for all the partisans whom a particularly bold stroke had brought to the attention of the authorities on either bank of the river, totally separated at this time by the slowness and infrequency of communication, and also by the centralisation of the police which prevented direct intercourse between the different departmental authorities.  It was in this way that Mme. de Combray, having become from 1796 to 1804, the chief of the party with the advantage of being known as such only to the party itself, sheltered the most compromised of the chiefs of Norman Chouannerie, those strange heroes whose mad bravery has brought them a legendary fame, and whose names are scarcely to be found, doubtfully spelled, in the accounts of historians.

Among those who sojourned at Tournebut was Charles de Margadel, one of Frotte’s officers, who had organised a royalist police even in Paris.  Thence he had escaped to deal some blows in the Eure under the orders of Hingant de Saint-Maur, another habitue of Tournebut who was preparing there his astonishing expedition of Pacy-sur-Eure.  Besides Margadel and Hingant, Mme. de Combray had oftenest sheltered Armand Gaillard, and his brother Raoul, whose death we have related.  Deville, called “Tamerlan”; the brothers Tellier; Le Bienvenu du Buc, one of the officers of Hingant; also another, hidden under the name of Collin, called “Cupidon”; a German bravo named Flierle, called “Le Marchand,” whom we shall meet again, were also her guests, without counting “Sauve-la-Graisse,” “Sans-Quartier,” “Blondel,” “Perce-Pataud”—­actors in the drama, without name or history, who were always sure of finding in the “cachettes” of the great chateau or the Tour de l’Ermitage, refuge and help.

These were compromising tenants, and it is quite easy to imagine what amusements at Tournebut served to fill the leisure of these men so long unaccustomed to regular occupation, and to whom strife and danger had become absolute necessaries.  Some statistics, rather hard to prove, will furnish hints on this point.  In September, 1800, the two coaches from Caen to Paris were stopped between Evreux and Pacy, at a place called Riquiqui, by two hundred armed brigands, and 48,000 livres belonging to the State taken.  Again, in 1800, the coach from Rouen to Pont-Audemer was attacked by twenty Chouans and a part of the funds carried off.  In 1801 a coach was robbed near Evreux; some days later the mail from Caen to Paris was plundered by six brigands.  On the highroad on the right bank of the Seine attacks on coaches were frequent near Saint-Gervais, d’Authevernes, and the old mill of Mouflaines.  It was only a good deal later, when the chateau of Tournebut was known as an avowed retreat of the Chouans, that it occurred to the authorities that “by its position at an equal distance from the two roads to Paris by Vernon and by Magny-en-Vexin, where the mail had so often been stopped,” it might well have served as a centre of operations,