And in a fifth, in which she answered from the dock, she maintained that her evidence of the countess’s accouchement had been extorted from her by violence.  She made no charges against either Madame de Bouille or the Marquis de Saint Maixent.  On the other hand, no sooner was she under lock and key than she despatched her son Guillemin to the marchioness to inform her that she was arrested.  The marchioness recognised how threatening things were, and was in a state of consternation; she immediately sent the sieur de la Foresterie, her steward, to the lieutenant-general, her counsel, a mortal enemy of the count, that he might advise her in this conjuncture, and suggest a means for helping the matron without appearing openly in the matter.  The lieutenant’s advice was to quash the proceedings and obtain an injunction against the continuance of the preliminaries to the action.  The marchioness spent a large sum of money, and obtained this injunction; but it was immediately reversed, and the bar to the suit removed.

La Foresterie was then ordered to pass to Riom, where the sisters Quinet lived, and to bribe them heavily to secrecy.  The elder one, on leaving the marchioness’s service, had shaken her fist in her face, feeling secure with the secrets in her knowledge, and told her that she would repent having dismissed her and her sister, and that she would make a clean breast of the whole affair, even were she to be hung first.  These girls then sent word that they wished to enter her service again; that the countess had promised them handsome terms if they would speak; and that they had even been questioned in her name by a Capuchin superior, 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.”