He buried his face in his hands. The girl could hear him weeping; it was the first time. Standing thus, and shaken by sobs, he made amore wretched and suppliant figure even than on his knees. He wept on for a while.
“Enough,”he said presently, the first violence of his emotion spent. “I find no words. And yet I had well pondered what I would say to you. And now I tremble and shiver, I grow faint-hearted at the decisive moment. I feel that something transcendent wraps us round, and my tongue falters. Oh, I shall fall to the ground if you will not take pity on me, pity on yourself! Condemn us not both to perdition. Didst thou but know how much I love thee!—what a heart is mine! the desertion of all virtue, the abandonment of myself! A doctor, I mock at science; a gentleman, I tarnish my name; a priest, I make of my missal a pillow of wantonness—I spit in the face of my Redeemer! And all for thee, enchantress; to be more worthy of thy hell! And yet thou rejectest the damned! Oh, let me tell thee all—more than this, something still more horrible, more horrible—!”
With these last words his manner became utterly distraught. He was silent a moment, then, in a stern voice and as if addressing himself:
“Cain!”he cried, “what has thou done with thy brother?”
There was a pause, and then he began again. “What have I done with him, Lord? I took him, I reared him, I nourished him, loved him, idolized him, and—I killed him! Yes, Lord, before my very eyes they dashed his head against the stones of thy house; and it was because of me, because of this woman, because of her—”
Madness gleamed from his sunken eyes; his voice dropped away; two or three times he repeated mechanically, and with long pauses between, like the last prolonged vibrations of the strokes of a bell, “Because of her—because of her—”At last, though his lips still moved, no articulate sound came from them, then suddenly he fell in a heap like a house crumbling to pieces, and remained motionless on the ground, his head on his knees.
A faint movement of the girl, drawing away her foot from under him, brought him to himself. He slowly swept his hand over his haggard cheeks, and gazed for some moments at his fingers, surprised to find them wet. “What,”he murmured, “have I been weeping?”
He turned suddenly upon the gipsy with nameless anguish.
“Woe is me! thou canst see me weep unmoved! Child, knowest thou that such tears are molten lava? Is it then indeed true, that in the man we hate nothing can melt us? Thou wouldst see me die and wouldst laugh. Oh, I cannot see thee die! One word, one single word of kindness! I ask not that thou shouldst say thou lovest me; tell me only that thou art willing I should save thee. That will suffice; I will save thee in return for that. If not—oh, time flies! I entreat thee, by all that is sacred, wait not till I turn to stone again like this gibbet, that yearns for thee also! Remember that I hold both our destinies in my hand; that I am frenzied—it is terrible—that I may let everything go, and that there lies beneath us, unhappy girl, a bottomless pit wherein my fall will follow thine to all eternity! One word of kindness! Say one word! but one word!”
Her lips parted to answer him. He flung himself on his knees before her to receive with adoration the words, perchance of relenting, that should fall from them.
“You are an assassin!”she said.
The priest clasped her furiously in his arms and burst into a hideous laugh.
“Good, then; yes, an assassin!”he cried, “and I will have thee. Thou wilt not have me for a slave; thou shalt have me for thy master. I will take my prey; I have a den whither I will drag thee. Thou shalt follow me; thou must follow me, or I will deliver thee up! Thou must die, my fair one, or be mine! belong to me, the priest, the apostate, the murderer! and this very night, hearest thou? Come! kiss me, little fool! The grave or my bed!”
His eyes flashed with rage and lust. Froth stood on the lascivious lips that covered the girl’s neck with frenzied kisses. She struggled fiercely in his arms.
“Bite me not, monster!”she shrieked. “Oh, the hateful, venomous monk! Let me go, or I tear out thy vile gray hairs and fling them in handfuls in thy face!”
He turned red, then white, then loosed his hold on her with a darkling look. Thinking herself victorious, she went on: “I tell thee I belong to my Ph?bus; that it is Ph?bus I love; Ph?bus, who is fair to look upon. Thou, priest, art old, thou art frightful. Get thee gone!”
He uttered a sudden scream, like some poor wretch under the branding-iron. “Die, then!”said he, grinding his teeth. She caught his terrible look and turned to fly; but he seized her, shook her, threw her on the ground, and walked rapidly towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after him along the pavement by her little hands.
Arrived at the corner of the Place, he turned round to her. “For the last time, wilt thou be mine?”
“No!”
The next moment, “Gudule! Gudule!”he cried in a loud voice, “here is the gipsy! take thy revenge!”
