The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [247]
The gipsy had drawn from the bag a tiny shoe, precisely like the other. A strip of parchment was fastened to the little shoe, upon which these verses were written:
“When the mate to this you find,
Thy mother is not far behind.”
Quick as a flash of lightning the recluse compared the two shoes, read the inscription on the parchment, and pressed her face, beaming with divine rapture, to the window-bars exclaiming,—
“My daughter! my daughter!”
“Mother!” replied the gipsy.
Here we must forbear to set down more.
The wall and the iron grating parted the two. “Oh, the wall!” cried the recluse. “Oh, to see her and not to kiss her! Your hand! your hand!”
The girl put her arm through the window; the recluse threw herself upon the hand, pressed her lips to it, and stood lost in that kiss, the only sign of life being an occasional sob which heaved her bosom. Yet she wept torrents of tears in silence, in the darkness, like rain falling in the night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that idolized hand the dark, deep fountain of tears within her heart, into which all her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for fifteen years.
Suddenly she rose, flung her long grey hair back from her face, and without a word began to shake the bars of her cell more fiercely than a lioness. They held firm. Then she brought from one corner a large paving-stone which served her as a pillow, and hurled it against them with such violence that one of them broke, flashing countless sparks. A second blow utterly destroyed the old iron cross which barricaded her window. Then with both hands she pulled out and demolished the rusty fragments. There are moments when a woman’s hands seem endowed with supernatural strength.
A passage being cleared,—and it took less than a minute to do the work,—she seized her daughter by the waist and dragged her into the cell. “Come, let me draw you out of the abyss!” she murmured.
When her daughter was in the cell, she placed her gently on the ground, then took her up again, and bearing her in her arms as if she were still her little Agnès, she paced to and fro in the narrow space, frantic, mad with joy, singing, shouting, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into laughter, melting into tears, all at once, and with the utmost passion.
“My daughter! my daughter!” she cried. “I’ve found my daughter! Here she is! The good God has restored her to me. Come, all of you! Is there no one here to see that I’ve found my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was to make her more beautiful for me! Then the gipsies did not eat her! Who told me so? My little girl! my little girl! kiss me. Those good gipsies! I love gipsies. It is really you. Then that was why my heart leaped within me every time you passed; and I thought it was hate! Forgive me, Agnès, forgive me. You thought me very cruel, didn’t you? I love you. Have you still the same little mark on your neck? Let us see. She has it still. Oh, how beautiful you are! It was I who gave you those big eyes, miss. Kiss me. I love you. I care not now if other mothers have children; I can laugh them to scorn. They may come. Here is mine. Here’s her neck, her eyes, her hair, her hand. Find me another as lovely! Oh, I tell you she’ll have plenty of lovers, this girl of mine! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has left me and gone to her. Kiss me.”
She made her a thousand other extravagant speeches, their only merit being in the tone in which they were uttered, disordered the poor girl’s dress until she made her blush, smoothed her silken hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her forehead, her eyes, went into ecstasies over each and all. The young girl made no resistance, but repeated ever and anon, in a low tone and with infinite sweetness, “Mother!”
“Look you, my little one,” went on the recluse, interrupting each word with kisses,—“look you; I shall love you dearly. We will go away; we shall