by Victor Hugo
The priest caught her fiercely in his arms, and began to laugh an abominable laugh.
"Well, yes, an assassin!" said he; "and you shall be mine. You will not have me for your slave, you shall have me for your master. You shall be mine! You shall be mine! I have a den whither I will drag you. You must follow me, you must needs follow me, or I will give you up to justice! You must die, my beauty, or be mine,--be the priest's, the apostate's, the assassin's! and that this night; do you hear me? Come! rejoice; come, kiss me, foolish girl! The tomb, or my bed!"
His eyes flashed with rage and desire. His impure lips reddened the neck of the young girl. She struggled in his arms. He covered her with frantic kisses.
"Do not bite me, monster!" she shrieked. "Oh, the hateful, poisonous monk! Let me go! I will tear out your vile grey hair, and throw it by handfuls in your face!"
He flushed, then paled, then released her, and looked at her gloomily. She thought herself victorious, and went on:--
"I tell you that I belong to my Phoebus, that 'tis Phoebus I love, that Phoebus alone is handsome! You priest, are old! you are ugly! Begone!"
He uttered a violent cry, like the wretch to whom a red-hot iron is applied. "Then die!" he said, gnashing his teeth. She saw his frightful look, and strove to fly. He overtook her, shook her, threw her down, and walked rapidly towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after him over the pavement by her fair hands.
Reaching it, he turned to her:--
"For the last time, will you be mine?"
She answered emphatically,--
"No!"
Then he called in a loud voice,--
"Gudule! Gudule! here is the gipsy girl! Avenge yourself!"
The young girl felt herself suddenly seized by the elbow. She looked. A fleshless arm was thrust from a loop-hole in the wall, and held her with an iron grip.
"Hold her fast!" said the priest; "it's the runaway gipsy. Do not let her go. I will fetch the officers. You shall see her hanged."
A guttural laugh from the other side of the wall replied to these bloody words: "Ha! ha! ha!" The gipsy saw the priest depart in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. The tramp of horses was heard coming from that quarter.
The girl recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with terror, she tried to release herself. She writhed, she twisted herself in agony and despair; but the woman held her with unnatural strength. The thin bony fingers which bruised her flesh fastened about her arm like a vise. That hand seemed riveted to her wrist. It was stronger than any chain, stronger than any pillory or iron ring; it was a pair of intelligent and living pincers issuing from a wall.
Exhausted, she sank back, and the fear of death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life, of youth, of the sight of the sky, of the various aspects of Nature, of the love of Phoebus, of all that was behind her and of all that was rapidly coming upon her, of the priest who would denounce her, of the hangman who would soon arrive, of the gallows which was already there. Then terror rose to the very roots of her hair, and she heard the melancholy laugh of the recluse, as she whispered in her ear,--
"Ha! ha! ha! You shall be hanged!"
She turned, almost fainting, to the window, and saw the savage face of the sachette through the bars.
"What have I done to you?" she asked feebly.
The recluse made no answer; she began to mumble in angry, mocking sing-song, "Gipsy girl! gipsy girl! gipsy girl!"
The luckless Esmeralda veiled her face with her hair, seeing that it was no human being with whom she had to deal.
All at once the recluse exclaimed, as if the gipsy's question had taken all this time to penetrate her troubled brain:--
"What have you done to me, do you say? Ah! What have you done to me, indeed, you gipsy! Well, listen, and I will tell you. I had a child, even I! Do you hear? I had a child,--a child, I say! A pretty little girl! My Agnes," she repeated, her wits wandering for a moment, and kissing something in the gloom. "Well, are you listening, gipsy? They stole my child; they took my child from me; they ate my child! That is what you have done to me."
The young girl answered, as innocently as the lamb in the fable,--
"Alas! I probably was not even born then!"
