After seeing to Jean and his wife and then carrying out George II’s body, Monsieur and Madame Doley relocked their doors. Cadoudal, who had eaten nothing since morning, now sat at a simple supper, as if his day had passed without event. Refusing the bed the farmer offered, he stretched out on fresh straw in the barn.
The next day, scarcely had he arisen when Sol de Grisolles arrived. Living in Auray, about two and a half leagues from Plescop, he had been roused by one of the brigands who’d hoped to please Cadoudal by telling Grisolles without delay that Cadoudal was nearby. The news greatly astonished Grisolles, for he believed, like everyone else, that Cadoudal was in London.
Cadoudal told him the whole story and showed him the traces of fire and blood on the kitchen’s tile floor. These burning brigades had surely been a police plot, devised to nullify the treaty that Cadoudal had signed with Bonaparte by accusing the Breton general of breaking it. So Cadoudal concluded; and in light of that, he said, he was once more free to act as he wished: which was what he wanted to talk to Sol de Grisolles about.
His first intention was to inform Bonaparte that by virtue of what had recently happened in Brittany, he was withdrawing his word. Still, with proof incontrovertible that he had nothing to do with the new wave of banditry in the west—for indeed he had stopped it at his own life’s peril—he would not declare a war between sovereign powers, since that would be impossible for him to carry out; rather, he would undertake vengeance Corsican style. He wished to charge Sol de Grisolles with communicating the vendetta. It was a charge that Grisolles accepted immediately, for he was a man who never backed away from what he believed to be his duty.
Grisolles would then join Laurent, wherever Laurent happened to be, and have him put his Companions of Jehu back into operation at once, with the understanding that Cadoudal himself would lose no time in going first to London and then returning to Paris to set his own plans into execution.
Once he had given his instructions to Sol de Grisolles, Cadoudal said good-bye to his hosts, begged their forgiveness for having used their home as the theater for the horrors the day before, and mounted his horse. While Grisolles was heading to Vannes, Cadoudal was galloping to the beaches at Erdeven and Carnac, where his boat, only apparently a fishing boat, was plying along the coast.
Three days later, Sol de Grisolles was in Paris, requesting from the First Consul a safe-conduct and a meeting for a matter of the greatest importance. The First Consul sent Duroc to his hotel, but Grisolles, apologizing politely like a true gentleman, declared that he could repeat only to General Bonaparte the message he carried from General Cadoudal. Duroc reported back to the First Consul and then returned to escort Grisolles to the Tuileries.
Bonaparte, it turned out, was quite upset about the Cadoudal matter. “So,” he said without allowing Sol de Grisolles time to speak, “that is how your general keeps his word. He agrees to leave for London, and instead he stays in the Morbihan where he raises bands of burning brigades who rampage all over, as if he were Mandrin or Poulailler. But I have given orders. All the authorities have been alerted. If he is taken, he will be shot like a bandit without a trial. Don’t tell me it’s not true. Le Journal de Paris has published an article, and my police reports agree. Besides, people have recognized him.”
“Will the First Consul permit me to answer,” said Sol de Grisolles, “and to prove my friend’s innocence with a few words?” Bonaparte shrugged.
“And if in five minutes you admit that your newspapers and your police reports are wrong and I am in the right, what will you say?”
“I will say… I will say that Régnier is an idiot, that is all.”
“Well, General. A copy of Le Journal de Paris reporting that Cadoudal had never left France and was raising burning brigades in the Morbihan ended up in his hands in London. He immediately boarded a fishing boat and came back to France, landing on the Quiberon peninsula. He hid at a farm that was to be burned that very night, and he burst from his hiding place just as the leader of the brigade, who claimed himself to be Cadoudal, was about to torture the farmer. The farmer’s name is Jacques Doley; the farm is called Plescop. Cadoudal walked straight up to the man who had usurped his name and blew out his brains, saying: ‘You are lying. I am Cadoudal.’
“And then he asked me to tell you, General, that in fact it was you, or at least your police, who had tried to sully his name by placing at the head of the burning brigades a man of his size and stature, a man who looked enough like him to be mistaken for him. He took vengeance on the man by killing him right there on the spot. That done, he ran the others off the farm they had presumed to seize, although there were twenty of them and he was but one.”
“What you are telling me is impossible.”
“I saw the body, and here is a letter from two farmers attesting to it all.” Grisolles placed under the First Consul’s eyes the written account of the night’s events. It was signed by Jacques Doley and his wife.
“So,” Grisolles continued, “Cadoudal now frees you from your promise and takes back his own. He is unable to declare war since you have stripped him of all his means of defense, but he declares upon you a Corsican vendetta. For you he adopts the code of your own country: Defend yourself! He will defend himself!”
“Citizen,” Duroc cried, “do you know whom you are speaking to?”
“I am speaking to a man who gave us his word as we gave him ours, who was bound as we were, and who had no more right to violate that word than did we.”
“He is right, Duroc,” said Bonaparte. “Still, we need to know if he’s telling the truth.”
“General, when a Breton gives his word.…” Sol de Grisolles cried.
“A Breton can be mistaken or tricked. Duroc, go get Fouché.”
Ten minutes later, Fouché was in the First Consul’s office. The former Minister of Police had scarcely cleared the doorway when Bonaparte called out, “Monsieur Fouché, where is Cadoudal?”
Fouché began to laugh. “I could answer that I have no idea.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I am no longer Minister of Police.”
“You still hold the office.…”
“… but am on the way out.”
“No more joking, Fouché. But, yes, you are on the way out. I am still paying you, however, and you still have the same agents, so you can still tell me what I need to know as you still are, technically, officially minister. I asked you where Cadoudal was.”
“As of now, he must be back in London.”
“So he had left England?”
“Yes.”
“For what reason?”
“To blow out the brains of a fellow who had assumed his identity.”
“And did he kill him?”
“Right in the presence of the fellow’s twenty men at the Plescop farm. But this man,” he said, pointing to Sol de Grisolles, “can tell you more than I can about the matter. He was close by when it happened. Plescop, I believe, is only two and a half leagues from Auray.”
“What?! You knew all that and you did not alert me?”
“Monsieur Régnier is prefect of police. It was his job to let you know. I am just an ordinary citizen, a senator.”
“So it’s clear, the prefecture is a job honest men will never know properly how to do,” said Bonaparte.
“Thank you, General,” said Fouché.
“Indeed. All you need is for people to think that you’re an honest man. In your place, Fouché, I would aim for something higher.
“Monsieur