The Countess of Saint Geran

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> The Countess of Saint Geran


The count thought it was some trifling irregularity, some
misappropriation in the house accounts; and fearing to hasten the death
of the sufferer by the shame of the confession of a fault, he sent word
that he heartily forgave him, that he might die tranquil, and refused to
see him. Baulieu expired, taking his secret with him. This happened in
1648.

The child was then seven years old. His charming manners grew with his
age, and the count and countess felt their love for him increase. They
caused him to be taught dancing and fencing, put him into breeches and
hose, and a page's suit of their livery, in which capacity he served
them. The marquis turned his attack to this quarter. He was doubtless
preparing some plot as criminal as the preceding, when justice overtook
him for some other great crimes of which he had been guilty. He
was arrested one day in the street when conversing with one of the
Saint-Geran footmen, and taken to the Conciergerie of the Palace of
Justice.

Whether owing to these occurrences, or to grounds for suspicion before
mentioned, certain reports spread in the Bourbonnais embodying some
of the real facts; portions of them reached the ears of the count and
countess, but they had only the effect of renewing their grief without
furnishing a clue to the truth.

Meanwhile, the count went to take the waters at Vichy. The countess
and Madame de Bouille followed him, and there they chanced to encounter
Louise Goillard, the midwife. This woman renewed her acquaintance with
the house, and in particular often visited the Marchioness de Bouille.
One day the countess, unexpectedly entering the marchioness's room,
found them both conversing in an undertone. They stopped talking
immediately, and appeared disconcerted.

The countess noticed this without attaching any importance to it, and
asked the subject of their conversation.

"Oh, nothing," said the marchioness.

"But what is it?" insisted the countess, seeing that she blushed.

The marchioness, no longer able to evade the question, and feeling her
difficulties increase, replied--

"Dame Louise is praising my brother for bearing no ill-will to her."

"Why?" said the countess, turning to the midwife,--"why should you fear
any ill-will on the part of my husband?"

"I was afraid," said Louise Goillard awkwardly, "that he might have
taken a dislike to me on account of all that happened when you expected
to be confined."

The obscurity of these words and embarrassment of the two women produced
a lively effect upon the countess; but she controlled herself and let
the subject drop. Her agitation, however, did not escape the notice
of the marchioness, who the next day had horses put to her coach and
retired to her estate of Lavoine. This clumsy proceeding strengthened
suspicion.

The first determination of the countess was to arrest Louise Goillard;
but she saw that in so serious a matter every step must be taken with
precaution. She consulted the count and the countess dowager. They
quietly summoned the midwife, to question her without any preliminaries.
She prevaricated and contradicted herself over and over again; moreover,
her state of terror alone sufficed to convict her of a crime. They
handed her over to the law, and the Count de Saint-Geran filed an
information before the vice-seneschal of Moulins.

The midwife underwent a first interrogatory. She confessed the truth of
the accouchement, but she added that the countess had given birth to a
still-born daughter, which she had buried under a stone near the step of
the barn in the back yard. The judge, accompanied by a physician and
a surgeon, repaired to the place, where he found neither stone,
nor foetus, nor any indications of an interment. They searched
unsuccessfully in other places.

When the dowager countess heard this statement, she demanded that this
horrible woman should be put on her trial. The civil lieutenant, in the
absence of the criminal lieutenant, commenced the proceedings.

In a second interrogation, Louise Goillard positively declared that the
countess had never been confined;

In a third, that she had been delivered of a mole;

In a fourth, that she had been confined of a male infant, which Baulieu
had carried away in a basket;

And in a fifth, in which she answered from the dock, she maintained that
her evidence of the countess's accouchement had been extorted from her
by violence. She made no charges against either Madame de Bouille or
the Marquis de Saint Maixent. On the other hand, no sooner was she under
lock and key than she despatched her son Guillemin to the marchioness
to inform her that she was arrested. The marchioness recognised how
threatening things were, and was in a state of consternation; she
immediately sent the sieur de la Foresterie, her steward, to the
lieutenant-general, her counsel, a mortal enemy of the count, that he
might advise her in this conjuncture, and suggest a means for helping
the matron without appearing openly in the matter. The lieutenant's
advice was to quash the proceedings and obtain an injunction against the
continuance of the preliminaries to the action. The marchioness spent a
large sum of money, and obtained this injunction; but it was immediately
reversed, and the bar to the suit removed.

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.

