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.
"Ho! ho! ho!Why this is terrible!You are ruffians! Are you really going to take my daughter?Oh! the cowards! Oh! the hangman lackeys! the wretched, blackguard assassins! Help! help! fire!Will they take my child from me like this?Who is it then who is called the good God?"
Then, addressing Tristan, foaming at the mouth, with wild eyes, all bristling and on all fours like a female panther,--
"Draw near and take my daughter!Do not you understand that this woman tells you that she is my daughter?Do you know what it is to have a child?Eh! lynx, have you never lain with your female? have you never had a cub? and if you have little ones, when they howl have you nothing in your vitals that moves?"
"Throw down the stone," said Tristan; "it no longer holds."
The crowbars raised the heavy course.It was, as we have said, the mother's last bulwark.
She threw herself upon it, she tried to hold it back; she scratched the stone with her nails, but the massive block, set in movement by six men, escaped her and glided gently to the ground along the iron levers.
The mother, perceiving an entrance effected, fell down in front of the opening, barricading the breach with her body, beating the pavement with her head, and shrieking with a voice rendered so hoarse by fatigue that it was hardly audible,--
"Help! fire! fire!"
"Now take the wench," said Tristan, still impassive.
The mother gazed at the soldiers in such formidable fashion that they were more inclined to retreat than to advance.
"Come, now," repeated the provost."Here you, Rennet Cousin!"
No one took a step.
The provost swore,--
"~Tête de Christ~! my men of war! afraid of a woman!"
"Monseigneur," said Rennet, "do you call that a woman?"
"She has the mane of a lion," said another.
"Come!" repeated the provost, "the gap is wide enough. Enter three abreast, as at the breach of pontoise.Let us make an end of it, death of Mahom!I will make two pieces of the first man who draws back!"
placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and advanced towards the Rat-Hole.
When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung aside her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall by her side.Then great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes; they flowed down her cheeks through a furrow, like a torrent through a bed which it has hollowed for itself.
At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so supplicating, so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that more than one old convict-warder around Tristan who must have devoured human flesh wiped his eyes.
"Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word.There is one thing which I must say to you.She is my daughter, do you see?my dear little daughter whom I had lost! Listen.It is quite a history.Consider that I knew the sergeants very well.They were always good to me in the days when the little boys threw stones at me, because I led a life of pleasure.Do you see?You will leave me my child when you know!I was a poor woman of the town.It was the Bohemians who stole her from me.And I kept her shoe for fifteen years.Stay, here it is.That was the kind of foot which she had.At Reims!La Chantefleurie!Rue Folle- peine!perchance, you knew about that.It was I.In your youth, then, there was a merry time, when one passed good hours.You will take pity on me, will you not, gentlemen? The gypsies stole her from me; they hid her from me for fifteen years.I thought her dead.Fancy, my good friends, believed her to be dead.I have passed fifteen years here in this cellar, without a fire in winter.It is hard.The poor, dear little shoe!I have cried so much that the good God has heard me.This night he has given my daughter back to me. It is a miracle of the good God.She was not dead.You will not take her from me, I am sure.If it were myself, I would say nothing; but she, a child of sixteen!Leave her time to see the sun!What has she done to you? nothing at all.Nor have I.If you did but know that she is all I have, that I am old, that she is a blessing which the Holy Virgin has sent to me!And then, you are all so good! You did not know that she was my daughter; but now you do know it.Oh!I love her!Monsieur, the grand provost. I would prefer a stab in my own vitals to a scratch on her finger!You have the air of such a good lord!What I have told you explains the matter, does it not?Oh! if you have had a mother, monsiegneur! you are the captain, leave me my child!Consider that I pray you on my knees, as one prays to Jesus Christ!I ask nothing of any one; I am from Reims, gentlemen; I own a little field inherited from my uncle, Mahiet pradon.I am no beggar.I wish nothing, but I do want my child! oh!I want to keep my child!The good God, who is the master, has not given her back to me for nothing!The king! you say the king!It would not cause him much pleasure to have my little daughter killed! And then, the king is good! she is my daughter! she is my own daughter!She belongs not to the king! she is not yours!I want to go away! we want to go away! and when two women pass, one a mother and the other a daughter, one lets them go!Let us pass! we belong in Reims.Oh! you are very good, messieurs the sergeants, I love you all.You will not take my dear little one, it is impossible!It is utterly impossible, is it not?My child, my child!"
We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, of the tears which she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands which she clasped and then wrung, of the heart-breaking smiles, of the swimming glances, of the groans, the sighs, the miserable and affecting cries which she mingled with her disordered, wild, and incoherent words.When she became silent Tristan l'Hermite frowned, but it was to conceal a tear which welled up in his tiger's eye.He conquered this weakness, however, and said in a curt tone,--
"The king wills it."
Then he bent down to the ear of Rennet Cousin, and said to him in a very low tone,--
"Make an end of it quickly!" possibly, the redoubtable provost felt his heart also failing him.
The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell.The mother offered no resistance, only she dragged herself towards her daughter and threw herself bodily upon her. The gypsy beheld the soldiers approach.The horror of death reanimated her,--
"Mother!" she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress, "Mother! they are coming! defend me!"
"Yes, my love, I am defending you!" replied the mother, in a dying voice; and clasping her closely in her arms, she covered her with kisses.The two lying thus on the earth, the mother upon the daughter, presented a spectacle worthy of pity.
Rennet Cousin grasped the young girl by the middle of her body, beneath her beautiful shoulders.When she felt that hand, she cried, "Heuh!" and fainted.The executioner who was shedding large tears upon her, drop by drop, was about to bear her away in his arms.He tried to detach the mother, who had, so to speak, knotted her hands around her daughter's waist; but she clung so strongly to her child, that it was impossible to separate them.Then Rennet Cousin dragged the young girl outside the cell, and the mother after her.The mother's eyes were also closed.
At that moment, the sun rose, and there was already on the place a fairly numerous assembly of people who looked on from a distance at what was being thus dragged along the pavement to the gibbet.For that was provost Tristan's way at executions.He had a passion for preventing the approach of the curious.
There was no one at the windows.Only at a distance, at the summit of that one of the towers of Notre-Dame which commands the Grève, two men outlined in black against the light morning sky, and who seemed to be looking on, were visible.
Rennet Cousin paused at the foot of the fatal ladder, with that which he was dragging, and, barely breathing, with so much pity did the thing inspire him, he passed the rope around the lovely neck of the young girl.The unfortunate child felt the horrible touch of the hemp.She raised her eyelids, and saw the fleshless arm of the stone gallows extended above her head.Then she shook herself and shrieked in a loud and heartrending voice: "No! no!I will not!" Her mother, whose head was buried and concealed in her daughter's garments, said not a word; only her whole body could be seen to quiver, and she was heard to redouble her kisses on her child.The executioner took advantage of this moment to hastily loose the arms with which she clasped the condemned girl.Either through exhaustion or despair, she let him have his way.Then he took the young girl on his shoulder, from which the charming creature hung, gracefully bent over his large head.Then he set his foot on the ladder in order to ascend.
At that moment, the mother who was crouching on the pavement, opened her eyes wide.Without uttering a cry, she raised herself erect with a terrible expression; then she flung herself upon the hand of the executioner, like a beast on its prey, and bit it.It was done like a flash of lightning.The headsman howled with pain.Those near by rushed up. With difficulty they withdrew his bleeding hand from the mother's teeth.She preserved a profound silence.They thrust her back with much brutality, and noticed that her head fell heavily on the pavement.They raised her, she fell back again.She was dead.
The executioner, who had not loosed his hold on the young girl, began to ascend the ladder once more.