“It is so true that they supped at the H?tel-de-Ville,” replied Oudarde, but little moved by this display of eloquence, “that no one ever saw such an exhibition of meats and sugar-plums before.”
“But I tell you that they were served by Le Sec, one of the city guard, at the Petit-Bourbon, and that’s what misled you.”
“At the H?tel-de-Ville, I say!”
“At the Petit-Bourbon, my dear! For didn’t they illuminate the word ‘Hope,’ which is written over the great entrance, with magical glasses?”
“At the H?tel-de-Ville! at the H?tel-de-Ville! Don’t I tell you that Husson-le-Voir played the flute?”
“I tell you, no!”
“I tell you, yes!”
“And I tell you, no!”
The good fat Oudarde was making ready to reply, and the quarrel might have come to blows, if Mahiette had not suddenly exclaimed, “Only see those people crowding together at the end of the bridge! There’s something in the midst of them, at which they’re all looking.”
“Truly,” said Gervaise, “I do hear the sound of a tambourine. I verily believe it’s that little Smeralda playing her tricks with her goat. Come quick, Mahiette! Make haste and pull your boy along faster. You came here to see all the sights of Paris. Yesterday you saw the Flemings; today you must see the gipsy girl.”
“The gipsy,” said Mahiette, turning back abruptly, and grasping her son’s arm more firmly. “Heaven preserve us! She might steal my child! -Come, Eustache!”
And she set out running along the quay towards the Place de Grève, until she had left the bridge far behind her. But the child, whom she dragged after her, stumbled, and fell upon his knees; she stopped, out of breath. Oudarde and Gervaise rejoined her.
“That gipsy girl steal your child!” said Gervaise. “What a strange idea!”
Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air.
“The queer part of it is,” observed Oudarde, “that the sachette has the same opinion of the gipsies.”
“What do you mean by the sachette?” said Mahiette.
“Why!” said Oudarde, “Sister Gudule.”
“And who,” returned Mahiette, “is Sister Gudule?”
“You must indeed be from Rheims, not to know that!” replied Oudarde. “She is the recluse of the Rat-Hole.”
“What!” asked Mahiette, “the poor woman to whom we are carrying this cake?”
Oudarde nodded.
“Exactly so. You will see her presently at her window on the Place de Grève. She feels just as you do about those gipsy vagabonds who go about drumming on the tambourine and telling people’s fortunes. No one knows what gave her such a horror of gipsies. But you, Mahiette,—why should you take to your heels in such haste at the mere sight of them?”
“Oh,” said Mahiette, clasping her child to her bosom, “I could not bear to have the same thing happen to me that happened to Paquette la Chantefleurie.”
“Oh, do tell us the story, my dear Mahiette,” said Gervaise, taking her arm.
“Gladly,” answered Mahiette; “but you must indeed be from Paris, not to know that! You must know, then,—but we need not stand here to tell the tale,—that Paquette la Chantefleurie was a pretty girl of eighteen when I was one too; that is to say, some eighteen years ago, and it is her own fault if she is not now, like me, a happy, hale, and hearty mother of six-and-thirty, with a husband and a son. However, from the time she was fourteen, it was too late! She was the daughter of Guybertaut, minstrel to the boats at Rheims, the same who played before King Charles VII, at his coronation, when he sailed down the river Vesle from Sillery to Muison, and, more by token, the Maid of Orleans was in the boat with him. Her old father died when Paquette was still a mere child; then she had no one but her mother, a sister to Pradon, the master brazier and coppersmith at Paris, in the Rue Parin-Garlin, who died last year. You see that she came of an honest family. The mother was a good, simple woman, unfortunately, and taught Paquette nothing but a little fringe-making and toy-making, which did not keep the child from growing very tall and remaining very poor. The two lived at Rheims, on the water’s edge, in the Rue Folle-Peine. Note this. I think this was what brought ill-luck to Paquette. In ‘61, the year of the coronation of our King Louis XI,—may Heaven preserve him!—Paquette was so merry and so pretty that every one knew her as Chantefleurie.cd Poor girl! She had lovely teeth, and she liked to laugh, so that she might show them. Now, a girl who likes to laugh is on the high-road to weep; fine teeth spoil fine eyes. Such was Chantefleurie. She and her mother had hard work to earn a living; they were greatly reduced after the father’s death; their fringe-making did not bring them in more than six farthings a week, which doesn’t make quite two pence. Where was the time when Father Guybertaut earned twelve Paris pence at a single coronation for a single song? One winter （it was that same year of ’61）， when the two women had not a stick of firewood and it was bitterly cold, the cold gave Chantefleurie such a fine color that the men called her Paquette,—some called her Paquerette,ce—and she went to the bad.—Eustache! don’t you let me see you nibble that cake!—We soon saw that she was ruined, when she came to church one fine Sunday with a gold cross on her neck. At fourteen years of age! Think of that! First it was the young Vicomte de Cormontreuil, whose castle is about three quarters of a league away from Rheims; then M. Henri de Triancourt, the king’s equerry; then something lower, Chiart de Beaulin, sergeant-at-arms; then, still lower, Guery Aubergeon, the king’s carver; then, Mace de Frépus, the dauphin’s barber; then, Thévenin-le-Moine, the king’s cook; then, still descending to older and meaner men, she fell into the hands of Guillaume Racine, viol-player, and of Thierry-de-Mer, the lantern-maker. Then—poor Chantefleurie!—she became common property; she had come to the last copper of her gold piece. How shall I tell you, ladies? At the time of the coronation, in that same year ‘61, it was she who made the king of ribalds’ bed,—that self-same year!”