e Marquise left
Tournebut with her son Bonnoeil, in a cabriolet that d'Ache drove,
disguised as a postillion.

In this equipage, the man without any resource but his courage, and his
royalist faith, whose dream was to change the course of the world's
events, started on his campaign; and one is obliged to think, in face of
this heroic simplicity, of Cervantes' hero, quitting his house one fine
morning, and armed with an old shield and lance, encased in antiquated
armour and animated by a sublime but foolish faith, going forth to
succour the oppressed, and declare war on Giants.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENTURES OF D'ACHE

The demesne of Donnay, situated about three leagues from Falaise on the
road to Harcourt, was one of the estates which Acquet de Ferolles had
usurped, under pretext of saving them from the Public Treasury and of
taking over the management of the property of his brother-in-law,
Bonnoeil, who was an emigre. Now, the latter had for some time
returned to the enjoyment of his civil rights, but Acquet had not
restored his possessions. This terrible man, acting in the name of his
wife, who was a claimant of the inheritance of the late M. de Combray,
had instituted a series of lawsuits against his brother-in-law. He
proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for
some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray
estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations
drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the
Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions
in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the
period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend upon
was a pension of 2,000 francs which the court had granted to her on
August 1, 1804, for her maintenance pending a definite decision. She
lived alone at the Hotel de Combray in the Rue du Trepot at Falaise, a
very large house composed of two main buildings, one of which was vacant
owing to the absence of Timoleon who had settled in Paris. Mme. de
Combray had undertaken to assist with her granddaughters' education, and
they had been sent off to a school kept by a Mme. du Saussay at Rouen.

Foreseeing that this state of things could not last forever, Acquet,
despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate
Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests,
chopping the elms in