She was not in truth his daughter, was of no blood relationship to him, yet he cared for her dearly and fondly and the love was returned. As the history of this girl was known to many in the province, so it shall be told here.
Early in his Intendancy, when Baville (already known as an esprit fort by the ministers round Louis) had been appointed to this distant Government, with, to console him, an absolute authority, he had returned one winter night from a raid that he had been making on a village in the Cévennes which, to use his own words, "reeked of Calvinism" and was full of persons who refused to comply with the new orders that were brought into force by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was then but newly married to a sister of Gourville, the colonel of a local regiment of dragoons, and his wife's welcome to him was somewhat cooled by the announcement which he made to her that an intimate friend of his had perished in the raid, leaving behind a motherless child of whom he proposed to constitute himself the guardian.
Apprised of the fact that Ducaire was the name of the intimate friend, Madame l'Intendante shrugged her shoulders and contented herself with saying that it was the first time she had ever heard of him.
Later, after reflection, she laughed a little, quoted some words of M. de Voiture as to les secrets de la comédie which were no secrets either to actors or audience, and, in the course of the next two or three days, uttered pointed remarks to the effect that if politics failed at any future time, doubtless M. l'Intendant might earn a pleasant livelihood as a weaver of romances and of plots for plays.
"En vérité" she said, with her little laugh, "Jean de la Fontaine is old, also Racine; profitez vous de l'occasion, mon ami. Profitez vous."
Then, because they were alone in Madame's boudoir, Baville rose and stood before his wife and, speaking seriously, bade her cease her badinage forever.
And after the conversation which ensued, after, also, the story which Baville told her, Madame did cease her flippancy, and henceforth had no further qualms of jealousy.
In truth, as the child grew up, she too came to love it, to pet it as much as her husband did, to--because she was an honest, tender-hearted woman who, beneath all her pride for Baville's great position, had still many feminine qualities in her breast--weep over it.
"Pauvrette!" she would sometimes whisper to little Urbaine, long ere the child had come to understanding, "pauvre petite. Neither mother nor father either. Ah, well! Ah, well! they shall never be wanting while we live--say, Baville, shall they?"
And the Intendant, the man of "horror and terror" to all around, looking down upon the babe as she slept in her little bed, would answer before God that they should never be wanting.