nd; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board
and her book of rules, and calmly awaited the long-hoped-for
thunderbolt.

It fell at length, and the old Chouan must have flushed with triumph
when she heard that Bonaparte was crushed. What a sudden change! In less
than a day, the prisoner became again the venerable Marquise de Combray,
a victim to her devotion to the royal cause, a heroine, a martyr, a
saint; while at the other end of Normandy, Acquet de Ferolles, who had
at last decided to take in his three children, felt the ground tremble
under his feet, and hurriedly made his preparations for flight. In their
eagerness to make themselves acceptable to the Combrays, people "who
would not have raised a finger to help them when they were overwhelmed
with misfortune," now revealed to them things that had hitherto been
hidden from them; and thus the Marquise and her sons learned how Senator
Pontecoulant, out of hatred for Caffarelli, "whom he wished to ruin,"
had undertaken, "with the aid of Acquet de Ferolles," to hand over
d'Ache to assassins. Proscribed royalists emerged on all sides from the
holes where they had been burrowing for the last fifteen years. There
was a spirit of retaliation in the air. Every one was making up his
account and writing out the bill. In this home of the Chouannerie, where
hatred ran rife and there were so many bitter desires for revenge, a
terrible reaction set in. The short notes, which the Marquise exchanged
with her sons and servants during the last few days of her captivity,
expressed neither joy at the Princes' return nor happiness at her own
restoration to liberty. They might be summed up in these words: "It is
our turn now," and the germ of the dark history of the Restoration and
the revolutions which followed it is contained in the outpourings of
this embittered heart, which nothing save vengeance could henceforth
satisfy.

On Sunday, May 1st, 1814, at the hour when Louis XVIII was to enter
Saint Ouen, the doors of the prison were opened for the Marquise de
Combray, who slept the following night at her house in the Rue des
Carmelites. The next day at 1.30 p.m. she set out for Tournebut
with Mlle. Querey; her bailiff, Leclerc, came as far as Rouen to fetch
her in his trap. All the public conveyances were overcrowded; on the
roads leading to Paris there was an uninterrupted stream of vehicles of
all sorts, of cavaliers and of foot passengers, all hurrying to see