by Hugo, Victor
His eyes flashed with lust and rage. His lascivious mouth left red marks on the girl’s throat. She struggled in his arms. He covered her with slavering kisses.
‘Don’t bite me, monster!’ she cried. ‘Oh! vile, loathsome monk! let me go! I’ll tear out your horrid grey hair in handfuls and throw it in your face.’
He went red, he went white, then he loosed her and looked at her with a sombre expression. She thought she had won, and continued: ‘I tell you I belong to my Phoebus, it’s Phoebus I love, it’s Phoebus who is so handsome! You, priest, you are old! you are ugly! Go away!’
He let out a violent cry, like a wretch being burned by the red-hot iron. ‘Die then!’ he said through grinding teeth. She saw his frightful look and tried to flee. He seized her, shook her, threw her to the ground, and hurried towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her behind him over the pavement by her lovely hands.
Once there, he turned to her: ‘One last time, will you be mine?’
She replied forcefully: ‘No.’
At that he cried loudly: ‘Gudule! Gudule! here’s the gypsy girl! Take your revenge!’
The girl felt her elbow roughly seized. She looked. It was an emaciated arm coming out of the window slit in the wall and holding her in a grip of iron.
‘Hold her tight!’ said the priest. ‘It’s the gypsy who escaped. Don’t let her go. I’ll go and fetch the sergeants. You’ll see her hang.’
From inside the wall a throaty laugh responded to these bloodthirsty words. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ The gypsy saw the priest run off in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. A troop of riders could be heard from over there.
The girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with terror she tried to pull free. She twisted about, heaved convulsively several times in agony and despair, but the other held her with extraordinary strength. The lean, bony fingers which were bruising her clutched her flesh and met round it. It was as though that hand were riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more than a shackle, more than an iron ring: it was living, intelligent pincers emerging from a wall.
Exhausted, she fell back against the wall, and then the fear of death took hold of her. She thought of all the beauty in life, youth, the sight of the sky, aspects of nature, love, Phoebus, of all that was fleeing away from her and all that was coming closer, the priest denouncing her, the executioner who was coming, the gibbet standing there. Then she felt horror rise to the roots of her hair, and she heard the dismal laugh of the recluse whispering: ‘Ha! ha! you’re going to be hanged!’
Half dead she turned to the window, and saw the sachette’s wild face through the bars. ‘What have I done to you?’ she said almost unconscious.
The recluse did not answer, but began mumbling in a singsong tone, angry and mocking: ‘Daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt!’
The unfortunate Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her hair, realizing that she was not dealing with a human being.
Suddenly the recluse cried out, as though the gypsy’s question had taken all that time to get through to her mind: ‘What have you done to me? you say! Ah! what have you done to me, gypsy woman! All right! listen. I had a child, yes I did, do you see? I had a child! a child, I say!—a pretty little girl!—my Agnés,’ she went on, distraught, kissing some object in the shadows. ‘Well! do you see, daughter of Egypt? They took my child away, they stole my child, they ate my child. That’s what you’ve done.’
The girl answered, like the lamb in the story: ‘Alas! I may not even have been born then!’
‘Oh yes!’ retorted the recluse, ‘you must have been born. You were one of them. She would be your age! So—for fifteen years now I’ve been here, fifteen years I’ve been suffering, fifteen years I’ve been praying, fifteen years I’ve been banging my head against these four walls. I tell you, it’s the gypsy women who stole her from me, do you hear? and ate her with their teeth. Do you have a heart? Imagine what it’s like, a child playing, a child feeding at the breast, a child sleeping. It’s so innocent! Well! that’s what they took from me, what they killed! The good Lord knows! Today it’s my turn, I’m going to eat gypsy!—Oh! how I’d bite you if the bars didn’t get in the way. My head’s too big!—Poor little thing! while she was asleep! And if they woke her up when they took her, it was no good her crying, I wasn’t there!—Ah! you gypsy mother, you’ve eaten my child! Come and see yours!’
