“A kindhearted peasant woman, Nicole Frimousset. She was nursing Monsieur Chérubin de Grandvilain at the time.”
“Indeed! so this woman was the young Marquis de Grandvilain’s nurse?”
“Yes, monsieur, he is my foster-brother, and in my childhood we played together all the time.”
“Very good! But that doesn’t tell us how you went to Gagny.”
“Mon Dieu! monsieur, it was a lady—my mother, I suppose—who carried me to dear Nicole’s, and begged her to take me to nurse. I was then a year old; she left some money with Nicole and went away, saying that she would come again. The next year she sent a little more money by a messenger from Paris; but she didn’t come to see me, and no one ever after came to inquire for me.”
“But what was the lady’s name; where did she live?”
“Nicole didn’t think to ask her any of those questions; for she could not dream that she would abandon me, that she would never come again. The messenger from Paris did not know who the lady was who hired him on the street, he could not tell my good nurse anything.”
“But was no paper, no mark found on you or on your clothing?”
“Nothing, monsieur, absolutely nothing.”
“That is very strange.—Don’t you agree with me, madame?”