The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [248]
“Oh, mother!” said the girl, at last recovering sufficient strength to speak in spite of her emotion, “the gipsy woman told me it would be so. There was a kind gipsy woman of our tribe who died last year, and who always took care of me as if she had been my nurse. It was she who hung this bag about my neck. She always said to me, ‘Little one, guard this trinket well. It is a precious treasure; it will help you to find your mother. You wear your mother around your neck.’ The gipsy foretold it!”
The sachette again clasped her daughter in her arms.
“Come; let me kiss you! You said that so prettily. When we are in our own country, we will give these little shoes to the Child Jesus in the church; we surely owe that much to the kind Blessed Virgin. Heavens! what a sweet voice you have! When you spoke to me just now, it was like music. Oh, my Lord God, I have found my child! But is it credible,—all this story? Nothing can kill one, for I have not died of joy.”
And then she again began to clap her hands, to laugh, and cry,
“How happy we shall be!”
At this moment the cell rang with the clash of arms and the galloping feet of horses, which seemed to come from the Pont Notre-Dame, and to be advancing nearer and nearer along the quay. The gipsy threw herself into the arms of the sachette in an agony.
“Save me! save me, mother! I hear them coming!”
The recluse turned pale.
“Heavens! What do you say? I had forgotten; you are pursued! Why, what have you done?”
“I know not,” replied the unhappy child; “but I am condemned to die.”
“To die!” said Gudule, tottering as if struck by lightning. “To die!” she repeated slowly, gazing steadily into her daughter’s face.
“Yes, mother,” replied the desperate girl, “they mean to kill me. They are coming now to capture me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They come! Save me!”
The recluse stood for some moments motionless, as if turned to stone; then she shook her head doubtingly, and all at once burst into loud laughter; but her former frightful laugh had returned:—
“Ho! ho! No; it is a dream! Oh, yes; I lost her, I lost her for fifteen years, and then I found her again, and it was but for an instant! And they would take her from me again! Now that she is grown up, that she is so fair, that she talks to me, that she loves me, they would devour her before my eyes,—mine, who am her mother! Oh, no; such things cannot be! The good God would not suffer them.”
Here the cavalcade seemed to pause, and a distant voice was heard, saying,—
“This way, Master Tristan; the priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-Hole!” The tramp of horses began again.
The recluse sprang up with a despairing cry.
“Save yourself! save yourself, my child! I remember now! You are right; it is your death! Horror! Malediction! Save yourself!”
She thrust her head from the window, and rapidly withdrew it.
“Stay!” she said in a low, curt, and mournful tone, convulsively clasping the hand of the gipsy, who was more dead than alive. “Stay! do not breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You cannot go; it is too light.”
Her eyes were dry and burning. She stood for a moment speechless; then she strode up and down the cell, pausing at intervals to tear out handfuls of her grey hair. Suddenly she said: “They are coming; I will speak to them. Hide yourself in this corner; they will not see you. I will tell them that you have escaped; that I let you go, by my faith!”
She laid her daughter—for she still held her in her arms—in a corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down, carefully arranged her so that neither hand nor foot protruded