to him, obliged to apply to an
innkeeper at Saint-Exupere. This man was in correspondence with a fellow
named Richard, who acted as courier to the two outlaws. "Between Bayeux
and Saint-Lo is the coal mine of Litre, and the vast forest of Serisy is
almost contiguous to it. This mine employed five or six hundred workmen,
and as Richard was employed there one was inclined to think that the
subterranean passages might serve as a refuge to Allain and d'Ache,
whether they were there in the capacity of miners, or were hidden in
some hut or disused ditch."

The information was too vague to be utilised, and Licquet thought it
wiser to direct his batteries on another point. He had under his thumb
one victim whom as yet he had not tortured, and from whom he hoped much:
this was Mme. Acquet. "She is," he wrote, "a second edition of her
mother for hypocrisy, but surpasses her in maliciousness and
ill-nature.... Her children seem to interest her but little; she never
mentions them to any one, and her heart is closed to all natural
sentiments."

But I believe that it was to excuse himself in his chief's eyes that
Licquet painted such a black picture of the prisoner. His own heart was
closed to all compassion, and we find in this man the inexorable
impassibility of a Laffemas or a Fouquier Tinville, with a refined irony
in addition which only added to the cruelty. The moral torture to which
he subjected Mme. Acquet is the product of an inquisitor's mind. "At
present," he remarked, "as the subject is somewhat exhausted, I shall
turn my attention to setting our prisoners against one another. The
little encounter may give us some useful facts."

The little encounter broke the prisoner's heart, and deprived her of the
only consoling thought so many misfortunes had left her.

CHAPTER VIII

PAYING THE PENALTY

"Le Chevalier is the adored one."

It was thus that Licquet summarised his first conversation with Mme.
Acquet. He had been certain for some time that her unbridled passion for
her hero held such a place in her heart that it had stifled all other
feeling. For his sake she had harboured Allain's men; for him she had so
often gone to brave the scornful reception of Joseph Buquet; and for him
she had so long endured the odious life in Vannier's house. Licquet
decided that so violent a passion, "well handled," might throw some new
light on affairs. This incomparable comedian should have been seen
playing his cruel game.