After they arrived at the chateau of Saint-Geran, her affection for Henri, the name retained by the child, increased day by day.  She often contemplated him with sadness, then embraced him with tenderness, and kept him long on her bosom.  The count shared this affection for the supposed nephew of Baulieu, who was adopted, so to speak, and brought up like a child of quality.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent and Madame de Bouille had not married, although the old Marquis de Bouille had long been dead.  It appeared that they had given up this scheme.  The marchioness no doubt felt scruples about it, and the marquis was deterred from marriage by his profligate habits.  It is moreover supposed that other engagements and heavy bribes compensated the loss he derived from the marchioness’s breach of faith.

He was a man about town at that period, and was making love to the demoiselle Jacqueline de la Garde; he had succeeded in gaining her affections, and brought matters to such a point that she no longer refused her favours except on the grounds of her pregnancy and the danger of an indiscretion.  The marquis then offered to introduce to her a matron who could deliver women without the pangs of labour, and who had a very successful practice.  The same Jacqueline de la Garde further gave evidence at the trial that M. de Saint-Maixent had often boasted, as of a scientific intrigue, of having spirited away the son of a governor of a province and grandson of a marshal of France; that he spoke of the Marchioness de Bouille, said that he had made her rich, and that it was to him she owed her great wealth; and further, that one day having taken her to a pretty country seat which belonged to him, she praised its beauty, saying “c’etait un beau lieu”; he replied by a pun on a man’s name, saying that he knew another Baulieu who had enabled him to make a fortune of five hundred thousand crowns.  He also said to Jadelon, sieur de la Barbesange, when posting with him from Paris, that the Countess de Saint-Geran had been delivered of a son who was in his power.

The marquis had not seen Madame de Bouille for a long time; a common danger reunited them.  They had both learned with terror the presence of Henri at the hotel de Saint-Geran.  They consulted about this; the marquis undertook to cut the danger short.  However, he dared put in practice nothing overtly against the child, a matter still more difficult just then, inasmuch as some particulars of his discreditable adventures had leaked out, and the Saint-Geran family received him more than coldly.

Baulieu, who witnessed every day the tenderness of the count and countess for the boy Henri, had been a hundred times on the point of giving himself up and confessing everything.  He was torn to pieces with remorse.  Remarks escaped him which he thought he might make without ulterior consequences; seeing the lapse of time, but they were noted and commented on.  Sometimes he would say that he held in his