by Victor Hugo
"Pooh!" said she, "that man is drunk. 'Twas more than a year ago that the tail of a cart full of stones was backed into my window and destroyed the grating. And, what's more, I scolded the carter roundly."
"That's true," said another archer; "I was here at the time."
There are always people everywhere who have seen everything. This unexpected testimony from the archer encouraged the recluse, who during this interrogatory felt as if she were crossing a precipice on the sharp edge of a knife.
But she was condemned to a continual alternation between hope and fear.
"If it was done by a cart," returned the first soldier, "the broken ends of the bars would have been driven inward; but they are bent outward."
"Ho! ho!" said Tristan; "your nose is as sharp as that of any inquisitor at the Chatelet. Answer him, old woman!"
"Good heavens!" she cried, at her wits' end, and in a voice which despite all her efforts was tearful, "I swear, sir, that it was a cart which broke those bars. You heard that man say he saw it; and besides, what has that to do with your gipsy?"
"Hum!" growled Tristan.
"The devil!" added the soldier, flattered by the provost's praises; "the fractures in the iron are quite fresh!"
Tristan shook his head. She turned pale.
"How long ago did you say this affair of the cart occurred?"
"A month,--perhaps a fortnight, sir. I'm sure I don't remember."
"She said it was a year, just now," observed the soldier.
"That looks queer!" said the provost.
"Sir," she cried, still pressing close to the window, and trembling lest their suspicions should lead them to put in their heads and examine the cell,--"sir, I swear it was a cart that broke these bars; I swear it by all the angels in paradise! If it was not a cart, may I be damned forever: and may God renounce me."
"You seem very ready to swear!" said Tristan, with his searching glance.
The poor woman felt her courage sink. She was in a state to commit any folly, and with terror she realized she was saying what she ought not to say.
Here another soldier ran up, shouting,--
"Sir, the old fagot lies. The witch did not escape through the Rue du Mouton. The chain has been stretched across the street all night, and the chain-keeper has seen no one pass."
Tristan, whose face grew more forbidding every instant, addressed the recluse:--
"What have you to say to this?"
She still strove to brave this fresh contradiction.
"I don't know, sir; I may have been mistaken. I dare say, indeed, that she crossed the water."
"That is in the opposite direction," said the provost. "However, it is not very likely that she would wish to return to the City, where she was closely pursued. You lie, old woman!"
"And then," added the first soldier, "there is no boat either on this side of the water or on the other."
"Perhaps she swam across," replied the recluse, disputing the ground inch by inch.
"Can women swim?" said the soldier.
"Odds bodikins! old woman! you lie! you lie!" angrily rejoined Tristan. "I have a great mind to let the witch go, and hang you in her stead. A quarter of an hour of the rack may wring the truth from your lips. Come! follow us!"
She seized eagerly upon his words:--
"As you like, sir. So be it, so be it! The rack. I am willing. Take me. Be quick; be quick. Let us be off at once. Meantime," thought she, "my daughter may escape."
"Zounds!" said the provost; "so greedy for the rack! I don't understand this mad-woman!"
An old grey-headed sergeant of the watch stepped from the ranks, and addressing the provost, said,--
"Mad, indeed, sir! If she let the gipsy go, it was not her fault, for she has no liking for gipsies. For fifteen years I have done duty on the watch, and I have heard her curse the gipsy women nightly with endless execrations. If the girl of whom we are in search is, as I suppose, the little dancer with the goat, she particularly detests her."
Gudule made an effort, and said,--
"Particularly."
The unanimous testimony of the men belonging to the watch confirmed the old sergeant's statement. Tristan l'Hermite, despairing of learning anything from the recluse, turned his back upon her, and with unspeakable anxiety she saw him move slowly towards his horse.
"Come," he muttered, "we must be off. Let us resume our search. I shall not sleep until this gipsy girl be hanged."
