The Brotherhood of Consolation, Honoré de Balzac [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

and simultaneous attack of England and Austria. This was the moment for the Chouan uprising; but just as it was about to take place, the victory of Wagram rendered the conspiracy in the provinces powerless.

"This expectation of exciting civil war in Brittany, La Vendee, and part of Normandy, coincided in time with the final wreck of the baron's fortune; and this wreck, coming at this time, led him to undertake an expedition to capture funds of the government which he might apply to the liquidation of the claims upon his property. But his wife and friend refused to take part in applying to private interests the money taken by armed force from the Receiver's offices and the couriers and post-carriages of the government,--money taken, as they thought, justifiably by the rules of war to pay the regiments of 'refractories' and Chouans, and purchase the arms and ammunition with which to equip them. At last, after an angry discussion in which the young leader, supported by the wife, positively refused to hand over to the husband a portion of the large sum of money which the young leader had seized for the benefit of the royal armies from the treasury of the West, the baron suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, to avoid arrest for debt, having no means left by which to ward it off. Poor Madame de la Chanterie was wholly ignorant of these facts; but even they are nothing to the plot still hidden behind these preliminary facts.

"It is too late to-night," said Monsieur Alain, looking at his little clock, "to go on with my narrative, which would take me, in any case, a long time to finish in my own words. Old Bordin, my friend, whose management of the famous Simeuse case had won him much credit in the royalist party, and who pleaded in the well-known criminal affair called that of the Chauffeurs de Mortagne, gave me, after I was installed in this house, two legal papers relating to the terrible history of Madame de la Chanterie and her daughter. I kept them because Bordin died soon after, before I had a chance to return them. You shall read them. You will find the facts much more succinctly stated than I could state them. Those facts are so numerous that I should only lose myself in the details and confuse them, whereas in those papers you have them in a legal summary. To-morrow, if you come to me, I will finish telling you all that relates to Madame de la Chanterie; for you will then know the general facts so thoroughly that I can end the whole story in a few words."


IX. THE LEGAL STATEMENT

Monsieur Alain placed the papers, yellowed by time, in Godefroid's hand; the latter, bidding the old man good-night, carried them off to his room, where he read, before he slept, the following document:--

THE INDICTMENT

Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department of the Orne

The attorney-general to the Imperial Court of Caen, appointed to
fulfil his functions before the Special Criminal Court established
by imperial decree under date September, 1809, and sitting at
Alencon, states to the Imperial Court the following facts which
have appeared under the above procedure.

The plot of a company of brigands, evidently long planned with
consummate care, and connected with a scheme for inciting the
Western departments to revolt, has shown itself in certain
attempts against the private property of citizens, but more
especially in an armed attack and robbery committed on the
mail-coach which transported, May --, 18--, the money in the treasury
at Caen to the Treasury of France. This attack, which recalls the
deplorable incidents of a civil war now happily extinguished,
manifests a spirit of wickedness which the political passions of
the present day do not justify.

Let us pass to the facts. The plot is complicated, the details are
numerous. The investigation has lasted one year; but the evidence,
which has followed the crime step by step, has thrown the clearest
light on its preparation, execution, and results.

The conception of the plot was formed by one Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph
Rifoel, calling himself Chevalier du Vissard, born at the Vissard,
district of Saint-Mexme, near Ernee, and a former leader of the rebels.

This criminal, whom H.M. the Emperor and King pardoned at the time
of the general pacification, and who has profited by the
sovereign's magnanimity to commit other crimes, has already paid
on the scaffold the penalty of his many misdeeds; but it is
necessary to recall some of his actions, because his influence was
great on the guilty persons now before the court, and he is
closely connected with the facts of his case.

This dangerous agitator, concealed, according to the usual custom
of the rebels, under the name of Pierrot, went from place to place
throughout the departments of the West gathering together the
elements of rebellion; but his chief resort was the chateau of
Saint-Savin, the residence of a Madame Lechantre and her daughter,
a Madame Bryond, situated in the district of Saint-Savin,
arrondissement of Mortagne. Several of the most horrible events of
the rebellion of 1799 are connected with this strategic point.
Here a bearer of despatches was murdered, his carriage pillaged by
the brigands under command of a woman, assisted by the notorious
Marche-a-Terre. Brigandage appeared to be endemic in that
locality.

