these horrors! Did not the parents of this libertine love each other to an excess that cried to heaven for vengeance? Living only for themselves, limiting the purpose of the universe to their exclusive corporal and moral duality, in their monstrous egoism they had wished even not to have children, so much had they dreaded to lose touch one of the other!"
The minister had been informed as to this particularity by his predecessor; Henry was not born except by chance, after several years of this unnatural marriage.
Moreover, at the now distant period when Henry de Kehlmark was tormenting his conscience on account of his inversion, having learned from his grandmother how excessively his parents had adored each other, he attributed his anomaly to the impious regret which his parents must have experienced at the time of his conception. Doubtless they were vexed with themselves at having brought into the world a being who would introduce himself, like an interloper, into the midst of their mutual endearments. The young Count had long imagined that he had been begotten under the governance of this maternal displeasure. This sentiment
