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The Hated Son-Part4_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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pinched Beauvouloir.

"Ah! I see!" he said to himself. "It ought to be a premature birth,



ought it?" he whispered to the countess, who replied with an

affirmative sign, as if that gesture were the only language in which



to express her thoughts.

"It is not all clear to me yet," thought the bonesetter.



Like all men in constant practice, he recognized at once a woman in

her first trouble as he called it. Though the modest inexperience of



certain gestures showed him the virginignorance of the countess, the

mischievous operator exclaimed:--



"Madame is delivered as if she knew all about it!"

The count then said, with a calmness more terrifying than his anger:--



"Give me the child."

"Don't give it him, for the love of God!" cried the mother, whose



almost savage cry awoke in the heart of the little man a courageous

pity which attached him, more than he knew himself, to the helpless



infant rejected by his father.

"The child is not yet born; you are counting your chicken before it is



hatched," he said, coldly, hiding the infant.

Surprised to hear no cries, he examined the child, thinking it dead.



The count, seeing the deception, sprang upon him with one bound.

"God of heaven! will you give it to me?" he cried, snatching the



hapless victim which uttered feeble cries.

"Take care; the child is deformed and almost lifeless; it is a seven



months' child," said Beauvouloir clinging to the count's arm. Then,

with a strength given to him by the excitement of his pity, he clung



to the father's fingers, whispering in a broken voice: "Spare yourself

a crime, the child cannot live."



"Wretch!" replied the count, from whose hands the bonesetter had

wrenched the child, "who told you that I wished to kill my son? Could



I not caress it?"

"Wait till he is eighteen years old to caress him in that way,"



replied Beauvouloir, recovering the sense of his importance. "But," he

added, thinking of his own safety, for he had recognized the Comte



d'Herouville, who in his rage had forgotten to disguise his voice,

"have him baptized at once and do not speak of his danger to the



mother, or you will kill her."

The gesture of satisfaction which escaped the count when the child's



death was prophesied, suggested this speech to the bonesetter as the

best means of saving the child at the moment. Beauvouloir now hastened



to carry the infant back to its mother who had fainted, and he pointed

to her condition reprovingly, to warn the count of the results of his



violence. The countess had heard all; for in many of the great crises

of life the human organs acquire an otherwise unknown delicacy. But



the cries of the child, laid beside her on the bed, restored her to

life as if by magic; she fancied she heard the voices of angels, when,



under cover of the whimperings of the babe, the bonesetter said in her

ear:--



"Take care of him, and he'll live a hundred years. Beauvouloir knows

what he is talking about."



A celestial sigh, a silent pressure of the hand were the reward of the

leech, who had looked to see, before yielding the frail little



creature to its mother's embrace, whether that of the father had done

no harm to its puny organization. The half-crazed motion with which



the mother hid her son beside her and the threatening glance she cast

upon the count through the eye-holes of her mask, made Beauvouloir



shudder.

"She will die if she loses that child too soon," he said to the count.



During the latter part of this scene the lord of Herouville seemed to

hear and see nothing. Rigid, and as if absorbed in meditation, he



stood by the window drumming on its panes. But he turned at the last




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