She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her mother kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the good fortune which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnes.She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a queen. So she returned to her attic in the Rue Folle-peine, very proud of bearing with her a queen.The next day she took advantage of a moment when the child was asleep on her bed, (for they always slept together), gently left the door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in the Rue de la Séchesserie, that the day would come when her daughter Agnes would be served at table by the King of England and the Archduke of Ethiopia, and a hundred other marvels.On her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself: 'Good! the child is still asleep!'She found her door wider open than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to the bed.---The child was no longer there, the place was empty.Nothing remained of the child, but one of her pretty little shoes.She flew out of the room, dashed down the stairs, and began to beat her head against the wall, crying: 'My child! who has my child?Who has taken my child?'The street was deserted, the house isolated; no one could tell her anything about it.She went about the town, searched all the streets, ran hither and thither the whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible, snuffing at doors and windows like a wild beast which has lost its young.She was breathless, dishevelled, frightful to see, and there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears.She stopped the passers-by and cried: 'My daughter! my daughter! my pretty little daughter! If any one will give me back my daughter, I will he his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall eat my heart if he will.'She met M. le Curé of Saint- Remy, and said to him: 'Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails, but give me back my child!'It was heartrending, Oudarde; and IL saw a very hard man, Master ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep.Ah! poor mother!In the evening she returned home.During her absence, a neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in their arms, then descend again, after closing the door.After their departure, something like the cries of a child were heard in paquette's room.The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter, ascended the stairs as though on wings, and entered.--A frightful thing to tell, Oudarde!Instead of her pretty little Agnes, so rosy and so fresh, who was a gift of the good God, a sort of hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed, deformed, was crawling and squalling over the floor.She hid her eyes in horror.'Oh!' said she, 'have the witches transformed my daughter into this horrible animal?'They hastened to carry away the little club-foot; he would have driven her mad.It was the monstrous child of some gypsy woman, who had given herself to the devil.He appeared to be about four years old, and talked a language which was no human tongue; there were words in it which were impossible.La Chantefleurie flung herself upon the little shoe, all that remained to her of all that she loved.She remained so long motionless over it, mute, and without breath, that they thought she was dead. Suddenly she trembled all over, covered her relic with furious kisses, and burst out sobbing as though her heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping also.She said: 'Oh, my little daughter! my pretty little daughter! where art thou?'--and it wrung your very heart.I weep still when I think of it.Our children are the marrow of our bones, you see.---My poor Eustache! thou art so fair!--If you only knew how nice he is! yesterday he said to me: 'I want to be a gendarme, that I do.'Oh! my Eustache! if I were to lose thee!--All at once la Chantefleurie rose, and set out to run through Reims, screaming: 'To the gypsies' camp! to the gypsies' camp!police, to burn the witches!'The gypsies were gone.It was pitch dark.They could not be followed. On the morrow, two leagues from Reims, on a heath between Gueux and Tilloy, the remains of a large fire were found, some ribbons which had belonged to paquette's child, drops of blood, and the dung of a ram.The night just past had been a Saturday.There was no longer any doubt that the Egyptians had held their Sabbath on that heath, and that they had devoured the child in company with Beelzebub, as the practice is among the Mahometans.When La Chantefleurie learned these horrible things, she did not weep, she moved her lips as though to speak, but could not.On the morrow, her hair was gray.On the second day, she had disappeared.
"'Tis in truth, a frightful tale," said Oudarde, "and one which would make even a Burgundian weep."
"I am no longer surprised," added Gervaise, "that fear of the gypsies should spur you on so sharply."
"And you did all the better," resumed Oudarde, "to flee with your Eustache just now, since these also are gypsies from poland."
"No," said Gervais, "'tis said that they come from Spain and Catalonia."
"Catalonia? 'tis possible," replied Oudarde."pologne, Catalogue, Valogne, I always confound those three provinces, One thing is certain, that they are gypsies."