The girl felt herself suddenly seized by the arm. She looked up, a skeleton arm was stretched through the window in the wall and was holding her in a grip of iron.
“Hold her fast!”said the priest. “It is the Egyptian woman escaped. Do not let her go; I go to fetch the sergeants. Thou shalt see her hang.”
A guttural laugh from the other side of the wall made answer to these bloodthirsty words. The gipsy saw the priest hurry away towards the Pont Notre-Dame, from which direction came the clatter of horses’ hoofs.
The girl had recognised the evil-minded recluse. Panting with terror, she stove to free herself. In vain she writhed and turned in agony and despair, the other held her with incredible strength. The lean bony fingers that clutched her were clenched and met round her flesh—that hand seemed rivetted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more than an iron ring: it was a pair of pincers endowed with life and understanding, issuing from a wall.
Exhausted at last, she fell against the wall, and the fear of death came upon her. She thought of all that made life desirable—of youth, the sight of the sky, all the varying aspects of nature, of love and Ph?bus, of all that was going from her and all that was approaching, of the priest who was even now betraying her, of the executioner he would bring, of the gibbet standing ready. Terror mounted even to the roots of her hair, and she heard the sinister laugh of the recluse as she hissed at her: “Ha! ha! thou art going to be hanged!”
She turned her fading eyes towards the window and saw the wolfish face of the sachette glaring at her through the bars.
“What have I done to you?”she gasped, almost past speaking.
The recluse made no answer, but fell to muttering in a sing-song, rasping, mocking tone: “Daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt!”
The unfortunate Esmeralda let her head droop on her breast, understanding that this was no human being.
Suddenly, as if the gipsy’s question had taken all this time to reach her apprehension, the recluse exclaimed:
“What hast thou done to me, sayest thou? Ah, what hast thou done to me, gipsy! Well, listen. I had a child —I—hearest thou?—I had a child—a child, I tell thee! The fairest little daughter! My Agnes—”and she paused and kissed something distractedly in the gloom. “Well, seest thou, daughter of Egypt, they took my child from me; they stole my child! That is what thou hast done to me!”
To which the poor girl answered, like the lamb in the fable: “Alas! perhaps I was not born then!”
“Oh, yes,”rejoined the recluse, “thou must have been born then. Thou wert one of them. She would be about thy age—thou seest therefore! For fifteen years have I been here; fifteen years have I suffered; fifteen years have I been smiting my head against these four walls. I tell thee that they were gipsy women that stole her from me—dost thou hear?—and that devoured her with their teeth. Hast thou a heart? Picture to thyself a child playing, sucking, sleeping —so sweet, so innocent! Well, that—all that—was what they stole from me, what they killed! The God in heaven knows it! To-day it is my turn; I shall eat of the Egyptian! Oh, that these bars were not so close, that I might bite thee! But my head is too big. The poor, pretty thing! while she slept! And if they did wake her as they took her away, she might scream as she would; I was not there! Ah, you gipsy mothers that ate my child, come hither now and look at yours!”And she laughed again and ground her teeth —the two actions were alike in that frenzied countenance.
Day was beginning to dawn. As the wan gray light spread gradually over the scene, the gibbet was growing more and more distinct in the centre of the Place. On the other side, in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame, the poor girl thought she heard the sound of cavalry approaching.
“Madame!”she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, dishevelled, wild, frantic with terror; “Madame! have pity! They are coming. I never harmed you: will you see me die in this horrible manner before your very eyes? You have pity for me, I am sure. It is too dreadful. Let me fly; leave go of me, for pity’s sake! I cannot die like that!”
“Give me back my child!”said the recluse.
“Mercy! mercy!”
“Give me back my child!”
“Let me go, in Heaven’s name!”
“Give me back my child!”
Once again the girl sank down exhausted, powerless, her eyes already glazed, as if in death.
“Alas!”she stammered, “you seek your child; I—I seek my parents.”
“Give me back my little Agnes!”Gudule went on. “Thou knowest not where she is? Then die! I will tell thee. I was a wanton, I had a child, they stole my child. It was the gipsies. Thou seest plainly that thou must die. When thy mother the gipsy comes to seek for thee, I shall say to her, ‘Mother, behold that gibbet!’ Else give me back my child! Dost thou know where she is, my little girl? Here, let me show thee. Here is her shoe; ’tis all that’s left to me of her. Dost know where the fellow to it is? If thou knowest, tell me, and I will go on my knees to fetch it, even to the other end of the world.”