Then she started to laugh, or grind her teeth, the two looked much the same in that ferocious face. Day was beginning to break. An ashen glint dimly lit up this scene, and the gibbet stood out more and more distinctly in the square. In the other direction, over towards the Pont Notre-Dame, the poor condemned girl thought she could hear the sound of cavalry coming closer.
‘Madame!’ she cried, hands clasped, down on her knees, dishevelled, distraught, wild with fright, ‘madame! have pity. They are coming. I have done nothing to you. Do you want to see me die so horribly before your eyes? You can feel pity, I’m sure. It’s too awful. Let me run away! Loose me! Mercy! I don’t want to die like that!’
‘Give me back my child!’ said the recluse.
‘Mercy! mercy!’
‘Give me back my child!’
‘Loose me, in heaven’s name!’
‘Give me back my child!’
This time the girl fell back once more, exhausted, broken, her eyes already glazed like someone in the grave. ‘Alas!’ she stammered, ‘you are looking for your child. I am looking for my parents.’
‘Give me back my little Agnès!’ Gudule continued. ‘You don’t know where she is? Die then!—I’m going to tell you. I was a loose woman, I had a child, they took my child from me—it was the gypsy women. You can see that you must die. When your gypsy mother comes to claim you, I’ll tell her: “Mother, look at that gibbet!” Or give me back my child—do you know where my little girl is? Wait, I’ll show you. Here’s her shoe, all that I have left of her. Do you know where the matching one is? If you know, tell me, and if it’s only the other end of the world, I’ll go and fetch it walking on my knees.’
As she said this, with her other arm stretched out of the window she showed the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to make out its shape and colours.
‘Show me that shoe,’ said the gypsy, giving a start. ‘God! God!’ And at the same time, with her free hand, she swiftly opened the little bag decorated with green glass beads which she wore round her neck.
‘Go on! go on!’ muttered Gudule, ‘rummage in your devilish amulet!’ Suddenly she broke off, trembled in every limb, and cried out in a voice which came from her innermost depths: ‘My daughter!’
The gypsy had just pulled out of the bag a little shoe exactly matching the other one. Attached to this little shoe was a scrap of parchment on which was written this verse:
When you find the pair to this shoe,
Your mother will stretch out her arms to you.
Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had compared the two shoes, read the inscription on the parchment, and pressed her face, radiant with heavenly joy, to the window bars, crying out: ‘My daughter! my daughter!’
‘Mother!’ answered the gypsy.
Here we give up any attempt at description.
The wall and the iron bars stood between them.
‘Oh! the wall!’ cried the recluse. ‘Oh! to see her and not embrace her! Your hand! your hand!’
The girl passed her arm through the window, the recluse threw herself upon that hand, fastened her lips to it and stayed, plunged in that kiss, showing no other sign of life than a sob which made her body heave from time to time. Meanwhile she wept torrents, in silence, in darkness, like rainfall at night. The poor mother poured out in streams over this adored hand the deep, black well of tears within her, into which all her grief had filtered drop by drop for fifteen years.
Suddenly she stood up, pushed her long grey hair away from her forehead and without saying a word began shaking the bars of her
cell with both hands more furiously than a lioness. The bars held firm. Then she went to fetch from a corner of the cell a big paving-stone which served her as a pillow, and hurled it at the bars so violently that one broke in a shower of sparks. A second blow completed the collapse of the old iron crossbar which blocked the window. Then using both hands she finished breaking and pushing clear the rusty stumps of the bars. There are moments when a woman’s hands have superhuman strength.
Once a way through had been cleared, and that took less than a minute, she seized her daughter round the waist and pulled her into the cell. ‘Come! let me fish you back from the abyss!’ she murmured.
When her daughter was inside the cell, she gently laid her on the ground, then picked her up again, and carrying her in her arms as though she was still the baby Agnès, walked up and down in the harrow cell, intoxicated, out of her mind with joy, shouting, singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her, roaring with laughter, bursting into tears, all at the same time, in a frenzy.
