The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hated Son, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: The Hated Son

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: September, 1998 [Etext #1455]
Posting Date: February 25, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HATED SON ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

THE HATED SON

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Madame la Baronne James Rothschild.

THE HATED SON

PART I. HOW THE MOTHER LIVED

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.