Do you suffer much?"

"No," murmured the countess.

The evident surprise of the mother, and the tardy demonstrations of pleasure on the part of the father, convinced Beauvouloir that there was some incident behind all this which escaped his penetration. He persisted in his suspicion, and rested his hand on that of the young wife, less to watch her condition than to convey to her some advice.

"The skin is good, I fear nothing for madame. The milk fever will come, of course; but you need not be alarmed; that is nothing."

At this point the wily bonesetter paused, and pressed the hand of the countess to make her attentive to his words.

"If you wish to avoid all anxiety about your son, madame," he continued, "never leave him; suckle him yourself, and beware of the drugs of apothecaries. The mother's breast is the remedy for all the ills of infancy. I have seen many births of seven months' children, but I never saw any so little painful as this. But that is not surprising; the child is so small. You could put him in a wooden shoe! I am certain he doesn't weight more than sixteen ounces. Milk, milk, milk. Keep him always on your breast and you will save him."

These last words were accompanied by a significant pressure of the fingers. Disregarding the yellow flames flashing from the eyeholes of the count's mask, Beauvouloir uttered these words with the serious imperturbability of a man who intends to earn his money.

"Ho! ho! bonesetter, you are leaving your old felt hat behind you," said Bertrand, as the two left the bedroom together.

The reasons of the sudden mercy which the count had shown to his son were to be found in a notary's office. At the moment when Beauvouloir arrested his murderous hand avarice and the Legal Custom of Normandy rose up before him. Those mighty powers stiffened his fingers and silenced the pa.s.sion of his hatred. One cried out to him, "The property of your wife cannot belong to the house of Herouville except through a male child." The other pointed to a dying countess and her fortune claimed by the collateral heirs of the Saint-Savins. Both advised him to leave to nature the extinction of that hated child, and to wait the birth of a second son who might be healthy and vigorous before getting rid of his wife and first-born. He saw neither wife nor child; he saw the estates only, and hatred was softened by ambition. The mother, who knew his nature, was even more surprised than the bonesetter, and she still retained her instinctive fears, showing them at times openly, for the courage of mothers seemed suddenly to have doubled her strength.

CHAPTER III. THE MOTHER'S LOVE

For several days the count remained a.s.siduously beside his wife, showing her attentions to which self-interest imparted a sort of tenderness.

The countess saw, however, that she alone was the object of these attentions. The hatred of the father for his son showed itself in every detail; he abstained from looking at him or touching him; he would rise abruptly and leave the room if the child cried; in short, he seemed to endure it living only through the hope of seeing it die. But even this self-restraint was galling to the count. The day on which he saw that the mother's intelligent eye perceived, without fully comprehending, the danger that threatened her son, he announced his departure on the morning after the ma.s.s for her churching was solemnized, under pretext of rallying his forces to the support of the king.

Such were the circ.u.mstances which preceded and accompanied the birth of Etienne d'Herouville. If the count had no other reason for wishing the death of this disowned son poor Etienne would still have been the object of his aversion. In his eyes the misfortune of a rickety, sickly const.i.tution was a flagrant offence to his self-love as a father. If he execrated handsome men, he also detested weakly ones, in whom mental capacity took the place of physical strength. To please him a man should be ugly in face, tall, robust, and ignorant. Etienne, whose debility would bow him, as it were, to the sedentary occupations of knowledge, was certain to find in his father a natural enemy. His struggle with that colossus began therefore from his cradle, and his sole support against that cruel antagonist was the heart of his mother whose love increased, by a tender law of nature, as perils threatened him.

Buried in solitude after the abrupt departure of the count, Jeanne de Saint-Savin owed to her child the only semblance of happiness that consoled her life. She loved him as women love the child of an illicit love; obliged to suckle him, the duty never wearied her. She would not let her women care for the child. She dressed and undressed him, finding fresh pleasures in every little care that he required. Happiness glowed upon her face as she obeyed the needs of the little being. As Etienne had come into the world prematurely, no clothes were ready for him, and those that were needed she made herself,--with what perfection, you know, ye mothers, who have worked in silence for a treasured child. The days had never hours long enough for these manifold occupations and the minute precautions of the nursing mother; those days fled by, laden with her secret content.