"Who certainly," added Gervaise, "have teeth long enough to eat little children.I should not be surprised if la Sméralda ate a little of them also, though she pretends to be dainty. Her white goat knows tricks that are too malicious for there not to be some impiety underneath it all."
Mahiette walked on in silence.She was absorbed in that revery which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and which ends only after having communicated the emotion, from vibration to vibration, even to the very last fibres of the heart.Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, "And did they ever learn what became of la Chantefleurie?" Mahiette made no reply.Gervaise repeated her question, and shook her arm, calling her by name.Mahiette appeared to awaken from her thoughts.
"What became of la Chantefleurie?" she said, repeating mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in her ear; then, ma king an effort to recall her attention to the meaning of her words, "Ah!" she continued briskly, "no one ever found out."
She added, after a pause,--
"Some said that she had been seen to quit Reims at nightfall by the Fléchembault gate; others, at daybreak, by the old Basée gate.A poor man found her gold cross hanging on the stone cross in the field where the fair is held.It was that ornament which had wrought her ruin, in '61.It was a gift from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. paquette had never been willing to part with it, wretched as she had been.She had clung to it as to life itself.So, when we saw that cross abandoned, we all thought that she was dead.Nevertheless, there were people of the Cabaret les Vantes, who said that they had seen her pass along the road to paris, walking on the pebbles with her bare feet.But, in that case, she must have gone out through the porte de Vesle, and all this does not agree.Or, to speak more truly, I believe that she actually did depart by the porte de Vesle, but departed from this world."
"I do not understand you," said Gervaise.
"La Vesle," replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, "is the river."
"poor Chantefleurie!" said Oudarde, with a shiver,--"drowned!"
"Drowned!" resumed Mahiette, "who could have told good Father Guybertant, when he passed under the bridge of Tingueux with the current, singing in his barge, that one day his dear little paquette would also pass beneath that bridge, but without song or boat.
"And the little shoe?" asked Gervaise.
"Disappeared with the mother," replied Mahiette.
"poor little shoe!" said Oudarde.
Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to sigh in company with Mahiette.But Gervaise, more curious, had not finished her questions.
"And the monster?" she said suddenly, to Mahiette.
"What monster?" inquired the latter.
"The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in Chantefleurie's chamber, in exchange for her daughter.What did you do with it?I hope you drowned it also."
"No." replied Mahiette.
"What?You burned it then?In sooth, that is more just. A witch child!"
"Neither the one nor the other, Gervaise.Monseigneur the archbishop interested himself in the child of Egypt, exorcised it, blessed it, removed the devil carefully from its body, and sent it to paris, to be exposed on the wooden bed at Notre- Dame, as a foundling."
"Those bishops!" grumbled Gervaise, "because they are learned, they do nothing like anybody else.I just put it to you, Oudarde, the idea of placing the devil among the foundlings!For that little monster was assuredly the devil. Well, Mahiette, what did they do with it in paris?I am quite sure that no charitable person wanted it."
"I do not know," replied the Rémoise, "'twas just at that time that my husband bought the office of notary, at Bern, two leagues from the town, and we were no longer occupied with that story; besides, in front of Bern, stand the two hills of Cernay, which hide the towers of the cathedral in Reims from view."
While chatting thus, the three worthy ~bourgeoises~ had arrived at the place de Grève.In their absorption, they had passed the public breviary of the Tour-Roland without stopping, and took their way mechanically towards the pillory around which the throng was growing more dense with every moment.It is probable that the spectacle which at that moment attracted all looks in that direction, would have made them forget completely the Rat-Hole, and the halt which they intended to make there, if big Eustache, six years of age, whom Mahiette was dragging along by the hand, had not abruptly recalled the object to them: "Mother," said he, as though some instinct warned him that the Rat-Hole was behind him, "can I eat the cake now?"
