When Lanoe had abandoned her at the farm of Villeneuve, twelve days before, Mme. Acquet had entreated so pitifully that a woman who was there had gone to fetch Collin, one of the servants at La Bijude; Mme. de Combray’s daughter had returned with him to Falaise, on one of the farmer’s horses.  She dared not go to the house in the Rue du Tripot, and therefore stopped with an honest woman named Chauvel, who did the washing for the Combray family.  She was drawn there by the fact that the son, Victor Chauvel, was one of the gendarmes who had been at Donnay the night before, and she wanted to find out from him if the Buquets had denounced her.

She went to the Chauvels’ under pretence of getting Captain Manginot’s address.  The gendarme was at supper.  He was a man of thirty-six, an old hussar, and a good fellow, but although married and the father of three children, known as a “gadder, and fond of the sex.”  “When women are around, Chauvel forgets everything,” his comrades used to say.  He now saw Mme. Acquet for the first time, and to her questions replied that her name had indeed been mentioned, and that Manginot, who was at the “Grand-Ture,” was looking for her.  The young woman began to cry.  She implored Mme. Chauvel to keep her, promised to pay her, and appealed to her pity, so that the washerwoman was touched.  She had an attic in the third story, some bedding was thrown on the floor, and from that place Mme. Acquet wrote to tell her mother that she had found a safe retreat.

It was very safe indeed, and one can understand that she did not feel the need of telling too precisely the conditions of the hospitality she was given.  Is it necessary to insist on the sort of relations established from the moment of her arrival at the Chauvels, between the poor woman whose fear of capture killed every other feeling and the soldier on whom her fate depended?  Chauvel had only to say one word to insure her arrest; she yielded to him, he held his tongue and the existence which then began for them both was so miserable and so tragic that it excites more pity than disgust.  Mme. Acquet had only one thought—­to escape the scaffold; Chauvel had only one wish—­to keep this unexpected mistress, more dear because he sacrificed for her his career, his honour and perhaps his life.  At first things went calmly enough.  No warrant had been issued for the fugitive, and in the evening she used to go out disguised with Chauvel.  Soon she grew bolder and walked in broad daylight in the streets of Falaise.  On the 15th of August Lefebre had Lanoe to breakfast and invited her also; they talked freely, and Mme. Acquet made no secret of the fact that she was living with the Chauvels and that the son kept her informed of all orders received from Caen or Paris.  Lefebre led the conversation round to the “treasure,” for the money hidden at the Buquets had excited much cupidity.  Bureau de Placene, as “banker” to the Chouans,