The unhappy woman had flung herself upon the shoe, for so many years her consolation and her despair, and she burst into heartrending sobs as if it were the very day it happened; for to a mother who has lost her child, her loss is ever present. Such grief as that never grows old. The garments of mourning may rust and wear out; the heart remains forever darkened.
At this instant the fresh, gay voices of a band of children were heard outside, passing the cell. Every time that a child met her eye or ear, the poor mother rushed into the blackest corner of her tomb, and seemed trying to bury her head in the stone walls, that she might not hear or see them. But today, on the contrary, she sprang up hastily, and listened eagerly. One of the little boys said,— “They are going to hang a gipsy girl today.”
With the sudden leap of that spider which we saw rush upon a fly when her web quivered, she ran to her window, which looked, as the reader knows, upon the Place de Grève. A ladder was indeed erected close to the permanent gallows, and the hangman’s assistant was arranging the chains rusted by the rain. A number of people stood about watching him.
The laughing group of children had already vanished. The recluse looked about for some passer-by, whom she might question. She noticed, close by her cell, a priest, who feigned to be reading the public breviary, but who was far less occupied with the “letters latticed with iron” than with the gibbet, towards which he cast repeated wild and gloomy glances. She recognized him as the archdeacon of Josas, a holy man.
“Father,” she asked, “who is to be hanged yonder?”
The priest stared at her, and made no answer; she repeated her question. Then he said,— “I do not know.”
“The children said that it was a gipsy girl,” continued the recluse.
“I believe it is,” said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into a hyena-like laugh.
“Sister,” said the archdeacon, “do you hate the gipsies so intensely?”
“Do I hate them!” cried the recluse; “they are witches, child stealers ! They devoured my little girl, my child, my only child! I have no heart now; they ate it!”
She was frightful to look upon. The priest gazed coldly at her.
“There is one whom I hate particularly, and whom I have cursed,” she added; “she is young,—about the age that my daughter would have been if her mother had not eaten my girl. Every time that young viper passes my cell, my blood boils!”
“Well, then, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, as cold as the statue on a monument; “it is that same girl whose death you are about to witness.”
His head fell upon his breast, and he moved slowly away.
The recluse wrung her hands with joy.
“I told her she would mount those steps! Thanks, Sir Priest!” she cried.
And she began to stride up and down behind her barred window, with disheveled hair and flaming eyes, striking her shoulder against the wall as she moved, with the savage air of a caged wolf which has long gone hungry, and knows that feeding-time is at hand.
CHAPTER VI
Three Men’s Hearts, Differently Constituted Ph?bus, however, was not dead. Men of his kind are hard to kill. When Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, said to poor Esmeralda, “He is dying,” he was either mistaken or joking. When the archdeacon, in pronouncing her sentence, repeated, “He is dead,” the fact was that he knew nothing whatever about it, but that he supposed so, he reckoned upon it, had no doubt of it, sincerely hoped it was so. It would have been too much to expect of him, that he should carry good news of his rival to the woman he loved. Any man would have done the same in his place.
Not that Ph?bus’s wound was not severe, but it was less so than the archdeacon flattered himself. The surgeon, to whose house the soldiers of the watch had at once carried him, had for a week feared for his life, and even told him so in Latin. However, youth triumphed ; and, as frequently happens, prognosis and diagnosis to the contrary, Nature amused herself by saving the patient in spite of the doctor. It was while he still lay upon his sick-bed that he underwent the first examination from Philippe Lheulier and the board of inquiry from the Bishop’s Court, which annoyed him exceedingly. Accordingly, one fine morning, feeling better, he left his golden spurs in payment of the doctor, and slipped away. This circumstance, moreover, did not at all disturb the legal proceedings. Justice in those days cared little for precision and accuracy in a criminal suit. Provided the prisoner were hanged, that was all that was necessary. Now, the judges had proof enough against Esmeralda. They believed Phoebus to be dead, and that was the end of the matter.