"Oh, my mother!" said the young girl, at length finding strength to speak in her emotion, "the gypsy woman told me so.There was a good gypsy of our band who died last year, and who always cared for me like a nurse.It was she who placed this little bag about my neck.She always said to me: 'Little one, guard this jewel well!'Tis a treasure.It will cause thee to find thy mother once again.Thou wearest thy mother about thy neck.'--The gypsy predicted it!"
The sacked nun again pressed her daughter in her arms.
"Come, let me kiss you!You say that prettily.When we are in the country, we will place these little shoes on an infant Jesus in the church.We certainly owe that to the good, holy Virgin.What a pretty voice you have!When you spoke to me just now, it was music!Ah! my Lord God! I have found my child again!But is this story credible? Nothing will kill one--or I should have died of joy."
And then she began to clap her hands again and to laugh and to cry out: "We are going to be so happy!"
At that moment, the cell resounded with the clang of arms and a galloping of horses which seemed to be coming from the pont Notre-Dame, amid advancing farther and farther along the quay.The gypsy threw herself with anguish into the arms of the sacked nun.
"Save me! save me! mother! they are coming!"
"Oh, heaven! what are you saying?I had forgotten! They are in pursuit of you!What have you done?"
"I know not," replied the unhappy child; "but I am condemned to die."
"To die!" said Gudule, staggering as though struck by lightning; "to die!" she repeated slowly, gazing at her daughter with staring eyes.
"Yes, mother," replied the frightened young girl, "they want to kill me.They are coming to seize me.That gallows is for me!Save me! save me!They are coming! Save me!"
The recluse remained for several moments motionless and petrified, then she moved her head in sign of doubt, and suddenly giving vent to a burst of laughter, but with that terrible laugh which had come back to her,--
"Ho! ho! no! 'tis a dream of which you are telling me. Ah, yes!I lost her, that lasted fifteen years, and then I found her again, and that lasted a minute!And they would take her from me again!And now, when she is beautiful, when she is grown up, when she speaks to me, when she loves me; it is now that they would come to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother!Oh! no! these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such things as that."
Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say in the distance,--
"This way, Messire Tristan!The priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-Hole." The noise of the horses began again.
The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. "Fly! fly! my child!All comes back to me.You are right.It is your death!Horror!Maledictions!Fly!"
She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again hastily.
"Remain," she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive."Remain!Do not breathe!There are soldiers everywhere. You cannot get out.It is too light."
Her eyes were dry and burning.She remained silent for a moment; but she paced the cell hurriedly, and halted now and then to pluck out handfuls of her gray hairs, which she afterwards tore with her teeth.
Suddenly she said: "They draw near.I will speak with them.Hide yourself in this corner.They will not see you. I will tell them that you have made your escape.That I released you, i' faith!"
She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that neither foot nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her black hair which she spread over her white robe to conceal it, placed in front of her her jug and her paving stone, the only articles of furniture which she possessed, imagining that this jug and stone would hide her.And when this was finished she became more tranquil, and knelt down to pray.The day, which was only dawning, still left many shadows in the Rat-Hole.
At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice, passed very close to the cell, crying,--
"This way, Captain phoebus de Chateaupers."
At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her corner, made a movement.
"Do not stir!" said Gudule.
She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and horses halted around the cell.The mother rose quickly and went to post herself before her window, in order to stop it up. She beheld a large troop of armed men, both horse and foot, drawn up on the Grève.
The commander dismounted, and came toward her.
"Old woman!" said this man, who had an atrocious face, "we are in search of a witch to hang her; we were told that you had her."
The poor mother assumed as indifferent an air as she could, and replied,--
"I know not what you mean."
The other resumed, "~Tête Dieu~!What was it that frightened archdeacon said?Where is he?"
"Monseigneur," said a soldier, "he has disappeared."
"Come, now, old madwoman," began the commander again, "do not lie.A sorceress was given in charge to you.What have you done with her?"
The recluse did not wish to deny all, for fear of awakening suspicion, and replied in a sincere and surly tone,--
"If you are speaking of a big young girl who was put into my hands a while ago, I will tell you that she bit me, and that I released her.There!Leave me in peace."
The commander made a grimace of disappointment. "Don't lie to me, old spectre!" said he."My name is Tristan l'Hermite, and I am the king's gossip.Tristan the Hermit, do you hear?" He added, as he glanced at the place de Grève around him, "'Tis a name which has an echo here."
"You might be Satan the Hermit," replied Gudule, who was regaining hope, "but I should have nothing else to say to you, and I should never be afraid of you."
"~Tête-Dieu~," said Tristan, "here is a crone!Ah!So the witch girl hath fled!And in which direction did she go?" Gudule replied in a careless tone,--
"Through the Rue du Mouton, I believe."
Tristan turned his head and made a sign to his troop to prepare to set out on the march again.The recluse breathed freely once more.
"Monseigneur," suddenly said an archer, "ask the old elf why the bars of her window are broken in this manner."
