PART II
HOW THE SON DIED
CHAPTER IV
THE HEIR
In 1617, twenty and some years after the horrible night during which
Etienne came into the world, the Duc d'Herouville, then seventy-six
years old, broken, decrepit, almost dead, was sitting at sunset in an
immense arm-chair, before the gothic window of his bedroom, at the
place where his wife had so vainly implored, by the sounds of the horn
wasted on the air, the help of men and heaven. You might have thought
him a body resurrected from the grave. His once energetic face,
stripped of its sinister aspect by old age and suffering, was ghastly
in color, matching the long meshes of white hair which fell around his
bald head, the yellow skull of which seemed softening. The warrior and
the fanatic still shone in those yellow eyes, tempered now by
religious sentiment. Devotion had cast a monastic tone upon the face,
formerly so hard, but now marked with tints which softened its
expression.
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