torches! Jeanne belonged henceforth to misery. Scarcely had she time

to say to her young cousin who was set at liberty:--
"Georges, if you love me, never see me again!"

She heard the departing steps of her lover, whom, in truth, she never
saw again; but in the depths of her heart she still kept sacred his

last look which returned perpetually in her dreams and illumined them.
Living like a cat shut into a lion's cage, the young wife dreaded at

all hours the claws of the master which ever threatened her. She knew
that in order to be happy she must forget the past and think only of

the future; but there were days, consecrated to the memory of some
vanished joy, when she deliberately made it a crime to put on the gown

she had worn on the day she had seen 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 horriblysuspicious 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 visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">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