“You hear, Turlurette,—tell the nurse to bring me my son as naked as a worm.”
“Yes, let her bring him to us at once, like a savage, without any fig-leaf.”
“Jasmin, will you be good enough to keep your tongue quiet for a moment?”
“I beg pardon, monsieur le marquis; it is my impatience to admire our dear love.”
Turlurette made haste to perform her errand, and the nurse soon appeared, carrying before her a large basin, wherein the new-born child, entirely naked, moved about and stretched out at pleasure its little pink and white limbs.
The nurse handed the child to the marquis, as the keys of a city used in the old days to be presented to a conqueror.
At sight of his son, Monsieur de Grandvilain uttered a joyful cry, and put out his arms to take him; but his emotion caused another attack of faintness; he had not the strength to take the child, but fell back in his chair. Meanwhile, the nurse, thinking that the father was going to take what she held out to him, had relaxed her hold of the child and the basin alike, and both would have fallen to the floor if stout Turlurette had not luckily caught the child by the part which presented itself first to her grasp.
The bowl fell to the floor and broke into a thousand pieces. When she heard the crash, madame la marquise thought that her son was killed.
“My child! what has happened to him?”
“Nothing, madame,” said Turlurette, giving the little boy to her mistress; “he didn’t fall; I caught him by—I got hold of him.”