tten about Le Chevalier than about most of those who
were concerned in the troubles in the west. Nevertheless, his adventures
deserve more than the few lines, often incorrect, devoted to him by some
chroniclers of the revolt of the Chouans. He was a remarkable
personality, very romantic, somewhat of an enigma, and one who by a
touch of gallantry and scepticism was distinguished from his savage and
heroic companions.

Born with a generous temperament and deeply in love with glory, as he
said, he was the son of a councillor, hammer-keeper to the corporation
of the woods and forests of Vire. A stay of several years in Paris where
he took lessons from different masters as much in science as in the arts
and foreign languages, had completed his education. He returned to Saint
Arnould in 1799, uncertain as to the choice of a career, when a chance
meeting with Picot, chief of the Auge division, whose death was
described at the beginning of this story, decided his vocation, and Le
Chevalier became a royalist officer, less from conviction than from
generous feelings which inclined him towards the cause of the vanquished
and oppressed. A pistol shot broke his left arm two or three days after
he was enrolled, and he was scarcely cured of this wound when he again
took the field and was implicated in the stopping of a coach. Three of
his friends were imprisoned, and when he himself was arrested, he
succeeded in proving that on the very day of the attack, in the
neighbourhood of Evreux, he was on a visit to a senator in Paris who had
great friends among the authorities, and the magistrates were compelled
to yield before this indisputable alibi. Le Chevalier, nevertheless,
appeared before the tribunal which was trying the cases of his
companions, and pleaded their cause with the eloquence inspired by the
purest and bravest friendship, and when he heard them condemned to
death, he begged in a burst of feeling which amazed everybody, to be
allowed to share their fate. It was considered a sufficient punishment
to send him to prison at Caen, whence he was liberated a few months
later, though he had to remain in the town under police surveillance. It
was then that the wild romance of his life began.

He possessed an ample fortune. His chivalrous behaviour in the affair at
Evreux had gained for him, among the Chouans such renown that without
knowing him otherwise than from hearsay, Mme. de Combray travelled
across Normandy, as did many othe