conversions were favourably looked on at court.
The Jesuits, who guided the individual's
movements, loudly claimed the honour of bringing
this lost sheep back to the fold; and they
crammed him so well with religious instruction,
that five weeks after his appearance on the scene
they pronounced him fit to abjure his errors.
The ceremony took place in Toulon cathedral,
on the 10th of April, 1699, the Grand-Vicaire
officiating.

Several details of this act require to be
noticed. By it, young De Caille took the
names of André d'Entrevergues, son of Scipion
d'Entrevergues, Sieur de Caille, and of the late
Dame Suzanne de Caille, and gave his age as
twenty-three. Now, De Caille the father called
himself Le Brun de Castellane, Seigneur de
Caille and de Rougon, and had never in any public
act taken the name of d'Entrevergues, although
he had the right to do so; and his wife, the
Demoiselle Judith Le Gouche, had never assumed
her husband's name, which would have been
contrary to the manners of the day. Moreover,
we know that, in 1699, young De Caille would
have been thirty-five instead of twenty-three
years of age.

The imposture was glaring; but no one at
the time took the trouble to see through it.
Only M. de Vauvray, who witnessed the act of
abjuration, was greatly astonished to hear young
De Caille declare that he could not write! He
more than suspected they had been taken in.
But the Jesuits were so proud of their
acquisition that he did not care to disturb their
triumph. In the then excited state of religious
passions, the abjuration made a great noise: so
much noise that the news soon reached
Lausanne.

M. de Caille was thunderstruck on learning
that his son, who had died three years ago in
Switzerland, had lately been renouncing his
heresy in Provence. He lost no time in
informing M. de Vauvray, though the Dame
Rolland, that some adventurer must have
assumed his name for dishonest purposes; and
he supported his statement by a legal certificate
proving that his son had died in Switzerland on
the 15th of February, 1696. He also entered
a formal protest, by letter of attorney, against
the imposture.

M. de Vauvray, whose eyes were already
opened, did not wait for a second application
from the injured father. He ordered the
impostor to be arrested; and, that step taken, one
would have said that the whole matter would
soon come to an end. But the false De Caille
was a soldier in the Marine, under the superior
orders of M. d'Infreville, who commanded all
the troops at Toulon. Conflict between M.
d'Infreville and M. de Vauvray. The dispute
had to be referred to the court. M. de
Pontchartrain, minister of state, mentioned the
affair to the king, who, on the 11th of June,
ordered the impostor to the Arsenal (where
the galley-slaves are), and to be handed over
to the judge ordinary, to be tried in the regular
way—which was done forthwith. On the 19th
of June the false De Caille was examined for
the first time, at his own request.

The interrogatory is full of plain proofs of
imposture. When pressed about the difference
in the names in his own declarations and the
documents received from Switzerland, he
replied that he had never exactly known his own
real name; that his father had always given
him that of D'Entrevergues de Rougon de
Caille; that he believed he was twenty-five years
of age (previously he had said twenty-three);
that he had never known his mother's maiden
name; that he never knew who were his
godfather and godmother; that he was ten years
old when they left Manosque! Every answer
betrayed a singular ignorance of the antecedents
of the person whom he pretended to
represent.

How had it happened that, born in the
upper ranks of society, he could neither read
nor write? It was the fault of his eyes, which
were weak from his birth. Of the name of the
street, and even of the quarter in which the
paternal mansion was situated in Manosque, he
could give no indication. What were its
interior arrangements? He knew nothing about
them; though he could give a very correct
description of its outside appearance. How
many children had his father? He answered,
three. What was his father like? He de-
scribed him as having black hair and beard
and a brown complexion; whereas M. de
Caille had light brown hair, a red beard, and a
white face. Certainly, the débutant had studied
his part very imperfectly.

Nevertheless, the Marine (as he is henceforth
called in the trial), at the close of his
examination, applied to the lieutenant-criminel
of Toulon to be set at liberty and put in
possession of his property. However ignorant he
might be of the most essential facts, he showed
no symptoms of fear or embarrassment. He
himself caused the result of his examination to
be signified to the Dame Rolland, to the Sieurs
Tardivi and Consorts (Jean Pousset), and even
to relations of the Sieur de Caille, who had no
interest in the exile's property.

The Dame Rolland protested, and declared
her intention to pursue the impostor in a
criminal court. An ordonnance of the lieutenaut-
criminel (16th September, 1699) decided that
the Marine should be taken to Manosque and
elsewhere, to be confronted with whoever
would recognise or disavow him; and he
himself urged that that measure should be put in
execution. M. Rolland appealed on behalf of
his wife, and obtained leave to lay an information
against the Marine for assuming a name
which belonged to another person, and to prove
that the pretended De Caille, the son, was no
other than one Pierre Mège, the son of a
galley-slave, well known in Provence for twenty
years past. In fact, there were people who,
without the slightest hesitation, recognised, in
the false De Caille, this same Pierre Mège, of
Marseilles, who had been enrolled at Toulon in
the body of the Marines.