Notre-Dame de Paris - Victor Hugo (diy ebook reader .txt) 📗

loves me; it is now that they would come to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother! Oh! no! these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such things as that.”

Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say in the distance⁠—

“This way, Messire Tristan! The priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-Hole.” The noise of the horses began again.

The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. “Fly! fly! my child! All comes back to me. You are right. It is your death! Horror! Maledictions! Fly!”

She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again hastily.

“Remain,” she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive. “Remain! Do not breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You cannot get out. It is too light.”

Her eyes were dry and burning. She remained silent for a moment; but she paced the cell hurriedly, and halted now and then to pluck out handfuls of her gray hairs, which she afterwards tore with her teeth.

Suddenly she said: “They draw near. I will speak with them. Hide yourself in this corner. They will not see you. I will tell them that you have made your escape. That I released you, i’ faith!”

She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that neither foot nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her black hair which she spread over her white robe to conceal it, placed in front of her her jug and her paving stone, the only articles of furniture which she possessed, imagining that this jug and stone would hide her. And when this was finished she became more tranquil, and knelt down to pray. The day, which was only dawning, still left many shadows in the Rat-Hole.

At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice, passed very close to the cell, crying⁠—

“This way, Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers.”

At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her corner, made a movement.

“Do not stir!” said Gudule.

She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and horses halted around the cell. The mother rose quickly and went to post herself before her window, in order to stop it up. She beheld a large troop of armed men, both horse and foot, drawn up on the Grève.

The commander dismounted, and came toward her.

“Old woman!” said this man, who had an atrocious face, “we are in search of a witch to hang her; we were told that you had her.”

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—

“If 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.”

“You might be Satan the Hermit,” replied Gudule, who was regaining hope, “but I should have nothing else to say to you, and I should never be afraid of you.”

“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.”

This question brought anguish again to the heart of the miserable mother. Nevertheless, she did not lose all presence of mind.

“They have always been thus,” she stammered.

“Bah!” retorted the archer, “only yesterday they still formed a fine black cross, which inspired devotion.”

Tristan cast a sidelong glance at the recluse.

“I think the old dame is getting confused!”

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.”

Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen everything. This unexpected testimony from the archer re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forcing to cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she was condemned to a perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.

“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.”

“Hé! hé!” said Tristan to the soldier, “you have the nose of an inquisitor of the Châtelet. Reply to what 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, that ’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!”