"After all this, sorry to have lost the papers, but glad to find he had a considerable fortune placed securely in Spain, the Count set out to seek his fair Henriette, resolving to carry her to another land; and thinking all the while that his intendant was the honestest man in the world. Under this impression, he made him his chief agent in all his plans, told him of his private marriage, and, in short, did what very wise men often do, let the greatest rogue of his acquaintance into all his most important secrets. "The Marquis de St. Brie very soon found out the proceedings of his friend the Count. The Count was of course assassinated, and thrown into the river; the Countess was put into a convent, where she died in childbirth, and God knows what became of the money in Spain. Matters being thus settled to the satisfaction of every one, the intendant found he had quite enough money to set up procureur, and went to live in the same town with his dear friend the apothecary." "But what became of the papers?" demanded I; "and why do you always call him the intendant? Were you a son by some former marriage of your mother?" "Be patient! be patient! Monsieur le Comte, and you shall hear," replied the little player. "I was just about to return to my mother, with regard to whom a man may feel himself tolerably certain. There is a proverb against human presumption in speaking of one's father, '_Sage enfant qui connoit son père!_' However, my mother was, as I have said, a very handsome woman, and she made use of her advantages; but, at the same time, she was a very superstitious one, and though she governed her husband in all domestic matters with a rod of iron, she suffered herself to be governed by her confessor in a manner still more despotic. Never used she to fail in her attendance at the confessional, and yet I never heard the good priest complain she troubled him unnecessarily.