An incident now occurred, the importance of which it is difficult to discover, but which seems to have been great, to judge from the mystery in which it is shrouded.  Whether he had received some urgent communication from England, or whether, in his state of destitution, he had thought of claiming the help of his friends at Tournebut, d’Ache despatched Flierle to Mme. de Combray, and gave him two letters, advising him to use the greatest discretion.  Flierle set out on horseback from Caen in the morning of March 13th.  At dawn next day he arrived at Rouen, and immediately repaired to the house of a Mme. Lambert, a milliner in the Rue de l’Hopital, to whom one of the letters was addressed.  “I gave it to her,” he said, “on her staircase, without speaking to her, as I had been told to do, and set out that very morning for Tournebut, where I arrived between two and three o’clock.  I gave Mme. de Combray the other letter, which she threw in the fire after having read it.”

Flierle slept at the chateau.  Next day Bonnoeil conducted him to Louviers, and there intrusted a packet of letters to him addressed to d’Ache.  Both directed their steps to Rouen, and the German fetched from the Rue de l’Hopital, the milliner’s reply, which she gave him herself without saying a word.

He immediately continued his journey, and by March 20th was back at Mandeville, and placed the precious mail in d’Ache’s hands.  The latter had scarcely read it before he sent David word to get his boat ready, and without losing a moment, the letters which had arrived from Rouen were taken out to sea to the English fleet, to be forwarded to London.

We are still ignorant of the contents of these mysterious despatches, and inquiry on this point is reduced to supposition.  Some pretended that d’Ache sent the manifesto to Mme. de Combray, and that it was clandestinely printed in the cellars at Tournebut; others maintain that towards March 15th Bonnoeil returned from Paris, bringing with him the correspondence of the secret royalist committee which was to be sent to the English Cabinet via Mandeville.  D’Ache certainly attached immense importance to this expedition, which ought, according to him, to make the princes decide on the immediate despatch of funds, and to hasten the preparation for the attack on the island of Tahitou.  But days passed and no reply came.  In the agony of uncertainty he decided to approach Le Chevalier, whom he only knew by reputation as being a shrewd and resolute man.  The meeting took place at Trevieres towards the middle of April, 1807.  Le Chevalier brought one of his aides-de-camp with him, but d’Ache came alone.

The names of these two men are so little known, they occupy such a very humble place in history, that we can hardly imagine, now that we know how pitifully their dreams miscarried, how without being ridiculous they could fancy that any result whatever could come of their meeting.  The surroundings made them consider themselves important:  d’Ache was—­or thought he was—­the mouthpiece of the exiled King; as for Le Chevalier, whether from vainglory or credulity he boasted of an immense popularity with the Chouans, and spoke mysteriously of the royalist committee which, working in Paris, had succeeded, he said, in rallying to the cause men of considerable importance in the entourage of the Emperor himself.