Part 88

His eyes sparkled with impurity and rage. His lewd lips reddened the young girl’s neck. She struggled in his arms. He covered her with furious kisses. “Do not bite me, monster!” she cried. “Oh! the foul, odious monk! leave me! I will tear out thy ugly gray hair and fling it in thy face by the handful!” He reddened, turned pale, then released her and gazed at her with a gloomy air. She thought herself victorious, and continued,— “I tell you that I belong to my Phœbus, that ’tis Phœbus whom I love, that ’tis Phœbus who is handsome! you are old, priest! you are ugly! Begone!” He gave vent to a horrible cry, like the wretch to whom a hot iron is applied. “Die, then!” he said, gnashing his teeth. She saw his terrible look and tried to fly. He caught her once more, he shook her, he flung her on the ground, and walked with rapid strides towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after him along the pavement by her beautiful hands. On arriving there, he turned to her,— “For the last time, will you be mine?” She replied with emphasis,— “No!” Then he cried in a loud voice,— “Gudule! Gudule! here is the gypsy! take your vengeance!” The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. She looked. A fleshless arm was stretched from an opening in the wall, and held her like a hand of iron. “Hold her well,” said the priest; “’tis the gypsy escaped. Release her not. I will go in search of the sergeants. You shall see her hanged.” A guttural laugh replied from the interior of the wall to these bloody words—“Hah! hah! hah!”—The gypsy watched the priest retire in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. A cavalcade was heard in that direction. The young girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with terror, she tried to disengage herself. She writhed, she made many starts of agony and despair, but the other held her with incredible strength. The lean and bony fingers which bruised her, clenched on her flesh and met around it. One would have said that this hand was riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more than a fetter, more than a ring of iron, it was a living pair of pincers endowed with intelligence, which emerged from the wall. She fell back against the wall exhausted, and then the fear of death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life, of youth, of the view of heaven, the aspects of nature, of her love for Phœbus, of all that was vanishing and all that was approaching, of the priest who was denouncing her, of the headsman who was to come, of the gallows which was there. Then she felt terror mount to the very roots of her hair and she heard the mocking laugh of the recluse, saying to her in a very low tone: “Hah! hah! hah! you are going to be hanged!” She turned a dying look towards the window, and she beheld the fierce face of the sacked nun through the bars. “What have I done to you?” she said, almost lifeless. The recluse did not reply, but began to mumble with a singsong irritated, mocking intonation: “Daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt!” The unhappy Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her flowing hair, comprehending that it was no human being she had to deal with. All at once the recluse exclaimed, as though the gypsy’s question had taken all this time to reach her brain,—“‘What have you done to me?’ you say! Ah! what have you done to me, gypsy! Well! listen.—I had a child! you see! I had a child! a child, I tell you!—a pretty little girl!—my Agnès!” she went on wildly, kissing something in the dark.—“Well! do you see, daughter of Egypt? they took my child from me; they stole my child; they ate my child. That is what you have done to me.” The young girl replied like a lamb,— “Alas! perchance I was not born then!” “Oh! yes!” returned the recluse, “you must have been born. You were among them. She would be the same age as you! so!—I have been here fifteen years; fifteen years have I suffered; fifteen years have I prayed; fifteen years have I beat my head against these four walls—I tell you that ’twas the gypsies who stole her from me, do you hear that? and who ate her with their teeth.—Have you a heart? imagine a child playing, a child sucking; a child sleeping. It is so innocent a thing!—Well! that, that is what they took from me, what they killed. The good God knows it well! To-day, it is my turn; I am going to eat the gypsy.—Oh! I would bite you well, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too large!—Poor little one! while she was asleep! And if they woke her up when they took her, in vain she might cry; I was not there!—Ah! gypsy mothers, you devoured my child! come see your own.” Then she began to laugh or to gnash her teeth, for the two things resembled each other in that furious face. The day was beginning to dawn. An ashy gleam dimly lighted this scene, and the gallows grew more and more distinct in the square. On the other side, in the direction of the bridge of Notre-Dame, the poor condemned girl fancied that she heard the sound of cavalry approaching. “Madam,” she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, dishevelled, distracted, mad with fright; “madam! have pity! They are coming. I have done nothing to you. Would you wish to see me die in this horrible fashion before your very eyes? You are pitiful, I am sure. It is too frightful. Let me make my escape. Release me! Mercy. I do not wish to die like that!” “Give me back my child!” said the recluse. “Mercy! Mercy!” “Give me back my child!” “Release me, in the name of heaven!” “Give me back my child!” Again the young girl fell; exhausted, broken, and having already the glassy eye of a person in the grave. “Alas!” she faltered, “you seek your child, I seek my parents.” “Give me back my little Agnès!” pursued Gudule. “You do not know where she is? Then die!