‘My daughter, my daughter!’ she said. ‘I’ve got my daughter! Here she is. The good Lord has restored her to me. Hey you! come here all of you! Is there anyone there to see that I’ve got my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You kept me waiting fifteen years, merciful God, but that was so she would be beautiful when you gave her back. So the gypsy women had not eaten her! Who told me so? My little girl! my little girl! kiss me. Those good gypsy women! I love gypsy women. It’s really you. So that’s why my heart leaped each time you went by. But there was I taking that for hatred! Forgive me. Agnès, forgive me. You thought I was very spiteful, didn’t you? I love you.—That little mark on your neck, do you still have it? Let’s see. She’s still got it. Oh! you are beautiful! You got those great big eyes from me, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you. I don’t mind other mothers having children, I don’t care about them now. They have only to come here. Here’s mine. There’s her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hand. Try and find anything as beautiful as that! Oh! I can assure you that she’ll have lots of men in love with her, that one! All my beauty has gone, and passed to her. Kiss me!’
She said countless other extravagant things to her, to which the tone alone lent beauty, disarranged the poor girl’s clothing to the point of making her blush, smoothed out her silken hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her forehead, her eyes, went into raptures about everything. The girl submitted to it all, repeating at intervals, very softly and with infinite gentleness: ‘Mother!’
‘You see, my little girl,’ the recluse went on, punctuating each word with kisses, ‘you see, I’ll love you dearly. We’ll go away from here. We’re going to be really happy. I’ve inherited something at Reims, the part of the country we come from. Reims, you know? Ah! no, you don’t know it, you were too small! If you knew how pretty you were at four months! Such tiny feet that people came to see them out of curiosity from Épernay, and that’s seven leagues distant! We’ll have a field, a house, I’ll have you sleep in my bed. My goodness! my goodness! Who would ever believe it? I’ve got my daughter!’
‘O mother!’ the girl said, finally finding enough strength to speak in her emotion, ‘the gypsy woman did tell me. There was a good gypsy woman of our people who died last year, and always cared for me like a foster mother. She was the one who put that little bag round my neck. She always used to say to me: “Little one, look after this jewel. It’s a treasure. It will enable you to find your mother again. You are wearing your mother round your neck.” She had foretold it, that gypsy had.’
The sachette once more hugged her daughter. ‘Come here, let me kiss you! You say that so nicely. When we are back home, we’ll put those little shoes on an Infant Jesus in one of the churches. We certainly owe that to the good Holy Virgin. Goodness, what a pretty voice you have! When you were talking to me just now it was like music! Oh! my Lord God! I have found my child! But who would ever believe such a story? Nothing is going to make us die, for I haven’t died of joy!’
Then she started clapping her hands again, laughing and shouting: ‘We are going to be happy!’
At that moment the cell rang with the clanking of weapons and the noise of galloping horses which seemed to emerge from the Pont Notre-Dame and to be approaching nearer and nearer along the quay. The gypsy flung herself in anguish into the sachette’s arms.
‘Save me! save me! mother! They are coming!’
The recluse went pale.
‘Oh! heavens! What are you saying? I had forgotten! They are pursuing you! But what have you done?’
‘I don’t know,’ the unhappy child replied, ‘but I have been condemned to death.’
‘To death!’ said Gudule, staggering as though struck by a thunderbolt. ‘To death!’ she went on slowly, staring fixedly at her daughter.
‘Yes, mother,’ the girl went on, quite distraught, ‘they want to kill me. They are coming now to take me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They’re coming! Save me!’
