e strangers asked her if she were not waiting for some
one. Upon her answering in the affirmative they conferred for a moment,
and then gave their names. They were the lawyer Vannier and Bureau de
Placene, two intimate friends of Le Chevalier's. Mme. Acquet, in her
turn, mentioned her name, and Vannier offering her his arm, escorted her
to his house in the Rue Saint-Martin.

They held a council next day at breakfast. Lemarchand, Vannier, and
Bureau de Placene appeared very anxious to keep Mme. Acquet. She was,
they said, sure of not being punished as long as she did not quit the
department of Calvados. Neither the prefect nor the magistrates would
trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy
had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected
with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons
which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a
question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal
of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than
40,000 francs. Finding her ready to rejoin Le Chevalier, and persuaded
that she would carry the remainder of this stolen money to her lover,
they thought it well to stop her and the money, to which they believed
they had a right--Lemarchand as Allain's friend and creditor, Placene in
his capacity of cashier to the Chouans. The lawyer Vannier, as
liquidator of Le Chevalier's debts, had offered to keep Mme. Acquet
prisoner until they had succeeded in extorting the whole sum from her.

The life led by the unhappy woman at Vannier's, where she was a prey to
this trio of scoundrels, was a purgatory of humiliations and misery.
When the lawyer understood that not only did his prisoner not possess a
single sou, but that she could not dispose of the Buquets' treasure, he
flew into a violent passion and plainly threatened to give her up to the
police; he even reproached her "for what she eat," swearing that somehow
or other "he would make her pay board, for he certainly was not going to
feed her free of cost." The unhappy woman, who had spent her last louis
in paying for the seat in the Rouen diligence, which she had not
occupied, wrote to Lefebre early in September, begging him to send her a
little money. He had received a large share of the plunder and might at
least have shown himself generous; but he replied coolly that he could
do nothing for her; and that she had b