municipal guard. Was it through fear of this woman's writing
indiscreetly to her husband that Mme. de Combray remained silent? But in
any case, why the tower?

However this may be, the exactness of Moisson's reminiscences was
proved. But the trap-door had not been forced, as he believed, by
Chouans fleeing after some nocturnal expedition. This point was already
decided by the first documents that Lenôtre had collected for this
present work. There was no expedition of the sort in the neighbourhood
of Tournebut during the summer of 1804. They would not have risked
attracting attention to the château where was hidden the only man whom
the Chouans of Normandy judged capable of succeeding Georges, and whom
they called "Le Grand Alexandre"--the Vicomte Robert d'Aché. Hunted
through Paris like all the royalists denounced by Querelle, he had
managed to escape the searchers, to go out in one of his habitual
disguises when the gates were reopened, to get to Normandy by the left
bank of the Seine and take refuge with his old friend at Tournebut,
where he lived for fourteen months under the name of Deslorières, his
presence there never being suspected by the police.

He was certainly, as well as Bonnoeil, Mme. de Combray's eldest son,
one of the three guests with whom Moisson took supper on the evening of
his arrival. The one who was always playing cards or tric-trac with the
Marquise, and whom she called her lawyer, might well have been d'Aché
himself. As to the stealthy visitors at the tower, given the presence of
d'Aché at Tournebut, it is highly probable that they were only passing
by there to confer with him, taking his orders secretly in the woods
without even appearing at the château, and then disappearing as
mysteriously as they had come.