“I tell you there is!” replied the hangman; “we all saw that there were two of you.”
“Look then!” said the recluse, with a sneer. “Put your head in at the window.”
The hangman scrutinized the mother’s nails, and dared not venture.
“Despatch!” cried Tristan, who had ranged his men in a ring around the Rat-Hole, and himself sat on horseback near the gibbet.
Henriet returned to the provost once more, utterly out of countenance. He had laid his rope on the ground, and awkwardly twirled his hat in his hands.
“Sir,” he inquired, “how am I to get in?”
“Through the door.”
“There is none.”
“Through the window.”
“It is too small.”
“Then make it bigger,” angrily exclaimed Tristan. “Have you no pickaxes?”
From the back of her den, the mother, ever on the alert, watched them. She had lost all hope, she knew not what she wished, but they should not have her daughter.
Henriet Cousin went to fetch his box of tools from the shed of the Maison-aux-Piliers. He also brought out the trestles, which he at once set up against the gibbet. Five or six of the provost’s men armed themselves with picks and levers, and Tristan moved towards the window with them.
“Old woman,” said the provost in a stern voice, “surrender that girl with a good grace.”
She looked at him like one who does not understand.
“‘Sblood!” added Tristan, “why should you prevent that witch from being hanged, as it pleases the king?”
The wretched woman began to laugh wildly.
“Why? She is my daughter!”
The tone in which she uttered that word made even Henriet Cousin shudder.
“I am sorry,” replied the provost, “but it is the king’s good plea sure”。
She shrieked with redoubled laughter,— “What is your king to me? I tell you she is my daughter!”
“Make a hole in the wall,” said Tristan.
It was only necessary to remove one course of stones under the window, in order to make an opening of sufficient size. When the mother heard the picks and levers undermining her fortress, she uttered an awful scream; then she began to pace her cell with frightful speed,—one of the habits of a wild beast which she had acquired in her cage. She said no more, but her eyes flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the marrow.
All at once she caught up her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it with both hands at the workmen. The stone, ill aimed （for her hands trembled）， struck no one and fell at the feet of Tristan’s horse. She ground her teeth.
Meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad daylight; a lovely pink tint illumined the worm-eaten old chimneys of the Maison-aux-Piliers. It was the hour when the windows of the earliest risers in the great city open joyously upon the roofs. Some few country people, some fruiterers going to market on their donkeys, began to pass through the Place de Grève; they paused a moment at sight of this cluster of soldiers huddled in front of the Rat-Hole, looked at them in surprise, then went their way.
The recluse had seated herself beside her daughter, covering her with her body, her eye fixed, listening to the poor girl, who never stirred, but murmured softly the one word, “Ph?bus! Ph?bus!” As the work of the destroyers progressed, the mother mechanically moved back, pressing the young girl closer and closer against the wall. All at once she saw the stones （for she was on the watch and never took her eyes from them） quiver, and she heard Tristan’s voice urging the laborers on. Then she woke from the stupor into which she had sunk, exclaiming,—and, as she spoke, her voice now pierced the ear like a saw, then stammered as if all the curses which she uttered crowded to her lips at once: “Ho! ho! ho! But this is horrible! You are robbers! Do you really mean to take my daughter from me? I tell you it is my daughter! Oh, cowards! Oh, base hangmen! Vile assassins! Help! help! Fire! Will they thus take my child? Then, what is he whom men call the good God?”
Then turning to Tristan, with foaming mouth, haggard eyes, on all fours like a panther, and bristling with rage:— “Come and take my daughter! Do you not understand that this woman tells you it is her daughter? Do you know what it is to have a child of your own? Have you no mate, O lynx? Have you never had a cub? And if you have little ones, when they howl does nothing stir within you?”
“Down with the stones,” said Tristan; “they are loosened.”
The levers lifted the ponderous course of stone. It was, as we have said, the mother’s last bulwark.