The gesture of satisfaction which escaped the count when the child's
death was prophesied, suggested this speech to the bonesetter as the
best means of saving the child at the moment. Beauvouloir now hastened
to carry the infant back to its mother who had fainted, and he pointed
to her condition reprovingly, to warn the count of the results of his
violence. The countess had heard all; for in many of the great crises
of life the human organs acquire an otherwise unknown delicacy. But
the cries of the child, laid beside her on the bed, restored her to
life as if by magic; she fancied she heard the voices of angels, when,
under cover of the whimperings of the babe, the bonesetter said in her
ear:--

"Take care of him, and he'll live a hundred years. Beauvouloir knows
what he is talking about."

A celestial sigh, a silent pressure of the hand were the reward of the
leech, who had looked to see, before yielding the frail little
creature to its mother's embrace, whether that of the father had done
no harm to its puny organization. The half-crazed motion with which
the mother hid her son beside her and the threatening glance she cast
upon the count through the eye-holes of her mask, made Beauvouloir
shudder.

"She will die if she loses that child too soon," he said to the count.

During the latter part of this scene the lord of Herouville seemed to
hear and see nothing. Rigid, and as if absorbed in meditation, he
stood by the window drumming on its panes. But he turned at the last
words uttered by the bonesetter, with an almost frenzied motion, and
came to him with uplifted dagger.