“So I denounced thee. ’Twas then I began to terrify thee whenever I met thee. The plot which I was weaving against thee, the storm which I was brewing over thy head, burst from me in muttered threats and lightning glances. And yet I hesitated. My project had appalling aspects from which I shrank.
“It may be that I would have renounced it— that my hideous thought would have withered in my brain without bearing fruit. I thought it would always depend on myself either to follow up or set aside this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable and will become an act; and there, where I thought myself all-powerful, Fate was more powerful than I. Alas! alas! ’tis Fate has laid hold on thee and cast thee in among the dread wheels of the machinery I had constructed in secret! Listen. I have almost done.
“One day— it was again a day of sunshine— a man passes me who speaks thy name and laughs with the gleam of lust in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him. Thou knowest the rest—”
He ceased.
The girl could find but one word— “Oh, my Ph?bus!”
“Not that name!” exclaimed the priest, grasping her arm with violence. “Utter not that name! Oh, wretched that we are, ’tis that name has undone us! Nay, rather we have all undone one another through the inexplicable play of Fate! Thou art suffering, art thou not? Thou art cold; the darkness blinds thee, the dungeon wraps thee round; but mayhap thou hast still more light shining within thee— were it only thy childish love for the fatuous being who was trifling with thy heart! while I— I bear the dungeon within me; within, my heart is winter, ice, despair— black night reigns in my soul! Knowest thou all that I have suffered? I was present at the trial. I was seated among the members of the Office. Yes, one of those priestly cowls hid the contortions of the damned. When they led thee in, I was there; while they questioned thee, I was there. Oh, den of wolves! It was my own crime— my own gibbet that I saw slowly rising above thy head. At each deposition, each proof, each pleading, I was present— I could count thy every step along that dolorous path. I was there, too, when that wild beast— oh, I had not foreseen the torture! Listen. I followed thee into the chamber of anguish; I saw thee disrobed and half-naked under the vile hands of the torturer; saw thy foot— that foot I would have given an empire to press one kiss upon and die; that foot which I would have rejoiced to feel crushing my head— that foot I saw put into the horrible boot that turns the limbs of a human being into a gory pulp. Oh, miserable that I am! While I looked on at this, I had a poniard under my gown with which I lacerated my breast. At thy cry I plunged it into my flesh— a second cry from thee and it should have pierced my heart. Look— I believe it still bleeds.”
He opened his cassock. His breast was indeed scored as by tiger’s claws, and in his side was a large, badly healed wound.
The prisoner recoiled in horror.
“Oh, girl!” cried the priest, “have pity on me! Thou deemest thyself miserable— alas! alas! thou knowest not what misery is. Oh, to love a woman— to be a priest— to be hated — to love her with all the fury of one’s soul, to feel that for the least of her smiles one would give one’s blood, one’s vitals, fame, salvation, immortality, and eternity— this life and the life to come; to regret not being a king, a genius, an emperor, an archangel— God— that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her day and night in one’s dreams, one’s thoughts— and then to see her in love with the trappings of a soldier, and have naught to offer her but the unsightly cassock of a priest, which she will only regard with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s jealousy and rage while she lavishes on a miserable, brainless swashbuckler her whole treasure of love and beauty! To see the form that enflames you, that soft bosom, that flesh panting and glowing under the kisses of another! Dear heaven— to adore her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to dream of her blue veins, her sun-browned skin till one writhes whole nights upon the stones of one’s cell, and to see all those caresses, which one has dreamed of lavishing on her, end in her torture! To have succeeded only in laying her on the bed of leather! Oh, these are the irons heated in the fires of hell! Oh, blest is he who is sawn asunder, torn by four horses! Knowest thou what that torture, is, endured through long nights from seething arteries, a breaking heart, a bursting head— burying your teeth in your own hands— fell tormentors that unceasingly turn you as on a burning gridiron over a thought of love, of jealousy, and of despair! Have mercy, girl! One moment’s respite from my torment— a handful of ashes on this white heat! Wipe away, I conjure thee, the drops of agony that trickle from my brow! Child, torture me with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, girl— have pity on me!”
The priest writhed on the wet floor and beat his head against the corner of the stone steps. The girl listened to him— gazed at him.
When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated under her breath: “Oh, my Ph?bus!”
The priest dragged himself to her on his knees.
