They put her in a close carriage, and drove her a whole day over
ploughed fields, by the roughest and hardest roads. She was so shaken
that she lost the power of breathing; it required all the strength of
her constitution to support this barbarous treatment in the delicate
condition of a lady so recently confined. They put her to bed again
after this cruel drive, and seeing that nobody took her view, she threw
herself into the arms of Providence, and consoled herself by religion;
the midwife administered violent remedies to deprive her of milk; she
got over all these attempts to murder her, and slowly got better.

Time, which heals the deepest affliction, gradually soothed that of the
countess; her grief nevertheless burst out periodically on the slightest
cause; but eventually it died out, till the following events rekindled
it.

There had been in Paris a fencing-master who used to boast that he had a
brother in the service of a great house. This fencing-master had married
a certain Marie Pigoreau, daughter of an actor. He had recently died in
poor circumstances, leaving her a widow with two children. This woman
Pigoreau did not enjoy the best of characters, and no one knew how she
made a living, when all at once, after some short absences from home and
visit from a man who came in the evening, his face muffled in his cloak,
she launched out into a more expensive style of living; the neighbours
saw in her house costly clothes, fine swaddling-clothes, and at last it
became known that she was nursing a strange child.

About the same time it also transpired that she had a deposit of two
thousand livres in the hands of a grocer in the quarter, named Raguenet;
some days later, as the child's baptism had doubtless been put off for