His mother died in 1820. The boy and his younger brother had no other friend than their grim and somewhat sinister father. In 1826 Pierre Conscience married again, this time to a widow much younger than himself, Anna Catherina Bogaerts. Soon after his second marriage Pierre sold his shop and moved to the Kempen region. Conscience often describes this land in his books. It is the flat land that stretches between Antwerp and Venlo.