in spacious grounds, and that he was accustomed to ride on horseback
and in a carriage. He described his father as a tall man and a
soldier, and stated that his face was seamed by scars received in
battle. He gave a circumstantial account of his father's death, and
said that he, as well as his mother and sister, were mourning for him.
After his father's funeral he asserted that he was taken from home by
a man whom he did not know, and that when he had been carried come
distance he was deserted by his conductor and left in the wood, in
which he wandered for some days, until he reached the highway, where
he was discovered by the passing traveller, as above narrated.

When this tale was made public, it naturally created great excitement,
and people set themselves to discover the identity of this foundling,
whom the Abbé de l'Epée had named Joseph. The Abbé himself was never
tired of conjecturing the possible history of his protégé, or of
communicating his conjectures to his friends. At length, in the year
1777, a lady, who had heard the boy's story, suggested a solution of
the mystery. She mentioned that in the autumn of 1773, a deaf and dumb
boy, the only son and heir of Count Solar, and head of the ancient and
celebrated house of Solar, had left Toulouse, where his father and
mother then dwelt, and had not returned. It had been given out that he
had died, but she suggested that the account of his death was false,
and that Joseph was the young Count Solar. Inquiries were instituted,
and showed that the hypothesis was at least tenable. The family of
Count Solar had consisted of his wife and a son and daughter. The son
was deaf and dumb, and was twelve years old at his father's death,
which occurred in 1773. After the decease of the old count, the boy
was sent by his mother to Bagnères de Bigorre, under the care of a
young lawyer, named Cazeaux, who came back to Toulouse early in the
following year, with the story that the heir had died of small-pox.