• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Anything for my daughter! Anything for my Héloïse!” cried the woman, twisting her arms around each other in despair. “Anything! Anything! Anything!”

“Listen,” the stranger went on. “It’s God that’s punishing you.”

“But what for?”

“For the torture you’ve inflicted on a poor mother like yourself.”

“Who are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“You’ve often led the prisoner to the brink of despair, that abyss where you find yourself at this moment, through your brutality and your constant spying. God is punishing you by leading this daughter you loved so much to death.”

“You said there was a man who could save her. Where is this man? What does he want? What is he asking for?”

“This man wants you to cease persecuting the Queen, he wants you to ask her forgiveness for the outrages you have done to her, and he wants you, if you perceive that this woman—who is also a mother who suffers, who weeps, who despairs—by some impossible circumstance, by some miracle of the heavens, is about to escape, instead of opposing her flight to help her all you can.”

“It’s you, isn’t it, citizen?” said Mother Tison. “You’re this man?”

“What of it?”

“It’s you who promises to save my daughter?”

The stranger remained silent.

“Do you promise me? Will you do it? Swear to me? Answer me!”

“Listen. All that a man can do to save a woman, I will do to save your daughter.”

“He can’t save her!” cried Mother Tison, howling. “He can’t save her. He was lying when he promised to save her.”

“You do what you can for the Queen, I’ll do what I can for your daughter.”

“What do I care about the Queen? She’s just a woman who has a daughter, that’s all. But if anyone’s going to get her throat cut, it won’t be her daughter, it’ll be her. Let them cut my throat if they like, but let them save my daughter. Let them take me to the guillotine; as long as they don’t touch a hair on her head, I’ll go to the guillotine singing:

“Ah, things will all be better soon

When we string the aristocrats from the lampposts.…”1

With that Mother Tison began to sing in an alarming voice; then, suddenly, she stopped singing and burst into crazy laughter. The man in the coat appeared frightened himself by this onset of madness and took a step back.

“Oh! You won’t get away that easily,” said Mother Tison in despair, holding him by his coat. “You don’t come and tell a mother ‘Do this and I’ll save your child’ only to tell her afterward ‘Maybe.’ Will you save her? ”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“The day they take her from the Conciergerie to the scaffold.”

“Why wait? Why not tonight, this evening, this very instant?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Ha! You see, you see,” shrieked Mother Tison. “You see: you can’t!

Well, I can.”

“What can you do?”

“I can persecute the prisoner, as you call her; I can keep an eye on the Queen, as you call her, aristocrat that you are! I can go into her cell anytime I like, day or night, and don’t think I won’t. As for her escaping, we’ll see about that. Ha! We’ll see about that all right, since you don’t want to save my daughter, we’ll see if she gets out, that one. A head for a head, is that what you want? Madame Veto was Queen, I know very well; Héloïse Tison is just a poor girl, I know very well. But on the guillotine we’re all equal.”

“Well then, so be it!” said the man in the coat. “You save her—and I will save her.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“On what?”

“On whatever you like.”

“Do you have a daughter?”

“No.”

“Well then,” said Mother Tison, dropping both arms in defeat, “what are you going to swear on?”

“Listen, I swear to God.”

“Bah!” replied Mother Tison. “You know very well they’ve taken down the old one and they haven’t put the new one up yet.”

“I swear to you on my father’s grave.”

“Don’t swear on a grave, that’ll bring her bad luck.… Oh! My God! My God! When I think that maybe in three days I’ll be able to swear on my daughter’s grave! My daughter! My poor Héloïse!” bellowed Mother Tison, so loudly—for a woman with a carrying voice to start with—that several windows flew