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
the pulse of the masked lady; not that he gave it a single thought, but
under cover of that medical action he could reflect, and he did reflect
on his own situation. In none of the shameful and criminal intrigues in
which superior force had compelled him to act as a blind instrument,
had precautions been taken with such mystery as in this case. Though his
death had often been threatened as a means of assuring the secrecy of
enterprises in which he had taken part against his will, his life had
never been so endangered as at that moment. He resolved, before all
things, to find out who it was who now employed him, and to discover
the actual extent of his danger, in order to save, if possible, his own
little person.

"What is the trouble?" he said to the countess in a low voice, as he
placed her in a manner to recei