by Victor Hugo
All at once the young girl saw his head reappear; his face wore a frightful expression, and he cried to her with a gasp of rage and despair, --
"I tell you he is dead!"
She fell face downwards on the ground, and no sound was heard in the dungeon save the sighing of the drop of water which rippled the water in the darkness.
CHAPTER V
The Mother
I do not think that there is anything in the world more delightful than the ideas aroused in a mother's heart by the sight of her child's little shoe, especially if it be a best shoe, a Sunday shoe, a christening shoe, a shoe embroidered down to the very sole, a shoe in which the child has never yet taken a step. That shoe is so dainty, so tiny, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it is to the mother as if she saw her child itself. She smiles at it, kisses it, talks to it; she asks it if there can really be so small a foot; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe is quite enough to bring the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She fancies she sees it; she does see it, from head to foot full of life and laughter, with its delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its clear eyes, whose very white is blue. If it be winter, it is there; it crawls over the carpet; it laboriously climbs upon a stool, and the mother trembles lest it go too near the fire. If it be summer, it creeps about the courtyard or the garden, pulls up the grass which grows between the paving-stones, gazes innocently and fearlessly at the big dogs and horses, plays with shells and flowers, and makes the gardener scold when he finds sand on his borders and dirt in his paths. All is bright and gay; all is mirth around it like itself, even to the breeze and the sunbeam, which vie with each other in sporting among the light curls of its hair. The shoe shows the mother all this, and makes her heart melt within her like wax before the fire.
But if she has lost her child, these thousand images of bliss, delight, and love which hover around the little shoe become so many horrid visions. The pretty embroidered shoe ceases to be aught but an instrument of torture, forever rending the mother's heart. The same fiber still vibrates,--the deepest and most sensitive fiber; but instead of being caressed by an angel, it is wrenched by a demon.
One morning, as the May sun was rising in a deep-blue sky, such as Garofolo loved to use for the background of his "Descents from the Cross," the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard the noise of wheels, horses' hoofs, and the clink of iron in the Place de Greve. She paid but little heed to it, pulled her hair over her ears to drown it, and again fell to gazing, on her knees, at the inanimate object which she had thus adored for fifteen years. This little shoe, as we have already said, was the entire universe to her. Her every thought was bound up in it, never to be parted until death. The gloomy cavern of the Tour-Roland alone knew how many bitter curses, how many touching lamentations, prayers, and sobs, she had addressed to Heaven on behalf of that dainty pink satin toy. Never was greater despair lavished on a prettier, more graceful object.
On this particular morning it seemed as if her grief burst forth with even greater violence than usual; and those who passed by outside heard her wailing in a loud monotonous tone which pierced their very hearts.
"Oh, my daughter," she moaned, "my daughter! My poor, dear little child, I shall never see you again, then! It is all over! It always seems to me as if it were but yesterday that it happened! My God, my God, it would have been better never to give her to me, if you meant to snatch her from me so soon! Perhaps you did not know that our children are a part of ourselves, and that a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God! Ah, wretch that I was, to go out that day! Lord! Lord! to take her from me thus, you could never have seen me with her when I warmed her, all rapture, at my fire; when she laughed at my breast; when I helped her little feet to climb up my bosom to my lips! Oh, if you had seen all this, my God, you would have had pity on my joy; you would not have robbed me of the only love left in my heart! Was I, then, so miserable a creature, Lord, that you could not look upon me before you condemned me? Alas! alas! here is the shoe, but where is the foot; where is the rest; where is the child? My daughter, my daughter! what have they done with you? Lord, restore her to me! My knees have been bruised for fifteen years in praying to you, my God! Will not that suffice? Restore her to me for a day, an hour, a single instant,--one instant only, Lord!--and then cast me to the devil for all eternity! Oh, if I did but know where to find the skirts of your garment, I would cling to them with both hands until you gave me back my child! Have you no mercy, when you see her pretty little shoe, Lord? Can you condemn a poor mother to fifteen years of torment ? Kind Virgin, gracious Lady of Heaven! they have taken away my child-Jesus; they have stolen her; they devoured her flesh upon the heath, they drank her blood, they gnawed her bones! Gracious Virgin, have pity upon me! My daughter! I must have my daughter! What do I care if she is in paradise? I don't want an angel; I want my child. I am a lioness, roaring for my cub. Oh, I will writhe upon the ground, I will beat my forehead against the stones, and I will be forever damned, and I will curse you, Lord, if you keep my child from me! You see that my arms are all bitten and torn, Lord! Has the good God no compassion? Oh, give me nothing but salt and black bread, but give me back my daughter, and she will warm me like the sun! Alas! God, my Lord, I am but a vile sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion from love of her; and I saw you through her smile as through an opening in the heavens. Oh, if I could only once, once more, just once more, put this shoe on her pretty little rosy foot, I would die, kind Virgin, blessing you! Ah! 'twas fifteen years ago. She would be almost a woman now! Unhappy child! What! then it is indeed true I shall never see her again, not even in heaven, for I shall never go there! Oh, what misery! to think that there is her shoe, and that is all I have left!"