"Oh, yes!" rejoined the recluse, "you must have been born. You had a hand in it. She would have been about your age! There! For fifteen years I have been in this hole; for fifteen years I have suffered; for fifteen years I have prayed; for fifteen years I have dashed my head against these four walls. I tell you, 'twas the gipsies who stole her from me,--do you hear?--and who gnawed her bones. Have you a heart? Fancy what it is to have a child who plays at your knee; a child who sucks your breast; a child who sleeps in your arms. It is such a helpless, innocent thing! Well, that,--that's what they took from me, what they killed for me! The good God knows it well! Now it is my turn; I will slaughter the Egyptians. Oh, how I would bite you, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too big to pass through them! Poor little thing! they took her while she slept! And if they waked her when they snatched her up, all her shrieks were vain; I was not there! Ah, gipsy mothers, you ate my child! Come, look at yours!"
Then she began to laugh, or gnash her teeth, for the two things were much the same in that frenzied face. Dawn was at hand. An ashen light faintly illumined the scene, and the gallows became more and more distinctly visible in the center of the square. From the other side, towards the Pont Notre-Dame the poor prisoner imagined she heard the tramp of approaching horsemen.
"Madame," she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, disheveled, frantic, mad with fright,--"Madame, have pity! they are coming. I never harmed you. Would you see me die so horrible a death before your very eyes? You are merciful, I am sure. It is too awful! Let me save myself! Let me go! Have mercy! I cannot die thus!"
"Give me back my child!" said the recluse.
"Mercy! mercy!"
"Give me back my child!"
"Let me go, in Heaven's name!"
"Give me back my child!"
Upon this, the girl sank down, worn out and exhausted, her eyes already having the glazed look of one dead.
"Alas!" she stammered forth, "you seek your child, and I seek my parents."
"Give me my little Agnes!" continued Gudule. "You know not where she is? Then die! I will tell you all. I was a prostitute; I had a child; they took my child from me. It was the gipsies who did it. You see that you must die. When your gipsy mother comes to claim you, I shall say, 'Mother, look upon that gibbet!--Or else restore my child!' Do you know where she is,--where my little girl is? Stay, I will show you. Here's her shoe,--all that is left me. Do you know where the mate to it is? If you know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I will go on my knees to get it."
So saying, with her other hand, stretched through the bars, she showed the gipsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to distinguish the shape and colors.
"Show me that shoe," said the gipsy shuddering. "My God! my God!"
And at the same time with her free hand she hastily opened the little bag adorned with green glass beads, which she wore about her neck.
"That's it! that's it!" growled Gudule; "search for your devilish spells!"
All at once she stopped short, trembled from head to foot, and cried out in a voice which came from her inmost soul, "My daughter!"
The gipsy had drawn from the bag a tiny shoe, precisely like the other. A strip of parchment was fastened to the little shoe, upon which these verses were written:
"When the mate to this you find,
Thy mother is not far behind."
Quick as a flash of lightning the recluse compared the two shoes, read the inscription on the parchment, and pressed her face, beaming with divine rapture, to the window-bars exclaiming,--
"My daughter! my daughter!"
"Mother!" replied the gipsy.
Here we must forbear to set down more.
The wall and the iron grating parted
the two. "Oh, the wall!" cried the recluse. "Oh, to see her and not to kiss her! Your hand! your hand!"
The girl put her arm through the window; the recluse threw herself upon the hand, pressed her lips to it, and stood lost in that kiss, the only sign of life being an occasional sob which heaved her bosom. Yet she wept torrents of tears in silence, in the darkness, like rain falling in the night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that idolized hand the dark, deep fountain of tears within her heart, into which all her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for fifteen years.
Suddenly she rose, flung her long grey hair back from her face, and without a word began to shake the bars of her cell more fiercely than a lioness. They held firm. Then she brought from one corner a large paving-stone which served her as a pillow, and hurled it against them with such violence that one of them broke, flashing countless sparks. A second blow utterly destroyed the old iron cross which barricaded her window. Then with both hands she pulled out and demolished the rusty fragments. There are moments when a woman's hands seem endowed with supernatural strength.