The counsel of the bonesetter still continued in the countess's mind.

She feared for her child, and would gladly not have slept in order to be sure that no one approached him during her sleep; and she kept his cradle beside her bed. In the absence of the count she ventured to send for the bonesetter, whose name she had caught and remembered. To her, Beauvouloir was a being to whom she owed an untold debt of grat.i.tude; and she desired of all things to question him on certain points relating to her son. If an attempt were made to poison him, how should she foil it? In what way ought she to manage his frail const.i.tution? Was it well to nurse him long? If she died, would Beauvouloir undertake the care of the poor child's health?

To the questions of the countess, Beauvouloir, deeply touched, replied that he feared, as much as she did, an attempt to poison Etienne; but there was, he a.s.sured her, no danger as long as she nursed the child; and in future, when obliged to feed him, she must taste the food herself.

"If Madame la comtesse," he said, "feels anything strange upon her tongue, a p.r.i.c.kly, bitter, strong salt taste, reject the food. Let the child's clothes be washed under her own eye and let her keep the key of the chest which contains them. Should anything happen to the child send instantly to me."

These instructions sank deep into Jeanne's heart. She begged Beauvouloir to regard her always as one who would do him any service in her power.

On that the poor man told her that she held his happiness in her hands.

Then he related briefly how the Comte d'Herouville had in his youth loved a courtesan, known by the name of La Belle Romaine, who had formerly belonged to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Abandoned by the count before very long, she had died miserably, leaving a child named Gertrude, who had been rescued by the Sisters of the Convent of Poor Clares, the Mother Superior of which was Mademoiselle de Saint-Savin, the countess's aunt. Having been called to treat Gertrude for an illness, he, Beauvouloir, had fallen in love with her, and if Madame la comtesse, he said, would undertake the affair, she should not only more than repay him for what she thought he had done for her, but she would make him grateful to her for life. The count might, sooner or later, be brought to take an interest in so beautiful a daughter, and might protect her indirectly by making him his physician.

The countess, compa.s.sionate to all true love, promised to do her best, and pursued the affair so warmly that at the birth of her second son she did obtain from her husband a "dot" for the young girl, who was married soon after to Beauvouloir. The "dot" and his savings enabled the bonesetter to buy a charming estate called Forcalier near the castle of Herouville, and to give his life the dignity of a student and man of learning.

Comforted by the kind physician, the countess felt that to her were given joys unknown to other mothers. Mother and child, two feeble beings, seemed united in one thought, they understood each other long before language could interpret between them. From the moment when Etienne first turned his eyes on things about him with the stupid eagerness of a little child, his glance had rested on the sombre hangings of the castle walls. When his young ear strove to listen and to distinguish sounds, he heard the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea upon the rocks, as regular as the swinging of a pendulum. Thus places, sounds, and things, all that strikes the senses and forms the character, inclined him to melancholy. His mother, too, was doomed to live and die in the clouds of melancholy; and to him, from his birth up, she was the only being that existed on the earth, and filled for him the desert.

Like all frail children, Etienne's att.i.tude was pa.s.sive, and in that he resembled his mother. The delicacy of his organs was such that a sudden noise, or the presence of a boisterous person gave him a sort of fever.

He was like those little insects for whom G.o.d seems to temper the violence of the wind and the heat of the sun; incapable, like them, of struggling against the slightest obstacle, he yielded, as they do, without resistance or complaint, to everything that seemed to him aggressive. This angelic patience inspired in the mother a sentiment which took away all fatigue from the incessant care required by so frail a being.

