when they approached the princes to whom they had devoted so
many years of their lives, hunted over France and pursued like
malefactors; how they must have anticipated the welcome in London that
their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by
the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who
were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The
deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of
its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many
false Chouans--spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each
brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining money made off
and were never seen again--that distrust at last had taken the place of
the unsuspecting confidence of former days. Every Frenchman who arrived
in London was considered an adventurer, and as far as we can gather from
this closed page of history,--for those, who tried the experiment of a
visit to the exiled princes, have respectfully kept silence on the
subject of their discomfiture--it appears that terrible mortifications
were in store for the militant royalists who approached the emigrant
leaders. D'Ache did not escape disillusionment, and though he did not
disclose the incidents of his stay in London, we know that at first he
was thrown into prison, and that for two months he could not succeed in
obtaining an interview with the Comte d'Artois, much less with the
exiled King.

M. de la Chapelle, the most influential man at the little court at
Hartwell, sent for him and questioned him about his plans, but was
opposed to his being received by the princes, though he put him in
communication with King George's ministers, every person who brought
news of any plot against Napoleon's government being sure of a welcome
and a hearing from the latter.

After three weeks of conferences the expedition which was to support a
general rising of the peasants in the West, was postponed till the
spring of 1807. A feigned attack on Port-en-Bessin would allow of their
surprising the islands of Tahitou and Saint-Marcouf as well as Port-Bail
on the western slope of the Cotentin. The destruction of the roads,
which protect the lower part of the peninsula, would insure the success
of the undertaking by cutting off Cherbourg which, attacked from behind,
would easily be carried, resistance being impossible. The invading army,
concentrating under the forts of the town, in