An intimacy, which we shall not attempt to characterize, existed
for more than a year between the woman Bryond and the said Rifoel.

It was in this district that an interview took place, in April,
1808, between Rifoel and a certain Boislaurier, a leader known by
the name of August in the baneful rebellions of the West, who
instigated the affair now before the court.

The somewhat obscure point of the relations between these two
leaders is cleared up by the testimony of numerous witnesses, and
also by the judgment of the court which condemned Rifoel.

From that time Boislaurier had an understanding with Rifoel, and
they acted in concert.

They communicated to each other, at first secretly, their infamous
plans, encouraged by the absence of His Imperial and Royal Majesty
with the armies in Spain. Their scheme was to obtain possession of
the money of the Treasury as the fundamental basis of future
operations.

Some time after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary
to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley--commonly called "The
Laborer," long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences--to
give information as to the men who could safely be relied upon.

It was thus by means of Hiley that the plotters obtained, from the
beginning, the co-operation of one Herbomez, otherwise called
General Hardi, a former rebel of the same stamp as Rifoel, and
like him faithless to his pledges under the amnesty.

Herbomez and Hiley recruited from the surrounding districts seven
brigands whose names are:--

1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest brigands of
the corps formed by Montauran in the year VII., and a participator
in the attack upon the courier of Mortagne and his murder.

2. Francois Lisieux, called Grand-Fils, refractory of the
department of the Mayenne.

3. Charles Grenier, called Fleur-de-Genet, deserter from the 69th
brigade.

4. Gabriel Bruce, called Gros-Jean, one of the most ferocious
Chouans of Fontaine's division.

5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant in the same
brigade, one of the confederates of Tinteniac, well-known for his
participation in the expedition to Quiberon.

6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, former huntsman to the
Sieur Carol of Alencon.

7. Louis Minard, refractory.

These confederates were lodged in three different districts, in
the houses of the following named persons: Binet, Melin, and
Laraviniere, innkeepers or publicans, and all devoted to Rifoel.

The necessary arms were supplied by one Jean-Francois Leveille,
notary; an incorrigible assistant of the brigands, and their
go-between with certain hidden leaders; also by one Felix Courceuil,
commonly called Confesseur, former surgeon of the rebel armies of
La Vendee; both these men are from Alencon.

Eleven muskets were hidden in a house belonging to the Sieur
Bryond in the faubourg of Alencon, where they were placed without
his knowledge.

When the Sieur Bryond left his wife to pursue the fatal course she
had chosen, these muskets, mysteriously taken from the said house,
were transported by the woman Bryond in her own carriage to the
chateau of Saint-Savin.

It was then that the acts of brigandage in the department of the
Orne and the adjacent departments took place,--acts that amazed
both the authorities and the inhabitants of those regions, which
had long been entirely pacificated; acts, moreover, which proved
that these odious enemies of the government and the French Empire
were in the secret of the coalition of 1809 through communication
with the royalist party in foreign countries.

The notary Leveille, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, Herbomez of
Mayenne, Boislaurier of Mans, and Rifoel, were therefore the heads
of the association, which was composed of certain guilty persons
already condemned to death and executed with Rifoel, certain
others who are the accused persons at present under trial, and a
number more who have escaped just punishment by flight or by the
silence of their accomplices.

It was Dubut who, living near Caen, notified the notary Leveille
when the government money contained in the local tax-office would
be despatched to the Treasury.

We must remark here that after the time of the removal of the
muskets, Leveille, who went to see Bruce, Grenier, and Cibot in
the house of Melin, found them hiding the muskets in a shed on the
premises, and himself assisted in the operation.

A general rendezvous was arranged to take place at Mortagne, in
the hotel de l'Ecu de France. All the accused persons were present
under various disguises. It was then that Leveille, the woman
Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier and Hiley (the ablest of the
secondary accomplices, as Cibot was the boldest) obtained the
co-operation of one Vauthier, called Vieux-Chene, a former servant
of the famous Longuy, and now hostler of the hotel. Vauthier
agreed to notify the woman Bryond of the arrival and departure of
the diligence bearing the government money, which always stopped
for a time at the hotel.

The woman Bryond collected the scattered brigands at the chateau
de Saint-Savin, a few miles from Mortagne, where she had lived