Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing is refused to those who are about to die.
The spectators in the windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.
At her feet lay a little goat, bound.
The condemned girl held together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift.
One would have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all.
Alas! modesty is not made for such shocks.
“Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair cousin, ‘tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.”
So saying, she turned to Phoebus.
His eyes were fixed on the tumbrel. He was very pale.
“What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered.
“What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?”
Phoebus interrupted her.
“I do not know what you mean.”
He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of penetration and distrust.
She vaguely recalled at that moment having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch.
“What is the matter with you?” she said to Phoebus, “one would say, that this woman had disturbed you.”
Phoebus forced a sneer,—
“Me!
Not the least in the world!
Ah! yes, certainly!”
“Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the end.”
The unlucky captain was obliged to remain.
He was somewhat reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her eyes from the bottom of the cart.
It was but too surely la Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger, because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate.
Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and despair.
Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile.
A tear was still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to speak.
Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid cries of joy and curious attitudes.
But as a faithful historian, we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed, many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them.
The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.
It halted before the central portal.
The escort ranged themselves in line on both sides.
The crowd became silent, and, in the midst of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like the sound of a fife.
Then there became visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern.
At the very extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the pavement. The whole nave was deserted.
But a few heads of priests could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and, at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy psalms,—
“Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine; salvum me fac, Deus!” “Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquae usque ad animam meam. “Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia.”
At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,—“Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam oeternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte im vitam.”
This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life, caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was the mass for the dead.
The people listened devoutly.
The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness in the obscure interior of the church.
Her white lips moved as though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word in a low tone,—“Phoebus.”
They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat, which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door.
The rope about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a serpent following her.
Then the chanting in the church ceased.
A great golden cross and a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom.
The halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later, a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the crowd.
But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head, immediately after the cross-bearer.
“Oh!” she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, “‘tis he again! the priest!”
It was in fact, the archdeacon.