Виктор Мари Гюго
Notre-Dame De Paris
CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK
The illustrious wine shop of “Eve’s Apple” was situated in the University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue de la Bâtonnier. It was a very spacious and very low hail on the ground floor, with a vaulted ceiling whose central spring rested upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow; tables everywhere, shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, always a large number of drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a window on the street, a vine at the door, and over the door a flaring piece of sheet-iron, painted with an apple and a woman, rusted by the rain and turning with the wind on an iron pin. This species of weather-vane which looked upon the pavement was the signboard.
Night was falling; the square was dark; the wine-shop, full of candles, flamed afar like a forge in the gloom; the noise of glasses and feasting, of oaths and quarrels, which escaped through the broken panes, was audible. Through the mist which the warmth of the room spread over the window in front, a hundred confused figures could be seen swarming, and from time to time a burst of noisy laughter broke forth from it. The passers-by who were going about their business, slipped past this tumultuous window without glancing at it. Only at intervals did some little ragged boy raise himself on tiptoe as far as the ledge, and hurl into the drinking-shop, that ancient, jeering hoot, with which drunken men were then pursued: “Aux Houls, saouls, saouls, saouls!”
Nevertheless, one man paced imperturbably back and forth in front of the tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no further from it than a pikernan from his sentry-box. He was enveloped in a mantle to his very nose. This mantle he had just purchased of the old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the “Eve’s Apple,” no doubt to protect himself from the cold of the March evening, possibly also, to conceal his costume. From time to time he paused in front of the dim window with its leaden lattice, listened, looked, and stamped his foot.
At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was what he appeared to be waiting for. Two boon companions came forth. The ray of light which escaped from the door crimsoned for a moment their jovial faces.
The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the watch under a porch on the other side of the street.
“Corne et tonnerre!” said one of the comrades. “Seven o’clock is on the point of striking. ‘Tis the hour of my appointed meeting.”
“I tell you,” repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, “that I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, indignus qui inter mala verba habitat. I have a lodging in the Rue Jean-Pain-Mollet, in vico Johannis Pain-Mollet. You are more horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. Every one knows that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but you have a nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the hospital.”
“Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other.
The other replied staggering, “It pleases you to say so, Phoebus; but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.”
The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave friends, the captain and the scholar. It appears that the man who was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, for he slowly followed all the zigzags that the scholar caused the captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had retained all his self-possession. By listening to them attentively, the man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the following interesting conversation, —
“Corbacque! Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know that I must leave you. Here it is seven o’clock. I have an appointment with a woman.”
“Leave me then! I see stars and lances of fire. You are like the Chateau de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter.”
“By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too much rabidness. By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?”
“Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher’s shop, parva boucheria.”
“Jehau! my friend Jehan! You know that I made an appointment with that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can only take her to the Falourdel’s, the old crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber. The old witch with a white moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity’s sake! Have we drunk up the whole of the curé’s purse? Have you not a single parisis left?”
“The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just and savory condiment for the table.”
“Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense! Tell me, Jehan of the devil! have you any money left? Give it to me, bédieu! or I will search you, were you as leprous as Job, and as scabby as Caesar!”
“Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie.”
“Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache is good, very good. But in the name of heaven collect your wits. I must have a sou parisis, and the appointment is for seven o’clock.”
“Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain, —
“Quand les rats mangeront les cas,
Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras;
Quand la mer, qui est grande et le(e
Sera a la Saint-Jean gele(e,
On verra, par-dessus la glace,
Sortir ceux d’Arras de leur place 43.”
“Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the entrails of your mother!” exclaimed Phoebus, and he gave the drunken scholar a rough push; the latter slipped against the wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Augustus. A remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a drinker, prompted Phoebus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of those pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at the corner of all the street posts of Paris, and which the rich blight with the name of “a rubbish-heap.” The captain adjusted Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass. Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain’s heart. “So much the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its passage!” he said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off.
The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by indecision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he also strode off in pursuit of the captain.
We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky, and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader.
On emerging into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phoebus perceived that some one was following him. On glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow crawling after him along the walls. He halted, it halted; he resumed his march, it resumed its march. This disturbed him not overmuch. “Ah, bah!” he said to himself, “I have not a sou.”
