This model functionary spent the day at Aisy waiting for news; the peasants and gendarmes scoured the country with precaution, for, since the night, the legend had grown and it was told, not without fear, how M. Dupont d’Aisy had courageously given battle to an army of brigands.  About midday the searchers returned leading the four horses which they had found tied to a hedge near the village of Placy, and poor Gousset who was found calmly seated in the shade of a tree near a wheat-field.  He said that the band had left him there very early in the morning after having made him march all night with bandaged eyes.  At the end of an hour and a half, hearing nothing, he had ventured to unfasten the bandage, and not knowing the country, had waited till some one came to seek him.  He could give no information respecting the robbers, except that they marched very fast and gave him terrible blows.  M. Caffarelli commiserated the poor man heartily, charged him to take the waggon and smashed chests back to Caen, then, after having warmly congratulated M. Dupont d’Aisy on his fine conduct, he returned home.

After the scuffle at Aisy, Allain and his companions had marched in haste to Donnay, but missed their way.  Crossing the village of Saint-Germain-le-Vasson, they seized a young miller who was taking the air on his doorstep, and who consented to guide them, though very much afraid of this band of armed men with heavily-laden wallets.  He led them as far as Acqueville and Allain sent him away with ten crowns.  It was nearly midnight when they reached Donnay; they passed behind the chateau where Joseph Buquet was waiting for them and led them to his house.  He and his brother made the eight men enter, enjoined silence, helped them to empty their sacks into a hole that had been made at the end of the garden, then gave them a drink.  After an hour’s rest Allain gave the signal for departure.  He was in haste to get his men out of the department of Calvados, and shelter them from the first pursuit of Caffarelli’s police.  At daybreak they crossed the Orne by the bridge of La Landelle, threw their guns into a wheat-field and separated after receiving each 200 francs.

This day, the 8th June, passed in the most perfect calm for the inhabitants of Donnay.  Mme. Acquet did not leave La Bijude.  In the afternoon a tanner of Placy, called Brazard, passed the house and called to Hebert whom he saw in the garden.  He told him that when he got up that morning he had found four horses tied to his hedge.  The gendarmes from Langannerie had come and claimed them saying “they belonged to the Falaise-Caen coach which had been attacked in the night by Chouans.”  Hebert was much astonished; Mme. Acquet did not believe it; but the report spread and by evening the news was known to the whole village.

Acquet had remained invisible for a month; his instinct of hatred and some information slyly obtained, warned him that his wife was working her own ruin, and he would do nothing to stop her good work.  Some days before, Aumont, his gardener, had remarked one morning that the dew was brushed off the grass of the lawn, and showed footsteps leading to the cellar of the chateau, but Acquet did not seem to attach any importance to these facts.