Information of these matters coming to the ears of justice, decisive
proofs were hoped for; but this happened just when other criminal
informations were lodged against the marquis, which left him helpless to
prevent the exposure of his crimes. Police officers were despatched in
all haste to the Conciergerie; they were stopped by the gaolers, who
told them that the marquis, feeling ill, was engaged with a priest who
was administering the sacraments to him. As they insisted on seeing
him, the warders approached the cell: the priest came out, crying that
persons must be sought to whom the sick man had a secret to reveal; that
he was in a desperate state, and said he had just poisoned himself; all
entered the cell.

M. de Saint-Maixent was writhing on a pallet, in a pitiable condition,
sometimes shrieking like a wild beast, sometimes stammering disconnected
words. All that the officers could hear was--

"Monsieur le Comte . . . call . . . the Countess . . . de Saint-Geran
. . .let them come. . . ." The officers earnestly begged him to try to be
more explicit.

The marquis had another fit; when he opened his eyes, he said--

"Send for the countess . . . let them forgive me . . . I wish to tell
them everything." The police officers asked him to speak; one even told
him that the count was there. The marquis feebly murmured--

"I am going to tell you----" Then he gave a loud cry and fell back dead.

It thus seemed as if fate took pains to close every mouth from which the
truth might escape. Still, this avowal of a deathbed revelation to be
made to the Count de Saint-Geran and the deposition of the priest who
had administered the last sacraments formed a strong link in the chain
of evidence.

The judge of first instruction, collecting all the information he had
got, made a report the weight of which was overwhelming. The carters,
the nurse, the domestic servants, all gave accounts consistent with each
other; the route and the various adventures of the child were plainly
detailed, from its birth till its arrival at the village of Descoutoux.

Justice, thus tracing crime to its sources, had no option but to issue
a warrant for the arrest of the Marchioness de Bouille; but it seems
probable that it was not served owing to the strenuous efforts of the
Count de Saint-Geran, who could not bring himself to ruin his sister,
seeing that her dishonour would have been reflected on him. The
marchioness hid her remorse in solitude, and appeared again no more. She
died shortly after, carrying the weight of her secret till she drew her
last breath.

The judge of Moulins at length pronounced sentence on the midwife, whom
he declared arraigned and convicted of having suppressed the child born
to the countess; for which he condemned her to be tortured and then
hanged. The matron lodged an appeal against this sentence, and the case
was referred to the Conciergerie.

No sooner had the count and countess seen the successive proofs of the
procedure, than tenderness and natural feelings accomplished the rest.
They no longer doubted that their page was their son; they stripped him
at once of his livery and gave him his rank and prerogatives, under the
title of the Count de la Palice.

Meanwhile, a private person named Sequeville informed the countess that
he had made a very important discovery; that a child had been baptized
in 1642 at St. Jean-en-Greve, and that a woman named Marie Pigoreau had
taken a leading part in the affair. Thereupon inquiries were made, and
it was discovered that this child had been nursed in the village of
Torcy. The count obtained a warrant which enabled him to get evidence
before the judge of Torcy; nothing was left undone to elicit the
whole truth; he also obtained a warrant through which he obtained more
information, and published a monitory. The elder of the Quinet girls
on this told the Marquis de Canillac that the count was searching at a
distance for things very near him. The truth shone out with great lustre
through these new facts which gushed from all this fresh information.
The child, exhibited in the presence of a legal commissary to the nurses
and witnesses of Torcy, was identified, as much by the scars left by
the midwife's nails on his head, as by his fair hair and blue eyes. This
ineffaceable vestige of the woman's cruelty was the principal proof; the
witnesses testified that la Pigoreau, when she visited this child with a
man who appeared to be of condition, always asserted that he was the
son of a great nobleman who had been entrusted to her care, and that she
hoped he would make her fortune and that of those who had reared him.

The child's godfather, Paul Marmiou, a common labourer; the grocer
Raguenet, who had charge of the two thousand livres; the servant of la
Pigoreau, who had heard her say that the count was obliged to take this
child; the witnesses who proved that la Pigoreau had told them that
the child was too well born to wear a page's livery, all furnished
convincing proofs; but others were forthcoming.

It was at la Pigoreau's that the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, living then
at the hotel de Saint-Geran, went to see the child, kept in her house
as if it were hers. Prudent Berger, the marquis's page, perfectly well
remembered la Pigoreau, and also the child, whom he had seen at her
house and whose history the marquis had related to him. Finally, many
other witnesses heard in the course of the case, both before the three
chambers of nobles, clergy, and the tiers etat, and before the judges of
Torcy, Cusset, and other local magistrates, made the facts so clear and
conclusive in favour of the legitimacy of the young count, that it was
impossible to avoid impeaching the guilty parties. The count ordered the
summons in person of la Pigoreau, who had not been compromised in
the original preliminary proceedings. This drastic measure threw the
intriguing woman on her beam ends, but she strove hard to right herself.

