It seems very probable that Licquet, either directly or through an agent like Perlet, in whom Le Chevalier had the greatest confidence, had had a hand in this escape.  As soon as the prisoner was free, as soon as Mme. Acquet had given up all her secrets as the price of her lover’s liberty, it only remained to secure him again, and the means employed to gain this end must have been somewhat discreditable, for in the reports sent to the Emperor, who was daily informed of the progress of the affair, things were manifestly misrepresented.  The following facts cannot be questioned:  Le Chevalier had found in Paris “an impenetrable retreat where he could boldly defy all the efforts of the police;” Fouche, guessing at the feelings of the fugitive, issued a warrant against Mme. Thiboust.  By whom was Le Chevalier informed in his hiding-place of his sister-in-law’s arrest?  It is here, evidently, that a third person intervened.  However that may be, the outlaw wrote to Fouche “offering to show himself as soon as the woman who acted as a mother to his son should be set at liberty.”  Fouche had Mme. Thiboust brought before him, and gave her a safe conduct of eight days for Le Chevalier, with positive and reiterated assurance that he would give him a passport for England as soon as he should deliver himself up.

Mme. Thiboust returned home to the Rue des Martyrs, where Le Chevalier came to see her; it was the evening of the 5th of January, 1808.  He covered his little son with kisses and put him in bed:  the child always remembered the caresses he received that evening.  Mme. Thiboust, who did not put much faith in Fouche’s promises, begged her brother-in-law to flee.  “No, no,” he replied; and later on she reported his answer thus:  “The minister has kept his promise in setting you at liberty and I must keep mine—­honour demands it; to hesitate would be weak, and to fail would be a crime.”  On the morning of the 6th, persuaded—­or pretending to be—­that Fouche was going to assist his crossing to England, he embraced his child and sister-in-law.

“Come,” he said, “it is Twelfth-Night, and it is a fine day; have a mass said for us, and get breakfast ready.  I shall be back in two hours.”

Two hours later Inspector Pasque restored him to the Temple, and saw that he was put “hands and feet in irons, in the most rigorous seclusion, under the surveillance of a police agent who was not to leave him day or night.”

The same evening Fouche sent the Emperor a report which contained no mention of the chivalrous conduct of Le Chevalier; it said that “the police had seized this brigand at the house of a woman with whom he had relations, and that they had succeeded in throwing themselves upon him before he could use his weapons.”  On the morning of the 9th, Commandant Durand, of the staff, presented himself at the Temple, and had the irons removed from the prisoner, who appeared at noon before a military commission in a hall in the staff office, 7 Quoi Voltaire.  This expeditious magistracy was so sparing of its paper and ink that it took no notes.  It played, in the social organisation, the role of a trap into which were thrust such people as were found embarrassing.  Some were condemned whose fate is only known because their names have been found scribbled on a torn paper that served as an envelope for police reports.