became so furious in his wrath, that he made
preparations to seclude Louis in some strong vault
or cellar of his mansion.

The Marquis having discovered the residence
of a young woman who was the mistress of his
father, paid her a secret visit, told her the story
of his unhappy life and domestic persecution;
and, as his own mother seemed powerless in the
matter, on his knees sought her interest in
his behalf. She would seem to have been
touched by the appeal; and rated the Counsellor
soundly for his unnatural conduct, threatening
him with the loss of her affection "if M. Louis
were not left to his own inclination in the choice
of a profession."

In the hope, perhaps, that some English or
Prussian bullet might rid him of a son whom
he hated so cordially, Bertin permitted the
Marquis to join the Regiment de Noailles (or
54th Cavalry of the Line, commanded by the
Comte d'Ayen, nephew of Marshal Noailles)
as a cadet or volunteer; but, according to the
system then pursued in the French service, he
could receive no pay or emolument, even while
campaigning in Flanders and Germany. After
fourteen months of this probation, however, he
was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Regiment de
Maine, and at sixteen years of age became
captain of a troop in the 40th Cavalry, or Dragoons
of St. Jal, commanded by Brigadier the Comte
de St. Jal;* his boyish spirit and bravery (not
to mention his rank) having even then attracted
the attention of Comte d'Argenson, who was
prime minister of France from 1743 to 1757.
The Count prevailed upon Louis the Fifteenth
to make the Marquis a Chevalier of the Royal
Order, and bestow upon him a special pension,
in lieu of the wretched pittance allowed him by
his father.

* Liste Historique de toutes les troupe au Service
de France.

This early success in camp and at court
seemed to inflame the resentment of the
Counsellor, who now began to affirm that the
Marquis was not his son; but a changeling, or
impostor, substituted by the nurse for his first
child, who, he declared, had died while under
her charge; but, as this story could be in no
way sustained, M. Bertin changed his tactics,
and resolved to get rid of his eldest son by—
poison!

A fever with which Fratteaux was seized
about this time, favoured the infamous idea;
and his father, who visited him with an air
of concern, contrived to give him, in his
medicine, a dose of some deadly drug which he
called an infusion of bark. It nearly proved
fatal, and would inevitably have done so, but
for the prompt arrival of the apothecary who
had furnished it, and who, suspecting foul
play when summoned by the Marquis, brought
with him a powerful antidote.

The Counsellor, who was immensely rich, now
suborned some worthless fellows, among whom
was an Italian (name unknown), to swear that
Fratteaux meditated a parricidal design against
his life; "that the Marquis, having a quarrel
with his father, drew his sword, and would
have killed him but for the interposition of
the father of the Italian, who received the
thrust, and died of it."

This deposition enabled Bertin to purchase a
lettre de cachet, by virtue of which he had his
son arrested, and thrust into a monastery near
Bourdeaux, where he was treated as a prisoner.

Through the great influence of Bertin as a
Counsellor of Parliament, all his son's entreaties
for release, or for a public trial, were rendered
vain, and he lost his commission in the Regiment
of St. Jal. Some of his friends, however, having
discovered where he was confined, and fearing
that he might be secretly put to death, broke
into the monastery one night, and assisted him
to escape. Through Gascony and Bearn he fled
to Spain, where, without so much as a change of
clothes, without money or letters of introduction,
he arrived, in a famished and destitute condition,
at the house of the Comte de Marcillac (a relation
of his mother), who derived his title from
the little town of that name, nine miles north
of Bourdeaux.

The Counsellor soon discovered the place of
his son's retreat, and, assisted by a liberal
donation of gold, soon procured from the French
ambassador at Madrid a warrant for the arrest
of the fugitive, based upon the powers afforded
by that infamous instrument of tyranny, the
lettre de cachet. Once more the unhappy son
had to fly; the Comte de Marcillac supplied him
with money; and, embarking at the nearest port,
he sailed for London, where he arrived in 1749.
There, under the name of Monsieur de St.
Etienne, he took a humble lodging in Paddington,
then a country village with green fields all
round it, from Marybone Farm to Kensington.
His landlord was a market gardener.

His friends in France and Spain sent him
remittances and letters of introduction to several
persons of rank in London. To these, the
pleasant manners, gentle bearing, and
handsome person, of the young Marquis speedily
recommended him, and ere long he was enabled
to remove nearer town, where he boarded with
a Mrs. Giles, in Marybone—or, as another
account has it, "with one Mrs. Bacon, a widow
gentlewoman of much good nature and
understanding." But even in this "land of liberty"
he was not safe from the rancour of the
indefatigable Counsellor, with his lettre de cachet.

The English friends of the Marquis having
urged that he should lay the story of his wrongs
before Louis the Fifteenth in the form of a
memorial, the preparation of it was confided to
an amanuensis, a Frenchman named Dages de
Souchard. This fellow (though only the son of
an obscure lawyer at Libourne, then a very small
town of Provence) assumed, in London, the
title of Baron. A deep-witted, crafty, and
insinuating rascal, he contrived to propitiate many
unsuspecting persons, and claimed to be a strict
French Protestant, though he had, in early life,
been a Franciscan monk, or friar minor, in a
monastery at Nerac, in the west of France, and