He paused in front of the College d’Autun. It was at this college that he had sketched out what he called his studies, and, through a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never passed the façade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of Horace, Olim truncus eram ficulnus. He had done this with so much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, Eduensis episcopus, had become almost effaced. Therefore, he halted before the statue according to his wont. The street was utterly deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phoebus two intent eyes, full of that vague light which issues in the night time from the pupils of a cat.
The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and finally broke the silence with a forced laugh.
“Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your hand near by here. In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true cross set in silver.”
The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and descended upon the arm of Phoebus with the grip of an eagle’s talon; at the same time the shadow spoke, —
“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers!”
“What, the devil!” said Phoebus, “you know my name!”
“I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle, with his sepulchral voice. “You have a rendezvous this evening.”
“Yes,” replied Phoebus in amazement.
“At seven o’clock.”
“In a quarter of an hour.”
“At la Falourdel’s.”
“Precisely.”
“The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”
“Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.”
“Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”
“Confiteor, – I confess – .”
“Who is called – ?”
“La Smeralda,” said Phoebus, gayly. All his heedlessness had gradually returned.
At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phoebus in a fury.
“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, thou liest!”
Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the cloak, – any one who could have beheld this would have been frightened. There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and the statue.
“Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers! Thou wilt not dare repeat it.”
“Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly.
The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom, superstitions, – he had forgotten all at that moment. He no longer beheld anything but a man, and an insult.
“Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage. He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear makes a man tremble: “Here! On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords! Blood on the pavement!”
But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary on guard and ready to parry, —
“Captain Phoebus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness, “you forget your appointment.”
The rages of men like Phoebus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is calmed by a drop of cold water. This simple remark caused the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.
“Captain,” pursued the man, “to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut your throat; but go first to your rendezvous.”
“In sooth,” said Phoebus, as though seeking to capitulate with himself, “these are two charming things to be encountered in a rendezvous, – a sword and a wench; but I do not see why I should miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have both.”
He replaced his sword in its scabbard.
“Go to your rendezvous,” said the man.
“Monsieur,” replied Phoebus with some embarrassment, “many thanks for your courtesy. In fact, there will be ample time to-morrow for us to chop up father Adam’s doublet into slashes and buttonholes. I am obliged to you for allowing me to pass one more agreeable quarter of an hour. I certainly did hope to put you in the gutter, and still arrive in time for the fair one, especially as it has a better appearance to make the women wait a little in such cases. But you strike me as having the air of a gallant man, and it is safer to defer our affair until to-morrow. So I will betake myself to my rendezvous; it is for seven o’clock, as you know.” Here Phoebus scratched his ear. “Ah. Corne Dieu! I had forgotten! I haven’t a sou to discharge the price of the garret, and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She distrusts me.”
“Here is the wherewithal to pay.”
Phoebus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip into his a large piece of money. He could not refrain from taking the money and pressing the hand.
“Vrai Dieu!” he exclaimed, “you are a good fellow!”
“One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I have been wrong and that you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some corner whence I can see whether this woman is really the one whose name you uttered.”
“Oh!” replied Phoebus, “‘tis all one to me. We will take, the Sainte-Marthe chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel hard by.”
“Come then,” said the shadow.
“At your service,” said the captain, “I know not whether you are Messer Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this evening; to-morrow I will repay you all my debts, both of purse and sword.”
They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that they were on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses.
“I will first show you the way,” said Phoebus to his companion, “I will then go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near the Petit-Châtelet.”
His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they had been walking side by side. Phoebus halted before a low door, and knocked roughly; a light made its appearance through the cracks of the door.
“Who is there?” cried a toothless voice.
“Corps-Dieu! Tête-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu!” replied the captain.
The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-corners to see an old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman was bent double, clad in tatters, with a shaking head, pierced with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish clout; wrinkled everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips retreated under her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which gave her the whiskered look of a cat.
The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled chimney-piece, spiders’ webs in all the corners, in the middle a staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty child among the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, a wooden ladder, which ended in a trap door in the ceiling.
On entering this lair, Phoebus’s mysterious companion raised his mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to “make the sun shine in a crown” as saith our admirable Régnier.
“The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he.
