Whatever it may have been, this incident interrupted Licquet’s journey to Caen.  He continued it towards the middle of November, quitting Rouen on the 18th, still accompanied by Delaitre and others of his cleverest men.  This time he represented himself as an inspector of taxes, which gave him the right of entering houses and visiting even the cellars.  His aim was to unearth Allain, Buquet and especially d’Ache, but none of them appeared.  We cannot deal with this third journey in detail, as Licquet has kept the threads of the play secret, but from half-confidences made to Real, we may infer that he bought the concurrence of Langelley and Chauvel on formal promises of immunity from punishment; they consented to serve the detective and betray Allain, and they were on the point of delivering him up when “fear of the Gendarme Mallet caused everything to fail.”  Licquet fell back with his troop, taking with him Chauvel, Mallet and Langelley, who were soon to be followed by Lanoe, Vannier, Placene and all the Buquets, save Joseph, who had not been seen again.  But before starting on his return journey to Rouen, Licquet wished to pay his respects to Count Caffarelli, the Prefect of Calvados, in whose territory he had just been hunting.  The latter did not conceal his displeasure, and thought it strange that his own gendarmes should be ordered to proceed with criminal cases and to make arrests of which they neglected even to inform him.  Licquet states that after “looking black at him, Caffarelli laughed till he cried” over the stories of the false Captain Delaitre and the false inspector of taxes.  It is probable that the story was well told; but the Prefect of Calvados was none the less annoyed at the unceremonious procedure, as he testified a little later with some blustering.  Licquet, moreover, was not deceived:  on his return from Caen, he wrote:  “Behold, I have quarrelled with the Prefect of Calvados.”

However, he cared very little about it.  It had been tacitly decreed that the robbery at Quesnay should be judged by a special court at Rouen.  Licquet became the organiser and stage-manager of the proceedings.  At the end of 1807 he had under lock and key thirty-eight prisoners whom he questioned incessantly, and kept in a state of uncertainty as to whether he meant to confront them with each other.  But he declared himself dissatisfied.  D’Ache’s absence spoiled his joy.  He quite understood that without the latter, his triumph would be incomplete, his work would remain unfinished, and it was doubtless due to this torturing obsession that he owed the idea, as cruel as it was ingenious, of a new drama of which the old Marquise de Combray was again the victim.