Incapable of finding consolation in the practice of his profession,
which gave him such power over feminine weakness, the poor bonesetter
felt himself born for the joys of family and yet was unable to obtain
them.

The good man's excellent heart was concealed by a misleading
appearance of joviality in keeping with his puffy cheeks and rotund
figure, the vivacity of his fat little body, and the frankness of his
speech. He was anxious to marry that he might have a daughter who
should transfer his property to some poor noble; he did not like his
station as bonesetter and wished to rescue his family name from the
position in which the prejudices of the times had placed it. He
himself took willingly enough to the feasts and jovialities which
usually followed his principal operations. The habit of being on such
occasions the most important personage in the company, had added to
his natural gaiety a sufficient dose of serious vanity. His
impertinences were usually well received in crucial moments when it
often pleased him to perform his operations with a certain slow
majesty. He was, in other respects, as inquisitive as a nightingale,
as greedy as a hound, and as garrulous as all diplomatists who talk
incessantly and betray no secrets. In spite of these defects developed
in him by the endless adventures into which his profession led him,
Antoine Beauvouloir was held to be the least bad man in Normandy.
Though he belonged to the small number of minds who are superior to
their epoch, the strong good sense of a Norman countryman warned him
to conceal the ideas he acquired and the truths he from time to time
discovered.

As soon as he found himself placed by the count in presence of a woman
in childbirth, the bonesetter recovered his presence of mind. He felt