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The Hated Son-Part3_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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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 of a sort

of reverie into which he had fallen. "You are to do exactly, and for



love of me, what I shall now tell you."

He flung upon the bed one of the two masks he had taken from the



chest, and smiled with derision as he saw the gesture of involuntary

fear which the slight shock of the black velvet wrung from his wife.



"You will give me a puny child!" he cried. "Wear that mask on your

face when I return. I'll have no barber-surgeon boast that he has seen



the Comtesse d'Herouville."

"A man!--why choose a man for the purpose?" she said in a feeble



voice.

"Ho! ho! my lady, am I not master here?" replied the count.



"What matters one horror the more!" murmured the countess; but her

master had disappeared, and the exclamation did her no injury.



Presently, in a brief lull of the storm, the countess heard the gallop

of two horses which seemed to fly across the sandy dunes by which the



castle was surrounded. The sound was quickly lost in that of the

waves. Soon she felt herself a prisoner in the vast apartment, alone



in the midst of a night both silent and threatening, and without

succor against an evil she saw approaching her with rapid strides. In



vain she sought for some stratagem by which to save that child

conceived in tears, already her consolation, the spring of all her



thoughts, the future of her affections, her one frail hope.

Sustained by maternal courage, she took the horn with which her



husband summoned his men, and, opening a window, blew through the

brass tube feeble notes that died away upon the vast expanse of water,



like a bubble blown into the air by a child. She felt the uselessness

of that moan unheard of men, and turned to hasten through the



apartments, hoping that all the issues were not closed upon her.

Reaching the library she sought in vain for some secret passage; then,



passing between the long rows of books, she reached a window which

looked upon the courtyard. Again she sounded the horn, but without



success against the voice of the hurricane.

In her helplessness she thought of trusting herself to one of the



women,--all creatures of her husband,--when, passing into her oratory,

she found that the count had locked the only door that led to their



apartments. This was a horrible discovery. Such precautions taken to

isolate her showed a desire to proceed without witnesses to some



horribleexecution. As moment after moment she lost hope, the pangs of

childbirth grew stronger and keener. A presentiment of murder, joined



to the fatigue of her efforts, overcame her last remaining strength.

She was like a shipwrecked man who sinks, borne under by one last wave



less furious than others he has vanquished. The bewildering pangs of

her condition kept her from knowing the lapse of time. At the moment



when she felt that, alone, without help, she was about to give birth

to her child, and to all her other terrors was added that of the



accidents to which her ignorance exposed her, the count appeared,

without a sound that let her know of his arrival. The man was there,



like a demon claiming at the close of a compact the soul that was sold

to him. He muttered angrily at finding his wife's face uncovered; then



after masking her carefully, he took her in his arms and laid her on

the bed in her chamber.



CHAPTER II

THE BONESETTER



The terror of that apparition and hasty removal stopped for a moment

the physical sufferings of the countess, and so enabled her to cast a



furtive glance at the actors in this mysterious scene. She did not

recognize Bertrand, who was there disguised and masked as carefully as



his master. After lighting in haste some candles, the light of which

mingled with the first rays of the sun which were reddening the window






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