W. Dimond, The Foundling of the Forest.

"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread soaked in milk, Bourgeat came in and said to me in his vile Auvergne accent: "'Mouchieur l'Etudiant, I am a poor man, a foundling from the hospital at Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not rich enough to marry.

The exposed infant, one of the oldest literary devices, was copiously revived, and during the decade when the Hospital was being constructed mention of foundlings on title-pages became especially common.

She bit her lip, reluctantly extended unaccustomed arms, and received the foundling into them.

Nature took the foundling to her broader breast.

Yet, sir, pardon me if I now discover a desire with which I long have laboured, of doing something of myself which may repair the obscurity of my birth, and prove to the world that heaven has endued this foundling with a courage and resolution capable of undertaking the greatest actions.

Now he has found out that I myself was on the way to see you; and to bring before my eyes some foundling as my daughter's child, that he did not dare to do.

If only you could know what I have fought up from, a foundling without a name abandoned in a third-rate Parisian hotel, reared a scullion, butt and scapegoat, with associates only of the lowest, scullions, beggars, pickpockets, Apaches, and worse!

Some of them have, as we said, good blood in them and can trace their lineage and standing to the English Bible and Book of Common Prayer; others are "new men," born under hedge-rows and left as foundlings at furnace-doors.

He had already been very unfortunate in his plans for obtaining a perfect wife,having vainly provided for the education of two foundlings between whom he promised himself to select a paragon of a helpmate.