ded the horn, but without success against the voice of the
hurricane.

In her helplessness she thought of trusting herself to one of the
women,--all creatures of her husband,--when, passing into her oratory,
she found that the count had locked the only door that led to their
apartments. This was a horrible discovery. Such precautions taken
to isolate her showed a desire to proceed without witnesses to some
horrible execution. As moment after moment she lost hope, the pangs of
childbirth grew stronger and keener. A presentiment of murder, joined
to the fatigue of her efforts, overcame her last remaining strength. She
was like a shipwrecked man who sinks, borne under by one last wave less
furious than others he has vanquished. The bewildering pangs of her
condition kept her from knowing the lapse of time. At the moment when
she felt that, alone, without help, she was about to give birth to her
child, and to all her other terrors was added that of the accidents to
which her ignorance exposed her, the count appeared, without a sound
that let her know of his arrival. The man was there, like a demon
claiming at the close of a compact the soul that was sold to him.
He muttered angrily at finding his wife's face uncovered; then after
masking her carefully, he took her in his arms and laid her on the bed
in her chamber.

CHAPTER II. THE BONESETTER

The terror of that apparition and hasty removal stopped for a moment
the physical sufferings of the countess, and so enabled her to cast
a furtive glance at the actors in this mysterious scene. She did not
recognize Bertrand, who was there disguised and masked as carefully as
his master. After lighting in haste some candles, the light of which
mingled with the first rays of the sun which were reddening the window
panes, the old servitor had gone to the embrasure of a window and stood
leaning against a corner of it. There, with his face towards the wall,
he seemed to be estimating its thickness, keeping his body in such
absolute immobility that he might have been taken for a statue. In the
middle of the room the countess beheld a short, stout man, apparently
out of breath and stupefied, whose eyes were blindfolded and his
features so distorted with terror that it was impossible to guess at
their natural expression.

"God's death! you scamp," said the count, giving him back his eyesight
by a rough movement which threw upon the man's neck the bandage that had
been upon his e