In this neighbourhood d’Ache had the choice of several places of refuge.  He was closely connected by ties of friendship with the family of Duquesnay de Monfiquet who lived at Mandeville near Trevieres.  M. de Monfiquet, a thoroughly loyal but quite unimportant nobleman, having emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution, his estate at Mandeville had been sequestrated and his chateau pillaged and half demolished.  Mme. de Monfiquet, a clever and energetic woman, being left with six daughters unprovided for, took refuge with the d’Ache’s at Gournay, where she spent the whole period of the Terror.  Madame d’Ache even kept Henriette, one of the little girls who was ill-favoured and hunchbacked but remarkably clever, with her for five years.

Monsieur de Monfiquet, returning from abroad in the year VII, and having somewhat reorganised his little estate at Mandeville, lived there in poverty with his family in the hope that brighter days would dawn for them with the return of the monarchy.  On all these grounds d’Ache was sure of finding not only a safe retreat but congenial society.  The few persons who were acquainted with what passed at Mandeville were convinced that Mlle. Henriette possessed a great influence over the exile, and that she had been his mistress for a long time.  According to general opinion he made her his confidant and she helped him like a devoted admirer.  In fact she arranged several other hiding-places for him in the neighbourhood of Trevieres in case of need;—­one at the mill at Dungy, another with M. de Cantelou at Lingevres, and a third at a tanner’s named La Perandeere at Bayeux.  And to escort him in his flights she secured a man of unparalleled audacity who had been a brigand in the district for ten years, and who had to avenge the death of his two brothers, who had fallen into an ambush and been shot at Bayeux in 1796.  People called him David the Intrepid.  Having been ten times condemned to death and certain of being shot as soon as he was caught, David had no settled abode.  On stormy nights he would embark in a boat which he steered himself, and, sure of not being overtaken, he would reach England where he used to act as an agent for the emigrants.  They say that he was not without influence with the entourage of the Comte d’Artois.  When he stayed in France he lodged with an old lady former housekeeper to a Councillor of the Parliament of Normandy, who lived alone in an old house in Bayeux and to whom he had been recommended by Mlle. Henriette de Monfiquet.  David did not take up much room.  When he arrived he set in motion a contrivance of his own by which two steps of the principal staircase were raised, and slipping into the cavity thus made, he quickly replaced everything.  All the gendarmes in Calvados could have gone up and down this staircase without suspecting that a man was hidden in the house, where, however, he was never looked for.