Summoned to La Bijude he presented himself there one morning towards the end of October.  D’Ache arrived there the same evening while they were at dinner.  They talked rather vaguely of the great project, but much of their old Chouan comrades.  In spite of his decided German accent Flierle was inexhaustible on this theme.  He and d’Ache slept in the same room, and this intimacy lasted two whole days, at the end of which it was decided that Flierle should be employed as a messenger at a salary of fifty crowns a month.  That same night, Lanoe conducted d’Ache two leagues from La Bijude and left him on the road to Arjentan.

Here is a new landmark:  on November 26th, Veyrat, the inspector of police, hastily informed Desmarets that d’Ache, whom they had been seeking for two years, had arrived the night before in Paris, getting out of the coach from Rennes in the company of a man named Durand.  The latter, leaving his trunk at the office, spent the night at a house in the Rue Montmartre, whence he departed the next morning for Boulogne.  As for d’Ache, wrote Veyrat, he had neither box nor parcel, and disappeared as soon as he got out of the carriage.  Search was made in all the furnished lodgings and hotels in the neighbourhood, but without result.  Desmarets set all his best men to work, but in vain:  d’Ache was not to be found.

He was at Tournebut, where he spent a month.  It is probable that a pressing need of money was the cause of this journey to Paris and his visit to Mme. de Combray.  By this time d’Ache had exhausted his credit at the banker Nourry’s.  Believing that this source would never be exhausted, he had drawn on it largely.  His disappointment was therefore cruel when he heard that his account was definitely closed.  He found himself again without money, and by a coincidence which must be mentioned, the diligence from Paris to Rouen was robbed, during his stay at Tournebut, in November, 1806, at the Mill of Monflaines, about a hundred yards from Authevernes, where the preceding attacks had taken place.  The booty was not large this time, and when d’Ache again took the road to Mandeville his resources consisted of six hundred francs.

He was obliged to spend the winter in torturing idleness; there is no indication of his movements till February, 1807.  The time fixed for the great events was drawing near, and it was important to make them known.  He decided on the plan of a manifesto which was to be widely circulated through the whole province, and would not allow any one to assist in drawing it up.  This proclamation, written in the name of the princes, stipulated a general amnesty, the retention of those in authority, a reduction of taxation, and the abolition of conscription.  Lanoe, summoned to Mandeville, received ten louis and the manuscript of the manifesto, with the order to get it printed as secretly as possible.  The crafty Norman promised, slipped the paper into the lining of his coat, and after a fruitless—­and probably very feeble—­attempt on a printer’s apprentice at Falaise, returned it to Flierle, with many admonitions to be prudent, but only refunded five louis.  Flierle first applied to a bookseller in the Froide Rue at Caen.  The latter, as soon as he found out what it contained, refused his assistance.