I should reproach myself if I did not mention, as a curiosity, the biography of M. and Mme. de Combray, united in one person in the “Dictionaire Historique” (!!!) of Larousse.  It is unique of its kind.  Names, places and facts are all wrong.  And the crowning absurdity is that, borne out by these fancies, fragments are given of the supposed Memoires that Felicie (!) de Combray wrote after the Restoration—­forgetting that she was guillotined under the Empire!

With M. Ernest Daudet we return to history.  No one had seriously studied the crime of Quesnay before him.  Some years ago he gave the correct story of it in Le Temps and we could not complain of its being only what he meant it to be—­a faithful and rapid resume.  Besides, M. Daudet had only at his disposal the portfolios 8,170, 8,171, and 8,172 of the Series F7 of the National Archives, and the reports sent to Real by Savoye-Rollin and Licquet, this cunning detective beside whom Balzac’s Corentin seems a mere schoolboy.  Consequently the family drama escapes M. Daudet, who, for that matter, did not have to concern himself with it.  It would not have been possible to do better than he did with the documents within his reach.

Lenotre has pushed his researches further.  He has not limited himself to studying, bit by bit, the voluminous report of the trial of 1808, which fills a whole cupboard; to comparing and opposing the testimony of the witnesses one against the other, examining the reports and enquiries, disentangling the real names from the false, truth from error—­in a word, investigating the whole affair, a formidable task of which he only gives us the substance here.  Aided by his wonderful instinct and the persistency of the investigator, he has managed to obtain access to family papers, some of which were buried in old trunks relegated to the attics, and in these papers has found precious documents which clear up the depths of this affair of Quesnay where the mad passion of one poor woman plays the greatest part.

And let no one imagine that he is going to read a romance in these pages.  It is an historical study in the severest meaning of the word.  Lenotre mentions no fact that he cannot prove.  He risks no hypothesis without giving it as such, and admits no fancy in the slightest detail.  If he describes one of Mme. Acquet’s toilettes, it is because it is given in some interrogation.  I have seen him so scrupulous on this point, as to suppress all picturesqueness that could be put down to his imagination.  In no cause celebre has justice shown more exactitude in exposing the facts.  In short, here will be found all the qualities that ensured the success of his “Conspiration de la Rouerie,” the chivalrous beginning of the Chouannerie that he now shows us in its decline, reduced to highway robbery!

As for me, if I have lingered too long by this old tower, it is because it suggested this book; and we owe some gratitude to these mute witnesses of a past which they keep in our remembrance.