yet unknown to her. Two tears, escaping from
her eyes, rolled slowly down her cheeks, and traced two shining lines,
remaining suspended at the bottom of that white face, like dewdrops on
a lily. What learned man would take upon himself to say that the child
unborn is on some neutral ground, where the emotions of its mother do
not penetrate during those hours when soul clasps body and communicates
its impressions, when thought permeates blood with healing balm or
poisonous fluids? The terror that shakes the tree, will it not hurt the
fruit? Those words, "Poor babe!" were they dictated by a vision of the
future? The shuddering of this mother was violent; her look piercing.

The bloody answer given by the count at the banquet was a link
mysteriously connecting the past with this premature confinement. That
odious suspicion, thus publicly expressed, had cast into the memories of
the countess a dread which echoed to the future. Since that fatal gala,
she had driven from her mind, with as much fear as another woman would
have found pleasure in evoking them, a thousand scattered scenes of her
past existence. She refused even to think of the happy days when her
heart was free to love. Like as the melodies of their native land make
exiles weep, so these memories revived sensations so delightful that
her young conscience thought them crimes, and sued them to enforce still
further the savage threat of the count. There lay the secret of the
horror which was now oppressing her soul.

Sleeping figures possess a sort of suavity, due to the absolute repose
of both body and mind; but though that species of calmness softened
but slightly the harsh expression of the count's features, all illusion
granted to the unhappy is so persuasive that the poor wife ended
by finding hope in that tranquillity. The roar of the tempest, now
descending in torrents of rain, seemed to her no more than a melancholy
moan; her fears and her pains both yielded her a momentary respite.
Contemplating the man to whom her life was bound, the countess
allowed herself to float into a reverie, the sweetness of which was so
intoxicating that she had no strength to break its charm. For a moment,
by one of those visions which in some way share the divine power, there
passed before her rapid images of a happiness lost beyond recall.

Jeanne in her vision saw faintly, and as if in a distant gleam of dawn,
the modest castle where her careless childhood had glided on; ther