thought for a moment that they had killed her, and wept in a corner of
the room, till Madame de Bouille reassured her.

During this frightful night a shadowy figure prowled in the corridors,
silently patrolled the rooms, and came now and then to the door of
the bedroom, where he conferred in a low tone with the midwife and the
Marchioness de Bouille. This was the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, who gave
his orders, encouraged his people, watched over every point of his
plot, himself a prey to the agonies of nervousness which accompany the
preparations for a great crime.

The dowager countess, owing to her great age, had been compelled to take
some rest. The count sat up, worn out with fatigue, in a downstairs room
hard by that in which they were compassing the ruin of all most dear to
him in the world.

The countess, in her profound lethargy, gave birth, without being aware
of it, to a boy, who thus fell on his entry into the world into the
hands of his enemies, his mother powerless to defend him by her cries
and tears. The door was half opened, and a man who was waiting outside
brought in; this was the major-domo Baulieu.

The midwife, pretending to afford the first necessary cares to the
child, had taken it into a corner. Baulieu watched her movements, and
springing upon her, pinioned her arms. The wretched woman dug her nails
into the child's head. He snatched it from her, but the poor infant for
long bore the marks of her claws.

Possibly the Marchioness de Bouille could not nerve herself to the
commission of so great a crime; but it seems more probable that the