Buried in solitude after the abrupt departure of the count, Jeanne de Saint-Savin owed to her child the only semblance of happiness that consoled her life.  She loved him as women love the child of an illicit love; obliged to suckle him, the duty never wearied her.  She would not let her women care for the child.  She dressed and undressed him, finding fresh pleasures in every little care that he required.  Happiness glowed upon her face as she obeyed the needs of the little being.  As Etienne had come into the world prematurely, no clothes were ready for him, and those that were needed she made herself,—­with what perfection, you know, ye mothers, who have worked in silence for a treasured child.  The days had never hours long enough for these manifold occupations and the minute precautions of the nursing mother; those days fled by, laden with her secret content.

The counsel of the bonesetter still continued in the countess’s mind.  She feared for her child, and would gladly not have slept in order to be sure that no one approached him during her sleep; and she kept his cradle beside her bed.  In the absence of the count she ventured to send for the bonesetter, whose name she had caught and remembered.  To her, Beauvouloir was a being to whom she owed an untold debt of gratitude; and she desired of all things to question him on certain points relating to her son.  If an attempt were made to poison him, how should she foil it?  In what way ought she to manage his frail constitution?  Was it well to nurse him long?  If she died, would Beauvouloir undertake the care of the poor child’s health?

To the questions of the countess, Beauvouloir, deeply touched, replied that he feared, as much as she did, an attempt to poison Etienne; but there was, he assured her, no danger as long as she nursed the child; and in future, when obliged to feed him, she must taste the food herself.

“If Madame la comtesse,” he said, “feels anything strange upon her tongue, a prickly, bitter, strong salt taste, reject the food.  Let the child’s clothes be washed under her own eye and let her keep the key of the chest which contains them.  Should anything happen to the child send instantly to me.”

These instructions sank deep into Jeanne’s heart.  She begged Beauvouloir to regard her always as one who would do him any service in her power.  On that the poor man told her that she held his happiness in her hands.

Then he related briefly how the Comte d’Herouville had in his youth loved a courtesan, known by the name of La Belle Romaine, who had formerly belonged to the Cardinal of Lorraine.  Abandoned by the count before very long, she had died miserably, leaving a child named Gertrude, who had been rescued by the Sisters of the Convent of Poor Clares, the Mother Superior of which was Mademoiselle de Saint-Savin, the countess’s aunt.  Having been called to treat Gertrude for an illness, he, Beauvouloir, had fallen in love with her, and if Madame la comtesse, he said, would undertake the affair, she should not only more than repay him for what she thought he had done for her, but she would make him grateful to her for life.  The count might, sooner or later, be brought to take an interest in so beautiful a daughter, and might protect her indirectly by making him his physician.