CHAPTER I

A BEDROOM OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

On a winter's night, about two in the morning, the Comtesse Jeanne
d'Herouville felt such violent pains that in spite of her
inexperience, she was conscious of an approaching confinement; and the
instinct which makes us hope for ease in a change of posture induced
her to sit up in her bed, either to study the nature of these new
sufferings, or to reflect on her situation. She was a prey to cruel
fears,--caused less by the dread of a first lying-in, which terrifies
most women, than by certain dangers which awaited her child.

In order not to awaken her husband who was sleeping beside her, the
poor woman moved with precautions which her intense terror made as
minute as those of a prisoner endeavoring to escape. Though the pains
became more and more severe, she ceased to feel them, so completely
did she concentrate her own strength on the painful effort of resting
her two moist hands on the pillow and so turning her suffering body
from a posture in which she could find no ease. At the slightest
rustling of the huge green silk coverlet, under which she had slept
but little since her marriage, she stopped as though she had rung a
bell. Forced to watch the count, she divided her attention between the
folds of the rustling stuff and a large swarthy face, the moustache of
which was brushing her shoulder. When some noisier breath than usual
left her husband's lips, she was filled with a sudden terror that
revived the color driven from her cheeks by her double anguish.