be the
child's father, but who Pigoreau assured them was her brother-in-law,
often came to see him.

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 su