“I beseech thee,” he cried, “if thou hast any bowels of compassion, repulse me not! Oh, I love thee! I am a wretch! When thou utterest that name, unhappy girl, ’tis as if thou wert grinding every fibre of my heart between thy teeth! Have pity! if thou comest from hell, I go thither with thee. I have done amply to deserve that. The hell where thou art shall be my paradise— the sight of thee is more to be desired than that of God! Oh, tell me, wilt thou have none of me? I would have thought the very mountains had moved ere a woman would have rejected such a love! Oh, if thou wouldst— how happy we could be! We would flee— I could contrive thy escape— we would go somewhere— we would seek that spot on earth where the sun shines brightest, the trees are most luxuriant, the sky the bluest. We would love— would mingle our two souls together—would each have an inextinguishable thirst for the other, which we would quench at the inexhaustible fountain of our love!”
She interrupted him with a horrible and strident laugh:
“Look, holy father, there is blood upon your nails!”
The priest remained for some moments as if petrified, his eyes fixed on his hand.
“Well, be it so,” he continued at last, with strange claim; “insult me, taunt me, overwhelm me with scorn, but come— come away. Let us hasten. ’Tis for to-morrow I tell thee. The gibbet of La Grève— thou knowest— it is always in readiness. ’Tis horrible!— to see thee carried in that tumbrel! Oh, have pity! I never felt till now how much I loved thee. Oh, follow me! Thou shalt take time to love me after I have saved thee. Thou shalt hate me as long as thou wilt— but come To-morrow— to-morrow— the gibbet!— thy execution! Oh, save thyself! spare me!”
He seized her by the arm distractedly and sought to drag her away.
She turned her fixed gaze upon him. “What has become of Ph?bus?”
“Ah,” said the priest, letting go her arm, “you have no mercy!”
“What has become of Ph?bus?” she repeated stonily.
“Dead!” cried the priest.
“Dead?” said she, still icy and motionless; “then why talk to me of living?”
He was not listening to her.
“Ah, yes,” he said, as if speaking to himself, “he must be dead. The knife went deep. I think I reached his heart with the point. Oh, my soul was in that dagger to the very point!”
The girl threw herself upon him with the fury of a tigress, and thrust him towards the steps with supernatural strength.
“Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the blood of both of us be an everlasting stain upon thy brow! Be thine, priest? Never! never! no power shall unite us— not hell itself! Begone, accursed— never!”
The priest stumbled against the steps. He silently disengaged his feet from the folds of his robe, took up his lantern, and began slowly to ascend the steps leading to the door. He opened the door and went out.
Suddenly she saw his head reappear. His face wore a frightful expression, and he cried with a voice hoarse with rage and despair:
“I tell thee he is dead!”
She fell on her face to the floor. No sound was now audible in the dungeon but the tinkle of the drop of water which ruffled the surface of the pool in the darkness.
Chapter 5 - The Mother
I doubt if there be anything in the world more enchanting to a mother’s heart than the thoughts awakened by the sight of her child’s little shoe— more especially when it is the holiday shoe, the Sunday, the christening shoe— the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the child has not yet taken a step. The shoe is so tiny, has such a charm in it, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it is to the mother as if she saw her child. She smiles as it, kisses it, babbles to it; she asks herself if it can be that there is a foot so small, and should the child be absent, the little shoe suffices to bring back to her vision the sweet and fragile creature. She imagines she sees it— she does see it— living, laughing, with its tender hands, its little round head, its dewy lips, its clear bright eyes. If it be winter, there it is creeping about the carpet, laboriously clambering over a stool, and the mother trembles lest it come too near the fire. If it be summer, it creeps about the garden, plucks up the grass between the stones, gazes with the artless courage of childhood at the great dogs, the great horses, plays with the shell borders, with the flowers, and makes the gardener scold when he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth on all the paths. The whole world smiles, and shines, and plays round it like itself, even to the breeze and the sunbeams that wanton in its curls. The shoe brings up all this before the mother’s eye, and her heart melts thereat like wax before the fire.
But if the child be lost, these thousand images of joy, of delight, of tenderness crowded round the little shoe become so many pictures of horror. The pretty embroidered thing is then an instrument of torture eternally racking the mother’s heart. It is still the same string that vibrates— the deepest, most sensitive of the human heart— but instead of the caressing touch of an angel’s hand, it is a demon’s horrid clutch upon it.
