Muette, where Massignon was waiting for them.  It was proved that their journeys had been made with perfect regularity; the same guides, the same night marches, the same hiding-places by day.  The house of Boniface Colliaux at Feuquieres, that of Monnier at Aumale, and the farm of La Poterie seemed to be the principal meeting-places.  Another passage took place in the second fortnight of November, and another in December, corresponding to a new disembarkation.  In January, 1804, Georges made the journey for the fourth time, to await at Biville the English corvette bringing Pichegru, the Marquis de Riviere and four other conspirators.  A fisherman called Etienne Horne gave some valuable details of this arrival.  He had noticed particularly the man who appeared to be the leader—­“a fat man, with a full, rather hard face, round-shouldered, and with a slight trouble in his arms.”

“These gentlemen,” he added, “usually arrived at night, and left about midnight; they were satisfied with our humble fare, and always kept together in a corner, talking.”

When the tide was full Horne went down to the beach to watch for the sloop.  The password was “Jacques,” to which the men in the boat replied “Thomas.”

Manginot, as may well be imagined, arrested all who in any way had assisted the conspirators, and hurried them off to Paris.  The tower of the Temple became crowded with peasants, with women in Normandy caps, and fishermen of Dieppe, dumbfounded at finding themselves in the famous place where the monarchy had suffered its last torments.  But these were only the small fry of the conspiracy, and the First Consul, who liked to pose as the victim exposed to the blows of an entire party, could not with decency take these inoffensive peasants before a high court of justice.  While waiting for chance or more treachery to reveal the refuge of Georges Cadoudal, the discovery of the organisers of the plot was most important, and this seemed well-nigh impossible, although Manginot had reason to think that the centre of the conspiracy was near Aumale or Feuquieres.

His attention had been attracted by a deposition mentioning the black horse that Georges had ridden from Preuseville to Aumale—­the one that the school-master Monnier had hidden in a corridor of his house.  With this slight clue he started for the country.  There he learned that a workman called Saint-Aubin, who lived in the hamlet of Coppegueule, had been ordered to take the horse to an address on a letter which Monnier had given him.  This man, when called upon to appear, remembered that he had led the horse “to a fine house in the environs of Gournay.”  When he arrived there a servant had taken the animal to the stables, and a lady had come out and asked for the letter, but he denied all knowledge of the lady’s name or the situation of the house.