Mme. de Combray’s royalist enthusiasm did not need this inspiration; a wise man would have counselled resignation, or at least patience, but unhappily, she was surrounded only by those whose fanaticism encouraged and excused her own.  Enthusiastic frenzy had become the habitual state of these people, whose overheated imaginations were nourished on legendary tales, and foolish hopes of imminent reprisals.  They welcomed with unfailing credulity the wildest prophecies, announcing terrible impending massacres, to which the miraculous return of the Bourbon lilies would put an end, and as illusions of this kind are strengthened by their own deceptions, the house in the Rue de Valasse soon heard mysterious voices, and became the scene “of celestial apparitions,” which, on the invitation of Pere Lemercier predicted the approaching destruction of the blues and the restoration of the monarchy.

On a certain day in the summer of 1795, a stranger presented himself to Pere Lemercier, armed with a password, and a very warm recommendation from a refractory priest, who was in hiding at Caen.  He was a Chouan chief, bearing the name and title of General Lebret; of medium stature, with red hair and beard, and cold steel-coloured eyes.  Introduced to Mme. de Combray by Lemercier, he admitted that his real name was Louis Acquet d’Hauteporte, Chevalier de Ferolles.  He had come to Rouen, he said, to transmit the orders of the Princes to Mallet de Crecy, who commanded for the King in Upper Normandy.

We can judge of the welcome the Chevalier received.  Mme. de Combray, her daughters, the nuns and the Chartreux friars used all their ingenuity to satisfy the slightest wish of this man, who modestly called himself “the agent general of His Majesty.”  They arranged a hiding-place for him in the safest part of the house, and Pere Lemercier blessed it.  Acquet stayed there part of the day, and in the evening joined in the usual pursuits of the household, and related the story of his adventures by way of entertainment.

According to him, he possessed large estates in the environs of the Sables-d’Olonne, of which place he was a native.  An officer in the regiment of Brie infantry before the Revolution, being at Lille in 1791 he had taken advantage of his nearness to the frontier to incite his regiment to insurrection and emigrate to Belgium.  He had then put himself at the disposal of the Princes, and had enlisted men for the royal army in Veudee, Poitou and Normandy, helping priests to emigrate, and saving whole villages from the fury of the blues.  He named Charette, Frotte and Puisaye as his most intimate friends, and these names recalled the chivalrous times of the wars in the west in which he had taken a glorious part.  Sometimes he disappeared for several days, and on his return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to a successful termination.  In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Ferolles had become the idol of the little group of naive royalists among whom he had found refuge.  He had bravely served the cause; he plumed himself on having merited the surname of “toutou of the Princes,” and in Mme. de Combray’s dazzled eyes this was equal to any number of references.