The Hated Son

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Madame la Baronne James Rothschild.

THE HATED SON
PART I

HOW THE MOTHER LIVED
CHAPTER I

A BEDROOM OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
On a winter's night, about two in the morning, the Comtesse Jeanne

d'Herouville felt such violent pains that in spite of her
inexperience, she was conscious of an approaching confinement; and the

instinct which makes us hope for ease in a change of posture induced
her to sit up in her bed, either to study the nature of these new

sufferings, or to reflect on her situation. She was a prey to cruel
fears,--caused less by the dread of a first lying-in, which terrifies

most women, than by certain dangers which awaited her child.
In order not to awaken her husband who was sleeping beside her, the

poor woman moved with precautions which her intenseterror made as
minute as those of a prisoner endeavoring to escape. Though the pains

became more and more severe, she ceased to feel them, so completely
did she concentrate her own strength on the painful effort of resting

her two moist hands on the pillow and so turning her suffering body
from a posture in which she could find no ease. At the slightest

rustling of the huge green silk coverlet, under which she had slept
but little since her marriage, she stopped as though she had rung a

bell. Forced to watch the count, she divided her attention between the
folds of the rustling stuff and a large swarthy face, the moustache of

which was brushing her shoulder. When some noisier breath than usual
left her husband's lips, she was filled with a sudden terror that

revived the color driven from her cheeks by her double anguish.
The prisoner reached the prison door in the dead of night and trying

to noiselessly turn the key in a pitiless lock, was never more timidly
bold.

When the countess had succeeded in rising to her seat without
awakening her keeper, she made a gesture of childlike joy which

revealed the touching naivete of her nature. But the half-formed smile
on her burning lips was quickly suppressed; a thought came to darken

that pure brow, and her long blue eyes resumed their sad expression.
She gave a sigh and again laid her hands, not without precaution, on

the fatal conjugal pillow. Then--as if for the first time since her
marriage she found herself free in thought and action--she looked at

the things around her, stretching out her neck with little darting
motions like those of a bird in its cage. Seeing her thus, it was easy

to divine that she had once been all gaiety and light-heartedness, but
that fate had suddenly mown down her hopes, and changed her ingenuous

gaiety to sadness.
The chamber was one of those which, to this day octogenarian porters

of old chateaus point out to visitors as "the state bedroom where
Louis XIII. once slept." Fine pictures, mostly brown in tone, were

framed in walnut, the delicate carvings of which were blackened by
time. The rafters of the ceiling formed compartments adorned with

arabesques in the style of the preceding century, which preserved the
colors of the chestnut wood. These decorations, severe in tone,

reflected the light so little that it was difficult to see their
designs, even when the sun shone full into that long and wide and

lofty chamber. The silver lamp, placed upon the mantel of the vast
fireplace, lighted the room so feebly that its quivering gleam could

be compared only to the nebulous stars which appear at moments through
the dun gray clouds of an autumn night. The fantastic figures crowded

on the marble of the fireplace, which was opposite to the bed, were so
grotesquely hideous that she dared not fix her eyes upon them, fearing

to see them move, or to hear a startling laugh from their gaping and
twisted mouths.

At this moment a tempest was growling in the chimney, giving to every
puff of wind a lugubrious meaning,--the vast size of the flute putting

the hearth into such close communication with the skies above that the
embers upon it had a sort of respiration; they sparkled and went out

at the will of the wind. The arms of the family of Herouville, carved
in white marble with their mantle and supporters, gave the appearance

of a tomb to this species of edifice, which formed a pendant to the
bed, another erection raised to the glory of Hymen. Modern architects

would have been puzzled to decide whether the room had been built for
the bed or the bed for the room. Two cupids playing on the walnut

headboard, wreathed with garlands, might have passed for angels; and
columns of the same wood, supporting the tester were carved with

mythological allegories, the explanation of which could have been
found either in the Bible or Ovid's Metamorphoses. Take away the bed,

and the same tester would have served in a church for the canopy of
the pulpit or the seats of the wardens. The married pair mounted by

three steps to this sumptuous couch, which stood upon a platform and
was hung with curtains of green silk covered with brilliant designs

called "ramages"--possibly because the birds of gay plumage there
depicted were supposed to sing. The folds of these immense curtains

were so stiff that in the semi-darkness they might have been taken for
some metal fabric. On the green velvethanging, adorned with gold

fringes, which covered the foot of this lordly couch the superstition
of the Comtes d'Herouville had affixed a large crucifix, on which

their chaplain placed a fresh branch of sacred box when he renewed at
Easter the holy water in the basin at the foot of the cross.

On one side of the fireplace stood a large box or wardrobe of choice
woods magnificently carved, such as brides receive even now in the

provinces on their wedding day. These old chests, now so much in
request by antiquaries, were the arsenals from which women drew the

rich and elegant treasures of their personal adornment,--laces,
bodices, high collars and ruffs, gowns of price, alms-purses, masks,

gloves, veils,--in fact all the inventions of coquetry in the
sixteenth century.

On the other side, by way of symmetry, was another piece of furniture,
somewhat similar in shape, where the countess kept her books, papers,

and jewels. Antique chairs covered with damask, a large and greenish
mirror, made in Venice, and richly framed in a sort of rolling toilet-

table, completed the furnishings of the room. The floor was covered
with a Persian carpet, the richness of which proved the gallantry of

the count; on the upper step of the bed stood a little table, on which
the waiting-woman served every night in a gold or silver cup a drink

prepared with spices.
After we have gone some way in life we know the secret influence

exerted by places on the condition of the soul. Who has not had his
darksome moments, when fresh hope has come into his heart from things

that surrounded him? The fortunate, or the unfortunate man, attributes
an intelligentcountenance to the things among which he lives; he

listens to them, he consults them--so naturally superstitious is he.
At this moment the countess turned her eyes upon all these articles of

furniture, as if they were living beings whose help and protection she
implored; but the answer of that sombre luxury seemed to her

inexorable.
Suddenly the tempest redoubled. The poor young woman could augur

nothing favorable as she listened to the threatening heavens, the
changes of which were interpreted in those credulous days according to

the ideas or the habits of individuals. Suddenly she turned her eyes
to the two arched windows at the end of the room; but the smallness of

their panes and the multiplicity of the leaden lines did not allow her
to see the sky and judge if the world were coming to an end, as

certain monks, eager for donations, affirmed. She might easily have
believed in such predictions, for the noise of the angry sea, the

waves of which beat against the castle wall, combined with the mighty
voice of the tempest, so that even the rocks appeared to shake. Though

her sufferings were now becoming keener and less endurable, the
countess dared not awaken her husband; but she turned and examined his

features, as if despair were urging her to find a consolation there
against so many sinister forebodings.

If matters were sad around the poor young woman, that face,
notwithstanding the tranquillity of 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