is furious. He threatens. The woman Bryond, though threatening him in return with Rifoel’s wrath, is forced to fly.

These facts rest on the confession of Ratel.

Mallet, pitying the woman Bryond’s position, offers her an asylum. Then Mallet and Ratel, accompanied by Hiley and Cibot, go at night to the brothers Chaussard; this time they find these brothers have left the place and have taken the rest of the money with them.

This was the last effort of the accomplices to recover the proceeds of the robbery.

It now becomes necessary to show the exact part taken by each of the actors in this crime.

Dubut, Boislaurier, Herbomez, Courceuil, and Hiley were the ringleaders. Some deliberated and planned, others acted.

Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three fugitives from justice and outlawed, are addicted to rebellion, fomenters of trouble, implacable enemies of Napoleon the Great, his victories, his dynasty, and his government, haters of our new laws and of the constitution of the Empire.

Herbomez and Hiley audaciously executed that which the three former planned.

The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime, namely, Cibot, Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and Minard, is evident; it appears from the confessions of those of them who are now in the hands of justice; Lisieux died during the investigation, and Bruce has fled the country.

The conduct of Rousseau, who drove the coach, marks him as an accomplice. His slow method of driving, his haste at the entrance of the wood, his persistent declaration that his head was covered, whereas the passengers testify that the leader of the brigands told him to take the handkerchief off his head and recognize them; all these facts are strong presumptive evidence of collusion.

As for the woman Bryond and the notary Leveille, could any co-operation be more connected, more continuous than theirs? They repeatedly furnished means for the crime; they were privy to it, and they abetted it. Leveille travelled constantly. The woman Bryond invented scheme after scheme; she risked all, even her life, to recover the plunder. She lent her house, her carriage; her hand is seen in the plot from the beginning; she did not dissuade the chief leader of all, Rifoel, since executed, although through her guilty influence upon him she might have done so. She made her waiting-woman, the girl Godard, an accomplice. As for Leveille, he took an active part in the actual perpetration of the crime by seeking the axe the brigands asked for.

The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, the woman Lechantre, Mallet and Ratel, all participated in the crime in their several degrees, as did the innkeepers Melin, Binet, Laraviniere, and Chargegrain.

Bourget has died during the investigation, after making a confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his motives are easy to understand.

The Chaussards knowingly fed and lodged the brigands, they saw them armed, they witnessed all their arrangements and knew the object of them; and lastly, they received the plunder, which they hid, and as it appears, stole from their accomplices.

Pannier, the former treasurer of the rebels, concealed the woman Bryond in his house; he is one of the most dangerous accomplices of this crime, which he knew from its inception. In him certain mysterious relations which are still obscure took their rise; the authorities now have these matters under investigation. Pannier was the right hand of Rifoel, the depositary of the secrets of the counter-revolutionary party of the West; he regretted that Rifoel introduced women into the plot and confided in them; it was he who received the stolen money from the woman Bryond and conveyed it to Rifoel.

As for the conduct of the two gendarmes Ratel and Mallet, it deserves the severest penalty of the law. They betrayed their duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed suicide, but not until he had made important revelations. The other, Mallet, denies nothing, his tacit admissions preclude all doubt, especially as to the guilt of the woman Bryond.

The woman Lechantre, in spite of her constant denials, was privy to all. The hypocrisy of this woman, who attempts to shelter her assumed innocence under the mask of a false piety, has certain antecedents which prove her decision of character and her intrepidity in extreme cases. She alleges that she was misled by her daughter, and believed that the plundered money belonged to the Sieur Bryond,--a common excuse! If the Sieur Bryond had possessed any property, he would not have left the department on account of his debts. The woman Lechantre claims that she did not suspect a shameful theft, because she saw the proceedings approved by her ally, Boislaurier. But how does she explain the presence of Rifoel (already executed) at Saint-Savin; the journeys to and fro; the relations of that young man with her daughter; the stay of the brigands at Saint-Savin, where they were served by her daughter and the girl Godard? She alleges sleep; declares it to be her practice to go to bed at seven in the evening; and has no answer to make when the magistrate points out to her that if she rises, as she says she does, at dawn, she must have seen some signs of the plot, of the sojourn of so many persons, and of the nocturnal goings and comings of her daughter. To this she replies that she was occupied in prayer. This woman is a mass of hypocrisy. Lastly, her journey on the day of the crime, the care she takes to carry her daughter to Mortagne, her conduct about the money, her precipitate flight when all is discovered, the pains she is at to conceal herself, even the circumstances of her arrest, all go to prove a long-existing complicity. She has not acted like a mother who desires to save her daughter and withdraw her from danger, but like a trembling accomplice. And her complicity is not that of a misguided tenderness; it is the fruit of party spirit, the inspiration of a well-known hatred against the government of His Imperial and Royal Majesty. Misguided maternal tenderness, if that could be fairly alleged in her defence, would not, however, excuse it; and we must not forget that consentment, long-standing and premeditated, is the surest sign of guilt.

