The Hated Son | Page 6

that this
nocturnal scene took place in 1591, a period when civil war raged
throughout France, and the laws had no vigor. The excesses of the
League, opposed to the accession of Henri IV., surpassed the calamities
of the religious wars. License was so universal that no one was
surprised to see a great lord kill his enemy in open day. When a
military expedition, having a private object, was led in the name of the
King or of the League, one or other of these parties applauded it. It was
thus that Blagny, a soldier, came near becoming a sovereign prince at

the gates of France. Sometime before Henri III.'s death, a court lady
murdered a nobleman who made offensive remarks about her. One of
the king's minions remarked to him:--
"Hey! vive Dieu! sire, she daggered him finely!"
The Comte d'Herouville, one of the most rabid royalists in Normandy,
kept the part of that province which adjoins Brittany under subjection
to Henri IV. by the rigor of his executions. The head of one of the
richest families in France, he had considerably increased the revenues
of his great estates by marrying seven months before the night on
which this history begins, Jeanne de Saint-Savin, a young lady who, by
a not uncommon chance in days when people were killed off like flies,
had suddenly become the representative of both branches of the Saint-
Savin family. Necessity and terror were the causes which led to this
union. At a banquet given, two months after the marriage, to the Comte
and Comtesse d'Herouville, a discussion arose on a topic which in those
days of ignorance was thought amusing: namely, the legitimacy of
children coming into the world ten months after the death of their
fathers, or seven months after the wedding day.
"Madame," said the count brutally, turning to his wife, "if you give me
a child ten months after my death, I cannot help it; but be careful that
you are not brought to bed in seven months!"
"What would you do then, old bear?" asked the young Marquis de
Verneuil, thinking that the count was joking.
"I should wring the necks of mother and child!"
An answer so peremptory closed the discussion, imprudently started by
a seigneur from Lower Normandy. The guests were silent, looking with
a sort of terror at the pretty Comtesse d'Herouville. All were convinced
that if such an event occurred, her savage lord would execute his threat.
The words of the count echoed in the bosom of the young wife, then
pregnant; one of those presentiments which furrow a track like
lightning through the soul, told her that her child would be born at

seven months. An inward heat overflowed her from head to foot,
sending the life's blood to her heart with such violence that the surface
of her body felt bathed in ice. From that hour not a day had passed that
the sense of secret terror did not check every impulse of her innocent
gaiety. The memory of the look, of the inflections of voice with which
the count accompanied his words, still froze her blood, and silenced her
sufferings, as she leaned over that sleeping head, and strove to see
some sign of a pity she had vainly sought there when awake.
The child, threatened with death before its life began, made so vigorous
a movement that she cried aloud, in a voice that seemed like a sigh,
"Poor babe!"
She said no more; there are ideas that a mother cannot bear. Incapable
of reasoning at this moment, the countess was almost choked with the
intensity of a suffering as yet unknown to her. Two tears, escaping
from her eyes, rolled slowly down her cheeks, and traced two shining
lines, remaining suspended at the bottom of that white face, like
dewdrops on a lily. What learned man would take upon himself to say
that the child unborn is on some neutral ground, where the emotions of
its mother do not penetrate during those hours when soul clasps body
and communicates its impressions, when thought permeates blood with
healing balm or poisonous fluids? The terror that shakes the tree, will it
not hurt the fruit? Those words, "Poor babe!" were they dictated by a
vision of the future? The shuddering of this mother was violent; her
look piercing.
The bloody answer given by the count at the banquet was a link
mysteriously connecting the past with this premature confinement. That
odious suspicion, thus publicly expressed, had cast into the memories
of the countess a dread which echoed to the future. Since that fatal gala,
she had driven from her mind, with as much fear as another woman
would have found pleasure in evoking them, a thousand scattered
scenes of her past existence. She