The widowed Duchess de Ventadour, daughter by her mother's second
marriage of the Countess dowager of Saint-Geran, and half-sister of the
count, and the Countess de Lude, daughter of the Marchioness de Bouille,
from whom the young count carried away the Saint-Geran inheritance,
were very warm in the matter, and spoke of disputing the judgment. La
Pigoreau went to see them, and joined in concert with them.

Then commenced this famous lawsuit, which long occupied all France,
and is parallel in some respects, but not in the time occupied in the
hearing, to the case heard by Solomon, in which one child was claimed by
two mothers.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent and Madame de Bouille being dead,
were naturally no parties to the suit, which was fought against the
Saint-Geran family by la Pigoreau and Mesdames du Lude and de Ventadour.
These ladies no doubt acted in good faith, at first at any rate, in
refusing to believe the crime; for if they had originally known the
truth it is incredible that they could have fought the case so long and
so obstinately.

They first of all went to the aid of the midwife, who had fallen sick in
prison; they then consulted together, and resolved as follows:

That the accused should appeal against criminal proceedings;

That la Pigoreau should lodge a civil petition against the judgments
which ordered her arrest and the confronting of witnesses;

That they should appeal against the abuse of obtaining and publishing
monitories, and lodge an interpleader against the sentence of the
judge of first instruction, who had condemned the matron to capital
punishment;

And that finally, to carry the war into the enemy's camp, la Pigoreau
should impugn the maternity of the countess, claiming the child as her
own; and that the ladies should depose that the countess's accouchement
was an imposture invented to cause it to be supposed that she had given
birth to a child.

For more safety and apparent absence of collusion, Mesdames du Lude and
de Ventadour pretended to have no communication with la Pigoreau.

About this time the midwife died in prison, from an illness which
vexation and remorse had aggravated. After her death, her son Guillemin
confessed that she had often told him that the countess had given birth
to a son whom Baulieu had carried off, and that the child entrusted to
Baulieu at the chateau Saint-Geran was the same as the one recovered;
the youth added that he had concealed this fact so long as it might
injure his mother, and he further stated that the ladies de Ventadour
and du Lude had helped her in prison with money and advice--another
strong piece of presumptive evidence.

The petitions of the accused and the interpleadings of Mesdames du Lude
and de Ventadour were discussed in seven hearings, before three courts
convened. The suit proceeded with all the languor and chicanery of the
period.

After long and specious arguments, the attorney general Bijnon gave his
decision in favour of the Count and Countess of Saint-Geran, concluding
thus:--

"The court rejects the civil appeal of la Pigoreau; and all the
opposition and appeals of the appellants and the defendants; condemns
them to fine and in costs; and seeing that the charges against la
Pigoreau were of a serious nature, and that a personal summons had
been decreed against her, orders her committal, recommending her to the
indulgence of the court."

By a judgment given in a sitting at the Tournelle by M. de Mesmes,
on the 18th of August 1657, the appellant ladies' and the defendants'
opposition was rejected with fine and costs. La Pigoreau was forbidden
to leave the city and suburbs of Paris under penalty of summary
conviction. The judgment in the case followed the rejection of the
appeal.

This reverse at first extinguished the litigation of Mesdames du Lude
and de Ventadour, but it soon revived more briskly than ever. These
ladies, who had taken la Pigoreau in their coach to all the hearings,
prompted her, in order to procrastinate, to file a fresh petition,
in which she demanded the confrontment of all the witnesses to the
pregnancy, and the confinement. On hearing this petition, the court gave
on the 28th of August 1658 a decree ordering the confrontment, but on
condition that for three days previously la Pigoreau should deliver
herself a prisoner in the Conciergerie.

This judgment, the consequences of which greatly alarmed la Pigoreau,
produced such an effect upon her that, after having weighed the interest
she had in the suit, which she would lose by flight, against the danger
to her life if she ventured her person into the hands of justice, she
abandoned her false plea of maternity, and took refuge abroad. This last
circumstance was a heavy blow to Mesdames du Lude and de Ventadour; but
they were not at the end of their resources and their obstinacy.

