“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.

The timid creature had too much purity and dignity to try, as some clever women would have done, to govern the count by putting calculation into her conduct,—­a sort of prostitution by which noble souls feel degraded.  Silently she turned away, to console her despair with Etienne.

“Tete-Dieu! shall I never be loved?” cried the count, seeing the tears in his wife’s eyes as she left the room.

Thus incessantly threatened, motherhood became to the poor woman a passion which assumed the intensity that women put into their guilty affections.  By a species of occult communion, the secret of which is in the hearts of mothers, the child comprehended the peril that threatened him and dreaded the approach of his father.  The terrible scene of which he had been a witness remained in his memory, and affected him like an illness; at the sound of the count’s step his features contracted, and the mother’s ear was not so alert as the instinct of her child.  As he grew older this faculty created by terror increased, until, like the savages of America, Etienne could distinguish his father’s step and hear his voice at immense distances.  To witness the terror with which the count inspired her thus shared by her child made Etienne the more precious to the countess; their union was so strengthened that like two flowers on one twig they bent to the same wind, and lifted their heads with the same hope.  In short, they were one life.

When the count again left home Jeanne was pregnant.  This time she gave birth in due season, and not without great suffering, to a stout boy, who soon became the living image of his father, so that the hatred of the count for his first-born was increased by this event.  To save her cherished child the countess agreed to all the plans which her husband formed for the happiness and wealth of his second son, whom he named Maximilien.  Etienne was to be made a priest, in order to leave the property and titles of the house of Herouville to his younger brother.  At that cost the poor mother believed she ensured the safety of her hated child.