The Hated Son. Honore de Balzac

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 stalwart appearance was in keeping with that of his master. This man, scarcely awakened, seemed to have walked there by instinct; the horn lantern which he held in his hand threw so feeble a gleam down the long library that his master and he appeared in that visible darkness like two phantoms.

      “Saddle my war-horse instantly, and come with me yourself.”

      This order was given in a deep tone which roused the man’s intelligence. He raised his eyes to those of his master and encountered so piercing a look that the effect was that of an electric shock.

      “Bertrand,” added the count laying his right hand on the servant’s arm, “take off your cuirass, and wear the uniform of a captain of guerrillas.”

      “Heavens and earth, monseigneur! What? disguise myself as a Leaguer! Excuse me, I will obey you; but I would rather be hanged.”

      The count smiled; then to efface that smile, which contrasted with the expression of his face, he answered roughly: —

      “Choose the strongest horse there is in the stable and follow me. We shall ride like balls shot from an arquebuse. Be ready when I am ready. I will ring to let you know.”

      Bertrand bowed in silence and went away; but when he had gone a few steps he said to himself, as he listened to the howling of the storm: —

      “All the devils are abroad, jarnidieu! I’d have been surprised to see this one stay quietly in his bed. We took Saint-Lo in just such a tempest as this.”

      The count kept in his room a disguise which often served him in his campaign stratagems. Putting on the shabby buff-coat that looked as thought it might belong to one of the poor horse-soldiers whose pittance was so seldom paid by Henri IV., he returned to the room where his wife was moaning.

      “Try to suffer patiently,” he said to her. “I will founder my horse if necessary to bring you speedy relief.”

      These words were certainly not alarming, and the countess, emboldened by them, was about to make a request when the count asked her suddenly: —

      “Tell me where you keep your masks?”

      “My masks!” she replied. “Good God! what do you want to do with them?”

      “Where are they?” he repeated, with his usual violence.

      “In the chest,” she said.

      She shuddered when she saw her husband select from among her masks a “touret de nez,” the wearing of which was as common among the ladies of that time as the wearing of gloves in our day. The count became entirely unrecognizable after he had put on an old gray felt hat with a broken cock’s feather on his head. He girded round his loins a broad leathern belt, in which he stuck a dagger, which he did not wear habitually. These miserable garments gave him so terrifying an air and he approached the bed with so strange a motion that the countess thought her last hour had come.

      “Ah! don’t kill us!” she cried, “leave me my child, and I will love you well.”

      “You must feel yourself very guilty to offer as the ransom of your faults the love you owe me.”

      The count’s voice was lugubrious and the bitter words were enforced by a look which fell like lead upon the countess.

      “My God!” she cried sorrowfully, “can innocence be fatal?”

      “Your death is not in question,” said her master, coming out СКАЧАТЬ