The Hated Son | Page 5

sleep, seemed sadder still. The light
from the lamp, flickering in the draught, scarcely reached beyond the
foot of the bed and illumined the count's head capriciously; so that the
fitful movements of its flash upon those features in repose produced the
effect of a struggle with angry thought. The countess was scarcely
reassured by perceiving the cause of that phenomenon. Each time that a
gust of wind projected the light upon the count's large face, casting
shadows among its bony outlines, she fancied that her husband was
about to fix upon her his two insupportably stern eyes.

Implacable as the war then going on between the Church and
Calvinism, the count's forehead was threatening even while he slept.
Many furrows, produced by the emotions of a warrior life, gave it a
vague resemblance to the vermiculated stone which we see in the
buildings of that period; his hair, like the whitish lichen of old oaks,
gray before its time, surrounded without grace a cruel brow, where
religious intolerance showed its passionate brutality. The shape of the
aquiline nose, which resembled the beak of a bird of prey, the black and
crinkled lids of the yellow eyes, the prominent bones of a hollow face,
the rigidity of the wrinkles, the disdain expressed in the lower lip, were
all expressive of ambition, despotism, and power, the more to be feared
because the narrowness of the skull betrayed an almost total absence of
intelligence, and a mere brute courage devoid of generosity. The face
was horribly disfigured by a large transversal scar which had the
appearance of a second mouth on the right cheek.
At the age of thirty-three the count, anxious to distinguish himself in
that unhappy religious war the signal for which was given on Saint-
Bartholomew's day, had been grievously wounded at the siege of
Rochelle. The misfortune of this wound increased his hatred against the
partisans of what the language of that day called "the Religion," but, by
a not unnatural turn of mind, he included in that antipathy all handsome
men. Before the catastrophe, however, he was so repulsively ugly that
no lady had ever been willing to receive him as a suitor. The only
passion of his youth was for a celebrated woman called La Belle
Romaine. The distrust resulting from this new misfortune made him
suspicious to the point of not believing himself capable of inspiring a
true passion; and his character became so savage that when he did have
some successes in gallantry he owed them to the terror inspired by his
cruelty. The left hand of this terrible Catholic, which lay on the outside
of the bed, will complete this sketch of his character. Stretched out as if
to guard the countess, as a miser guards his hoard, that enormous hand
was covered with hair so thick, it presented such a network of veins and
projecting muscles, that it gave the idea of a branch of birch clasped
with a growth of yellowing ivy.
Children looking at the count's face would have thought him an ogre,

terrible tales of whom they knew by heart. It was enough to see the
width and length of the space occupied by the count in the bed, to
imagine his gigantic proportions. When awake, his gray eyebrows hid
his eyelids in a way to heighten the light of his eye, which glittered
with the luminous ferocity of a wolf skulking on the watch in a forest.
Under his lion nose, with its flaring nostrils, a large and ill-kept
moustache (for he despised all toilet niceties) completely concealed the
upper lip. Happily for the countess, her husband's wide mouth was
silent at this moment, for the softest sounds of that harsh voice made
her tremble. Though the Comte d'Herouville was barely fifty years of
age, he appeared at first sight to be sixty, so much had the toils of war,
without injuring his robust constitution, dilapidated him physically.
The countess, who was now in her nineteenth year, made a painful
contrast to that large, repulsive figure. She was fair and slim. Her
chestnut locks, threaded with gold, played upon her neck like russet
shadows, and defined a face such as Carlo Dolce has painted for his
ivory-toned madonnas,--a face which now seemed ready to expire
under the increasing attacks of physical pain. You might have thought
her the apparition of an angel sent from heaven to soften the iron will
of the terrible count.
"No, he will not kill us!" she cried to herself mentally, after
contemplating her husband for a long time. "He is frank, courageous,
faithful to his word--faithful to his word!"
Repeating that last sentence in her thoughts, she trembled violently, and
remained as if stupefied.
To understand the horror of her present situation, we must add