A passage being cleared,--and it took less than a minute to do the work,--she seized her daughter by the waist and dragged her into the cell. "Come, let me draw you out of the abyss!" she murmured.
When her daughter was in the cell, she placed her gently on the ground, then took her up again, and bearing her in her arms as if she were still her little Agnes, she paced to and fro in the narrow space, frantic, mad with joy, singing, shouting, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into laughter, melting into tears, all at once, and with the utmost passion.
"My daughter! my daughter!" she cried. "I've found my daughter! Here she is! The good God has restored her to me. Come, all of you! Is there no one here to see that I've found my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was to make her more beautiful for me! Then the gipsies did not eat her! Who told me so? My little girl! my little girl! kiss me. Those good gipsies! I love gipsies. It is really you. Then that was why my heart leaped within me every time you passed; and I thought it was hate! Forgive me, Agnes, forgive me. You thought me very cruel, didn't you? I love you. Have you still the same little mark on your neck? Let us see. She has it still. Oh, how beautiful you are! It was I who gave you those big eyes, miss. Kiss me. I love you. I care not now if other mothers have children; I can laugh them to scorn. They may come. Here is mine. Here's her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hand. Find me another as lovely! Oh, I tell you she'll have plenty of lovers, this girl of mine! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has left me and gone to her. Kiss me."
She made her a thousand other extravagant speeches, their only merit being in the tone in which they were uttered, disordered the poor girl's dress until she made her blush, smoothed her silken hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her forehead, her eyes, went into ecstasies over each and all. The young girl made no resistance, but repeated ever and anon, in a low tone and with infinite sweetness, "Mother!"
"Look you, my little one," went on the recluse, interrupting each word with kisses,--"look you; I shall love you dearly. We will go away; we shall be very happy. I have inherited something at Rheims, in our native country. You know, at Rheims? Oh, no! you don't remember; you were too little. If you only knew how pretty you were at four months old! Tiny feet, which people, out of curiosity, came all the way from Epernay, full seven leagues off, to see! We will have a field and a house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God! my God! who would ever have believed it? I've found my daughter!"
"Oh, mother!" said the girl, at last recovering sufficient strength to speak in spite of her emotion, "the gipsy woman told me it would be so. There was a kind gipsy woman of our tribe who died last year, and who always took care of me as if she had been my nurse. It was she who hung this bag about my neck. She always said to me, 'Little one, guard this trinket well. It is a precious treasure; it will help you to find your mother. You wear your mother around your neck.' The gipsy foretold it!"
The sachette again clasped her daughter in her arms.
"Come; let me kiss you! You said that so prettily. When we are in our own country, we will give these little shoes to the Child Jesus in the church; we surely owe that much to the kind Blessed Virgin. Heavens! what a sweet voice you have! When you spoke to me just now, it was like music. Oh, my Lord God, I have found my child! But is it credible,--all this story? Nothing can kill one, for I have not died of joy."
And then she again began to clap her hands, to laugh, and cry,
"How happy we shall be!"
At this moment the cell rang with the clash of arms and the galloping feet of horses, which seemed to come from the Pont Notre-Dame, and to be advancing nearer and nearer along the quay. The gipsy threw herself into the arms of the sachette in an agony.
"Save me! save me, mother! I hear them coming!"
The recluse turned pale.
"Heavens! What do you say? I had forgotten; you are pursued! Why, what have you done?"
"I know not," replied the unhappy child; "but I am condemned to die."
"To die!" said Gudule, tottering as if struck by lightning. "To die!" she repeated slowly, gazing steadily into her daughter's face.
"Yes, mother," replied the desperate girl, "they mean to kill me. They are coming now to capture me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They come! Save me!"
The recluse stood for some moments motionless, as if turned to stone; then she shook her head doubtingly, and all at once burst into loud laughter; but her former frightful laugh had returned:--
"Ho! ho! No; it is a dream! Oh, yes; I lost her, I lost her for fifteen years, and then I found her again, and it was but for an instant! And they would take her from me again! Now that she is grown up, that she is so fair, that she talks to me, that she loves me, they would devour her before my eyes,--mine, who am her mother! Oh, no; such things cannot be! The good God would not suffer them."
