"
The duke struck his hand into that of his physician as a sign of
complete acceptance, and retired to his own apartments.
When the days of a high and mighty seigneur are numbered, the
physician becomes a personage of importance in the household. It is,
therefore, not surprising to see a former bonesetter so familiar with
the Duc d'Herouville. Apart from the illegitimate ties which connected
him, by marriage, to this great family and certainly militated in his
favor, his sound good sense had so often been proved by the duke that
the old man had now become his master's most valued counsellor.
Beauvouloir was the Coyctier of this Louis XI. Nevertheless, and no
matter how valuable his knowledge might be, he never obtained over the
government of Normandy, in whom was the ferocity of religious warfare,
as much influence as feudality exercised over that rugged nature. For
this reason the physician was confident that the prejudices of the
noble would thwart the desires and the vows of the father.
CHAPTER V
GABRIELLE
Great physician that he was, Beauvouloir saw plainly that to a being
so delicately organized as Etienne marriage must come as a slow and
gentle inspiration, communicating new powers to his being and
vivifying it with the fires of love.
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