The Hated Son | Page 9

her lover for the first time.
"I am not guilty," she said, "but if I seem guilty to the count it is as if I
were so. Perhaps I am! The Holy Virgin conceived without--"
She stopped. During this moment when her thoughts were misty and
her soul floated in a region of fantasy her naivete made her attribute to

that last look with which her lover transfixed her the occult power of
the visitation of the angel to the Mother of her Lord. This supposition,
worthy of the days of innocence to which her reverie had carried her
back, vanished before the memory of a conjugal scene more odious
than death. The poor countess could have no real doubt as to the
legitimacy of the child that stirred in her womb. The night of her
marriage reappeared to her in all the horror if its agony, bringing in its
train other such nights and sadder days.
"Ah! my poor Chaverny!" she cried, weeping, "you so respectful, so
gracious, YOU were always kind to me."
She turned her eyes to her husband as if to persuade herself that that
harsh face contained a promise of mercy, dearly brought. The count
was awake. His yellow eyes, clear as those of a tiger, glittered beneath
their tufted eyebrows and never had his glance been so incisive. The
countess, terrified at having encountered it, slid back under the great
counterpane and was motionless.
"Why are you weeping?" said the count, pulling away the covering
which hid his wife.
That voice, always a terror to her, had a specious softness at this
moment which seemed to her of good augury.
"I suffer much," she answered.
"Well, my pretty one, it is no crime to suffer; why did you tremble
when I looked at you? Alas! what must I do to be loved?" The wrinkles
of his forehead between the eyebrows deepened. "I see plainly you are
afraid of me," he added, sighing.
Prompted by the instinct of feeble natures the countess interrupted the
count by moans, exclaiming:--
"I fear a miscarriage! I clambered over the rocks last evening and tired
myself."

Hearing those words, the count cast so horribly suspicious a look upon
his wife, that she reddened and shuddered. He mistook the fear of the
innocent creature for remorse.
"Perhaps it is the beginning of a regular childbirth," he said.
"What then?" she said.
"In any case, I must have a proper man here," he said. "I will fetch
one."
The gloomy look which accompanied these words overcame the
countess, who fell back in the bed with a moan, caused more by a sense
of her fate than by the agony of the coming crisis; that moan convinced
the count of the justice of the suspicions that were rising in his mind.
Affecting a calmness which the tones of his voice, his gestures, and
looks contradicted, he rose hastily, wrapped himself in a dressing-
gown which lay on a chair, and began by locking a door near the
chimney through which the state bedroom was entered from the
reception rooms which communicated with the great staircase.
Seeing her husband pocket that key, the countess had a presentiment of
danger. She next heard him open the door opposite to that which he had
just locked and enter a room where the counts of Herouville slept when
they did not honor their wives with their noble company. The countess
knew of that room only by hearsay. Jealousy kept her husband always
with her. If occasionally some military expedition forced him to leave
her, the count left more than one Argus, whose incessant spying proved
his shameful distrust.
In spite of the attention the countess now gave to the slightest noise,
she heard nothing more. The count had, in fact, entered a long gallery
leading from his room which continued down the western wing of the
castle. Cardinal d'Herouville, his great-uncle, a passionate lover of the
works of printing, had there collected a library as interesting for the
number as for the beauty of its volumes, and prudence had caused him
to build into the walls one of those curious inventions suggested by
solitude or by monastic fears. A silver chain set in motion, by means of

invisible wires, a bell placed at the bed's head of a faithful servitor. The
count now pulled the chain, and the boots and spurs of the man on duty
sounded on the stone steps of a spiral staircase, placed in the tall tower
which flanked the western corner of the chateau on the ocean side.
When the count heard the steps of his retainer he pulled back the rusty
bolts which protected the door leading from the gallery to the tower,
admitting into the sanctuary of learning a man of arms whose