of M. de Sartine, the well-known minister of police.  Here his conduct was remarkable.  From the first day of his entrance he shrank from association with the other inmates, who were for the most part boys belonging to the lower orders, and by so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution.  Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris.  Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l’Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same time considered that, by reason of his intelligence, he was likely to prove an apt pupil in acquiring the manual alphabet which the worthy ecclesiastic had invented.  Accordingly, the Abbe removed him to his own house, and in a few months had rendered him able to give some account of himself by signs.  His story was that he had a distinct recollection of living with his father and mother and sister, in a splendid mansion, situated in spacious grounds, and that he was accustomed to ride on horseback and in a carriage.  He described his father as a tall man and a soldier, and stated that his face was seamed by scars received in battle.  He gave a circumstantial account of his father’s death, and said that he, as well as his mother and sister, were mourning for him.  After his father’s funeral he asserted that he was taken from home by a man whom he did not know, and that when he had been carried come distance he was deserted by his conductor and left in the wood, in which he wandered for some days, until he reached the highway, where he was discovered by the passing traveller, as above narrated.

When this tale was made public, it naturally created great excitement, and people set themselves to discover the identity of this foundling, whom the Abbe de l’Epee had named Joseph.  The Abbe himself was never tired of conjecturing the possible history of his protege, or of communicating his conjectures to his friends.  At length, in the year 1777, a lady, who had heard the boy’s story, suggested a solution of the mystery.  She mentioned that in the autumn of 1773, a deaf and dumb boy, the only son and heir of Count Solar, and head of the ancient and celebrated house of Solar, had left Toulouse, where his father and mother then dwelt, and had not returned.  It had been given out that he had died, but she suggested that the account of his death was false, and that Joseph was the young Count Solar.  Inquiries were instituted, and showed that the hypothesis was at least tenable.  The family of Count Solar had consisted of his wife and a son and daughter.  The son was deaf and dumb, and was twelve years old at his father’s death, which occurred in 1773.  After the decease of the old count, the boy was sent by his mother to Bagneres de Bigorre, under the care of a young lawyer, named Cazeaux, who came back to Toulouse early in the following year, with the story that the heir had died of small-pox.  The mother died in 1775.