Doubtless the days passed slowly for this man accustomed to an active life; he and his old friend dreamt of the return of the King, and Bonnoeil, who spent part of the year at Tournebut, read to them a funeral oration of the Duc d’Enghien, a virulent pamphlet that the royalists passed from hand to hand, and of which he had taken a copy.  How many times must d’Ache have paced the magnificent avenue of limes, which still exists as the only vestige of the old park.  There is a moss-grown stone table on which one loves to fancy this strange man leaning his elbow while he thought of his “rival,” and planned the future according to his royalist illusions as the other in his Olympia, the Tuileries, planned it according to his ambitious caprices.

This existence lasted fifteen months.  From the time of his arrival at the end of March, 1804, until the day he left, it does not seem that d’Ache received any visitors, except Mme. Levasseur of Rouen, who, if police reports are to be believed, was simultaneously his mistress and Raoul Gaillard’s.  The truth is that she was a devoted friend of the royalists—­to whom she had rendered great service, and through her d’Ache was kept informed of what happened in Lower Normandy during his seclusion at Tournebut.  Since the general pacification, tranquillity was, in appearance at least, established; Chouannerie seemed to be forgotten.  But conscription was not much to the taste of the rural classes, and the rigour with which it was applied alienated the population.  The number of refractories and deserters augmented at each requisition; protected by the sympathy of the peasants they easily escaped all search; the country people considered them victims rather than rebels, and gave them assistance when they could do so without being seen.  There were here all the elements of a new insurrection; to which would be added, if they succeeded in uniting and equipping all these malcontents, the survivors of Frotte’s bands, exasperated by the rigours of the new regime, and the ill-treatment of the gendarmes.

The descent of a French prince on the Norman coast would in d’Ache’s opinion, group all these malcontents.  Thoroughly persuaded that to persuade one of them to cross the channel it would suffice to tell M. le Comte d’Artois or one of his sons that his presence was desired by the faithful population in the West, he thought of going himself to England with the invitation.  Perhaps they would be able to persuade the King to put himself at the head of the movement, and be the first to land on French soil.  This was d’Ache’s secret conviction, and in the ardour of his credulous enthusiasm he was certain that on the announcement, Napoleon’s Empire would crumble of itself, without the necessity of a single blow.