Toward the end of March the prisoners were therefore transferred from the prison of Besancon to that of Bourg, and the first steps toward a trial were taken.
But here the prisoners adopted a line of defence that greatly embarrassed the prosecuting officers.

They declared themselves to be the Baron de Sainte-Hermine, the Comte de Jayat, the Vicomte de Valensolle, and the Marquis de Ribier, and to have no connection with the pillagers of diligences, whose names were Morgan, Montbar, Adler, and d'Assas.
They acknowledged having belonged to armed bands; but these forces belonged to the army of M.de Teyssonnet and were a ramification of the army of Brittany intended to operate in the East and the Midi, while the army of Brittany, which had just signed a peace, operated in the North.
They had waited only to hear of Cadoudal's surrender to do likewise, and the despatch of the Breton leader was no doubt on its way to them when they were attacked and captured.
It was difficult to disprove this.

The diligences had invariably been pillaged by masked, men, and, apart from Madame de Montrevel and Sir John Tanlay, no one had ever seen the faces of the assailants.
The reader will recall those circumstances: Sir John, on the night they had tried, condemned, and stabbed him; Madame de Montrevel, when the diligence was stopped, and she, in her nervous struggle, had struck off the mask of the leader.
Both had been summoned before the preliminary court and both had been confronted with the prisoners; but neither Sir John nor Madame de Montrevel had recognized any of them.

How came they to practice this deception?
As for Madame de Montrevel, it was comprehensible.

She felt a double gratitude to the man who had come to her assistance, and who had also forgiven, and even praised, Edouard's attack upon himself.