The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the black mantle had given to Phoebus. While her back was turned, the bushy-headed and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes, adroitly approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in its place a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.
The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them. On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on a coffer, and, Phoebus, like a frequent visitor of the house, opened a door which opened on a dark hole. “Enter here, my dear fellow,” he said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag. The light had disappeared.
CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER
Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him. It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A vertical section of this kennel, as Phoebus had so justly styled it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust, and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire; rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose cool-ness afforded him some relief.
What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.
In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phoebus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed in his mind a horrible group.
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phoebus, twirling his moustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld her rise from below like a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled and whirled around him; he no longer saw nor heard anything.
When he recovered himself, Phoebus and Esmeralda were alone seated on the wooden coffer beside the lamp which made these two youthful figures and a miserable pallet at the end of the attic stand out plainly before the archdeacon’s eyes.
Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a spider’s web upon which rain has fallen, allowed a view, through its rent meshes, of a corner of the sky, and the moon lying far away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds.
The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her long, drooping lashes shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, to whom she dared not lift her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with a charmingly unconscious gesture, she traced with the tip of her finger incoherent lines on the bench, and watched her finger. Her foot was not visible. The little goat was nestling upon it.
The captain was very gallantly clad; he had tufts of embroidery at his neck and wrists; a great elegance at that day.
It was not without difficulty that Dom Claude managed to hear what they were saying, through the humming of the blood, which was boiling in his temples.
(A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace affair. It is a perpetual “I love you.” A musical phrase which is very insipid and very bald for indifferent listeners, when it is not ornamented with some fioriture; but Claude was not an indifferent listener.)
“Oh!” said the young girl, without raising her eyes, “do not despise me, monseigneur Phoebus. I feel that what I am doing is not right.”
“Despise you, my pretty child!” replied the officer with an air of superior and distinguished gallantry, “despise you, tête-Dieu! and why?”
“For having followed you!”
“On that point, my beauty, we don’t agree. I ought not to despise you, but to hate you.”
The young girl looked at him in affright: “Hate me! what have I done?”
“For having required so much urging.”
“Alas!” said she, “‘tis because I am breaking a vow. I shall not find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue. But what matters it? What need have I of father or mother now?”
So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, moist with joy and tenderness.
“Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phoebus. La Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear dropped from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said, – “Oh! monseigneur, I love you.”
Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue surrounded the young girl, that Phoebus did not feel completely at his ease beside her. But this remark emboldened him: “You love me!” he said with rapture, and he threw his arm round the gypsy’s waist. He had only been waiting for this opportunity.
The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the point of a poniard which he wore concealed in his breast.
“Phoebus,” continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her waist from the captain’s tenacious hands, “You are good, you are generous, you are handsome; you saved me, me who am only a poor child lost in Bohemia. I had long been dreaming of an officer who should save my life. ‘Twas of you that I was dreaming, before I knew you, my Phoebus; the officer of my dream had a beautiful uniform like yours, a grand look, a sword; your name is Phoebus; ‘tis a beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your sword, Phoebus, that I may see it.”
“Child!” said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword with a smile.
The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade; examined the cipher on the guard with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, saying, —
“You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.” Phoebus again profited by the opportunity to impress upon her beautiful bent neck a kiss which made the young girl straighten herself up as scarlet as a poppy. The priest gnashed his teeth over it in the dark.
“Phoebus,” resumed the gypsy, “let me talk to you. Pray walk a little, that I may see you at full height, and that I may hear your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”
The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of satisfaction, —
“What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, have you seen me in my archer’s ceremonial doublet?”
“Alas! no,” she replied.
“It is very handsome!”
Phoebus returned and seated himself beside her, but much closer than before.
“Listen, my dear – ”
The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty hand on his mouth, with a childish mirth and grace and gayety.
“No, no, I will not listen to you. Do you love me? I want you to tell me whether you love me.”
“Do I love thee, angel of my life!” exclaimed the captain, half kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for thee. I love thee, and I have never loved any one but thee.”
The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many similar conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath, without committing a single mistake. At this passionate declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.
“Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment when one should die!”
