"I will founder my horse if
necessary to bring you speedy relief."
These words were certainly not alarming, and the countess, emboldened
by them, was about to make a request when the count asked her
suddenly:--
"Tell me where you keep your masks?"
"My masks!" she replied. "Good God! what do you want to do with them?"
"Where are they?" he repeated, with his usual violence.
"In the chest," she said.
She shuddered when she saw her husband select from among her masks a
"touret de nez," the wearing of which was as common among the ladies
of that time as the wearing of gloves in our day. The count became
entirely unrecognizable after he had put on an old gray felt hat with
a broken cock's feather on his head. He girded round his loins a broad
leathern belt, in which he stuck a dagger, which he did not wear
habitually. These miserable garments gave him so terrifying an air and
he approached the bed with so strange a motion that the countess
thought her last hour had come.
"Ah! don't kill us!" she cried, "leave me my child, and I will love
you well.
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