The unhappy woman had flung herself upon the shoe, for so many years her consolation and her despair, and she burst into heartrending sobs as if it were the very day it happened; for to a mother who has lost her child, her loss is ever present. Such grief as that never grows old. The garments of mourning may rust and wear out; the heart remains forever darkened.
At this instant the fresh, gay voices of a band of children were heard outside, passing the cell. Every time that a child met her eye or ear, the poor mother rushed into the blackest corner of her tomb, and seemed trying to bury her head in the stone walls, that she might not hear or see them. But today, on the contrary, she sprang up hastily, and listened eagerly. One of the little boys said,--
"They are going to hang a gipsy girl today."
With the sudden leap of that spider which we saw rush upon a fly when her web quivered, she ran to her window, which looked, as the reader knows, upon the Place de Greve. A ladder was indeed erected close to the permanent gallows, and the hangman's assistant was arranging the chains rusted by the rain. A number of people stood about watching him.
The laughing group of children had already vanished. The recluse looked about for some passer-by, whom she might question. She noticed, close by her cell, a priest, who feigned to be reading the public breviary, but who was far less occupied with the "letters latticed with iron" than with the gibbet, towards which he cast repeated wild and gloomy glances. She recognized him as the archdeacon of Josas, a holy man.
"Father," she asked, "who is to be hanged yonder?"
The priest stared at her, and made no answer; she repeated her question. Then he said,--
"I do not know."
"The children said that it was a gipsy girl," continued the recluse.
"I believe it is," said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into a hyena-like laugh.
"Sister," said the archdeacon, "do you hate the gipsies so intensely?"
"Do I hate them!" cried the recluse; "they are witches, child stealers ! They devoured my little girl, my child, my only child! I have no heart now; they ate it!"
She was frightful to look upon. The priest gazed coldly at her.
"There is one whom I hate particularly, and whom I have cur
sed," she added; "she is young,--about the age that my daughter would have been if her mother had not eaten my girl. Every time that young viper passes my cell, my blood boils!"
"Well, then, sister, rejoice," said the priest, as cold as the statue on a monument; "it is that same girl whose death you are about to witness."
His head fell upon his breast, and he moved slowly away.
The recluse wrung her hands with joy.
"I told her she would mount those steps! Thanks, Sir Priest!" she cried.
And she began to stride up and down behind her barred window, with disheveled hair and flaming eyes, striking her shoulder against the wall as she moved, with the savage air of a caged wolf which has long gone hungry, and knows that feeding-time is at hand.
CHAPTER VI
Three Men's Hearts, Differently Constituted
Phoebus, however, was not dead. Men of his kind are hard to kill. When Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, said to poor Esmeralda, "He is dying," he was either mistaken or joking. When the archdeacon, in pronouncing her sentence, repeated, "He is dead," the fact was that he knew nothing whatever about it, but that he supposed so, he reckoned upon it, had no doubt of it, sincerely hoped it was so. It would have been too much to expect of him, that he should carry good news of his rival to the woman he loved. Any man would have done the same in his place.
