The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [246]
“What have I done to you?” she asked feebly.
The recluse made no answer; she began to mumble in angry, mocking sing-song, “Gipsy girl! gipsy girl! gipsy girl!”
The luckless Esmeralda veiled her face with her hair, seeing that it was no human being with whom she had to deal.
All at once the recluse exclaimed, as if the gipsy’s question had taken all this time to penetrate her troubled brain:—
“What have you done to me, do you say? Ah! What have you done to me, indeed, you gipsy! Well, listen, and I will tell you. I had a child, even I! Do you hear? I had a child,—a child, I say! A pretty little girl! My Agnès,” she repeated, her wits wandering for a moment, and kissing something in the gloom. “Well, are you listening, gipsy? They stole my child; they took my child from me; they ate my child! That is what you have done to me.”
The young girl answered, as innocently as the lamb in the fable,—
“Alas! I probably was not even born then!”
“Oh, yes!” rejoined the recluse, “you must have been born. You had a hand in it. She would have been about your age! There! For fifteen years I have been in this hole; for fifteen years I have suffered; for fifteen years I have prayed; for fifteen years I have dashed my head against these four walls. I tell you, ‘twas the gipsies who stole her from me,—do you hear?—and who gnawed her bones. Have you a heart? Fancy what it is to have a child who plays at your knee; a child who sucks your breast; a child who sleeps in your arms. It is such a helpless, innocent thing! Well, that,—that’s what they took from me, what they killed for me! The good God knows it well! Now it is my turn; I will slaughter the Egyptians. Oh, how I would bite you, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too big to pass through them! Poor little thing! they took her while she slept! And if they waked her when they snatched her up, all her shrieks were vain; I was not there! Ah, gipsy mothers, you ate my child! Come, look at yours!”
Then she began to laugh, or gnash her teeth, for the two things were much the same in that frenzied face. Dawn was at hand. An ashen light faintly illumined the scene, and the gallows became more and more distinctly visible in the center of the square. From the other side, towards the Pont Notre-Dame the poor prisoner imagined she heard the tramp of approaching horsemen.
“Madame,” she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, disheveled, frantic, mad with fright,—“Madame, have pity! they are coming. I never harmed you. Would you see me die so horrible a death before your very eyes? You are merciful, I am sure. It is too awful! Let me save myself! Let me go! Have mercy! I cannot die thus!”
“Give me back my child!” said the recluse.
“Mercy! mercy!”
“Give me back my child!”
“Let me go, in Heaven’s name!”
“Give me back my child!”
Upon this, the girl sank down, worn out and exhausted, her eyes already having the glazed look of one dead.
“Alas!” she stammered forth, “you seek your child, and I seek my parents.”
“Give me my little Agnès!” continued Gudule. “You know not where she is? Then die! I will tell you all. I was a prostitute; I had a child; they took my child from me. It was the gipsies who did it. You see that you must die. When your gipsy mother comes to claim you, I shall say, ‘Mother, look upon that gibbet!—Or else restore my child!’ Do you know where she is,—where my little girl is? Stay, I will show you. Here’s her shoe,—all that is left me. Do you know where the mate to it is? If you know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I will go on my knees to get it.”
So saying, with her other hand, stretched through the bars, she showed the gipsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to distinguish the shape and colors.
“Show me that shoe,” said the gipsy shuddering. “My God! my God!”
And at the same time with her free hand she hastily opened the little bag adorned with green glass beads, which she wore about her neck.
“That’s it! that’s it!” growled Gudule; “search for your devilish spells!”
All at once she stopped