The recluse stood quite still for a few moments as if turned to stone, then shook her head doubtingly, and suddenly let out a roar of laughter, but with her mad, terrifying laugh which had come back: ‘Oh! oh! no! it’s a dream that you’re telling me. Ah, yes! I lose her, and that lasts fifteen years, then I find her again and that lasts one minute! And they are going to take her away again! And it’s now that she is beautiful, grown up, talking to me, loving me, it’s now they come to devour her, before my eyes, I, her mother! Oh no! Such things are not possible. The good God doesn’t allow things like that.’
Now the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a distant voice could be heard saying: ‘Over here, Messire Tristan! The priest says we’ll find her at the Rat-hole.’ The sound of horses began again.
The recluse stood upright with a desperate cry. ‘Flee, flee, my child! It all comes back to me. You are right. It is your death! Horrors! malediction! flee!’
She put her head out of the window and quickly withdrew it.
‘Stay,’ she said, in a low voice, curt and mournful, convulsively squeezing the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive. ‘Stay! don’t breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You can’t go out. It’s too light.’
Her eyes were dry and burning. She stayed for a moment without speaking. She just strode about the cell, stopping periodically to rip out handfuls of grey hair, and then tore them with her teeth.
Suddenly she said; ‘They are coming closer. I’ll talk to them. Hide in that corner. They won’t see you. I’ll just tell them you escaped, that I let you go.’
She put her daughter down, for she was still carrying her, in a corner of the cell which could not be seen from outside. She made her crouch down, carefully arranging her so that neither her hand nor her foot emerged from the darkness, undid her black hair and spread it over her white dress to conceal it, and put the pitcher and paving-stone, the only furniture she had, in front of the girl, imagining that the pitcher and paving stone would hide her. When that was done, now calmer, she knelt down and prayed. Day, which was only just breaking, still left plenty of dark corners in the Rat-hole.
At that moment the priest’s voice, that voice out of hell, passed right by the cell, shouting: ‘Over here, Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers!’
At that name, that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her corner, made a movement. ‘Don’t stir!’ said Gudule.
She had scarcely finished speaking before a tumult of men, swords, and horses halted round the cell. The mother quickly stood up and took up a position in front of the window to block it. She saw a great body of armed men, on foot and on horseback, drawn up on the Grève. Their commander dismounted and came over to her. ‘Old woman,’ said this man, who had a most cruel face, ‘we are looking for a witch to hang her; we’ve been told you had her.’
The poor mother put on the most casual air she could, and answered: ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
The other went on: ‘God’s head! What was that tale that archdeacon was making all that fuss about then? Wher
e is he?’
‘My lord,’ a soldier said, ‘he’s vanished.’
‘Now then, you crazy old woman,’ the commander continued, ‘don’t Îie to me. You were given a witch to guard. What have you done with her?’
The recluse did not want to deny everything, for fear of arousing suspicion, and replied in a tone of surly sincerity: ‘If you’re talking about a tall girl they gave me to hold just now, I can tell you that she bit me and I let her go. There. Leave me in peace.’
The commander made a grimace of disappointment.
‘Don’t go lying to me, you old spectre,’ he went on. ‘My name is Tristan l’Hermite and I’m the King’s compère. Tristan l’Hermite, do you hear?’ He added, looking around him at the Place de Grève: ‘It’s a name with echoes around here.’
‘Even if you were Satan l’Hermite,’ Gudule replied, regaining hope, ‘I wouldn’t tell you any different and I wouldn’t be afraid of you.’
‘God’s head!’ said Tristan, ‘what an old harridan! Ah! so the witch girl escaped! Which way did she go?’
Gudule answered in a tone of indifference: ‘The rue du Mouton, I think.’
Tristan turned his head, and signalled to his troop to prepare to move off again. The recluse breathed again.
‘My lord,’ one of the archers said suddenly, ‘ask the old hag why the bars on her window are all broken like that.’
The question brought anguish back into the wretched mother’s heart. She did not, however, lose all presence of mind: ‘They’ve always been like that,’ she stammered.
‘Oh no!’ retorted the archer, ‘only yesterday they formed a fine black cross which gave people pious thoughts.’
