Paul swears before Father Rendu (Paul vol2, Le Prieur, An X - 1802) - Bovinet after Binet

Orphan Paul goes to Abbé Rendu for advice: he wants to marry Louise, a young girl who grew up alongside him on a farm in the outbuildings of the Marquise de Belbonne. The abbé replies that this marriage is impossible, for reasons linked to secrets he cannot reveal. When Paul insists, the prior demands that he swear on the Bible never to reveal what he is about to confide in him. He then informs him that Paul is in fact the Marquise's son, born of a forbidden first marriage that she is doing her utmost to conceal. From then on, according to the abbé, a union with a simple peasant girl is hardly conceivable.