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.