“My daughter! my daughter!” she cried. “I’ve found my daughter! Here she is! The good God has restored her to me. Come, all of you! Is there no one here to see that I’ve found my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was to make her more beautiful for me! Then the gipsies did not eat her! Who told me so? My little girl! my little girl! kiss me. Those good gipsies! I love gipsies. It is really you. Then that was why my heart leaped within me every time you passed; and I thought it was hate! Forgive me, Agnès, forgive me. You thought me very cruel, didn’t you? I love you. Have you still the same little mark on your neck? Let us see. She has it still. Oh, how beautiful you are! It was I who gave you those big eyes, miss. Kiss me. I love you. I care not now if other mothers have children; I can laugh them to scorn. They may come. Here is mine. Here’s her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hand. Find me another as lovely! Oh, I tell you she’ll have plenty of lovers, this girl of mine! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has left me and gone to her. Kiss me.”
She made her a thousand other extravagant speeches, their only merit being in the tone in which they were uttered, disordered the poor girl’s dress until she made her blush, smoothed her silken hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her forehead, her eyes, went into ecstasies over each and all. The young girl made no resistance, but repeated ever and anon, in a low tone and with infinite sweetness, “Mother!”
“Look you, my little one,” went on the recluse, interrupting each word with kisses,—“look you; I shall love you dearly. We will go away; we shall be very happy. I have inherited something at Rheims, in our native country. You know, at Rheims? Oh, no! you don’t remember; you were too little. If you only knew how pretty you were at four months old! Tiny feet, which people, out of curiosity, came all the way from Epernay, full seven leagues off, to see! We will have a field and a house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God! my God! who would ever have believed it? I’ve found my daughter!”
“Oh, mother!” said the girl, at last recovering sufficient strength to speak in spite of her emotion, “the gipsy woman told me it would be so. There was a kind gipsy woman of our tribe who died last year, and who always took care of me as if she had been my nurse. It was she who hung this bag about my neck. She always said to me, ‘Little one, guard this trinket well. It is a precious treasure; it will help you to find your mother. You wear your mother around your neck.’ The gipsy foretold it!”
The sachette again clasped her daughter in her arms.
“Come; let me kiss you! You said that so prettily. When we are in our own country, we will give these little shoes to the Child Jesus in the church; we surely owe that much to the kind Blessed Virgin. Heavens! what a sweet voice you have! When you spoke to me just now, it was like music. Oh, my Lord God, I have found my child! But is it credible,—all this story? Nothing can kill one, for I have not died of joy.”
And then she again began to clap her hands, to laugh, and cry, “How happy we shall be!”
At this moment the cell rang with the clash of arms and the galloping feet of horses, which seemed to come from the Pont Notre-Dame, and to be advancing nearer and nearer along the quay. The gipsy threw herself into the arms of the sachette in an agony.
“Save me! save me, mother! I hear them coming!”
The recluse turned pale.
“Heavens! What do you say? I had forgotten; you are pursued! Why, what have you done?”
“I know not,” replied the unhappy child; “but I am condemned to die.”
“To die!” said Gudule, tottering as if struck by lightning. “To die!” she repeated slowly, gazing steadily into her daughter’s face.
“Yes, mother,” replied the desperate girl, “they mean to kill me. They are coming now to capture me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They come! Save me!”
The recluse stood for some moments motionless, as if turned to stone; then she shook her head doubtingly, and all at once burst into loud laughter; but her former frightful laugh had returned:— “Ho! ho! No; it is a dream! Oh, yes; I lost her, I lost her for fifteen years, and then I found her again, and it was but for an instant! And they would take her from me again! Now that she is grown up, that she is so fair, that she talks to me, that she loves me, they would devour her before my eyes,—mine, who am her mother! Oh, no; such things cannot be! The good God would not suffer them.”