d in the same tone,
like a woman secure within herself, able to look proudly at her husband
and kiss the forehead of her son without a blush. She had prayed much;
she had clasped her hands for nights together over her child, refusing
to let him die.

"I went," she said, "to the gate of the sanctuary and asked his life of
God."

She had had visions, and she told them to me; but when she said, in that
angelic voice of hers, these exquisite words, "While I slept my heart
watched," the count harshly interrupted her.

"That is to say, you were half crazy," he cried.

She was silent, as deeply hurt as though it were a first wound;
forgetting that for thirteen years this man had lost no chance to shoot
his arrows into her heart. Like a soaring bird struck on the wing by
vulgar shot, she sank into a dull depression; then she roused herself.

"How is it, monsieur," she said, "that no word of mine ever finds favor
in your sight? Have you no indulgence for my weakness,--no comprehension
of me as a woman?"

She stopped short. Already she regretted the murmur, and measured the
future by the past; how could she expect comprehension? Had she not
drawn upon herself some virulent attack? The blue veins of her temples
throbbed; she shed no tears, but the color of her eyes faded. Then she
looked down, that she might not see her pain reflected on my face, her
feelings guessed, her soul wooed by my soul; above all, not see the
sympathy of young love, ready like a faithful dog to spring at the
throat of whoever threatened his mistress, without regard to the
assailant's strength or quality. At such cruel moments the count's air
of superiority was supreme. He thought he had triumphed over his wife,
and he pursued her with a hail of phrases which repeated the one idea,
and were like the blows of an axe which fell with unvarying sound.

"Always the same?" I said, when the count left us to follow the huntsman
who came to speak to him.

"Always," answered Jacques.

"Always excellent, my son," she said, endeavoring to withdraw Monsieur
de Mortsauf from the judgment of his children. "You see only the
present, you know nothing of the past; therefore you cannot criticise
your father without doing him injustice. But even if you had the pain of
seeing that your father was to blame, family honor requires you to bury
such secrets in silence."

"How have the changes at the Cassine and the Rhetoriere answered?" I
asked, to divert her mind from