So saying, she thrust her other hand through the window and held up before the gipsy girl the little embroidered shoe. There was just light enough to distinguish its shape and its colour.
“Let me see that shoe!”said the gipsy with a start. “Oh, God in heaven!”And at the same time, with the hand she had free, she eagerly opened the little bag she wore about her neck.
“Go to, go to!”muttered Gudule; “search in thy devil’s amulet—”
She broke off suddenly, her whole frame shook, and in a voice that seemed to come from the innermost depths of her being, she cried: “My daughter!”
For the gipsy had drawn from the amulet bag a little shoe the exact counterpart of the other. To the shoe was attached a slip of parchment, on which was written this couplet:
“When thou the fellow of this shalt see,
Thy mother will stretch out her arms to thee.
Quicker than a flash of lightning the recluse had compared the two shoes, read the inscription on the parchment, then pressed her face, radiant with ineffable joy, against the cross-bars of the loophole, crying again:
“My daughter! my daughter!”
“Mother!”returned the gipsy girl.
Here description fails us.
But the wall and the iron bars divided them. “Oh, the wall!”cried the recluse. “Oh, to see her and not embrace her! Thy hand—give me thy hand!”
The girl put her hand through the opening, and the mother threw herself upon it, pressing her lips to it, remaining thus lost to everything but that kiss, giving no sign of life but a sob that shook her frame at long intervals. For the poor mother was weeping in torrents in the silence and darkness of her cell, like rain falling in the night; pouring out in a flood upon that adored hand all that deep dark font of tears which her grief had gathered in her heart, drop by drop, during fifteen long years.
Suddenly she lifted her head, threw back her long gray hair from her face, and without a word began tearing at the bars of her window with the fury of a lioness. But the bars stood firm. She then went and fetched from the back of her cell a large paving-stone, which served her for a pillow, and hurled it against them with such force that one of the bars broke with a shower of sparks, and a second blow completely smashed the old iron cross-bar that barricaded the hole. Then, using her whole force, she succeeded in loosening and wrenching out the rusty stumps. There are moments when a woman’s hands are possessed of superhuman strength.
The passage cleared—and it had taken her less than a minute to do it—she leaned out, seized her daughter round the waist, and drew her into the cell.
“Come,”she murmured, “let me drag thee out of the pit.”
As soon as she had her daughter in the cell, she set her gently on the ground; then catching her up in her arms again, as if she were still only the baby Agnes, she carried her to and fro in the narrow cell, intoxicated, beside herself with joy, shouting, singing, kissing her daughter, babbling to her, laughing, melting into tears—all at the same time, all with frenzied vehemence.
“My daughter! my daughter!”said she. “I have my daughter again—’tis she! God has given her back to me. Hey there! come all of you! Is there anybody to see that I’ve got my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! Thou hast made me wait fifteen years, oh, my God, but it was only that thou mightest give her back to me so beautiful. And the gipsy women had not eaten her! Who told me that they had? My little girl—my little one—kiss me. Those good gipsies! I love the gipsies. So it is thou indeed? And it was that that made my heart leap every time thou didst pass by. And to think that I took it for hatred! Forgive me, my Agnes, forgive me! Thou thoughtest me very wicked, didst thou not? I love thee. Hast thou then that little mark still on thy neck? Let me see. Yes, she has it still. Oh, how fair thou art! ’Twas from me you got those big eyes, my lady. Kiss me. I love thee. What is it to me that other women have children? I can laugh at them now! Let them only come and look. Here is mine. Look at her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hand. Find me anything as beautiful as that! Oh, I’ll warrant you she’ll have plenty of lovers, this one! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty that I lost has gone to her. Kiss me!”
She said a thousand tender and extravagant things to her, the beauty of which lay in their tone, disarranged the poor child’s garments till she blushed, smoothed her silken tresses with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her forehead, her eyes, went into raptures over everything, the girl letting her do as she would, only repeating at intervals, very low and with ineffable sweetness the word “Mother!”
“Hark thee, my little girl,”resumed the recluse, interrupting her words constantly with kisses, “hark thee, I shall love thee and take good care of thee. We will go away from here. We are going to be so happy! I have inherited somewhat in Reims—in our country. Thou knowest Reims, —thou canst not, thou wert too little. Couldst thou but know how pretty thou wert at four months old—such tiny feet that people came all the way from épernay, five leagues off, to see them. We shall have a field and a house. Thou shalt sleep in my own bed. Oh, my God! who would believe it? I have my daughter again!”
