Mme. d’Ache and her eldest daughter had been since February in the Madelonnettes prison; the second girl, Alexandrine, had been left at liberty in the hope that in Paris, where she was a stranger, she would be guilty of some imprudence that would deliver her father to the police.  She had taken lodgings in the Rue Traversiere-Saint-Honore, at the Hotel des Treize-Cantons, and Real had immediately set two spies upon her, but their reports were monotonously melancholy.  “Very well behaved, very quiet—­she lives, and is daily with the master and mistress of the hotel, people of mature age.  She sees no one, and is spoken of in the highest terms.”  From this side, also, all hope of catching d’Ache had to be abandoned.

Another way was thought of, and on March 22d the order to open all the gates was given.  Fouche foresaw that in their anxiety to leave Paris all of Georges’ accomplices who had not been caught would hasten to return to Normandy, and thanks to the watchfulness exercised, a clean sweep might be made of them.  The cleverly conceived idea had some result.  On the 25th a peasant called Jacques Pluquet of Meriel, near l’Isle-Adam, when working in his field on the border of the wood of La Muette, saw four men in hats pulled down over cotton caps, and with strong knotted clubs, coming towards him.  They asked him if they could cross the Oise at Meriel.  Pluquet replied that it was easy to do so, “but there were gendarmes to examine all who passed.”  At that they hesitated.  They described themselves as conscript deserters coming from Valenciennes who wished to get back to their homes.  Pluquet’s account is so picturesque as to be worth quoting: 

“I asked them where they belonged; they replied in Alencon.  I remarked that they would have trouble in getting there without being arrested.  One of them said:  ’That is true, for after what had just happened in Paris, everywhere is guarded.’  Then, allowing the three others to go on ahead, he said to me, ‘But if they arrest us, what will they do to us?’ I replied:  ’They will take you back to your corps, from brigade to brigade.’  On that he said, ’If they catch us, they will make us do ten thousand leagues.’  And he left me to regain his comrades, the youngest of whom might have been twenty-two years old and seemed very sad and tired.”

The next morning some people at Auvers found a little log cabin in a wood in which the four men had spent the night.  They were seen on the following days, wandering in the forest of l’Isle-Adam.  At last, on April 1st they went to the ferryman of Meriel, Eloi Cousin, who was sheltering two gendarmes.  While they were begging the ferryman to take them in his boat, the gendarmes appeared, and the men fled.  A pistol shot struck one of them, and a second, who stopped to assist his comrade, was also taken.  The two others escaped to the woods.

The wounded man was put in a boat and taken to the hospital at Pontoise, where he died the next day.  Real, who was immediately informed of it, immediately sent Querelle, whom he was carefully keeping in prison to use in case of need, and he at once recognised the corpse to be that of Raoul Gaillard, called Houvel, or Saint-Vincent, the friend of d’Ache, the principal advance-agent of Georges.  The other prisoner was his brother Armand, who was immediately taken to Paris and thrown into the Temple.