The half-crazed motion with which the mother hid her son beside her and the threatening glance she cast upon the count through the eye-holes of her mask, made Beauvouloir shudder.
"She will die if she loses that child too soon," he said to the count.
During the latter part of this scene the lord of Herouville seemed to hear and see nothing.

Rigid, and as if absorbed in meditation, he stood by the window drumming on its panes.

But he turned at the last words uttered by the bonesetter, with an almost frenzied motion, and came to him with uplifted dagger.
"Miserable clown!" he cried, giving him the opprobrious name by which the Royalists insulted the Leaguers.

"Impudent scoundrel! your science which makes you the accomplice of men who steal inheritances is all that prevents me from depriving Normandy of her sorcerer." So saying, and to Beauvouloir's great satisfaction, the count replaced the dagger in its sheath.
"Could you not," continued the count, "find yourself for once in your life in the honorable company of a noble and his wife, without suspecting them of the base crimes and trickery of your own kind?
Kill my son! take him from his mother! Where did you get such crazy ideas?
Am I a madman?
Why do you attempt to frighten me about the life of that vigorous child?
Fool! I defy your silly talk--but remember this, since you are here, your miserable life shall answer for that of the mother and the child." The bonesetter was puzzled by this sudden change in the count's intentions.

This show of tenderness for the infant alarmed him far more than the impatient cruelty and savage indifference hitherto manifested by the count, whose tone in pronouncing the last words seemed to Beauvouloir to point to some better scheme for reaching his infernal ends.