Soon his precocious perception of suffering revealed to him the power that he had upon his mother; often he tried to divert her with caresses and make her smile at his play; and never did his coaxing hands, his stammered words, his intelligent laugh fail to rouse her from her reverie. If he was tired, his care for her kept him from complaining.

"Poor, dear, little sensitive!" cried the countess as he fell asleep tired with some play which had driven the sad memories from her mind, "how can you live in this world? who will understand you? who will love you? who will see the treasures hidden in that frail body? No one! Like me, you are alone on earth."

She sighed and wept. The graceful pose of her child lying on her knees made her smile sadly. She looked at him long, tasting one of those pleasures which are a secret between mothers and G.o.d. Etienne's weakness was so great that until he was a year and a half old she had never dared to take him out of doors; but now the faint color which tinted the whiteness of his skin like the petals of a wild rose, showed that life and health were already there.

One morning the countess, giving herself up to the glad joy of all mothers when their first child walks for the first time, was playing with Etienne on the floor when suddenly she heard the heavy step of a man upon the boards. Hardly had she risen with a movement of involuntary surprise, when the count stood before her. She gave a cry, but endeavored instantly to undo that involuntary wrong by going up to him and offering her forehead for a kiss.

"Why not have sent me notice of your return?" she said.

"My reception would have been more cordial, but less frank," he answered bitterly.

Suddenly he saw the child. The evident health in which he found it wrung from him a gesture of surprise mingled with fury. But he repressed his anger, and began to smile.

"I bring good news," he said. "I have received the governorship of Champagne and the king's promise to be made duke and peer. Moreover, we have inherited a princely fortune from your cousin; that cursed Huguenot, Georges de Chaverny is killed."

The countess turned pale and dropped into a chair. She saw the secret of the devilish smile on her husband's face.

"Monsieur," she said in a voice of emotion, "you know well that I loved my cousin Chaverny. You will answer to G.o.d for the pain you inflict upon me."

At these words the eye of the count glittered; his lips trembled, but he could not utter a word, so furious was he; he flung his dagger on the table with such violence that the metal resounded like a thunder-clap.

"Listen to me," he said in his strongest voice, "and remember my words.

I will never see or hear the little monster you hold in your arms. He is your child, and not mine; there is nothing of me in him. Hide him, I say, hide him from my sight, or--"

"Just G.o.d!" cried the countess, "protect us!"

"Silence!" said her husband. "If you do not wish me to throttle him, see that I never find him in my way."

"Then," said the countess gathering strength to oppose her tyrant, "swear to me that if you never meet him you will do nothing to injure him. Can I trust your word as a n.o.bleman for that?"

"What does all this mean?" said the count.

"If you will not swear, kill us now together!" cried the countess, falling on her knees and pressing her child to her breast.

"Rise, madame. I give you my word as a man of honor to do nothing against the life of that cursed child, provided he lives among the rocks between the sea and the house, and never crosses my path. I will give him that fisherman's house down there for his dwelling, and the beach for a domain. But woe betide him if I ever find him beyond those limits."

The countess began to weep.

"Look at him!" she said. "He is your son."

"Madame!"

At that word, the frightened mother carried away the child whose heart was beating like that of a bird caught in its nest. Whether innocence has a power which the hardest men cannot escape, or whether the count regretted his violence and feared to plunge into despair a creature so necessary to his pleasures and also to his worldly prosperity, it is certain that his voice was as soft as it was possible to make it when his wife returned.

"Jeanne, my dear," he said, "do not be angry with me; give me your hand.

One never knows how to trust you women. I return, bringing you fresh honors and more wealth, and yet, tete-Dieu! you receive me like an enemy. My new government will oblige me to make long absences until I can exchange it for that of Lower Normandy; and I request, my dear, that you will show me a pleasant face while I am here."

The countess understood the meaning of the words, the feigned softness of which could no longer deceive her.

"I know my duty," she replied in a tone of sadness which the count mistook for tenderness.