recently dead.  He had been a door-keeper
of the court of justice, and this office would
descend, as a dowry, upon whomsoever should
marry his daughter.  Employments were, in
those days, like estates, with the permission
to bequeath them.  At first he only intended
to make the young woman his mistress; it
was all a person in her position could expect
from a fine gentleman; but, as it happened
that she was too virtuous to agree to
anything but honourable, lawful marriage, and
as the Sieur de la Pivardière was very much
in love, and considered that he had been
irrevocably injured by and divided from his
wife, he felt no scruple in contracting a second
marriage while she was alive; although
bigamy, by the laws of France, was, in those
days, a hanging matter.

He married her, notwithstanding, under
his family name of Bouchet, and ceasing to
be a seigneur, entered upon the office of
huissier, which his bride's father had held
before him: thus becoming a simple bourgeois.
This marriage was very happy, and he did
not suffer any remorse or misgivings to
disturb his felicity.  At the end of a year his
second wife presented him with a baby, and
he began to wish to make some better
provision for it than the chance of becoming a
huissier like its father and grandfather.  He
obtained leave of absence from his duties,
and made a journey to Nerbonne, where his
first wife still continued to reside, and the
prior to visit her.  M. de la Pivardière
saw no reason for altering his previous
opinion as to his having just grounds of
jealousy, although it is only fair to say, that
no proof beyond his own suspicions ever
came to light.  He pretended to his wife that
he was still attached to the army, and needed
money to buy his promotion.  She gave him
all she had, and he departed to rejoin his
second wife, on whom he bestowed all the
money he obtained from his first.  Every
year, for four successive years, he made a
visit to Nerbonne, and took from his wife
nearly the whole of her income, always under
the pretence of the exigences of the service.
His family at Auxerre, in the meanwhile,
had increased; he had by that time four
children.

At length his real wife, Madame de la
Pivardière, began to entertain some vague
suspicions that all was not right.  News did
not travel in those days either far or fast.
Still, it is very possible that rumours of his
life at Auxerre might have reached her.

In the month of June, sixteen hundred and
ninety-seven, she received a letter from the
procureur of the parliament in Paris,
inquiring if she could tell him where her
husband then was, as a person had written to
him from Auxerre, to say that a woman
there was extremely anxious to know his
address, that she might send some clothes
to him. This procureur—M. de Vigneur—
appears to have been a friend, if not a
relative of Madame de la Pivardière.  Such a
letter was well calculated to inspire any
wife with jealousy—much more Madame de
la Pivardière, who had so much reason to
question her husband's proceedings.  She
was still in all the perplexity caused by this
letter when her husband himself arrived at
Bourg Dieu (a small village about seven
miles from his château); he was met by a
mason named François Marsau, who knew
him, and who expressed his surprise that he
should come there instead of going home;
but M. de la Pivardière, who was in a very
bad humour, and more jealous of his wife
than ever, declared his intention not to go to
the château until the evening, when he hoped
to surprise the Prior of Miseray with his wife,
when either he would take the prior's life, or
the prior should take his.  François Marsau,
thinking to do a good deed, carried this
information to Madame de la Pivardière and to
the prior.  Two hours afterwards, when her
husband alighted at the gate of the château,
he certainly found both his wife and the
prior—but he also found several of the
neighbouring gentry with their wives.  They were
all seated at dinner, and it was a friendly
party instead of a guilty tête-à-tête that he
disturbed.  The prior seemed overjoyed to
see him, and all the guests gave him a cordial
welcome; his wife alone kept her seat, and
did not speak to him.  A lady of the company
said, jestingly, to Pivardière,

"Is that the way to welcome back a
husband after so long an absence?"

He replied gloomily,—

"I am her husband, it is true, but I am
not her friend!"

And then he seated himself at the table in
silence.

This was not likely to make the rest of the
party very comfortable, and they took their
departure as soon as possible.  Left alone
with his wife, M. de la Pivardière asked the
meaning of the insolent reception she had
given him.

"Go ask your wife," she replied.

Of course her husband stoutly denied
everything; but, he could not convince her.
They had high words together, and at length
she was overheard to say,

"You shall learn what it is to offer such
an insult to a woman like me!"

After which she left him, and retired to
her own room, the door of which she shut
with violence.  M. de la Pivardière also
retired into the room that had been prepared
for him.

From that moment he disappeared.  To
comprehend properly the remainder of this strange
story, the reader must bear in mind that, in
those days, the domestic life in the interior of
the castles and châteaux was of the strictest
seclusion and privacy.  There were no neighbours
except those of the village belonging to
the lord of the place, and they seldom dreamed of
either commenting upon his acts or questioning