When the child was eighteen months old, la Pigoreau took him away and weaned him.  Of the two by her husband the elder was called Antoine, the second would have been called Henri if he had lived; but he was born on the 9th of August 1639, after the death of his father, who was killed in June of the same year, and died shortly after his birth.  La Pigoreau thought fit to give the name and condition of this second son to the stranger, and thus bury for ever the secret of his birth.  With this end in view, she left the quarter where she lived, and removed to conceal herself in another parish where she was not known.  The child was brought up under the name and style of Henri, second son of la Pigoreau, till he was two and a half years of age; but at this time, whether she was not engaged to keep it any longer, or whether she had spent the two thousand livres deposited with the grocer Raguenet, and could get no more from the principals, she determined to get rid of it.

Her gossips used to tell this woman that she cared but little for her eldest son, because she was very confident of the second one making his fortune, and that if she were obliged to give up one of them, she had better keep the younger, who was a beautiful boy.  To this she would reply that the matter did not depend upon her; that the boy’s godfather was an uncle in good circumstances, who would not charge himself with any other child.  She often mentioned this uncle, her brother-in-law, she said, who was major-domo in a great house.

One morning, the hall porter at the hotel de Saint-Geran came to Baulieu and told him that a woman carrying a child was asking for him at the wicket gate; this Baulieu was, in fact, the brother of the fencing master, and godfather to Pigoreau’s second son.  It is now supposed that he was the unknown person who had placed the child of quality with her, and who used to go and see him at his nurse’s.  La Pigoreau gave him a long account of her situation.  The major-domo took the child with some emotion, and told la Pigoreau to wait his answer a short distance off, in a place which he pointed out.

Baulieu’s wife made a great outcry at the first proposal of an increase of family; but he succeeded in pacifying her by pointing out the necessities of his sister-in-law, and how easy and inexpensive it was to do this good work in such a house as the count’s.  He went to his master and mistress to ask permission to bring up this child in their hotel; a kind of feeling entered into the charge he was undertaking which in some measure lessened the weight on his conscience.

The count and countess at first opposed this project; telling him that having already five children he ought not to burden himself with any more, but he petitioned so earnestly that he obtained what he wanted.  The countess wished to see it, and as she was about to start for Moulins she ordered it to be put in her women’s coach; when it was shown her, she cried out, “What a lovely child!” The boy was fair, with large blue eyes and very regular features.  She gave him a hundred caresses, which the child returned very prettily.  She at once took a great fancy to him, and said to Baulieu, “I shall not put him in my women’s coach; I shall put him in my own.”