"How thrives the child, Madame Moulinet?" asked Jean Charost, looking down upon the infant with a glance of interest, but with none of that peculiar admiration which grown women feel and grown men often affect for a very young baby.
The good woman assured him that the child was doing marvelously, and Jean Charost then proceeded to inquire whether any one, during his absence, had been to visit or inquire after it.
"Oh, a quantity of people from the castle, sir," answered the good dame; "that saucy young fellow De Royans among the rest, and old Monsieur Blaize, and the chaplain, and the fool, God wot! But beside that--" and she dropped her voice to a lower tone--"one evening, just as we were going to bed, there came a strange, wild-looking gentleman, with long gray hair, who seemed so mad he frightened both me and my husband. He asked a number of questions. Then he stared at the child for full five minutes, and cried out at length, 'Ah! she doubtless looked once like that,' and then he threw down a purse upon the table with fifty gold crowns in it. So the little maid has got her little fortune already."
"Did you not know him?" asked Jean Charost.
"I never saw him in my life before," replied the woman; "and, in truth, I did not know how to answer any one when they asked me about the child, as you were gone, and had not told me what to say; so all I could tell them was that you had brought her here, had paid well for nursing her, and had commanded me to take good care of her in the name of my good father's old lord."
"And was that wild-looking man not your father's old lord?" asked Jean Charost, in a tone of much surprise.
"Lord bless your heart, no sir," replied Madame Moulinet. "A hand's breadth taller, and not half so stout--quite a different sort of man altogether."
Jean Charost mused in silence; but he asked no further questions, and shortly after returned to the château.
In passing through the court-yard, the first person the young gentleman encountered was Seigneur André the fool, who at once began upon the subject of the child with a good deal of malevolence. "Ah, ha! Mr. Secretary," he said, "I want to roam the forests with you, and find out the baby-tree that bears living acorns. On my faith, the duke ought to knight you with his own hand, being the guide of ladies, and the protector of orphans, the defender of women and children."
"My good friend," replied Jean Charost, "I think he ought to promote you also. I have heard of a good many gentlemen of your profession; but all the rest are mere pretenders to you. The others only call themselves fools; you are one in reality;" and with these tart words, excited as much, perhaps, by some new feeling of doubt and perplexity in his own mind, as by the jester's evident ill will toward him, he walked on and sought his own chamber.