“The dear love! I had a terrible fright!—Great heaven! Turlurette, what a very strange way to hold the child!”
“Bless me! it’s very lucky that I caught hold of him as I did! If it hadn’t been so, he might have fallen with the basin, and God knows if he wouldn’t have been smashed like it.”
While all this was taking place, Jasmin, seeing his master lying back in his chair, pale and trembling, hastily poured out another glass of madeira for him, and then retired behind the curtain once more.
Monsieur de Grandvilain, having recovered his strength for the third time, took the child whom Turlurette still held, and embraced him heartily; then held him up in the air, exclaiming:
“So this is my son! my heir! Corbleu! I was sure that I should have a son.”
But the marchioness, fearing that her husband would faint again, and that he would then drop the child altogether, begged him to sit down beside her bed; Monsieur de Grandvilain complied, and then began to turn the child over and over, scrutinizing every part.
“What a lovely child!” he cried; “and to think that I begot him!”
“Yes, we begot him!” muttered Jasmin, who stood behind his master’s chair, with the bottle of madeira in his hand, in case of an emergency.
“How plump and pink he is; what pretty little calves!”
“Faith, I haven’t as much calf as that now!” said Jasmin, glancing at his own legs.