Contempt of court being decreed against la Pigoreau, and the case being
got up against the other defendants, the Count de Saint-Geran left
for the Bourbonnais, to put in execution the order to confront the
witnesses. Scarcely had he arrived in the province when he was obliged
to interrupt his work to receive the king and the queen mother, who were
returning from Lyons and passing through Moulins. He presented the Count
de la Palice to their Majesties as his son; they received him as such.
But during the visit of the king and queen the Count de Saint-Geran fell
ill, over fatigued, no doubt, by the trouble he had taken to give them a
suitable reception, over and above the worry of his own affairs.

During his illness, which only lasted a week, he made in his will a
new acknowledgment of his son, naming his executors M. de Barriere,
intendant of the province, and the sieur Vialet, treasurer of France,
desiring them to bring the lawsuit to an end. His last words were
for his wife and child; his only regret that he had not been able to
terminate this affair. He died on the 31st of January 1659.

The maternal tenderness of the countess did not need stimulating by the
injunctions of her husband, and she took up the suit with energy.
The ladies de Ventadour and du Lude obtained by default letters of
administration as heiresses without liability, which were granted out of
the Chatelet. At the same time they appealed against the judgment of the
lieutenant-general of the Bourbonnais, giving the tutelage of the young
count to the countess his mother, and his guardianship to sieur de
Bompre. The countess, on her side, interpleaded an appeal against the
granting of letters of administration without liability, and did all
in her power to bring back the case to the Tournelle. The other ladies
carried their appeal to the high court, pleading that they were not
parties to the lawsuit in the Tournelle.

It would serve no purpose to follow the obscure labyrinth of
legal procedure of that period, and to recite all the marches and
countermarches which legal subtlety suggested to the litigants. At the
end of three years, on the 9th of April 1661, the countess obtained a
judgment by which the king in person--

"Assuming to his own decision the civil suit pending at the
Tournelle, as well as the appeals pled by both parties, and the
last petition of Mesdames du Lude and de Ventadour, sends back
the whole case to the three assembled chambers of the States
General, to be by them decided on its merits either jointly or
separately, as they may deem fit."

The countess thus returned to her first battlefield. Legal science
produced an immense quantity of manuscript, barristers and attorneys
greatly distinguishing themselves in their calling. After an
interminable hearing, and pleadings longer and more complicated than
ever, which however did not bamboozle the court, judgment was pronounced
in conformity with the summing up of the attorney-general, thus--

"That passing over the petition of Mesdames Marie de la Guiche and
Eleonore de Bouille, on the grounds," etc. etc.;

"Evidence taken," etc.;

"Appeals, judgments annulled," etc.;

"With regard to the petition of the late Claude de la Guiche and Suzanne
de Longaunay, dated 12th August 1658,"

"Ordered,

"That the rule be made absolute;

"Which being done, Bernard de la Guiche is pronounced, maintained, and
declared the lawfully born and legitimate son of Claude de la Guiche and
Suzanne de Longaunay; in possession and enjoyment of the name and
arms of the house of Guiche, and of all the goods left by Claude de la
Guiche, his father; and Marie de la Guiche and Eleonore de Bouille are
interdicted from interfering with him;

"The petitions of Eleonore de Bouille and Marie de la Guiche, dated 4th
June 1664, 4th August 1665, 6th January, 10th February, 12th March, 15th
April, and 2nd June, 1666, are dismissed with costs;

"Declared,

"That the defaults against la Pigoreau are confirmed; and that she,
arraigned and convicted of the offences imputed to her, is condemned to
be hung and strangled at a gallows erected in the Place de Greve in
this city, if taken and apprehended; otherwise, in effigy at a gallows
erected in the Place de Greve aforesaid; that all her property subject
to confiscation is seized and confiscated from whomsoever may be
in possession of it; on which property and other not subject to
confiscation, is levied a fine of eight hundred Paris livres, to be
paid to the King, and applied to the maintenance of prisoners in the
Conciergerie of the Palace of justice, and to the costs."

Possibly a more obstinate legal contest was never waged, on both sides,
but especially by those who lost it. The countess, who played the part
of the true mother in the Bible, had the case so much to heart that she
often told the judges, when pleading her cause, that if her son were not
recognised as such, she would marry him, and convey all her property to
him.

The young Count de la Palice became Count de Saint-Geran through the
death of his father, married, in 1667, Claude Francoise Madeleine de
Farignies, only daughter of Francois de Monfreville and of Marguerite
Jourdain de Carbone de Canisi. He had only one daughter, born in 1688,
who became a nun. He died at the age of fifty-five years, and thus this
illustrious family became extinct.