Allain, too, showed some interest in her.  He was hiding in the neighbourhood of Caen, and sometimes came in the evening to confer with Vannier in company with Bureau de Placene and a lawyer named Robert Langelley with whom her host had business dealings.  They were all equally needed, and spent their time in planning means to make Joseph Buquet disgorge.  Allain proposed only one plan, and it was adopted.  Mme. Acquet was to go to Donnay again and try to soften the peasant; if he refused to show where the money was hidden, Allain was to spring on him and strangle him.

They set out from Caen one morning, about the 25th of September.  Mme. Acquet had arranged to meet Joseph at the house of a farmer named Halbout, which was situated at some distance from the village of Donnay.  He came at the appointed hour; but as he was approaching carefully, fearing an ambuscade, he caught sight of Allain hiding behind a hedge, and taking fright made off as fast as his legs could carry him.

They had to go back to Caen empty-handed and face the anger of Vannier, who accused his lodger of complicity with the Buquets to make their attempts miscarry.  A fresh council was held, and this time Chauvel was admitted; he too, had a plan.  This was that he and Mallet, one of his comrades, should go to Donnay in uniform; Langelley was to play the part of commissary of police.  “They were to arrest Buquet on the part of the government; if he consented to say where the money was, he was to be given his liberty, and the address of a safe hiding-place; in case of his refusing, the police were to kill him, and they would then be free to draw up a report of contumacy.”

The Marquise de Combray’s daughter was present at these conferences, meek and resigned, her heart heavy at the thought that this wretched money would become the prey of these men who had had none of the trouble and who would have all the profit.  Every day she sank deeper and deeper into this quagmire; the plots that were hatched there, the things she heard—­for they showed no reserve before her—­were horrible.  As she represented 40,000 francs to these ruffians, she had to endure not only their brutal gallantries, but also their confidences.  “Mme. Placene one day suggested the enforced disappearance of the baker Lerouge,” says Bornet, as he was “very religious and a very good man,” she was afraid that if he were arrested, “he would not consent to lie, and would ruin them all.”  Langelley specially feared the garrulity of Flierle and Lanoe, in prison at Caen, and he was trying to get them poisoned.  He had already made an arrangement “with the chemist and the prison doctor, whom he had under his thumb,” and he also knew a man who “for a small sum, would create a disturbance in the town, allow himself to be arrested and condemned to a few months’ imprisonment, and would thus find a way of getting rid of these individuals.”  They also spoke of Acquet, who was still in jail at Caen.  In