Not that Phoebus's wound was not severe, but it was less so than the archdeacon flattered himself. The surgeon, to whose house the soldiers of the watch had at once carried him, had for a week feared for his life, and even told him so in Latin. However, youth triumphed ; and, as frequently happens, prognosis and diagnosis to the contrary, Nature amused herself by saving the patient in spite of the doctor. It was while he still lay upon his sick-bed that he underwent the first examination from Philippe Lheulier and the board of inquiry from the Bishop's Court, which annoyed him exceedingly. Accordingly, one fine morning, feeling better, he left his golden spurs in payment of the doctor, and slipped away. This circumstance, moreover, did not at all disturb the legal proceedings. Justice in those days cared little for precision and accuracy in a criminal suit. Provided the prisoner were hanged, that was all that was necessary. Now, the judges had proof enough against Esmeralda. They believed Phoebus to be dead, and that was the end of the matter.
Phoebus, for his part, had not gone far. He simply rejoined his company, then in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Ile-de-France, a few relays away from Paris.
After all, he had no desire to appear at the trial in person. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous part in it. In fact, he did not quite know what to think about the matter. Irreligious and superstitious, like most soldiers who are nothing but soldiers, when he questioned himself concerning the affair, he felt somewhat uneasy about the goat, about the strange fashion in which he first met Esmeralda, the no less strange fashion in which she had allowed him to guess her love for him, the fact of her gipsy blood, and lastly the goblin monk. He had a dim idea that there was far more magic than love in the story, that there was probably a witch, perhaps the devil, mixed up in it; it was a very disagreeable farce, or, to use the language of the day, a mystery, in which he played a most awkward part,--that of the butt for cuffs and laughter. He felt quite sheepish about it; he experienced that kind of shame which La Fontaine so admirably defines:--
"Shamefaced as a fox by timid chicken caught."
However, he hoped that the affair would not be noised abroad, and that he being absent, his name would scarcely be mentioned, and in any case would not be known outside the court-room. In this he was not mistaken; for there was no Police Gazette then; and as a week seldom passed but there was some coiner boiled, or witch hanged, or heretic burned, by one of the innumerable justices of Paris, people were so much accustomed to seeing the old feudal Themis at every street corner, with her sleeves tucked up and her arms bare, doing her work at the gibbet, the whipping-post, or the pillory, that they hardly noticed her. The aristocracy of that day scarcely knew the name of the victim who passed them on the street, and at most it was only the mob that regaled itself with this coarse meat. An execution was a common incident in the highways, like the baker's kneading-trough, or the butcher's shambles. The hangman was but a kind of butcher a shade more skillful than the other.
Phoebus accordingly soon set his mind at rest in regard to the enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her; to the stab inflicted by the gipsy or the goblin monk (to him it mattered little which); and to the issue of the trial. But no sooner was his heart vacant on that score, than the image of Fleur-de-Lys re-entered it. The heart of Captain Phoebus, like the physics of that time, abhorred a vacuum.
Besides, Queue-en-Brie was a very tedious abode,--a village of farriers, and dairymaids with chapped hands; a long string of huts and hovels bordering the high-road on either side for half a league.
Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one,--a pretty girl with a delightful dowry; therefore, one fine morning, completely cured of his wound, and feeling sure that after a lapse of two months the gipsy matter must be past and forgotten, the amorous knight appeared in state at the door of the Gondelaurier house.
He paid no heed to a somewhat numerous crowd which had gathered in the square in front of Notre-Dame; he recollected that it was the month of May; he supposed there was some procession, that it was Pentecost or some other holiday, fastened his horse to the ring at the porch, and went joyously upstairs to see his fair betrothed.
She was alone with her mother.
Fleur-de-Lys ever had upon her mind the scene with the sorceress, her goat, her accursed alphabet, and Phoebus's long absence. Still, when her captain entered, he looked so handsome with his spick-and-span new uniform, his glittering baldric, and his impassioned air, that she blushed for pleasure.
The noble damsel herself was more lovely than ever. Her superb light hair was braided in the most ravishing manner; she was dressed from head to foot in that sky-blue which is so becoming to fair skins,--a piece of coquetry which Colombe had taught her; and her eyes swam in that languor of love which is still more becoming.
