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.”

The marquis had at that time permission to go out from prison occasionally on his parole.  This will not surprise anyone acquainted with the ideas which prevailed at that period on the honour of a nobleman, even the greatest criminal.  The marquis, profiting by this facility, took the page to see a child of about seven years of age, fair and with a beautiful countenance.

“Page,” said he, “look well at this child, so that you may know him again when I shall send you to inquire about him.”

He then informed him that this was the Count de Saint-Geran’s son whom he had carried away.