Here the cavalcade seemed to pause, and a distant voice was heard, saying,--
"This way, Master Tristan; the priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-Hole!" The tramp of horses began again.
The recluse sprang up with a despairing cry.
"Save yourself! save yourself, my child! I remember now! You are right; it is your death! Horror! Malediction! Save yourself!"
She thrust her head from the window, and rapidly withdrew it.
"Stay!" she said in a low, curt, and mournful tone, convulsively clasping the hand of the gipsy, who was more dead than alive. "Stay! do not breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You cannot go; it is too light."
Her eyes were dry and burning. She stood for a moment speechless; then she strode up and down the cell, pausing at intervals to tear out handfuls of her grey hair. Suddenly she said: "They are coming; I will speak to them. Hide yourself in this corner; they will not see you. I will tell them that you have escaped; that I let you go, by my faith!"
She laid her daughter--for she still held her in her arms--in a corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down, carefully arranged her so that neither hand nor foot protruded beyond the shadow, loosened her black hair, which she spread over her white gown to hide it, put before her her jug and paving-stone,--the only articles of furniture which she had,--imagining that they would conceal her; and when this was done, feeling calmer, she knelt and prayed. Day, which was but just breaking, still left many shadows in the Rat-Hole.
At that instant the voice of the priest--that infernal voice--passed very close to the cell, shouting,--
"This way, Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers!"
At that name, at that voice, Esmeralda, huddling in her corner, made a movement.
"Do not stir!" said Gudule.
She had hardly finished speaking when a riotous crowd of men, swords, and horses, halted outside the cell. The mother rose hastily, and placed herself before the window in such a way as to cut off all view of the room. She saw
a numerous band of armed men, on foot and on horseback, drawn up in the Place de Greve. The officer in command sprang to the ground and came towards her.
"Old woman," said this man, who had an atrocious face, "we are looking for a witch, that we may hang her. We were told that you had her."
The poor mother assumed the most indifferent air that she could, and answered,--
"I don't know what you mean."
The other replied, "Zounds! Then what was that frightened archdeacon talking about? Where is he?"
"Sir," said a soldier, "he has disappeared."
"Come, now, old hag," resumed the commanding officer, "don't lie! A witch was left in your care. What have you done with her?"
The recluse dared not deny everything, lest she should rouse suspicion, and answered in a surly but seemingly truthful tone,--
"If you mean a tall girl who was thrust into my hands just now, I can only tell you that she bit me, and I let her go. There. Now leave me in peace."
The officer pulled a wry face.
"Don't lie to me, old scarecrow!" he replied. "I am Tristan l'Hermite, and I am the friend of the king. Tristan l'Hermite, do you hear?" he added looking round the Place de Greve, "'Tis a name familiar here."
"You might be Satan l'Hermite," responded Gudule, whose hopes began to rise, "and I could tell you nothing more, and should be no more afraid of you."
"Odds bodikins!" said Tristan, "here's a vixen for you! Ah, so the witch girl escaped! And which way did she go?"
Gudule answered indifferently,--
"Through the Rue du Mouton, I believe."
Tristan turned his head, and signed to his troop to prepare to resume their march. The recluse breathed more freely.
"Sir," suddenly said an archer, "pray ask this old sorceress how the bars of her window came to be so twisted and broken."
This question revived the miserable mother's anguish. Still, she did not lose all presence of mind.
"They were always so," she stammered.
"Nonsense!" rejoined the archer; "only yesterday they formed a beautiful black cross which inspired pious thoughts in all who looked upon it."
Tristan cast a side-glance at the recluse.
"It seems to me that our friend looks embarrassed."
The unfortunate woman felt that everything depended upon her putting a good face on the matter, and, with death in her soul, she began to laugh. Mothers have such courage.