Thus all the elements of the crime and the persons committing it are fully brought to light.

We see the madness of faction combining with pillage and greed; we see assassination advised by party spirit, under whose aegis these criminals attempt to justify themselves for the basest crimes. The leaders give the signal for the pillage of the public money, which money is to be used for their ulterior crimes; vile stipendiaries do this work for a paltry price, not recoiling from murder; then the fomenters of rebellion, not less guilty because their own hands have neither robbed nor murdered, divide the booty and dispose of it. What community can tolerate such outrages? The law itself is scarcely rigorous enough to duly punish them.

It is upon the above facts that this Court of Criminal and Special Justice is called upon to decide whether the prisoners Herbomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, Binet, Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, the woman Bourget, Vauthier, Chaussard the elder, Pannier, the widow Lechantre, Mallet, all herein named and described, and arraigned before this court; also Boislaurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, the younger Chaussard, Chargegrain, and the girl Godard,--these latter being absent and fugitives from justice,--are or are not guilty of the crimes charged in this indictment.

Done at Caen, this 1st of December, 180-.

(Signed) Baron Bourlac, Attorney-General.

X. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU

This legal paper, much shorter and more imperative than such indictments are these days, when they are far more detailed and more precise, especially as to the antecedent life of accused persons, affected Godefroid deeply. The dryness of the statement in which the official pen narrated in red ink the principal details of the affair stirred his imagination. Concise, abbreviated narratives are to some minds texts into the hidden meaning of which they love to burrow.

In the middle of the night, aided by the silence, by the darkness, by the terrible relation intimated by the worthy Alain between the facts of that document and Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid applied all the forces of his intellect to decipher the dreadful theme.

Evidently the name Lechantre stood for la Chanterie; in all probably the aristocracy of the name was intentionally thus concealed during the Revolution and under the Empire.

Godefroid saw, in imagination, the landscape and the scenes where this drama had taken place. The forms and faces of the accomplices passed before his eyes. He pictured to himself not “one Rifoel” but a Chevalier du Vissard, a young man something like the Fergus of Walter Scott, a French Jacobite. He developed the romance of an ardent young girl grossly deceived by an infamous husband (a style of romance then much the fashion); loving the young and gallant leader of a rebellion against the Empire; giving herself, body and soul, like another Diana Vernon, to the conspiracy, and then, once launched on that fatal incline, unable to stop herself. Had she rolled to the scaffold?

The young man saw in his own mind a whole world, and he peopled it. He wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those bold Chouans. His mind conceived the state of that wild country where lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of the Marquis de Montauran--of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had told him.

This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid. When he remembered that this drama must relate to the dignified, noble, deeply religious old woman whose virtue was acting upon him so powerfully as to be upon the point of metamorphosing him, Godefroid was seized with a sort of terror, and turned hastily to the second document which Monsieur Alain had given him. This was entitled:--

Summary on behalf of Madame Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres, nee Lechantre de la Chanterie.

“No longer any doubt!” murmured Godefroid.

We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign had reason to exercise his right of clemency it is surely in a case like this.

Here is a young woman, about to become a mother, and condemned to death.

From a prison cell, with the scaffold before her, this woman will tell the truth.

The trial before the Criminal Court of Alencon had, as in all cases where there are many accused persons in a conspiracy inspired by party-spirit, certain portions which were seriously obscure.

The Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty knows now the truth about the mysterious personage named Le Marchand, whose presence in the department of the Orne was not denied by the government during the trial, but whom the prosecution did not think proper to call as witness, and whom the defence had neither the power nor the opportunity to find.

That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille,--known elsewhere as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian police under the name of Contenson.

He is notorious. His youth and name were degraded by vices so imperative, an immorality so profound, conduct so criminal, that his infamous life must have ended on the scaffold if he had not possessed the ability to play a double part, as indicated by his names. Hereafter, as his passions rule him more and more, he will end by falling to the depths of infamy in spite of his incontestable ability and a remarkable mind.

When the Comte de Lille became aware of this man’s character he no longer permitted him to take part in the royalist councils or to handle the money sent to France; he thus lost the resources derived from these masters, whose service had been profitable to him.

It was then that he returned to his country home, crippled with debt.

His traitorous connection with the intrigues of England and the Comte de Lille, won him the confidence of the old families attached to the cause now vanquished by the genius of our immortal Emperor. He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion, with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on the scaffold for his plots against the State. Through him Bryond was able to penetrate once more into the secrets of that party which has misunderstood both the glory of H.M. the Emperor Napoleon I. and the true interests of the nation united in his august person.

At the age of thirty-five, this man, then known under his true name of des Tours-Minieres, affecting a sincere piety, professing the utmost devotion to the interests of the Comte de Lille and a reverence for the memory of the insurgents who lost their lives at the West, disguising with great ability the secrets of his exhausted youth, and powerfully protected by the silence of creditors, and by the spirit of caste which exists among all country _ci-devants_,--this man, truly a whited sepulchre, was introduced, as possessing every claim for consideration, to Madame Lechantre, who was supposed to be the possessor of a large fortune.