This question brought anguish again to the heart of the miserable mother.Nevertheless, she did not lose all presence of mind.
They have always been thus," she stammered.
"Bah!" retorted the archer, "only yesterday they still formed a fine black cross, which inspired devotion."
Tristan east a sidelong glance at the recluse.
"I think the old dame is getting confused!"
The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her self- possession, and, although with death in her soul, she began to grin.Mothers possess such strength.
"Bah!" said she, "the man is drunk.'Tis more than a year since the tail of a stone cart dashed against my window and broke in the grating.And how I cursed the carter, too."
"'Tis true," said another archer, "I was there."
Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen everything.This unexpected testimony from the archer re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forcing to cross an abyss on the edge of a knife.But she was condemned to a perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.
"If it was a cart which did it," retorted the first soldier, "the stumps of the bars should be thrust inwards, while they actually are pushed outwards."
"Ho! ho!" said Tristan to the soldier, "you have the nose of an inquisitor of the Chatelet.Reply to what he says, old woman."
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, driven to bay, and in a voice that was full of tears in despite of her efforts, "I swear to you, monseigneur, that 'twas a cart which broke those bars. You hear the man who saw it.And then, what has that to do with your gypsy?"
"Hum!" growled Tristan.
"The devil!" went on the soldier, flattered by the provost's praise, "these fractures of the iron are perfectly fresh."
Tristan tossed his head.She turned pale.
"How long ago, say you, did the cart do it?"
"A month, a fortnight, perhaps, monseigheur, I know not."
"She first said more than a year," observed the soldier.
"That is suspicious," said the provost.
"Monseigneur!" she cried, still pressed against the opening, and trembling lest suspicion should lead them to thrust their heads through and look into her cell; "monseigneur, I swear to you that 'twas a cart which broke this grating.I swear it to you by the angels of paradise.If it was not a cart, may I be eternally damned, and I reject God!"
"You put a great deal of heat into that oath;" said Tristan, with his inquisitorial glance.
The poor woman felt her assurance vanishing more and more.She had reached the point of blundering, and she comprehended with terror that she was saying what she ought not to have said.
Here another soldier came up, crying,--
"Monsieur, the old hag lies.The sorceress did not flee through the Rue de Mouton.The street chain has remained stretched all night, and the chain guard has seen no one pass."
Tristan, whose face became more sinister with every moment, addressed the recluse,--
"What have you to say to that?"
She tried to make head against this new incident,
"That I do not know, monseigneur; that I may have been mistaken.I believe, in fact, that she crossed the water."
"That is in the opposite direction," said the provost, "and it is not very likely that she would wish to re-enter the city, where she was being pursued.You are lying, old woman."
"And then," added the first soldier, "there is no boat either on this side of the stream or on the other."
"She swam across," replied the recluse, defending her ground foot by foot.
"Do women swim?" said the soldier.
"~Tête Dieu~! old woman!You are lying!" repeated Tristan angrily."I have a good mind to abandon that sorceress and take you.A quarter of an hour of torture will, perchance, draw the truth from your throat.Come!You are to follow us."
She seized on these words with avidity.
"As you please, monseigneur.Do it.Do it.Torture.I am willing.Take me away.Quick, quick! let us set out at once!--During that time," she said to herself, "my daughter will make her escape."
"'S death!" said the provost, "what an appetite for the rack!I understand not this madwoman at all."
An old, gray-haired sergeant of the guard stepped out of the ranks, and addressing the provost,--
"Mad in sooth, monseigneur.If she released the gypsy, it was not her fault, for she loves not the gypsies.I have been of the watch these fifteen years, and I hear her every evening cursing the Bohemian women with endless imprecations.If the one of whom we are in pursuit is, as I suppose, the little dancer with the goat, she detests that one above all the rest."
Gudule made an effort and said,--
"That one above all."
The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch confirmed the old sergeant's words to the provost.Tristan l'Hermite, in despair at extracting anything from the recluse, turned his back on her, and with unspeakable anxiety she beheld him direct his course slowly towards his horse.
"Come!" he said, between his teeth, "March on! let us set out again on the quest.I shall not sleep until that gypsy is hanged."
But he still hesitated for some time before mounting his horse.Gudule palpitated between life and death, as she beheld him cast about the place that uneasy look of a hunting dog which instinctively feels that the lair of the beast is close to him, and is loath to go away.At length he shook his head and leaped into his saddle.Gudule's horribly compressed heart now dilated, and she said in a low voice, as she cast a glance at her daughter, whom she had not ventured to look at while they were there, "Saved!"
The poor child had remained all this time in her corner, without breathing, without moving, with the idea of death before her.She had lost nothing of the scene between Gudule and Tristan, and the anguish of her mother had found its echo in her heart.She had heard all the successive snappings of the thread by which she hung suspended over the gulf; twenty times she had fancied that she saw it break, and at last she began to breathe again and to feel her foot on firm ground. At that moment she heard a voice saying to the provost: "~Corboeuf~!Monsieur le prev?t, 'tis no affair of mine, a man of arms, to hang witches.The rabble of the populace is suppressed.I leave you to attend to the matter alone. You will allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting for their captain."
