but that they said nothing, in order to give time to prepare an answer
for them. The marchioness found herself obliged to take back the girls;
she kept the younger, and married the elder to Delisle, her house
steward. But la Foresterie, finding himself in this network of intrigue,
grew disgusted at serving such a mistress, and left her house. The
marchioness told him on his departure that if he were so indiscreet as
to repeat a word of what he had learned from the Quinet girls, she would
punish him with a hundred poniard stabs from her major-domo Delisle.
Having thus fortified her position, she thought herself secure against
any hostile steps; but it happened that a certain prudent Berger,
gentleman and page to the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, who enjoyed his
master's confidence and went to see him in the Conciergerie, where he
was imprisoned, threw some strange light on this affair. His master had
narrated to him all the particulars of the accouchement of the countess
and of the abduction of the child.

"I am astonished, my lord," replied the page, "that having so many
dangerous affairs on hand; you did not relieve your conscience of this
one."

"I intend," replied the marquis, "to restore this child to his father:
I have been ordered to do so by a Capuchin to whom I confessed having
carried off from the midst of the family, without their knowing it, a
grandson of a marshal of France and son of a governor of a province."

The marquis had at that time permission to go out from prison
occasionally on his parole. This will not surprise anyone acquainted
with the ideas which prevailed at that period on the honour of a
nobleman, even the greatest criminal. The marquis, profiting by this
facility, took the page to see a child of about seven years of age, fair