Phoebus found “the moment” favorable for robbing her of another kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook. “Die!” exclaimed the amorous captain, “What are you saying, my lovely angel? ‘Tis a time for living, or Jupiter is only a scamp! Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing! Corne-de-boeuf, what a jest! It is not that. Listen, my dear Similar, Esmenarda – Pardon! you have so prodigiously Saracen a name that I never can get it straight. ‘Tis a thicket which stops me short.”
“Good heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought my name pretty because of its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would that I were called Goton.”
“Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! ‘tis a name to which one must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know it by heart, all will go smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar; I adore you passionately. I love you so that ‘tis simply miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over it – ”
The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who?”
“What matters that to us?” said Phoebus; “do you love me?”
“Oh!” – said she.
“Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the great devil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest woman in the world. We will have a pretty little house somewhere. I will make my archers parade before your windows. They are all mounted, and set at defiance those of Captain Mignon. There are voulgiers, cranequiniers and hand couleveiniers44. I will take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the storehouse of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners of the trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aides of the mint; a devilish fine array, in short! I will conduct you to see the lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. All women love that.”
For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming thoughts, was dreaming to the sound of his voice, without listening to the sense of his words.
“Oh! how happy you will be!” continued the captain, and at the same time he gently unbuckled the gypsy’s girdle.
“What are you doing?” she said quickly. This “act of violence” had roused her from her revery.
“Nothing,” replied Phoebus, “I was only saying that you must abandon all this garb of folly, and the street corner when you are with me.”
“When I am with you, Phoebus!” said the young girl tenderly.
She became pensive and silent once more.
The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist without resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child’s corsage, and disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the panting priest beheld the gypsy’s beautiful shoulder emerge from the gauze, as round and brown as the moon rising through the mists of the horizon.
The young girl allowed Phoebus to have his way. She did not appear to perceive it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.
Suddenly she turned towards him, —
“Phoebus,” she said, with an expression of infinite love, “instruct me in thy religion.”
“My religion!” exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, “I instruct you in my religion! Corne et tonnerre! What do you want with my religion?”
“In order that we may be married,” she replied.
The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.
“Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”
The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her breast.
“My beautiful love,” resumed Phoebus, tenderly, “what nonsense is this? A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!”
While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely near the gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around her supple and delicate waist, his eye flashed more and more, and everything announced that Monsieur Phoebus was on the verge of one of those moments when Jupiter himself commits so many follies that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.
But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for the passage of his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given over in disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in his-veins; his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all those loosened pins. Any one who could, at that moment, have seen the face of the unhappy man glued to the wormeaten bars, would have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye shone like a candle through the cracks of the door.
All at once, Phoebus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy’s gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy, awoke with a start; she recoiled hastily from the enterprising officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck and shoulders, red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and motionless, one would have declared her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were lowered.
But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet which she wore about her neck.
“What is that?” he said, seizing this pretext to approach once more the beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.
“Don’t touch it!” she replied, quickly, “‘tis my guardian. It will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so. Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine! My mother! My poor mother! My mother! Where art thou? Come to my rescue! Have pity, Monsieur Phoebus, give me back my gorgerette!”
Phoebus retreated amid said in a cold tone, —
“Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!”
“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside her. “I do not love thee, my Phoebus? What art thou saying, wicked man, to break my heart? Oh, take me! take all! do what you will with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet! What matters to me my mother! ‘Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee! Phoebus, my beloved Phoebus, dost thou see me? ‘Tis I. Look at me; ‘tis the little one whom thou wilt surely not repulse, who comes, who comes herself to seek thee. My soul, my life, my body, my person, all is one thing – which is thine, my captain. Well, no! We will not marry, since that displeases thee; and then, what am I? a miserable girl of the gutters; whilst thou, my Phoebus, art a gentleman. A fine thing, truly! A dancer wed an officer! I was mad. No, Phoebus, no; I will be thy mistress, thy amusement, thy pleasure, when thou wilt; a girl who shall belong to thee. I was only made for that, soiled, despised, dishonored, but what matters it? – beloved. I shall be the proudest and the most joyous of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am no longer good to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still. Others will embroider scarfs for you; ‘tis I, the servant, who will care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will have that pity, will you not, Phoebus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phoebus, all this belongs to thee, only love me! We gypsies need only air and love.”
