"What's the matter?" cried the count, turning livid.

"A sore throat," answered the mother, who seemed not to see me; "but
it is nothing serious."

She was holding the child by the head and body, and her eyes seemed to
shed two rays of life into the poor frail creature.

"You are so extraordinarily imprudent," said the count, sharply; "you
expose him to the river damps and let him sit on a stone bench."

"Why, papa, the stone is burning hot," cried Madeleine.

"They were suffocating higher up," said the countess.

"Women always want to prove they are right," said the count, turning
to me.

To avoid agreeing or disagreeing with him by word or look I watched
Jacques, who complained of his throat. His mother carried him away,
but as she did so she heard her husband say:--

"When they have brought such sickly children into the world they ought
to learn how to take care of them."

Words that were cruelly unjust; but his self-love drove him to defend
himself at the expense of his wife. The countess hurried up the steps
and across the portico, and I saw her disappear through the glass
door. Monsieur de Mortsauf seated himself on the bench, his head bowed