【英文原著类】THE HATED SON(逆子).pdf

THE HATED SON
THE HATED SON
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Madame la Baronne James Rothschild.
1
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, tesse 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, pletely 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.
The prisoner reached the prison door in the dead of night and trying to
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THE HATED SON
noiselessly turn the key in a pitiless lock, was never more timidly bold.
When the countess had eeded in rising to her seat without
awakening her keeper, she ma