“Oh, kings! kings!” cried Godefroid; “and is the wretch still living?”

“No; the wretch, as you justly call him, who concealed his real name under that of Contenson, died about the close of the year 1829 or the beginning of 1830.  In trying to arrest a criminal who escaped over a roof, he fell into the street.  Louis XVIII. shared Napoleon’s ideas as to spies and police.  Madame de la Chanterie is a saint; she prays constantly for the soul of that man and has two masses said yearly for him.  As I have already told you, Madame de la Chanterie knew nothing of the dangers her daughter was incurring until the day when the money was carried to Alencon; nevertheless she was unable to establish her innocence, although defended by one of the greatest lawyers of that time.  The president, du Ronceret, and the vice-president, Blondet, of the court of Alencon did their best to save our poor lady.  But the influence of the councillor of the Imperial Court who presided at her trial before the Criminal and Special Court, the famous Mergi, and that of Bourlac the attorney-general was such over the other judges that they obtained her condemnation.  Both Bourlac and Mergi showed extraordinary bitterness against mother and daughter; they called the Baronne des Tours-Minieres ‘the woman Bryond,’ and Madame ’the woman Lechantre.’  The names of accused persons in those days were all brought to one republican level, and were sometimes unrecognizable.  The trial had several very extraordinary features, which I cannot now recall; one piece of audacity remains in my memory which will serve to show you what sort of men those Chouans were.  The crowd which assembled to hear the trial was immense; it even filled the corridors and the square before the court-house.  One morning, after the opening of the court-room and before the arrival of the judges, Pille-Miche, a famous Chouan, sprang over the balustrade into the middle of the crowd, elbowing right and left, ‘charging like a wild boar,’ as Bordin told me, through the frightened people.  The guards and the gendarmes dashed after him and caught him just as he reached the square; after that the guards were doubled.  A picket of gendarmerie was stationed in the square, for they feared there were Chouans on the ground ready to rescue the prisoners.  As it was, three persons were crushed to death on this occasion.  It was afterwards discovered that Contenson (neither my friend Bordin nor I could ever bring ourselves to call him the Baron des Tours-Minieres, nor Bryond which is the name of an old family),—­it was, I say, discovered that this wretch Contenson had obtained sixty thousand francs of the stolen money from the Chaussards; he gave ten thousand to the younger Chaussard, whom he took with him into the detective police and innoculated with his vices; his other accomplices got nothing from him.  Madame de la Chanterie invested the money restored to her by the king in the public Funds, and bought this house to please her