"Just as I said. Tout le monde knew about it. When you turned up pregnant in the Hague, everyone, including le Roi, and Étienne, assumed that the baby was the spawn of Arcachon; and, when it was born healthy, this made it seem that you were that rarest of specimens: one who could mate with a scion of the de Lavardac line without passing on its well-known hereditary imperfections to the child. I did as much as I could to propagate this myth through other channels."