—I will tell you. I was a woman of the town, I had a child, they took my child. It was the gypsies. You see plainly that you must die. When your mother, the gypsy, comes to reclaim you, I shall say to her: ‘Mother, look at that gibbet!—Or, give me back my child. Do you know where she is, my little daughter? Stay! I will show you. Here is her shoe, all that is left me of her. Do you know where its mate is? If you know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I will crawl to it on my knees.” As she spoke thus, with her other arm extended through the window, she showed the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to distinguish its shape and its colors. “Let me see that shoe,” said the gypsy, quivering. “God! God!” And at the same time, with her hand which was at liberty, she quickly opened the little bag ornamented with green glass, which she wore about her neck. “Go on, go on!” grumbled Gudule, “search your demon’s amulet!” All at once, she stopped short, trembled in every limb, and cried in a voice which proceeded from the very depths of her being: “My daughter!” The gypsy had just drawn from the bag a little shoe absolutely similar to the other. To this little shoe was attached a parchment on which was inscribed this charm,— Quand le pareil retrouveras Ta mère te tendras les bras.[68] Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the two shoes together, had read the parchment and had put close to the bars of the window her face beaming with celestial joy as she cried,— “My daughter! my daughter!” “My mother!” said the gypsy. Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene. The wall and the iron bars were between them. “Oh! the wall!” cried the recluse. “Oh! to see her and not to embrace her! Your hand! your hand!” The young girl passed her arm through the opening; the recluse threw herself on that hand, pressed her lips to it and there remained, buried in that kiss, giving no other sign of life than a sob which heaved her breast from time to time. In the meanwhile, she wept in torrents, in silence, in the dark, like a rain at night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that adored hand the dark and deep well of tears, which lay within her, and into which her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for fifteen years. All at once she rose, flung aside her long gray hair from her brow, and without uttering a word, began to shake the bars of her cage cell, with both hands, more furiously than a lioness. The bars held firm. Then she went to seek in the corner of her cell a huge paving stone, which served her as a pillow, and launched it against them with such violence that one of the bars broke, emitting thousands of sparks. A second blow completely shattered the old iron cross which barricaded the window. Then with her two hands, she finished breaking and removing the rusted stumps of the bars. There are moments when woman’s hands possess superhuman strength. A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her to seize her daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her into her cell. “Come let me draw you out of the abyss,” she murmured. When her daughter was inside the cell, she laid her gently on the ground, then raised her up again, and bearing her in her arms as though she were still only her little Agnès, she walked to and fro in her little room, intoxicated, frantic, joyous, crying out, singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into laughter, melting into tears, all at once and with vehemence. “My daughter! my daughter!” she said. “I have my daughter! here she is! The good God has given her back to me! Ha you! come all of you! Is there any one there to see that I have my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You have made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was in order to give her back to me beautiful.—Then the gypsies did not eat her! Who said so? My little daughter! my little daughter! Kiss me. Those good gypsies! I love the gypsies!—It is really you! That was what made my heart leap every time that you passed by. And I took that for hatred! Forgive me, my Agnès, forgive me. You thought me very malicious, did you not? I love you. Have you still the little mark on your neck? Let us see. She still has it. Oh! you are beautiful! It was I who gave you those big eyes, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you. It is nothing to me that other mothers have children; I scorn them now. They have only to come and see. Here is mine. See her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hands. Find me anything as beautiful as that! Oh! I promise you she will have lovers, that she will! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has departed and has fallen to her. Kiss me.” She addressed to her a thousand other extravagant remarks, whose accent constituted their sole beauty, disarranged the poor girl’s garments even to the point of making her blush, smoothed her silky hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her brow, her eyes, was in raptures over everything. The young girl let her have her way, repeating at intervals and very low and with infinite tenderness, “My mother!”