The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [167]
Had the archdeacon been present, he would certainly have recalled at this moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the wretched victim saw, through a cloud which spread before her eyes, the buskin approach; soon she saw her foot, locked between the iron-bound boards, hidden by the hideous machine. Then terror restored her strength.
“Take it off!” she cried frantically; and starting up all disheveled, “Mercy!”
She sprang from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king’s proxy; but her leg was held by the heavy mass of wood and iron, and she sank down upon the buskin, more helpless than a bee with a leaden weight upon its wing.
At a sign from Charmolue she was replaced upon the bed, and two coarse hands bound about her slender waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.
“For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?” asked Charmolue with his unshaken benevolence.
“I am innocent.”
“Then, young lady, how do you explain the circumstances brought against you?”
“Alas! sir, I do not know!”
“Then you deny everything?”
“Everything!”
“Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.
Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the buskin contracted, and the wretched girl uttered one of those terrible shrieks which defy all orthography in any human language.
“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” said he to the gipsy.
“Everything!” cried the miserable girl. “I confess, I confess! Mercy!”
She had not calculated her strength when she braved the torture. Poor child! her life thus far had been so joyous, so sweet, so smooth, the first pang vanquished her.
“Humanity compels me to tell you,” remarked the king’s proxy, “that if you confess, you can look for nothing but death.”
“I hope so, indeed!” said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, almost fainting, bent double, suspended by the strap buckled around her waist.
“There, my beauty, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, lifting her. “You look like the golden sheep which hangs on my Lord of Burgundy’s neck.”
Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,—
“Clerk, write. Young gipsy girl, you confess your complicity in the love-feasts, revels, and evil practices of hell, with wizards, demons, and witches? Answer!”
“Yes,” said she, in so low a voice that it was scarcely more than a whisper.
“You confess that you have seen the ram which Beelzebub reveals in the clouds to summon his followers to the Witches’ Sabbath, and which is only seen by sorcerers?”
“Yes.”
“You confess that you have worshiped the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of the Templars?”
“Yes.”
“That you have held constant intercourse with the devil in the shape of a tame goat, included in the trial?”
“Yes.”
“And, finally, you acknowledge and confess that, with the help of the foul fiend and the phantom commonly called the goblin monk, on the night of the 29th of March last you did murder and assassinate a certain captain named Phœbus de Châteaupers?”
She raised her large steady eyes to the magistrate’s face, and answered as if mechanically, without any effort or convulsion,—
“Yes.”
It was plain that she was utterly broken.
“Write, clerk,” said Charmolue; and addressing the torturers: “Release the prisoner, and lead her back to the court-room.”
When the prisoner was “unshod,” the king’s proxy examined her foot, still numb with pain.
“Come!” said he; “there is no great harm done. You screamed in time. You can dance yet, my beauty.”
Then he turned to his companions from the Bishop’s Court—
“So justice is enlightened at last! That’s a comfort, gentlemen! The young lady will bear witness that we have acted with the utmost gentleness.”
CHAPTER III
End of the Crown Piece Changed to a Dry Leaf
When she returned to the audience-chamber, pale and limping, she was greeted with a general buzz of pleasure. On the part of the audience, it was caused by that feeling of satisfied impatience which is felt at the theater, at the end of the final intermission, when the curtain rises and the last act begins. On the part of the judges, it came