In this affair lies everything beloved of the romance: a secret society, a rustic laboratory in the countryside, a house rented under false pretences, and, at its centre, two men playing a double game. Yet this is no romance; it is an indictment, which the Gazette abstracts document by document.
The “Society”—as the text terms it—intended to fabricate counterfeit assignats. It had first commissioned engraved plates from one Sieur Malapeau; then, deeming that mere plates would fail to deceive the most discerning eye, it resolved to resort to punches and movable type. A letter-engraver was required. One Sieur Guillot applied to a certain La Reynie to procure one; the latter turned to Monsieur George, who accepted the commission just as Malapeau had done—and, like him, repaired immediately on the 2nd of December to make a full deposition before the police commissioner of the Section des Thermes-de-Julien.
The counterfeiters, if these depositions are to be credited, thus laboured beneath the very eyes of the police without suspecting a thing. George cut punches, counter-punches, vignettes, and dry stamps; proofs were pulled; the Society was well pleased. Only one Sieur Vimal detected a few imperfections, and, jealous of total perfection, conveyed detailed notes to the engraver, minutely setting forth the distinctive marks of genuine assignats.
Vimal was the enterprise’s papermaker. He began fashioning the moulds in the Rue Pierre-Sarrazin; finding himself insufficiently secluded there, he spent six weeks at Guillot’s house in Montrouge, and thence moved to Saint-Rémy near Nonancourt, where a Sieur Sauvade joined him. Another six weeks of stubborn labour behind bolted doors followed. They returned to Paris with banknote paper for assignats of 300, 100, and 50 livres.
On the 25th of February, upon the new boulevard, the first conference was held: Vimal, Guillot, George, and La Reynie. There, the Gazette records, Vimal unburdened his heart. He had once lived in great comfort, had lost everything since the Revolution, and groaned under heavy obligations; friends had counselled him to manufacture assignats; after a few days’ reflection, he had resolved upon it, albeit with deep trepidation, “for you may well imagine that one is seldom at ease in such enterprises.” George replied that the paper was imitated to perfection.
On the 8th of March, Vimal and Guillot leased for three months a fully furnished house in Passy, in the Rue Basse. It was ostensibly destined, so the story went, to accommodate a young lady from the provinces who was to come thither for her confinement. Two days later, they conducted George thither under assumed names, mapping out the station for each stage of the work. A day was appointed to transport the implements, observed with the most fastidious precautions.
The Gazette’s issue breaks off at this transport. We know, from the title of the docket, that the business ended before the Criminal Court; yet here we do not yet see the door at Passy flung open to the police. There remains this Vimal, undone by the Revolution, who confided his misgivings to the very engraver who was denouncing him, and that provincial damsel who never was brought to bed in the Rue Basse.
Gazette des nouveaux tribunaux, 1792, Criminal Court of the Department of Paris, Case of the Counterfeiters of Assignats (Vimal, Guillot, Sauvade, and others).