Still, he hesitated some time before mounting his horse. Gudule trembled between life and death as she saw him glance about the square with the restless air of a hunting-dog, which scents the lair of the wild beast and refuses to depart. At last he shook his head and leaped into his saddle. Gudule's terribly overladen heart swelled, and she said in a low voice, with a glance at her daughter, at whom she had not dared to look while the soldiers were there, "Saved!"
The poor girl had crouched in her corner all this time, without moving or breathing, staring death in the face. She had lost none of the scene between Gudule and Tristan, and each of her mother's pangs had found an echo in her own soul. She had heard the successive snappings of the thread which held her suspended over the abyss; twenty times she had felt that it must break, and now at last she began to breathe freely, and to hope that her footing was secure. At this instant she heard a voice say to the provost,--
"'Sblood! Mr. Provost, it is no business for a soldier to hang witches. The mob still rages yonder. I must leave you to your own devices. You will not object to my rejoining my company, who are left without a captain."
This voice was that of Phoebus de Chateaupers. She underwent an indescribable revulsion of feeling. So he was there,--her friend, her protector, her stay, her refuge, her Phoebus! She rose, and before her mother could prevent her, flew to the window, crying,--
"Phoebus! help, my Phoebus!"
Phoebus was no longer there.22 He had just galloped round the corner of the Rue de la Coutellerie. But Tristan was not yet gone.
The recluse flung herself upon her daughter with a roar. She dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck. A tigress does not look twice when the safety of her young is in question. But it was too late. Tristan had seen her.
"Ha! ha!" cried he, with a laugh which bared all his teeth, and made his face look like the muzzle of a wolf, "two mice in the trap!"
"I thought as much," said the soldier.
Tristan clapped him on the shoulder, "You are a famous cat! Come," he added, "where is Henriet Cousin?"
A man who had neither the dress nor the manner of a soldier stepped from the ranks. He wore a motley garb of brown and grey, his hair was smooth and lank, his sleeves were of leather, and in his huge hand was a bundle of rope. This man always accompanied Tristan, who always accompanied Louis XI.
"My friend," said Tristan l'Hermite, "I presume that this is the witch we are seeking. You will hang her for me. Have you your ladder?"
"There is one yonder under the shed of the Maison-aux-Piliers," replied the man. "Are we to do the business on this gallows?" he continued, pointing to the stone gibbet.
"Yes."
"Ho! ho!" rejoined the man, with a coarse laugh even more bestial than that of the provost; "we sha'n't have far to go."
"Despatch!" said Tristan; "you can laugh afterwards."
Meantime, since Tristan had seen her daughter, and all hope was lost, the recluse had not spoken a word. She had cast the poor gipsy, almost lifeless, into the corner of the cell, and resumed her place at the window, her hands clinging to the sides of the frame like two claws. In this position her eyes wandered boldly over the soldiers, the light of reason having once more faded from them. When Henriet Cousin approached her refuge, she glared so savagely at him that he shrank back.
"Sir," said he, returning to the provost, "which am I to take?"
"The young one."
"So much the better; for the old one seems hard to manage."
"Poor little dancer with the goat!" said th
e old sergeant of the watch.
Henriet Cousin again advanced to the window. The mother's eye made his own fall. He said somewhat timidly,--
"Madame,--"
She interrupted him in very low but furious tones:
"What do you want?"
"Not you," said he; "it is the other."
"What other?"
"The young one."
She began to wag her head, crying,--
"There's nobody here! there's nobody here! there's nobody here!"
"Yes, there is!" rejoined the hangman, "and you know it well. Let me have the young one. I don't want to harm you."
She said with a strange sneer,--
"Ah! you don't want to harm me!"
"Let me have the other, madame; it is the provost's will."
She repeated with a foolish look,--
"There's nobody here!"
"I tell you there is!" replied the hangman; "we all saw that there were two of you."
"Look then!" said the recluse, with a sneer. "Put your head in at the window."
The hangman scrutinized the mother's nails, and dared not venture.
"Despatch!" cried Tristan, who had ranged his men in a ring around the Rat-Hole, and himself sat on horseback near the gibbet.
Henriet returned to the provost once more, utterly out of countenance. He had laid his rope on the ground, and awkwardly twirled his hat in his hands.
