So saying, and to Beauvouloir’s great satisfaction, the count replaced the dagger in its sheath.

“Could you not,” continued the count, “find yourself for once in your life in the honorable company of a noble and his wife, without suspecting them of the base crimes and trickery of your own kind?  Kill my son! take him from his mother!  Where did you get such crazy ideas?  Am I a madman?  Why do you attempt to frighten me about the life of that vigorous child?  Fool!  I defy your silly talk—­but remember this, since you are here, your miserable life shall answer for that of the mother and the child.”

The bonesetter was puzzled by this sudden change in the count’s intentions.  This show of tenderness for the infant alarmed him far more than the impatient cruelty and savage indifference hitherto manifested by the count, whose tone in pronouncing the last words seemed to Beauvouloir to point to some better scheme for reaching his infernal ends.  The shrewd practitioner turned this idea over in his mind until a light struck him.

“I have it!” he said to himself.  “This great and good noble does not want to make himself odious to his wife; he’ll trust to the vials of the apothecary.  I must warn the lady to see to the food and medicine of her babe.”

As he turned toward the bed, the count who had opened a closet, stopped him with an imperious gesture, holding out a purse.  Beauvouloir saw within its red silk meshes a quantity of gold, which the count now flung to him contemptuously.

“Though you make me out a villain I am not released from the obligation of paying you like a lord.  I shall not ask you to be discreet.  This man here,” (pointing to Bertrand) “will explain to you that there are rivers and trees everywhere for miserable wretches who chatter of me.”

So saying the count advanced slowly to the bonesetter, pushed a chair noisily toward him, as if to invite him to sit down, as he did himself by the bedside; then he said to his wife in a specious voice:—­

“Well, my pretty one, so we have a son; this is a joyful thing for us.  Do you suffer much?”

“No,” murmured the countess.

The evident surprise of the mother, and the tardy demonstrations of pleasure on the part of the father, convinced Beauvouloir that there was some incident behind all this which escaped his penetration.  He persisted in his suspicion, and rested his hand on that of the young wife, less to watch her condition than to convey to her some advice.

“The skin is good, I fear nothing for madame.  The milk fever will come, of course; but you need not be alarmed; that is nothing.”

At this point the wily bonesetter paused, and pressed the hand of the countess to make her attentive to his words.

“If you wish to avoid all anxiety about your son, madame,” he continued, “never leave him; suckle him yourself, and beware of the drugs of apothecaries.  The mother’s breast is the remedy for all the ills of infancy.  I have seen many births of seven months’ children, but I never saw any so little painful as this.  But that is not surprising; the child is so small.  You could put him in a wooden shoe!  I am certain he doesn’t weight more than sixteen ounces.  Milk, milk, milk.  Keep him always on your breast and you will save him.”