by Hugo, Victor
‘That is indeed a frightful story,’ said Oudarde, ‘enough to make a Burgundian weep!’
‘I’m not surprised any more,’ added Gervaise, ‘that you are so obsessed with fear of gypsies!’
‘And when you ran off just now with your Eustache,’ Oudarde went on, ‘you were all the better advised, because these are gypsies from Poland too.’
‘No they aren’t,’ said Gervaise, ‘they are said to come from Spain and Catalonia.’
‘Catalonia? Maybe,’ answered Oudarde. ‘Poland, Catalonia, Valogne,* I always confuse those three provinces. What is certain is that they are gypsies.’
‘And their teeth are certainly long enough,’ added Gervaise, ‘to eat little children. And I wouldn’t be surprised if la Smeralda ate a bit too, for all her simpering ways. Her white goat is up to too many mischievous tricks; there must be some sort of debauchery behind it all.’
Mahiette walked on in silence. She was absorbed in the kind of daydream that somehow prolongs a painful story, and stops only when it has spread the Shockwave, vibration by vibration, to the innermost fibres of the heart. However, Gervaise spoke to her: ‘And did they ever find out what became of la Chantefleurie?’ Mahiette did not answer. Gervaise repeated her question, shaking Mahiette by the arm and calling out her name. Mahiette seemed to awaken from her thoughts.
‘What became of la Chantefleurie?’ she said, mechanically repeating the words whose impression was fresh in her ear; then, making an effort to turn her attention to the sense of those words: ‘Ah!’ she went on quickly, ‘no one ever knew.’
She added after a pause:
‘Some said they had seen her leave Reims at dusk by the Porte Fléchembault; others at dawn by the old Porte Basée. A poor man found her little golden cross hung on the stone cross in the field where they hold the fair. That was the jewel that caused her downfall, in ’61. It was a gift from the handsome vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette would never part with it, however great her need. She clung to it as to her very life. So when we saw that she had given up that cross we all thought she was dead. However, some people at Cabaret-les-Vantes said they had seen her go by on the Paris road, walking barefoot on the stones. But then she would have had to have left by the Porte de Vesle, and that doesn’t fit in. Or rather, I believe that she did in fact leave by the Porte de Vesle, but left this world.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gervaise.
‘The Vesle,’ Mahiette answered with a sad smile, ‘is the river.’
‘Poor Chantefleurie!’ said Oudarde with a shudder, ‘drowned!’
‘Drowned,’ Mahiette went on, ‘and who could have told good old Guybertaut as he drifted down under the bridge at Tinqueux, singing in his boat, that one day his dear little Paquette would drift under that bridge too, but without a song or a boat?’
‘And the little shoe?’ asked Gervaise.
‘Vanished with the mother,’ Mahiette replied.
‘Poor little shoe!’ said Oudarde.
Oudarde, a plump, sentimental woman, would have been very happy to sigh along with Mahiette. But Gervaise, with more curiosity, had not done with her questions.
‘And the monster?’ she suddenly asked Mahiette.
‘What monster?’ the latter asked.
‘The little gypsy monster that the witches left in Chantefleurie’s room in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it? I hope you drowned it too.’
‘No,’ Mahiette answered.
‘What! well, burned it then? In fact that would be more fitting. An infant sorcerer!’
‘Neither of those things, Gervaise. The archbishop took an interest in the gypsy child, he exorcised it, blessed it, carefully drove the devil out of its body, and sent it to Paris to be put out on the wooden bed at Notre-Dame as a foundling.’
‘Those bishops!’ grumbled Gervaise. ‘Because they are learned they don’t behave like other people. I ask you, Oudarde, putting the devil with the foundlings! For it’s quite certain that the little monster was the devil. Well then, Mahiette, what did they do with him in Paris? I reckon that no charitable person wanted anything to do with him.’
‘I don’t know,’ answered their friend from Reims. ‘That was just the time my husband bought the tabellionage* of Beru, two leagues from the town, and we didn’t concern ourselves with the story any more; and on top of that there are the two hills of Cernay lying in front of Beru which block the view of the towers of Reims cathedral.’
As they talked the three worthy women had reached the place de Grève. They were so preoccupied that they had gone past the public breviary at the Tour-Roland without stopping and were making their way without thinking towards the pillory around which the crowd was constantly growing. It is quite likely that the spectacle which at that moment was attracting every eye would have made them completely forget the Rat-hole and the halt they had intended to make there if plump, 6-year old Eustache, whom Mahiette was dragging along, had not suddenly reminded them of its purpose: ‘Mother,’ he said, as if some instinct warned him that the Rat-hole was behind him, ‘now may I eat the cake?’
If Eustache had been shrewder, that is less greedy, he would have waited longer, and only when they were back home in the University, at Maître Andry Musnier’s house in the rue Madame-la-Valence, with the two arms of the Seine and the five bridges of the City between the Rat-hole and the cake, would he have ventured to ask timidly: ‘Mother, now may I eat the cake?’
