"I begin to see," she said in a strangled voice. "You wanted an heir. After that it did not matter. O, how I loathe myself...." And she began to sob, putting her hands wildly to her head. "Take the picture down ... I don't want it there ... take the child away..." She struggled to get up, but as Armand, greatly alarmed, bent over her to help her she shrank back, trying to keep him off, and crying, "Don't touch me, don't touch me! ... I hate you! ... I hate your child! I hate it, I hate it!"
Armand had the sense to dash to the bell and to pull it furiously.
Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon was born next day, at half past eleven in the morning.
CHAPTER XIII
(1)
Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White, Paris, November 28th, 1831.
"My dear Polly,
"Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at present. I have not had time these weeks so much as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl, and you were always one to want to know things from the beginning. The precious babe is well, thank God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which are enough to scare a Christian woman. Will you believe it, before that dear child was many hours old, with Miss Horatia at death's door as you may say, they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as I put away myself with his dear mother looking on, not so much as two days before, all wasted. When his Reverence came over I did think it would be done again properly, but no! A fine string of names he has, poor mite, but I will not try to write them. Master Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to hear that Joséphine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte this and Monsieur le Vicomte that.
"But Joséphine can't show off any of her airs now, for we are all put to the right about by this Madam Carry. Even the old Madam was ready to go down on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he would have given her a pound a minute. It was a pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn't come already, but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to take us all by surprise. Only the day before she was worrying her pretty head counting over all them English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing like, and she says to me, 'Martha, are you sure there is enough?' and I says, 'Saving your presence, more than enough for twins twice over.' And there they are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen Indian. It's pitiful to see him.
"The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said, 'Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?' and she says, looking strange, 'No, Martha,' and it seemed to me she had forgotten all about it. Then I went for a turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six o'clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might have been St. Giles' Fair, and all of them jibbering and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what had happened, but just then the old Madam's lady came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my poor lamb.