the sole guardianship of his wife, Jeanne Vacherot.
About four years after his death Jeanne
went to an estate she had at Vernon, taking
with her the youngest child, little Louis, but
leaving her elder two, big boys now of ten and
fourteen, under the care of their grandmother
and a faithful old servant. One day the two
boys went out to play with a companion named
Coustard: but though they went out, they forgot
to come in again, for all three urchins ran
away to see the world, leaving parents and
guardians in a beautiful state of uncertainty and
excitement. A short time after their flight,
Jeanne Vacherot saw, sitting on the steps of
the Hôtel Dieu, a boy so exactly like her son
Jacques, that she went to the police of that
time, making a statement of her loss, and adding
her belief that the little beggar-boy of the
Hôtel Dieu was her son. On further examination
she dropped her claim, and went back to
Vernon. The beggar who was called Monrousseau,
and the child who was Jacques le Moine's
double, went there too; and soon the whole
neighbourhood was in an uproar. The people
all said that the child was Jeanne's: Jeanne
Vacherot said it was not, for all its fair hair,
and the mother's mark, so exactly like that on
the missing Jacques. Besides, Jacques le Moine
was a well-educated lad for his years, and little
Monrousseau, the beggar, could not read or
write. But this was held to be no proof at all.
Indignant at Jeanne's heartlessness, some of the
neighbours, having first nearly killed her,
instituted an action against her, to make her
acknowledge her child, the little beggar; and
though Jeanne was ably defended, yet she lost
her cause from the overwhelming testimony
brought against her. Twenty-one witnesses
swore to the identity of this little beggar-boy
with Jacques le Moine. Servants, tradespeople,
one or two kinsfolk, the surgeon who had made
a certain cicatrice upon his body, the farmers
on the mother's estate, in short, every one who
had any idea on the matter at all. Only Jeanne
stood out that he was not her son, and Monrousseau
stood out that he was his. The other side
won; and the decree was hard enough, considering
what the truth was. Claude le Moine,
brother to the defunct Lancelot, was ordered to
take the boy to his heart and home. Jeanne
was made to grant him a pension of a hundred
livres; but to mark the disapprobation of her
unmotherly conduct, she was deprived of all
maternal privileges and rights over him.
Monrousseau, the beggar, was imprisoned and
heavily ironed for the crime of stealing a well-born
child, and hiding the truth when he had the
opportunity of undoing his wrong; and for three
years this wise arrangement was in full force.
Jeanne and her kinsfolk, kept "in silence," that
is, not allowed to appeal; Monrousseau kept in
prison and irons; and the little beggar-boy kept
in luxury and unhappiness. And then vagrant
Master Jacques, the real son. of Lancelot le
Moine and Jeanne Vacherot, returned, giving a
pitiful account of his three years' wanderings,
and poor elder brother Pierre's death. Whereupon
Justice was forced to make amends; which
she did, but as surlily as possible; releasing
Monrousseau from prison with a sulky pardon
for no crime done, and enjoining him to bring
up Louis as his son, Louis being enjoined to
obey and consider him as his father: neither of
them having ever wanted anything but the right
of considering themselves father and son.
Claude le Moine was released from his enforced
guardianship over the little beggar-boy; and
Jeanne Vacherot had her hundred livres
restored to her.

There was another very curious case of
mistaken identity in France. A Calvinist family,
named De Caille, were exiled from Provence at
the time of the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. They were people of standing and
condition, owning a good property, which, when the
law of 1689 was passed, that all those absent
from the kingdom on account of their religion
should forfeit their estates to their nearest
relatives, passed into the hands of a Dame Anne
Rolland and a Dame Tardivi, as the nearest
inheritors of Dame Judith la Gouche—Madame
de Caille. In process of time sundry members
of the Caille family died at their new home in
Lausanne, and among them the eldest son,
Isaac de Rougon, a studious, consumptive young
man of thirty or so, leaving De Caille now
absolutely heirless—if haply, indeed, any son of
his would have constituted himself the heir by
renouncing his father's faith, and becoming a
Catholic for the sake of gain. A few years after
the death of this Isaac, and when the Rollands
and the Tardivis were furthest from dreaming of
any disturbance, a man known elsewhere by the
name of Pierre Mêge, a marine soldier of no
very delightful antecedents, came before the
authorities, giving himself out as De Caille's eldest
son, so long reported dead. He had not been
dead at all, said Pierre Mêge, Sieur de Rougon;
on the contrary, he had been kept locked up by
his father for many years, the old man having
the intensest hatred to him, because of his
inclination for the Catholic faith. He had,
however, managed to escape after repeated trials
and increased severities; and he gave a strange
account of himself since that escape. He acknowledged
that he had passed by the name of Pierre
Mêge, whom he had known on board the Fidelle,
where they had both served, but where he was
distinguished by the sobriquet of "Le Grenadier
sans regret;" acknowledged, too, that he had
passed as Pierre Mêge with Honorade Venelle,
the wife, she knowing of the deception all the
time, and helping to keep it up—the friends,
creditors, and relatives of the true Pierre
accepting him without reserve or suspicion. But
now the time had come when it was his duty to
throw off this pretence of Pierre Mêge, this false
mask or larva that hid his true features, and come
forward boldly to claim his rights as André
d'Entrevergues, eldest son and heir of le Sieur
de Caille. The lawsuit that ensued is too long
to dissect here. The most startling points in it
were, that this pretended heir could neither
read nor write; that he gave himself a wrong