If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say, less greedy, he would have continued to wait, and would only have hazarded that simple question, "Mother, can I eat the cake, now?" on their return to the University, to Master Andry Musnier's, Rue Madame la Valence, when he had the two arms of the Seine and the five bridges of the city between the Rat-Hole and the cake.
This question, highly imprudent at the moment when Eustache put it, aroused Mahiette's attention.
"By the way," she exclaimed, "we are forgetting the recluse!Show me the Rat-Hole, that I may carry her her cake."
"Immediately," said Oudarde, "'tis a charity."
But this did not suit Eustache.
"Stop! my cake!" said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with his shoulders, which, in such cases, is the supreme sign of discontent.
The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the vicinity of the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two,--
"We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the recluse.Do you two pretend to read the _Dominus_ in the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the aperture; the recluse knows me a little.I will give you warning when you can approach."
She proceeded alone to the window.At the moment when she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping.A moment later, she laid her finger on her lips, and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and look.
Mahiette, much touched, stepped up in silence, on tiptoe, as though approaching the bedside of a dying person.
It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented itself to the eyes of the two women, as they gazed through the grating of the Rat-Hole, neither stirring nor breathing.
The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched ceiling, and viewed from within, it bore a considerable resemblance to the interior of a huge bishop's mitre.On the bare flagstones which formed the floor, in one corner, a woman was sitting, or rather, crouching.Her chin rested on her knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. Thus doubled up, clad in a brown sack, which enveloped her entirely in large folds, her long, gray hair pulled over in front, falling over her face and along her legs nearly to her feet, she presented, at the first glance, only a strange form outlined against the dark background of the cell, a sort of dusky triangle, which the ray of daylight falling through the opening, cut roughly into two shades, the one sombre, the other illuminated.It was one of those spectres, half light, half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb, or leaning against the grating of a prison cell.
It was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor a definite form; it was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness and day.It was with difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe profile; her dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape, which contracted on the hard, cold pavement. The little of human form of which one caught a sight beneath this envelope of mourning, caused a shudder.
That figure, which one might have supposed to be riveted to the flagstones, appeared to possess neither movement, nor thought, nor breath.Lying, in January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on a granite floor, without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but never the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to think.One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season.Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed.At first sight one took her for a spectre; at the second, for a statue.
Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath, and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind sweeps aside.
Nevertheless, from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be seen from without; a gaze which seemed to fix all the sombre thoughts of that soul in distress upon some mysterious object.
Such was the creature who had received, from her habitation, the name of the "recluse"; and, from her garment, the name of "the sacked nun."
The three women, for Gervaise had rejoined Mahiette and Oudarde, gazed through the window.Their heads intercepted the feeble light in the cell, without the wretched being whom they thus deprived of it seeming to pay any attention to them."Do not let us trouble her," said Oudarde, in a low voice, "she is in her ecstasy; she is praying."
Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing anxiety at that wan, withered, dishevelled head, and her eyes filled with tears."This is very singular," she murmured.
She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted.
When she withdrew her head from the window, her countenance was inundated with tears.
"What do you call that woman?" she asked Oudarde.
Oudarde replied,--
"We call her Sister Gudule."
"And I," returned Mahiette, "call her paquette la Chantefleurie."
Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Oudarde to thrust her head through the window and look.
Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the recluse were fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver.
Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing upon the unhappy mother, began to weep.
But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse. Her hands remained clasped; her lips mute; her eyes fixed; and that little shoe, thus gazed at, broke the heart of any one who knew her history.
The three women had not yet uttered a single word; they dared not speak, even in a low voice.This deep silence, this deep grief, this profound oblivion in which everything had disappeared except one thing, produced upon them the effect of the grand altar at Christmas or Easter.They remained silent, they meditated, they were ready to kneel.It seemed to them that they were ready to enter a church on the day of Tenebrae.
At length Gervaise, the most curious of the three, and consequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak:
"Sister!Sister Gudule!"