"Sir," he inquired, "how am I to get in?"
"Through the door."
"There is none."
"Through the window."
"It is too small."
"Then make it bigger," angrily exclaimed Tristan. "Have you no pickaxes?"
From the back of her den, the mother, ever on the alert, watched them. She had lost all hope, she knew not what she wished, but they should not have her daughter.
Henriet Cousin went to fetch his box of tools from the shed of the Maison-aux-Piliers. He also brought out the trestles, which he at once set up against the gibbet. Five or six of the provost's men armed themselves with picks and levers, and Tristan moved towards the window with them.
"Old woman," said the provost in a stern voice, "surrender that girl with a good grace."
She looked at him like one who does not understand.
"'Sblood!" added Tristan, "why should you prevent that witch from being hanged, as it pleases the king?"
The wretched woman began to laugh wildly.
"Why? She is my daughter!"
The tone in which she uttered that word made even Henriet Cousin shudder.
"I am sorry," replied the provost, "but it is the king's good plea sure".
She shrieked with redoubled laughter,--
"What is your king to me? I tell you she is my daughter!"
"Make a hole in the wall," said Tristan.
It was only necessary to remove one course of stones under the window, in order to make an opening of sufficient size. When the mother heard the picks and levers undermining her fortress, she uttered an awful scream; then she began to pace her cell with frightful speed,--one of the habits of a wild beast which she had acquired in her cage. She said no more, but her eyes flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the marrow.
All at once she caught up her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it with both hands at the workmen. The stone, ill aimed (for her hands trembled), struck no one and fell at the feet of Tristan's horse. She ground her teeth.
Meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad daylight; a lovely pink tint illumined the worm-eaten old chimneys of the Maison-aux-Piliers. It was the hour when the windows of the earliest risers in the great city open joyously upon the roofs. Some few country people, some fruiterers going to market on their donkeys, began to pass through the Place de Greve; they paused a moment at sight of this cluster of soldiers huddled in front of the Rat-Hole, looked at them in surprise, then went their way.
The recluse had seated herself beside her daughter, covering her with her body, her eye fixed, listening to the poor girl, who never stirred, but murmured softly the one word, "Phoebus! Phoebus!" As the work of the destroyers progressed, the mother mechanically moved back, pressing the young girl closer and closer against the wall. All at once she saw the stones (for she was on the watch and never took her eyes from them) quiver, and she heard Tristan's voice urging the laborers on. Then she woke from the stupor into which she had sunk, exclaiming,--and, as she spoke, her voice now pierced the ear like a saw, then stammered as if all the curses which she uttered crowded to her lips at once:
"Ho! ho! ho! But this is horrible! You are robbers! Do you really mean to take my daughter from me? I tell you it is my daughter! Oh, cowards! Oh, base hangmen! Vile assassins! Help! help! Fire! Will they thus take my child? Then, what is he whom men call the good God?"
Then turning to Tristan, with foaming mouth, haggard eyes, on all fours like a panther, and bristling with rage:--
"Come and take my daughter! Do you not understand that this woman tells you it is her daughter? Do you know what it is to have a child of your own? Have you no mate, O lynx? Have you never had a cub? And if you have little ones, when they howl does nothing stir within you?"
"Down with the stones," said Tristan; "they are loosened."
The levers lifted the ponderous course of stone. It was, as we have said, the mother's last bulwark.
She threw herself upon it, tried to hold it up. She scratched it with her nails; but the heavy block, set in motion by six men, escaped from her grasp and slid gently to the ground along the iron levers.
The mother, seeing that an entrance was effected, fell across the opening, barricading the breach with her body, wringing her hands, beating her head against the flagstones, and shrieking in a voice hoarse with fatigue and scarcely audible,--
"Help! Fire! fire!"
"Now, seize the girl," said Tristan, still unmoved.
The mother glared at the soldiers in so terrible a fashion they would much rather have retreated than advanced.
"Come, come," repeated the provost. "Here, Henriet Cousin!"
No one stirred a step.
