Mme. de Combray’s sons kept Tournebut, and Bonnoeil continued to live there.  There are many people in Aubevoye who remember him.  He was a tall old man, with almost the figure of an athlete, though quite bowed and bent.  His eyebrows were grizzled and bushy, his eyes large and very dark, his complexion sunburned.  He was somewhat gloomy, and seemed to care for nothing but to talk with a very faded and wrinkled old woman in a tall goffered cap, who was an object of veneration to everybody.  This was Mlle. Querey.  All were aware she had been Mme. de Combray’s confidante and knew all the Marquise’s secrets:  and she was often seen talking at great length to Bonnoeil about the past.

Bonnoeil died at Tournebut in 1846, at the age of eighty-four, and the manor of Marillac did not long outlast him.  Put up for sale in 1856, it was demolished in the following year and replaced by a large and splendid villa.  While the walls of the old chateau were being demolished, the peasants of Aubevoye, who had so often listened to the legends concerning it, displayed great curiosity as to the mysteries which the demolition would disclose.  Nothing was discovered but a partly filled up subterranean passage, which seemed to run towards the small chateau.  The secret of the other hiding-places had long been known.  A careful examination of the old dwelling produced only one surprise.  A portmanteau containing 3,000 francs in crowns and double-louis was found in a dark attic.  Mme. de Combray’s grandchildren knew so little of the drama of their house, that no one thought of connecting this find with the affairs of Quesnay, of which they had scarcely ever heard.  It seems probable that this portmanteau belonged to the lawyer Lefebre and was hidden by him, unknown to the Marquise, in the hope of being able to recover it later on.

A very few words will suffice to tell the fate of the other actors in this drama.  Licquet was unfortunate; but first of all he asked for the cross of the Legion of Honour.  “I have served the government for twenty years,” he wrote to Real.  “I bristle with titles.  I am the father of a family and am looked up to by the authorities.  My only ambition is honour, and I am bold enough to ask for a sign.  Will you be kind enough to obtain it for me?” Did Real not dare to stand sponsor for such a candidate?  Did they think that the cross, given hitherto so parsimoniously to civilians, was not meant for the police?  Licquet was obliged to wait in patience.  In the hope of increasing his claims to the honour he coveted, he went in quest of new achievements, and had the good fortune to discover a second attack on a coach, far less picturesque, as a matter of fact, than the one to which he owed his fame, but which he undertook to work up like a master, and did it so well, by dint of disguises, forged letters, surprised confidences, the invention of imaginary persons, and other melodramatic tricks, that he succeeded in producing at the Criminal Court