Meanwhile, the stranger continued to drag her along with the same silence and the same rapidity.
She had no recollection of any of the places where she was walking.
As she passed before a lighted window, she made an effort, drew up suddenly, and cried out,
“Help!”
The bourgeois who was standing at the window opened it, appeared there in his shirt with his lamp, stared at the quay with a stupid air, uttered some words which she did not understand, and closed his shutter again.
It was her last gleam of hope extinguished.
The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her firmly, and set out again at a quicker pace.
She no longer resisted, but followed him, completely broken.
From time to time she called together a little strength, and said, in a voice broken by the unevenness of the pavement and the breathlessness of their flight,
“Who are you?
Who are you?”
He made no reply.
They arrived thus, still keeping along the quay, at a tolerably spacious square.
It was the Greve.
In the middle, a sort of black, erect cross was visible; it was the gallows.
She recognized all this, and saw where she was.
The man halted, turned towards her and raised his cowl.
“Oh!” she stammered, almost petrified, “I knew well that it was he again!”
It was the priest.
He looked like the ghost of himself; that is an effect of the moonlight, it seems as though one beheld only the spectres of things in that light.
“Listen!” he said to her; and she shuddered at the sound of that fatal voice which she had not heard for a long time.
He continued speaking with those brief and panting jerks, which betoken deep internal convulsions. “Listen! we are here.
I am going to speak to you. This is the Greve.
This is an extreme point.
Destiny gives us to one another.
I am going to decide as to your life; you will decide as to my soul.
Here is a place, here is a night beyond which one sees nothing.
Then listen to me.
I am going to tell you...In the first place, speak not to me of your Phoebus. (As he spoke thus he paced to and fro, like a man who cannot remain in one place, and dragged her after him.) Do not speak to me of him. Do you see?
If you utter that name, I know not what I shall do, but it will be terrible.”
Then, like a body which recovers its centre of gravity, he became motionless once more, but his words betrayed no less agitation. His voice grew lower and lower.
“Do not turn your head aside thus.
Listen to me.
It is a serious matter.
In the first place, here is what has happened.—All this will not be laughed at. I swear it to you.—What was I saying?
Remind me!
Oh!—There is a decree of Parliament which gives you back to the scaffold.
I have just rescued you from their hands.
But they are pursuing you.
Look!”
He extended his arm toward the City.
The search seemed, in fact, to be still in progress there.
The uproar drew nearer; the tower of the lieutenant’s house, situated opposite the Greve, was full of clamors and light, and soldiers could be seen running on the opposite quay with torches and these cries,
“The gypsy!
Where is the gypsy!
Death!
Death!”
“You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I am not lying to you.
I love you.—Do not open your mouth; refrain from speaking to me rather, if it be only to tell me that you hate me.
I have made up my mind not to hear that again.—I have just saved you.—Let me finish first. I can save you wholly. I have prepared everything.