e officer, touched to pity, said:

"Madame, I am sorry for your fault, for, as I see, you are a good mother.
My orders are to take you to prison, and thence to the convent specified
by the archbishop, but I warn you that if we catch the father of your
child, he will hang. As for you, who have been seduced, and who belong
to a good family, tell me one of your relatives with whom you are on
friendly terms, and I will undertake to inform them of your predicament."

Madame Scarron, busy in soothing the Duc du Maine, durst not explain for
fear of aggravating matters, but begged the brigadier to take her back to
Saint Germain.

At this juncture my brother arrived on his way back to Paris. He
recognised the carriage, which stood before the inn, with a crowd of
peasants round it, and hastened to rescue the governess, for he soon
succeeded in persuading these worthy police officers that the sobbing
dame was not a runaway nun, and that the new-born infant came of a good
stock.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Saint Denis View.--Superstitions, Apparitions.--Projected Enlargement
of Versailles.--Fresh Victims for Saint Denis.

One evening I was walking at the far end of the long terrace of Saint
Germain. The King soon came thither, and pointing to Saint Denis, said,
"That, madame, is a gloomy, funereal view, which makes me displeased and
disgusted with this residence, fine though it be."

"Sire," I replied, "in no other spot could a more magnificent view be
found. Yonder river winding afar through the vast plain, that noble
forest divided by hunting roads into squares, that Calvary poised high in
air, those bridges placed here and there to add to the attractiveness of
the landscape, those flowery meadows set in the foreground as a rest to
the eye, the broad stream of the Seine, which seemingly is fain to flow
at a slower rate below your palace windows,--I do not think that any more
charming combination of objects could be met with elsewhere, unless one
went a long way from the capital."

"The chateau of Saint Germain no longer pleases me," replied the King. "I
shall enlarge Versailles and withdraw thither. What I am going to say
may astonish you, perhaps, as it comes from me, who am neither a
whimsical female nor a prey to superstition. A few days before the
Queen, my mother, had her final seizure, I was walking here alone in this
very spot. A reddish light appeared above the monastery of Saint Denis,
and a cloud which ro