She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time.The recluse did not move; not a word, not a glance, not a sigh, not a sign of life.
Oudarde, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing voice,--"Sister!" said she, "Sister Sainte-Gudule!"
The same silence; the same immobility.
"A singular woman!" exclaimed Gervaise, "and one not to be moved by a catapult!"
"perchance she is deaf," said Oudarde.
"perhaps she is blind," added Gervaise.
"Dead, perchance," returned Mahiette.
It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the exterior organs no longer penetrated.
"Then we must leave the cake on the window," said Oudarde; "some scamp will take it.What shall we do to rouse her?"
Eustache, who, up to that moment had been diverted by a little carriage drawn by a large dog, which had just passed, suddenly perceived that his three conductresses were gazing at something through the window, and, curiosity taking possession of him in his turn, he climbed upon a stone post, elevated himself on tiptoe, and applied his fat, red face to the opening, shouting, "Mother, let me see too!"
At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child's voice, the recluse trembled; she turned her head with the sharp, abrupt movement of a steel spring, her long, fleshless hands cast aside the hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child, bitter, astonished, desperate eyes.This glance was but a lightning flash.
"Oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on her knees, and it seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her chest as it passed from it, "do not show me those of others!"
"Good day, madam," said the child, gravely.
Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse.A long shiver traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet in her hands as though to warm them,--
"Oh, how cold it is!"
"poor woman!" said Oudarde, with great compassion, "would you like a little fire?"
She shook her head in token of refusal.
"Well," resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; "here is some hippocras which will warm you; drink it."
Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied, "Water."
Oudarde persisted,--"No, sister, that is no beverage for January.You must drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of maize, which we have baked for you."
She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, "Black bread."
"Come," said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, "here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours."
She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied, "A sack."
"But," resumed the good Oudarde, "you must have perceived to some extent, that yesterday was a festival."
"I do perceive it," said the recluse; "'tis two days now since I have had any water in my crock."
She added, after a silence, "'Tis a festival, I am forgotten. people do well.Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it?Cold charcoal makes cold ashes."
And as though fatigued with having said so much, she dropped her head on her knees again.The simple and charitable Oudarde, who fancied that she understood from her last words that she was complaining of the cold, replied innocently, "Then you would like a little fire?"
"Fire!" said the sacked nun, with a strange accent; "and will you also make a little for the poor little one who has been beneath the sod for these fifteen years?"
Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed, she had raised herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her thin, white hand towards the child, who was regarding her with a look of astonishment."Take away that child!" she cried."The Egyptian woman is about to pass by."
Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck the stone, with the sound of one stone against another stone.The three women thought her dead.A moment later, however, she moved, and they beheld her drag herself, on her knees and elbows, to the corner where the little shoe was. Then they dared not look; they no longer saw her; but they heard a thousand kisses and a thousand sighs, mingled with heartrending cries, and dull blows like those of a head in contact with a wall.Then, after one of these blows, so violent that all three of them staggered, they heard no more.
"Can she have killed herself?" said Gervaise, venturing to pass her head through the air-hole."Sister!Sister Gudule!"
"Sister Gudule!" repeated Oudarde.
"Ah! good heavens! she no longer moves!" resumed Gervaise; "is she dead?Gudule!Gudule!"
Mahiette, choked to such a point that she could not speak, made an effort."Wait," said she.Then bending towards the window, "paquette!" she said, "paquette le Chantefleurie!"
A child who innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into the cell of Sister Gudule.
The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette and Oudarde, and the other woman and the child recoiled even to the parapet of the quay.
Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole."Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the Egyptian who is calling me!"
At that moment, a scene which was passing at the pillory caught her wild eye.Her brow contracted with horror, she stretched her two skeleton arms from her cell, and shrieked in a voice which resembled a death-rattle, "So 'tis thou once more, daughter of Egypt!'Tis thou who callest me, stealer of children!Well!Be thou accursed! accursed! accursed! accursed!"