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theatre of operations: a poor hunchbacked girl was his council, and his
army was composed of David the Intrepid. He was, moreover, penniless. At
the beginning of the autumn Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis by
Lanoe, a keeper who had been in her service, and who now occupied a
small farm at Glatigny, near to Bretteville-sur-Dives. Lanoe belonged to
that rapacious type of peasant whom even a small sum of money never
fails to attract. Already he had on two occasions acted as guide to the
Baron de Commarque and to Frotte when Mme. de Combray offered them
shelter at Donnay. For this he had been summoned before a military
commission and spent nearly two years in prison, but this had no
effect. For three francs he would walk ten leagues and if he complained
sufficiently of the dangers to which these missions exposed him the sum
was doubled and he would go away satisfied. In the middle of August he
went to Mandeville to fetch d'Ache to Donnay, where he spent ten days
and again passed three weeks at the end of September. He was to have
gone there again in December, but at the moment when he was preparing to
start Bonnoeil suddenly appeared at Mandeville, having come to warn
him not to venture there as Mme. de Combray had been accused of a crime
and was on the point of being arrested.

* * * * *

It was not without vexation that Acquet saw his mother-in-law settling
herself at his very door. Keenly on the lookout for any means of
annoying the Marquise, he was struck by the idea that if an incumbent
were appointed to the vacant cure of Donnay, he would have to live at
the parsonage, half of which belonged to the Commune, and that their
being obliged to live in the same house would be a great inconvenience
to Mme. de Combray. This prospect charmed Acquet, and as he had several
friends in high positions, among them the Baron Darthenay his neighbour
at Meslay, who had lately been elected deputy for Calvados, he had small
difficulty in getting a priest appointed. A few days afterwards a cure,
the Abbe Clerisse, arrived at Donnay, fully determined to carry out the
duties of his ministry faithfully, and very far from foreseeing the
tragic fate in store for him.

Mme. de Combray had made herself quite comfortable at the parsonage,
which she considered in a manner her own property since she had
furnished half the money for its purchase. She now saw herself compelled
to surrender a portion of it, whi