d have merited the traditional epitaph: "A very high, noble
and powerful lady."

CHAPTER X

THE CHOUANS SET FREE

A letter in a woman's handwriting, addressed to Timoleon de Combray,
Hotel de la Loi, Rue de Richelieu, its black seal hastily broken,
contains these words: "Alas, my dear cousin, you still continued to hope
when all hope was over.... I cannot leave your mother and I am anxious
about M. de Bonnoeil's condition."

This is all that we can glean of the manner in which Mme. Acquet's
mother and brothers learned of her execution on October 6th. Mme. de
Combray at least displayed a good deal of energy, if not great calmness.
After the winter began, the letters she wrote Timoleon regained their
natural tone. The great sorrow seems to have been forgotten; they all
were leagued together against Acquet, who still reigned triumphant at
Donnay, and threatened to absorb the fortune of the whole family. The
trial had cost an enormous sum. Besides the money stolen in the woods at
Quesnay, which the Marquise had to refund, she had been obliged to spend
money freely in order to "corrupt Licquet," for Chauveau-Lagarde's fee,
for her advocate Maitre Gady de la Vigne, and for Ducolombier's journeys
to Paris and Vienna with the little girls,--the whole outlay amounting
to nearly 125,000 francs; and as the farms at Tournebut were
tenantless, while Acquet retained all the estates in lower Normandy and
would not allow them anything, the Marquise and her sons found their
income reduced to almost nothing. There remained not a single crown of
the 25,000 francs deposited in August, 1807, with Legrand. All had been
spent on "necessaries for the prisoners, or in their interests."

Acquet was intractable. When the time for settling up came, he refused
insolently to pay his share of the lawsuit or for his children's
education. "Mme. de Combray, in order to carry out her own frenzied
plots," he stated, "had foolishly used her daughter's money in paying
her accomplices, and now she came and complained that Mme. Acquet lacked
bread and that she supported her, besides paying for the children's
schooling.... Mme. Acquet left her husband's house on the advice of her
mother who wished to make an accomplice of her. They took away the
children, their father did not even know the place of their retreat, and
the very persons who had abducted them came and asked him for the cost
of their maintenance."

This was his plea; to which the Com