e 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 hand the life and honour
of Madame the Marchioness de Bouille; sometimes that the count and
countess had more reasons than they knew of for loving Henri. One day he
put a case of conscience to a confessor, thus: "Whether a man who had
been concerned in the abduction of a child could not satisfy his
conscience by restoring him to his father and mother without telling them
who he was?" What answer the confessor made is not known, but apparently
it was not what the major-domo wanted. He replied to a magistrate of
Moulins, who congratulated him on having a nephew whom his masters
overburdened with kind treatment, that they ought to love him, since he
was nearly related to them.

These remarks were noticed by others than those principally concerned.
One day a wine merchant came to propose to Baulieu the purchase of a pipe
of Spanish wine, of which he gave him a sample bottle; in the evening he
was taken violently ill. They carried him to bed, where he writhed,
uttering horrible cries. One sole thought possessed him when hi