The poor woman would never have known this peacemaker but for her husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself of his mission.  She had yielded as much from inexperience as from compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom.  She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning for love and her impressionable nature.  The person who now came suddenly into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero—­he was so handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling novelties, loved him from the first day with an “ungovernable passion.”  She associated herself with his life with an ardour that excluded every other sentiment, and she so wished to stand well with him that, casting aside all prudence, she adopted his adventurous mode of living, mixing with the outcasts who formed the entourage of her lover, and with them frequenting the inns and cafes of Caen.  He succeeded in avoiding the surveillance of the police, and secretly undertook journeys to Paris where he said he had friends in the Emperor’s immediate circle.  He travelled by those roads in Normandy which were known to all the old Chouans, talking to them of the good times when they made war on the Blues, and not hesitating to say that, whenever he wished, he had only to make a sign and an army would spring up around him.  He maintained, moreover, a small troop of determined men who carried his messages and formed his staff.

There is not the slightest doubt that their chief resource lay in carrying off the money of the State which was sent from place to place in public conveyances, and it was this booty that enriched the coffers of the party, the treasurer, Placene, having long since grown indifferent to the source of his supplies.  The agreement of certain dates is singularly convincing.  Thus, at the beginning of December, 1805, d’Ache was at Mandeville with the Monfiquets, in a state of such penury that, as we have seen, Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis d’or by Lanoe; nevertheless, he was thinking of going to England to fetch back the princes.  He would require a considerable sum to prepare for his journey, and to guard against all the contingencies of this somewhat audacious attempt.  Mme. Acquet was informed of the situation by her mother whom she came to visit at Donnay, and on the 22d December, 1805, the coach from Rouen to Paris was attacked on the slope of Authevernes, at a distance of only three leagues from the Chateau of Tournebut.  The travellers noticed that one of the brigands, dressed in a military costume, and whom his comrades called The Dragon, was so much thinner and more active than the rest, that he might well have been taken “for a woman dressed as a man.”  A fresh attack was made at the same place by the same band on the 15th February, 1806; and as before the band disappeared