That question, ill-advised at the moment that Eustache put it, revived Mahiette’s attention.
‘By the way,’ she exclaimed, ‘we are forgetting the recluse! Show me your Rat-hole, then, so I can give her her cake.’
‘Right away,’ said Oudarde. ‘It’s a charity.’
That was not how Eustache saw it.
‘Hey! my cake!’ he said, bumping each ear in turn against his shoulders, which in such a situation is the ultimate sign of dissatisfaction.
The three women retraced their steps, and when they were near the house of the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two: ‘We mustn’t all look into the hole at the same time in case we frighten the sachette. You two must pretend to be reading dominus in the breviary while I have a peep through the window. The sachette knows me slightly. I’ll let you know when you can come near.’
She went by herself to the window. The moment she saw what was inside, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her cheerful, open face changed expression and colour as abruptly as if it had gone from sunshine to moonlight. Her eyes grew moist, her mouth puckered as when one is about to weep. A moment later she put a finger to her lips and beckoned to Mahiette to come and look.
Mahiette came, very moved, in silence and on tiptoe, as one does approaching a deathbed.
It was indeed a sad spectacle that the two women had before their eyes as they looked, without moving or breathing, through the barred window of the Rat-hole.
The cell was narrow, wider than it was deep, with a pointed vault, and from inside rather resembled the alveole of a large episcopal mitre. On the bare flagstones which formed the floor, in a corner, a woman sat, or, rather, crouched. Her chin rested on her knees, which her two crossed arms held tightly against her chest. Huddled like that, wearing brown sacking that wholly covered her in its wide folds, her long grey hair swept forward, falling over her face and legs down to her feet, she looked at first sight like a strange shape, silhouetted against the gloomy background of the cell, a kind of blackish triangle, which the ray of daylight coming through the window crudely divided into two shades, one dark, the other light. It was one of those spectres, half light, half shade, such as one sees in dreams and in Goya’s extraordinary works, pale, motionless, sinister, crouched on a grave or leaning against the bars of a dungeon. It was neither woman nor man, nor living creature, nor definite shape; it was a figure; a sort of vision where reality and fantasy intersected like darkness and daylight. Beneath her hair, which spread out down to the ground, a harsh and
wasted profile could just be discerned; from her robe just the tip of a bare foot protruded, clenched on the freezing, unyielding stone. What little could be glimpsed of human shape beneath that envelope of mourning made one shudder.
This figure, which looked as though it were fixed to the floor, seemed to be without movement, thought or breath. Under that thin canvas sack, in January, lying naked on a granite floor, without a fire, in the shadows of a dungeon whose slanting window let in from outside only the icy wind and never the sun, she did not seem to be suffering, or even to feel. It was as if she had turned into stone like her cell, ice like the season. Her hands were clasped together, her eyes fixed. At first sight she could be taken for a spectre, at a second look, for a statue.
However, at intervals her blue lips parted in a breath, and quivered, but as lifelessly and mechanically as leaves shifting in the wind.
However, in her dull eyes a look would pass, a look ineffable, profound, mournful, unwavering, constantly fixed on a corner of the cell which could not be seen from outside; a look which seemed to link all the gloomy thoughts of that soul in distress to some mysterious object.
Such was the creature who took from her abode the name ‘recluse’ and from her garment the name ‘sachette’.
The three women, for Gervaise had now joined Mahiette and Oudarde, looked through the window. Their heads blocked the feeble light in the cell, without the wretched being thus deprived apparently taking any notice of them. ‘We must not disturb her,’ Oudarde said in a low voice; ‘she is in her ecstasy, she’s praying.’
Meanwhile Mahiette was gazing with growing anxiety at that gaunt, withered, dishevelled head, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘That would be most strange,’ she murmured.
She passed her head through the window bars, and managed to see into the corner on which the unfortunate woman’s eyes were invariably fixed.
When she withdrew her head from the window her face streamed with tears.
‘What do you call that woman?’ she asked Oudarde.
Oudarde answered: ‘We call her Sister Gudule.’
‘Well,’ Mahiette went on, ‘I call her Paquette la Chantefleurie.’ Then, putting her finger to her lips, she made a sign to the astounded Oudarde to put her head through the window and look.
Oudarde looked, and saw in the corner on which the recluse’s eyes were fixed in such sombre ecstasy, a little, pink, satin shoe embroidered with hundreds of gold and silver spangles.
Gervaise looked in after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing at the unhappy mother, began to weep.
Neither their looking in nor their tears, however, had distracted the recluse. Her hands remained clasped, her lips speechless, her eyes fixed, and for anyone who knew her story it was heart-breaking to see her staring like that at the little shoe.
The three women had so far not uttered a word; they did not dare to speak, even in a low voice. The absolute silence, absolute grief, absolute oblivion in which all had vanished but for this one thing had the same effect on them as a high altar at Easter or Christmas. They kept quiet, they collected their thoughts, they were ready to go down on their knees. It seemed to them as though they had just gone into a church for Tenebrae in Holy Week.
