alse names, false
papers, ambushes, kidnappings, attacks on coaches, subterranean
passages, prisons, escapes, child spies and female captains! He states
himself that the affair of the Forest of Quesnay was "tragic, strange
and mysterious!" And at the same time he condemns as "strange" and
"romantic" the simplest of all these adventures--that of Moisson! He
scoffs at his hiding-places in the roofs of the old chateau, and it is
precisely in the roofs of the old chateau that the police found the
famous refuge which could hold forty men with ease. He calls the
retreats arranged for the outlaws and bandits "legendary," at the same
time that he gives two pages to the enumeration of the holes, vaults,
wells, pits, grottoes and caverns in which these same bandits and
outlaws found safety! So that M. de la Sicotiere seems to be laughing at
himself!

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