One morning, as the May sun rose into one of those deep blue skies against which Garofalo loves to set his Descents from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of wheels and horses and the clanking of iron in the Place de Grève. But little moved by it, she knotted her hair over her ears to deaden the sound, and resumed her contemplation of the object she had been adoring on her knees for fifteen years. That little shoe, as we have already said, was to her the universe. Her thoughts were wrapped up in it, never to leave it till death. What bitter imprecations she had sent up to heaven, what heart-rending plaints, what prayers and sobs over this charming rosy toy, the gloomy cell of the Tour-Roland alone knew. Never was greater despair lavished upon a thing so engaging and so pretty.
On this morning it seemed as though her grief found more than usually violent expression, and her lamentations could be heard in the street as she cried aloud in monotonous tones that wrung the heart:
“Oh, my child!” she moaned, “my child! my dear and hapless babe! shall I never see thee more? All hope is over! It seems to me always as if it had happened but yesterday. My God! my God! to have taken her from me so soon, it had been better never to have given her to me at all. Knowest thou not that our children are flesh of our flesh, and that a mother who has lost her child believes no longer in God? Ah, wretched that I am, to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord! to have taken her from me so! Thou canst never have looked upon us together— when I warmed her, all sweet and rosy, at my fire— when I suckled her— when I made her little feet creep up my bosom to my lips! Ah, hadst thou seen that, Lord, thou wouldst have had pity on my joy— hadst not taken from me the only thing left for me to love! Was I so degraded a creature, Lord, that thou couldst not look at me before condemning me? Woe! woe is me!— there is the shoe— but the foot— where is it?— where is the rest— where is the child? My babe, my babe! what have they done with thee? Lord, give her back to me! For fifteen years have I worn away my knees in prayer to thee, O God— is that not enough? Give her back to me for one day, one hour, one minute— only one minute, Lord, and then cast me into hell for all eternity! Ah, did I but know where to find one corner of the hem of thy garment, I would cling to it with both hands and importune thee till thou wast forced to give me back my child! See its pretty little shoe— hast thou no pity on it, Lord? Canst thou condemn a poor mother to fifteen years of such torment? Holy Virgin— dear mother in heaven! my Infant Jesus— they have taken it from me— they have stolen it, they have devoured it on the wild moor— have drunk its blood— have gnawed its bones; Blessed Virgin, have pity on me! My babe— I want my babe! What care I that she is in paradise? I will have none of your angels— I want my child! I am a lioness, give me my cub. Oh, I will writhe on the ground— I will dash my forehead against the stones— I will damn myself, and curse thee, Lord, if thou keepest my child from me! Thou seest that my arms are gnawed all over— has the good God no pity? Oh, give me but a little black bread and salt, only let me have my child to warm me like the sun! Alas! O Lord my God, I am the vilest of sinners, but my child made me pious— I was full of religion out of love for her, and I beheld thee through her smiles as through an opening in heaven. Oh, let me only once, once more only, once more draw this little shoe on to her sweet rosy little foot, and I will die, Holy Mother, blessing thee! Ah, fifteen years— she will be a woman grown now! Unhappy child! is it then indeed true that I shall never see her more?— not even in heaven, for there I shall never go. Oh, woe is me! to have to say, There is her shoe, and that is all I shall ever have of her!”
The unhappy creature threw herself upon the shoe— her consolation and her despair for so many years— and her very soul was rent with sobs as on the first day. For to a mother who has lost her child, it is always the first day— that grief never grows old. The mourning garments may wear out and lose their sombre hue, the heart remains black as on the first day.
At that moment the blithe, fresh voices of children passing the cell struck upon her ear. Whenever children met her eye or ear, the poor mother would cast herself into the darkest corner of her living sepulchre, as if she sought to bury her head in the stone wall that she might not hear them. This time, contrary to her habit, she started up and listened eagerly, for one of them had said: “They are going to hang a gipsy woman to-day.”
With the sudden bound of the spider which we have seen rush upon the fly at the shaking of his web, she ran to her loophole which looked out, as the reader knows, upon the Place de Grève. In effect, a ladder was placed against the gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busy adjusting the chains rusted by the rain. A few people stood round.