At length Gervaise, the most inquisitive of the three, and consequently the least sensitive, tried to get the recluse to speak: ‘Sister, Sister Gudule!’
She repeated her call three times, more loudly each time. The recluse did not stir. Not a word, not a look, not a sigh, no sign of life.
Oudarde in her turn, more gently and tenderly, said: ‘Sister! Sister Sainte-Gudule!’
The same silence, the same immobility.
‘A strange woman!’ exclaimed Gervaise, ‘she wouldn’t be stirred by a bombard!’
‘Perhaps she is deaf,’ Oudarde said with a sigh.
‘Perhaps blind,’ added Gervaise.
‘Perhaps dead,’ Mahiette put in.
It is certain that if the soul had not yet left this inert, somnolent, lethargic body, it had at least withdrawn to hide in depths to which the perceptions of external organs no longer penetrated.
‘We’ll have to leave the cake on the window ledge, then.’ said Oudarde. ‘Some fellow will take it. What can we do to rouse her?’
Eustache, who up to that moment had been distracted by a little cart pulled by a large dog, which had just gone by, suddenly noticed that his three guides were looking at something through the window and, seized with curiosity in his turn, he got up on a marker stone, stood on tiptoe and stuck his fat, red face in the opening as he cried: ‘Mother, do let me see then!’
At the sound of this childish voice, clear, fresh, resonant, the recluse started. She turned her head with the sharp, abrupt movement of a steel spring, her two long, skinny hands came up to push the hair back from her forehead, and she looked at the boy in bitter, hopeless amazement. This look lasted only for a flash.
‘O God!’ she suddenly cried, hiding her head in her lap, and it seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her chest as it came out, ‘at least don’t show me those of others!’
‘Good-day, madame,’ said the boy gravely.
However, the shock had, so to speak, roused the recluse. A long shudder ran through her whole body from head to foot, her teeth chattered, she half raised her head, and, pressing her elbows tightly against her hips and taking her feet in her hands as if to warm them, she said: ‘Oh! how bitter cold it is!’
‘Poor woman,’ said Oudarde, full of pity,’ would you like a bit of fire?’
She shook her head in refusal.
‘All right,’ Oudarde went on, offering her a flask, ‘there’s some hippocras to warm you up. Go on, drink.’
She shook her head again, stared at Oudarde and answered: ‘Water.’
Oudarde was insistent: ‘No, sister. That’s no drink for January. You must drink a little hippocras and eat this maize cake we’ve baked for you.’
She rejected the cake that Mahiette offered her, and said: ‘Black bread.’
‘Come now,’ said Gervaise, feeling charitable in her turn, and undoing her woollen smock,’ here’s a coat that’s a bit warmer than yours. Put that over your shoulders.’
She refused the coat as she had refused the flask and cake, and answered: ‘A sack.’
‘But you must surely realize,’ went on kindly Oudarde, ‘that yesterday was a holiday.’
‘I do realize,’ said the recluse. ‘It’s two days since I ran out of water in my pitcher.’
She added after a silence: ‘It’s a holiday, people forget me. They are quite right to do so. Why should the world think of me when I don’t think of it? Dead coals go with cold ash.’
And as though wearied by so much talk, she let her head drop back on her knees. Simple, charitable Oudarde, who took her last words to mean that she was still complaining of the cold, answered in all innocence: ‘Then you would like a bit of fire?’
‘Fire!’ said the sachette in a strange voice: ‘and will you make a bit too for the poor little girl who’s been under the ground for the past fifteen years?’
She trembled in every limb, her voice shook, her eyes shone, she had risen to her knees. Suddenly she stretched out her wan skinny hand towards the child who looked at her in amazement: ‘Take that child away!’ she cried. ‘The gypsy girl is going to pass by!’
Then she fell with her face to the ground, and her forehead struck the flags with the sound of stone on stone. The three women thought she was dead. A moment later she stirred, and they saw her drag herself on knees and elbows to the corner where the little shoe lay. Then they did not dare look, they could no longer see her, but they heard kisses and sighs without number mixed with heart-rending cries and dull thuds as of a head banging against a wall. Then, after one of these thuds, so violent that it made all three of them reel, they heard nothing more.
‘Could she have killed herself?’ said Gervaise, venturing to pass her head through the bars. ‘Sister! Sister Gudule!’
‘Sister Gudule!’ repeated Oudarde.
‘Oh, my God! she’s not moving!’ went on Gervaise. ‘Is she dead?—Gudule! Gudule!’
Mahiette, so overcome up till then that she could not speak, made an effort. ‘Wait,’ she said. Then leaning towards the window: ‘Paquette!’ she said. ‘Paquette la Chantefleurie!’
A child innocently blowing on the flickering fuse of a petard, and having it explode in his face, could not have been more appalled than Mahiette at the effect produced by this name abruptly cast into Sister Gudule’s cell.
The recluse’s whole body shook, she stood up on bare feet and sprang at the window with such blazing eyes that Mahiette, Oudarde, the other woman, and the boy retreated as far as the parapet on the quay.
