“You left me in your place, my beauty,” resumed the captain, whose tongue was loosened when he talked to a girl from the streets, “a very surly knave, blind of one eye, and a hunchback, the bishop’s bell-ringer, I believe. They tell me he’s the archdeacon’s son, and a devil. He has a droll name; they call him Ember Days, Palm Sunday, Shrove Tuesday, or something of the sort! He’s named for some high holiday or other! He took the liberty of carrying you off; as if you were a mate for such as he! That was coming it rather strong. What the devil did that screech-owl want with you, eh? Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” answered she.
“Did any one ever hear of such insolence,—a bell-ringer to carry off a girl as if he were a viscount! a common fellow to poach the game of gentlemen! A pretty state of things, indeed! However, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the roughest groom that ever combed and curried a knave; and I can tell you, if it will please you, that he gave your bell-ringer’s hide a most thorough dressing.”
“Poor man!” said the gipsy, reminded by these words of the scene at the pillory.
The captain burst out laughing. “By the great horn-spoon! your pity is as much out of place as a feather on a pig’s tail. May I be as fat as a pope, if—”
He stopped short. “Excuse me, ladies! I was just about to utter a folly.”
“Fie, sir!” said Gaillefontaine.
“He speaks to that creature in her own tongue!” added Fleur-de-Lys in a low voice, her anger growing every instant. Nor was this wrath diminished when she saw the captain, charmed with the gipsy and above all with himself, turn on his heel, repeating with the coarse and frank gallantry of a soldier,— “A lovely girl, upon my soul!”
“Very badly dressed,” said Diane de Christeuil, smiling to show her fine teeth.
This remark was a ray of light to the others. It showed them the gipsy’s vulnerable point: unable to carp at her beauty, they attacked her dress.
“Why, that’s true, little one,” said Montmichel; “where did you learn to run about the streets in this way, without a wimple or a neckerchief?”
“Your skirt is so short it fairly makes me shiver,” added Gaillefontaine.
“My dear,” continued Fleur-de-Lys, somewhat sharply, “you will be taken up one of these days, by the sergeants of the dozen, for your gilded belt.”
“Little one, little one,” resumed Christeuil with a pitiless smile, “if you wore a decent pair of sleeves upon your arms, they would be less sunburnt.”
It was indeed a scene worthy of a more intelligent spectator than Phoebus, to see how these beautiful girls, with their angry, venomous tongues, glided and twisted and twined about the street dancer; they were cruel and yet gracious; they maliciously searched and scanned her shabby, fantastic garb of rags and tinsel. Their laughter, their mockery, and their sneers were endless. Sarcasms rained upon the gipsy, with wicked glances and a haughty pretence of benevolence. They were like those young Roman damsels who amused themselves by plunging golden pins into the bosom of a beautiful slave girl. They were like elegant greyhounds, hanging, with distended nostrils and fiery eyes, about a poor wood-deer which their master’s eye forbids them to devour.
After all, what was a miserable street dancer to these daughters of noble houses? They seemed to pay no heed to her presence, and spoke of her, before her, to her, in loud tones, as of something rather dirty, rather low, but still rather pretty.
The gipsy was not insensible to these pin-pricks. Now and then a flush of shame, a flash of anger, kindled in her eyes or on her cheeks; a scornful word seemed trembling on her lips; she made that little pout with which the reader is familiar, in token of her contempt, but she stood motionless; she fixed a sad, sweet look of resignation upon Ph?bus.
This look was also full of happiness and affection. She seemed to be restraining herself, for fear she should be turned out.
Ph?bus also laughed, and took the gipsy’s part with a mixture of impertinence and pity.
“Let them talk, little one,” he repeated, jingling his golden spurs; “no doubt your dress is somewhat extravagant and peculiar; but what does that matter to such a charming girl as you are?”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the fair-haired Gaillefontaine, straightening her swan-like neck with a bitter smile, “I see that the officers of the king’s guard easily take fire at the bright eyes of a gipsy.”
“Why not?” said Ph?bus.
At this answer, carelessly uttered by the captain, like a stone cast at random, which falls unnoted, Colombe began to laugh, as did Diane and Amelotte and Fleur-de-Lys, into whose eyes tears started at the same time.