Then she began to laugh, or gnash her teeth, for the two things were much the same in that frenzied face. Dawn was at hand. An ashen light faintly illumined the scene, and the gallows became more and more distinctly visible in the center of the square. From the other side, towards the Pont Notre-Dame the poor prisoner imagined she heard the tramp of approaching horsemen.
“Madame,” she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, disheveled, frantic, mad with fright,—“Madame, have pity! they are coming. I never harmed you. Would you see me die so horrible a death before your very eyes? You are merciful, I am sure. It is too awful! Let me save myself! Let me go! Have mercy! I cannot die thus!”
“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!”
Upon this, the girl sank down, worn out and exhausted, her eyes already having the glazed look of one dead.
“Alas!” she stammered forth, “you seek your child, and I seek my parents.”
“Give me my little Agnès!” continued Gudule. “You know not where she is? Then die! I will tell you all. I was a prostitute; I had a child; they took my child from me. It was the gipsies who did it. You see that you must die. When your gipsy mother comes to claim you, I shall say, ‘Mother, look upon that gibbet!—Or else restore my child!’ Do you know where she is,—where my little girl is? Stay, I will show you. Here’s her shoe,—all that is left me. Do you know where the mate to it is? If you know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I will go on my knees to get it.”
So saying, with her other hand, stretched through the bars, she showed the gipsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to distinguish the shape and colors.
“Show me that shoe,” said the gipsy shuddering. “My God! my God!”
And at the same time with her free hand she hastily opened the little bag adorned with green glass beads, which she wore about her neck.
“That’s it! that’s it!” growled Gudule; “search for your devilish spells!”
All at once she stopped short, trembled from head to foot, and cried out in a voice which came from her inmost soul, “My daughter!”
The gipsy had drawn from the bag a tiny shoe, precisely like the other. A strip of parchment was fastened to the little shoe, upon which these verses were written: “When the mate to this you find,
Thy mother is not far behind.”
Quick as a flash of lightning the recluse compared the two shoes, read the inscription on the parchment, and pressed her face, beaming with divine rapture, to the window-bars exclaiming,— “My daughter! my daughter!”
“Mother!” replied the gipsy.
Here we must forbear to set down more.
The wall and the iron grating parted the two. “Oh, the wall!” cried the recluse. “Oh, to see her and not to kiss her! Your hand! your hand!”
The girl put her arm through the window; the recluse threw herself upon the hand, pressed her lips to it, and stood lost in that kiss, the only sign of life being an occasional sob which heaved her bosom. Yet she wept torrents of tears in silence, in the darkness, like rain falling in the night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that idolized hand the dark, deep fountain of tears within her heart, into which all her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for fifteen years.
Suddenly she rose, flung her long grey hair back from her face, and without a word began to shake the bars of her cell more fiercely than a lioness. They held firm. Then she brought from one corner a large paving-stone which served her as a pillow, and hurled it against them with such violence that one of them broke, flashing countless sparks. A second blow utterly destroyed the old iron cross which barricaded her window. Then with both hands she pulled out and demolished the rusty fragments. There are moments when a woman’s hands seem endowed with supernatural strength.
A passage being cleared,—and it took less than a minute to do the work,—she seized her daughter by the waist and dragged her into the cell. “Come, let me draw you out of the abyss!” she murmured.
When her daughter was in the cell, she placed her gently on the ground, then took her up again, and bearing her in her arms as if she were still her little Agnès, she paced to and fro in the narrow space, frantic, mad with joy, singing, shouting, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into laughter, melting into tears, all at once, and with the utmost passion.