The provost swore:--
"By the Cross! my soldiers! Afraid of a woman!"
"Sir," said Henriet, "do you call that a woman?"
"She has a lion's mane!" said another.
"Come!" resumed the provost, "the gap is broad enough. Go in three abreast, as at the breach of Pontoise. Have done with it, by the head of Mahomet! The first who recoils I'll cut in two!"
Thus placed between the provost and the mother, both alike menacing, the soldiers hesitated an instant; then, making their choice, they advanced upon the Rat-hole.
When the recluse saw this, she rose suddenly to her knees, shook her hair back from her face, then let her thin, bleeding hands fall upon her thighs. Great tears started one by one from her eyes; they trickled down a wrinkle in her cheeks, like a torrent down the bed which it has worn for itself. At the same time she spoke, but in a voice so suppliant, so sweet, so submissive, and so full of pathos, that more than one old fire-eater about Tristan wiped his eyes.
"Gentlemen! soldiers! one word. I must say one thing to you. She is my daughter, you see,--my dear little daughter whom I lost! Listen. It is quite a story. You must know that I was once very friendly with the soldiers. They were always kind to me in the days when little boys threw stones at me because I led a light life. Do you see? You will leave me my child, when you know all! I am a poor woman of the town. The gipsies stole her away from me. I kept her shoe for fifteen years. Stay; here it is. That was the size of her foot. Paquette Chantefleurie, at Rheims.--Rue Folle-Peine! Perhaps you knew her once. That was I. When you were young, you led a merry life; there were fine doings then. You will take pity on me, won't you, gentlemen? The gipsies stole her from me; they kept her hidden from me for fifteen years. I thought she was dead. Only fancy, my kind friends, I thought she was dead. I have spent fifteen years here, in this cave, with never a spark of fire in winter. That was hard to
bear, that was. The poor, dear little shoe! I have shed so many tears that the good God heard me. Last night he gave me back my girl. The good God wrought a miracle. She was not dead. You will not take her from me, I am sure. If it were only myself, I would not complain; but for her, a child of sixteen! Let her have time to see the sun! What has she done to you? Nothing at all. No more have I. If you only knew that I have nobody but her, that I am old, that she is a blessing sent down to me by the Holy Virgin! And then, you are all so kind! You did not know that she was my daughter; now you know it. Oh, I love her! Mr. Provost, I would rather have a hole through my heart than a scratch on her finger. You look like a good, kind gentleman! What I tell you, explains the whole thing, doesn't it? Oh, if you ever had a mother, sir! You are the captain; leave me my child! Remember that I pray to you on my knees, as one prays to Jesus Christ! I ask nothing of any one; I am from Rheims, gentlemen; I have a little field there, left me by my uncle, Mahiet Pradon. I am not a beggar. I want nothing, but I must have my child! Oh, I must keep my child! The good God, who is master of us all, never gave her back to me for nothing! The king! you say the king! It can't give him much pleasure to have my little girl killed! And besides, the king is good! It's my daughter! It's my daughter, my own girl! She is not the king's! she is not yours! I will go away! we will both go away! After all, they will let two women pass,--a mother and her daughter! Let us pass! we are from Rheims! Oh, you are very kind, sergeants! I love you all. You will not take my dear little one from me; it is impossible, isn't it? Utterly impossible! My child, my child!"
We will not try to give any idea of her gestures, of her accent, of the tears which she swallowed as she spoke, of her hands which she clasped and then wrung, of the heartrending smiles, the pathetic glances, the groans, the sighs, the agonizing and piercing cries which she mingled with her wild, incoherent, rambling words. When she ceased, Tristan l'Hermite frowned, but it was to hide a tear that dimmed his tigerish eye. However, he conquered this weakness, and said curtly,--
"It is the king's command."
Then he bent down to Henriet Cousin and said in a low voice,--
"Put an end to this!"
Perhaps the terrible provost himself felt his heart fail him.
The hangman and his men entered the cell. The mother made no resistance. She only dragged herself towards her daughter and threw herself heavily upon her.