All parties conspired to promote a marriage between the young Henriette, only daughter of Madame Lechantre, and this protege of the _ci-devants_. Priests, nobles, creditors, each with a different interest, loyal in some, selfish in others, blind for the most part, all united in furthering the union of Bernard Bryond des Tours-Minieres with Henriette Lechantre.

The good sense of the notary who had charge of Madame Lechantre’s affairs, and perhaps his distrust, were the actual cause of the disaster of this young girl. The Sieur Chesnel, notary at Alencon, put the estate of Saint-Savin, the sole property of the bride, under the dower system, reserving the right of habitation and a modest income to the mother.

The creditors, who supposed, from Madame Lechantre’s orderly and frugal way of living, that she had capital laid by, were deceived in their expectations, and they then began suits which revealed the precarious financial condition of Bryond.

Serious differences now arose between the newly married pair, and the young wife had occasion to know the depraved habits, the political and religious atheism and--shall I say the word?--the infamy of the man to whom her life had been so fatally united. Bryond, forced to let his wife into the secret of the royalist plots, gave a home in his house to their chief agent, Rifoel du Vissard.

The character of Rifoel, adventurous, brave, generous, exercised a charm on all who came in contact with him, as was abundantly proved during his trials before three successive criminal courts.

The irresistible influence, the absolute empire he acquired over the mind of a young woman who saw herself suddenly cast into the abyss of a fatal marriage, is but too visible in this catastrophe which now brings her a suppliant to the foot of the Throne. But that which the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty can easily verify is the infamous encouragement given by Bryond to this intimacy. Far from fulfilling his duty as guide and counsellor to a child whose poor deceived mother had trusted her to him, he took pleasure in drawing closer still the bonds that united the young Henriette to the rebel leader.

The plan of this odious being, who takes pride in despising all things and considers nothing but the satisfaction of his passions, admitting none of the restraints imposed by civil or religious morality, was as follows:--

We must first remark, however, that such plotting was familiar to a man who, ever since 1794 has played a double part, who for eight years deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, and probably deceived at the same time the police of the Republic and the Empire: such men belong only to those who pay them most.

Bryond pushed Rifoel to crime; he instigated the attacks of armed men upon the mail-coaches bearing the moneys of the government, and the levying of a heavy tribute from the purchasers of the National domain; a tax he enforced by means of tortures invented by him which carried terror through five departments. He then demanded that a sum of three hundred thousand francs derived from these plunderings be paid to him for the liquidation of his debts.

When he met with resistance on the part of his wife and Rifoel, and saw the contempt his proposal inspired in upright minds who were acting only from party spirit, he determined to bring them both under the rigor of the law in the next occasion of their committing a crime.

He disappeared, and returned to Paris, taking with him all information as to the then condition of the departments of the West.

The brothers Chaussard and Vauthier were, as the chancellor knows, Bryond’s correspondents.

As soon as the attack was made on the diligence from Caen, Bryond returned secretly and in disguise, under the name of Le Marchand. He put himself into secret communication with the prefect and the magistrates. What was the result? Never was any conspiracy, in which a great number of persons took part, so rapidly discovered and dealt with. Within six days after the committal of the crime all the guilty persons were followed and watched with an intelligence which showed the most accurate knowledge of the plans, and of the individuals concerned in them. The immediate arrest, trial, and execution of Rifoel and his accomplices are the proof of this. We repeat, the chancellor knows even more than we do on this subject.

If ever a condemned person had a right to appeal to the Sovereign’s mercy it is Henriette Lechantre.

Though led astray by love, by ideas of rebellion which she sucked in with the milk that fed her, she is, most certainly, inexcusable in the eyes of the law; but in the eyes of the most magnanimous of emperors, will not her misfortunes, the infamous betrayal of her husband, and a rash enthusiasm plead for her?

The greatest of all captains, the immortal genius which pardoned the Prince of Hatzfeldt and is able to divine the reasons of the heart, will he not admit the fatal power of love, invincible in youth, which extenuates this crime, great as it was?

Twenty-two heads have fallen under the blade of the law; only one of the guilty persons is now left, and she is a young woman, a minor, not twenty years of age. Will not the Emperor Napoleon the Great grant her life, and give her time in which to repent? Is not that to share the part of God?

For Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tour-Minieres,--

Her defender, Bordin, Barrister of the Lower Court of the Department of the Seine.

This dreadful drama disturbed the little sleep that Godefroid took. He dreamed of that penalty of death such as the physician Guillotin has made it with a philanthropic object. Through the hot vapors of a nightmare he saw a young woman, beautiful, enthusiastic, enduring the last preparations, drawn in that fatal tumbril, mounting the scaffold, and crying out, “Vive le roi!”