Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
The duke, like an old menagerie lion which has reached a decrepitude that is still full of majesty, turned to another white-haired man and said, holding out a fleshless arm covered with sparse hairs, still sinewy, but without vigor: "Your turn now, bonesetter. How am I to-day?" "Doing well, monseigneur; the fever has ceased. You will live many years yet."
In spite of the protection of a great family to whom he had done great services, he had recently been implicated in a criminal case, and the intervention of the Governor of Normandy, obtained by the duchess, had alone saved him from being brought to trial. The duke had no reason to repent this protection given to the old bonesetter.
Incapable of finding consolation in the practice of his profession, which gave him such power over feminine weakness, the poor bonesetter felt himself born for the joys of family and yet was unable to obtain them.
The milk fever will come, of course; but you need not be alarmed; that is nothing." At this point the wily bonesetter paused, and pressed the hand of the countess to make her attentive to his words. "If you wish to avoid all anxiety about your son, madame," he continued, "never leave him; suckle him yourself, and beware of the drugs of apothecaries.
Newman ripped out an oath. "Give it here. A bonesetter, not a dose of physic is needed in there." He reached out his hand, and Wong obediently surrendered the glass. He surrendered something else. I was standing by Newman's side, and, saw the piece of paper that passed into his hand with the tumbler. Newman's face remained as impassive as the Chinaman's own.
Then, with a strength given to him by the excitement of his pity, he clung to the father's fingers, whispering in a broken voice: "Spare yourself a crime, the child cannot live." "Wretch!" replied the count, from whose hands the bonesetter had wrenched the child, "who told you that I wished to kill my son? Could I not caress it?"
From this moment began a period of decline which soon became so visible as to bring about the appointment of Beauvouloir to the post of physician to the house of Herouville and the government of Normandy. The former bonesetter came to live at the castle.
The counsel of the bonesetter still continued in the countess's mind. She feared for her child, and would gladly not have slept in order to be sure that no one approached him during her sleep; and she kept his cradle beside her bed. In the absence of the count she ventured to send for the bonesetter, whose name she had caught and remembered.
So saying the count advanced slowly to the bonesetter, pushed a chair noisily toward him, as if to invite him to sit down, as he did himself by the bedside; then he said to his wife in a specious voice: "Well, my pretty one, so we have a son; this is a joyful thing for us. Do you suffer much?" "No," murmured the countess.
Word Of The Day