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 fear of betraying his origin, Pigoreau had him christened at St. Jean en Greve.  She did not invite any of the neighbours to the function, and gave parents’ names of her own choosing at the church.  For godfather she selected the parish sexton, named Paul Marmiou, who gave the child the name of Bernard.  La Pigoreau remained in a confessional during the ceremony, and gave the man ten sou.  The godmother was Jeanne Chevalier, a poor woman of the parish.

The entry in the register was as follows:—­

“On the seventh day of March one thousand six hundred and forty-two was baptized Bernard, son of . . . and . . . his godfather being Paul Marmiou, day labourer and servant of this parish, and his godmother Jeanne Chevalier, widow of Pierre Thibou.”

A few days afterwards la Pigoreau put out the child to nurse in the village of Torcy en Brie, with a woman who had been her godmother, whose husband was called Paillard.  She gave out that it was a child of quality which had been entrusted to her, and that she should not hesitate, if such a thing were necessary, to save its life by the loss of one of her own children.  The nurse did not keep it long, because she fell ill; la Pigoreau went to fetch the child away, lamenting this accident, and further saying that she regretted it all the more, as the nurse would have earned enough to make her comfortable for the rest of her life.  She put the infant out again in the same village, with the widow of a peasant named Marc Peguin.  The monthly wage was regularly paid, and the child brought up as one of rank.  La Pigoreau further told the woman that it was the son of a great nobleman, and would later make the fortunes of those who served him.  An elderly man, whom the people supposed to be the child’s father, but who Pigoreau assured them was her brother-in-law, often came to see him.