Phoebus, who had seen no beauties of any sort since he left the rustic wenches of Queue-en-Brie, was carried away by Fleur-de-Lys, and this lent such cordiality and gallantry to his manner that his peace was soon made. Madame de Gondelaurier herself, still seated maternally in her great arm-chair, had not the courage to scold him. As for the reproaches of Fleur-de-Lys, they died away in tender cooings.
The young girl sat by the window, still working away at her Neptune's cave. The captain leaned against the back of her chair, and she addressed her affectionate complaints to him in an undertone.
"Where have you been for these two months, you naughty fellow?"
"I swear," replied Phoebus, somewhat embarrassed by the question, "that you are handsome enough to disturb the dreams of an archbishop."
She could not help smiling.
"There, there, sir! Leave my beauty out of the question, and answer me. Fine beauty, indeed!"
"Well, dear cousin, I was sent back to garrison."
"And where, pray? And why didn't you come and take leave of me?"
"At Queue-en-Brie."
Phoebus was enchanted that the first question helped him to evade the second.
"But that is close by, sir. Why did you never come to see us?"
Here Phoebus was seriously embarrassed.
"Why--my duties--And then, fair cousin, I have been ill."
"Ill!" she repeated in alarm.
"Yes,--wounded."
"Wounded!"
The poor child was quite overcome.
"Oh, don't be frightened about that!" said Phoebus, indifferently; "it was nothing. A quarrel, a sword-thrust; why should that trouble you?"
"Why should that trouble me?" cried Fleur-de-Lys, raising her lovely eyes bathed in tears. "Oh, you do not really mean what you say! What was this sword-thrust? I insist upon knowing everything."
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"Well, then, my dear, I had a row with Mahe Fedy,--you know whom I mean,--the lieutenant from Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and each of us ripped up a few inches of the other's skin. That's all there is about it."
The lying captain was well aware that an affair of honor always exalts a man in a woman's eyes. In fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him in the face, quivering with terror, delight, and admiration. Still, she was not completely reassured.
"If you are sure that you are quite cured, dear Phoebus!" said she. "I don't know your Mahe Fedy, but he is a bad man. And what did you quarrel about?"
Here Phoebus, whose imagination was only tolerably active, began to wonder how he was to get out of the scrape.
"Oh, I don't know,--a trifle, a horse, a bit of gossip! Fair cousin," cried he, in order to change the conversation, "what can that noise be in the square?"
He stepped to the window.
"Heavens! fair cousin, what a crowd there is in the square!"
"I don't know," said Fleur-de-Lys, "but I heard that a witch was to do public penance this morning before the church, and to be hanged afterwards."
The captain felt so sure that Esmeralda's affair was well over, that he took very little interest in Fleur-de-Lys' words. Still he asked her one or two questions.
"What is this witch's name?"
"I do not know," replied she.
"And what do they claim that she has done?"
She again shrugged her white shoulders.
"I don't know."
"Oh, my sweet Savior!" said the mother, "there are so many sorcerers nowadays that they burn them, I verily believe, without knowing their names. You might as well try to find out the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, we may rest easy. The good God keeps his list." Here the venerable lady rose, and came to the window. "Good Lord!" said she, "you're right, Phoebus. What a rabble! Bless me! if they haven't climbed upon the house-tops! Do you know, Phoebus, it reminds me of my young days. When King Charles VII entered Paris, there was exactly such a crowd. I've forgotten, now, just what year that was. When I talk to you of such matters, it seems to you like ancient history, doesn't it, while to me it seems quite recent. Oh, that was a much finer-looking crowd than this is! They even hung upon the battlements of the Porte Saint-Antoine. The king had the queen on the crupper behind him, and after their Highnesses came all the ladies riding on the cruppers of all the lords. I remember people laughed well because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short of stature, was my lord Matefelon, a knight of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of Englishmen. It was a splendid sight. A procession of all the gentlemen in France, with their oriflammes blazing in our very eyes. Some bore pennons and some bore banners. How can I tell you who they all were? There was the Lord of Calan, with his pennon; Jean de Chateaumorant with his banner; the Lord of Coucy, with his banner, and a showier one it was, too, than any of the others except that of the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! how sad it is to think that all that has been, and that nothing of it remains!"