“Ah! I see!” he said to himself. “It ought to be a premature birth, ought it?” he whispered to the countess, who replied with an affirmative sign, as if that gesture were the only language in which to express her thoughts.
“It is not all clear to me yet,” thought the bonesetter.
Like all men in constant practice, he recognized at once a woman in her first trouble as he called it. Though the modest inexperience of certain gestures showed him the virgin ignorance of the countess, the mischievous operator exclaimed:—
“Madame is delivered as if she knew all about it!”
The count then said, with a calmness more terrifying than his anger:—
“Give me the child.”
“Don’t give it him, for the love of God!” cried the mother, whose almost savage cry awoke in the heart of the little man a courageous pity which attached him, more than he knew himself, to the helpless infant rejected by his father.
“The child is not yet born; you are counting your chicken before it is hatched,” he said, coldly, hiding the infant.
Surprised to hear no cries, he examined the child, thinking it dead. The count, seeing the deception, sprang upon him with one bound.
“God of heaven! will you give it to me?” he cried, snatching the hapless victim which uttered feeble cries.