Notre-Dame de Paris
Victor Hugo
CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE. Page 4
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,--
"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."
"~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."
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.
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."
"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 Châtelet. Reply to 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, '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.
"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,
"I do not know, monseigneur; that I may have been mistaken. I believe, in fact, 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."
"She swam across," replied the recluse, defending ground foot by foot.
"~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."
"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 escape."
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 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.
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 voice was of Phoebus de Châteaupers; that which took place within her was ineffable. He was there, her friend, protector, her support, 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.
"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?"
"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,--
"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,--
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."
"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?"
"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.
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 an air of astonishment and passed on.
The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, covering her with her body, in front of her, with staring eyes, listening to the poor child, who did not stir, but who kept murmuring in a low voice, these words only, "Phoebus! Phoebus!" In proportion as the work of the demolishers seemed to advance, the mother mechanically retreated, and pressed the young girl closer and closer to the wall. All at once, the recluse beheld the stone (for she was standing guard and never took her eyes from it), move, and she heard Tristan's voice encouraging the workers. Then she aroused from the depression into which she had fallen during the last few moments, cried out, and as she spoke, her voice now rent the ear like a saw, then stammered as though all kind of maledictions were pressing to her lips to burst forth at once.