The voice was that of phoebus de Chateaupers; that which took place within her was ineffable.He was there, her friend, her protector, her support, her refuge, her phoebus.She rose, and before her mother could prevent her, she had rushed to the window, crying,--
"phoebus! aid me, my phoebus!"
phoebus was no longer there.He had just turned the corner of the Rue de la Coutellerie at a gallop.But Tristan had not yet taken his departure.
The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck.A tigress mother does not stand on trifles.But it was too late.Tristan had seen.
"Hé! hé!" he exclaimed with a laugh which laid bare all his teeth and made his face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, "two mice in the trap!"
"I suspected as much," said the soldier.
Tristan clapped him on the shoulder,--
"You are a good cat!Come!" he added, "where is Henriet Cousin?"
A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a soldier, stepped from the ranks.He wore a costume half gray, half brown, flat hair, leather sleeves, and carried a bundle of ropes in his huge hand.This man always attended Tristan, who always attended Louis XI.
"Friend," said Tristan l'Hermite, "I presume that this is the sorceress of whom we are in search.You will hang me this one.Have you your ladder?"
"There is one yonder, under the shed of the pillar-House," replied the man."Is it on this justice that the thing is to be done?" he added, pointing to the stone gibbet.
"Yes."
"Ho, hé!" continued the man with a huge laugh, which was still more brutal than that of the provost, "we shall not have far to go."
"Make haste!" said Tristan, "you shall laugh afterwards."
In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word since Tristan had seen her daughter and all hope was lost. She had flung the poor gypsy, half dead, into the corner of the cellar, and had placed herself once more at the window with both hands resting on the angle of the sill like two claws.In this attitude she was seen to cast upon all those soldiers her glance which had become wild and frantic once more.At the moment when Rennet Cousin approached her cell, she showed him so savage a face that he shrank back.
"Monseigneur," he said, returning to the provost, "which am I to take?"
"The young one."
"So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult."
"poor little dancer with the goat!" said the old sergeant of the watch.
Rennet Cousin approached the window again.The mother's eyes made his own droop.He said with a good deal of timidity,--
"Madam"--
She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice,--
"What do you ask?"
"It is not you," he said, "it is the other."
"What other?"
"The young one."
She began to shake her head, crying,--
"There is no one! there is no one! there is no one!"
"Yes, there is!" retorted the hangman, "and you know it well.Let me take the young one.I have no wish to harm you."
She said, with a strange sneer,--
"Ah! so you have no wish to harm me!"
"Let me have the other, madam; 'tis monsieur the provost who wills it."
She repeated with a look of madness,--
"There is no one here."
"I tell you that there is!" replied the executioner."We have all seen that there are two of you."
"Look then!" said the recluse, with a sneer."Thrust your head through the window."
The executioner observed the mother's finger-nails and dared not.
"Make haste!" shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his troops in a circle round the Rat-Hole, and who sat on his horse beside the gallows.
Rennet returned once more to the provost in great embarrassment. He had flung his rope on the ground, and was twisting his hat between his hands with an awkward air.
"Monseigneur," he asked, "where am I to enter?"
"By the door."
"There is none."
"By the window."
"'Tis too small."
"Make it larger," said Tristan angrily."Have you not pickaxes?"
The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of her cavern.She no longer hoped for anything, she no longer knew what she wished, except that she did not wish them to take her daughter.
Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night man, under the shed of the pillar-House.He drew from it also the double ladder, which he immediately set up against the gallows.Five or six of the provost's men armed themselves with picks and crowbars, and Tristan betook himself, in company with them, towards the window.
"Old woman," said the provost, in a severe tone, "deliver up to us that girl quietly."
She looked at him like one who does not understand.
"~Tête Dieu~!" continued Tristan, "why do you try to prevent this sorceress being hung as it pleases the king?"
The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way.
"Why?She is my daughter."
The tone in which she pronounced these words made even Henriet Cousin shudder.
"I am sorry for that," said the provost, "but it is the king's good pleasure."
She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh,--
"What is your king to me?I tell you that she is my daughter!"
"pierce the wall," said Tristan.
In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to dislodge one course of stone below the window.When the mother heard the picks and crowbars mining her fortress, she uttered a terrible cry; then she began to stride about her cell with frightful swiftness, a wild beasts' habit which her cage had imparted to her.She no longer said anything, but her eyes flamed.The soldiers were chilled to the very soul.
All at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it with both fists upon the workmen.The stone, badly flung (for her hands trembled), touched no one, and fell short under the feet of Tristan's horse.She gnashed her teeth.
In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad daylight; a beautiful rose color enlivened the ancient, decayed chimneys of the pillar-House.It was the hour when the earliest windows of the great city open joyously on the roofs.Some workmen, a few fruit-sellers on their way to the markets on their asses, began to traverse the Grève; they halted for a moment before this group of soldiers clustered round the Rat-Hole, stared at it with an air of astonishment and passed on.