At that moment she heard a voice saying to the provost:
“Corboeuf!
Monsieur le Prevot, ‘tis no affair of mine, a man of arms, to hang witches.
The rabble of the populace is suppressed.
I leave you to attend to the matter alone.
You will allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting for their captain.”
The voice was that of Phoebus de Chateaupers; that which took place within her was ineffable.
He was there, her friend, her protector, her support, her refuge, her Phoebus.
She rose, and before her mother could prevent her, she had rushed to the window, crying,— “Phoebus! aid me, my Phoebus!”
Phoebus was no longer there. He had just turned the corner of the Rue de la Coutellerie at a gallop.
But Tristan had not yet taken his departure.
The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck. A tigress mother does not stand on trifles. But it was too late.
Tristan had seen.
“He! he!” he exclaimed with a laugh which laid bare all his teeth and made his face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, “two mice in the trap!”
“I suspected as much,” said the soldier.
Tristan clapped him on the shoulder,—
“You are a good cat!
Come!” he added, “where is Henriet Cousin?”
A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a soldier, stepped from the ranks. He wore a costume half gray, half brown, flat hair, leather sleeves, and carried a bundle of ropes in his huge hand. This man always attended Tristan, who always attended Louis XI.
“Friend,” said Tristan l’Hermite, “I presume that this is the sorceress of whom we are in search.
You will hang me this one.
Have you your ladder?”
“There is one yonder, under the shed of the Pillar-House,” replied the man. “Is it on this justice that the thing is to be done?” he added, pointing to the stone gibbet.
“Yes.”
“Ho, he!” continued the man with a huge laugh, which was still more brutal than that of the provost, “we shall not have far to go.”
“Make haste!” said Tristan, “you shall laugh afterwards.”
In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word since Tristan had seen her daughter and all hope was lost. She had flung the poor gypsy, half dead, into the corner of the cellar, and had placed herself once more at the window with both hands resting on the angle of the sill like two claws. In this attitude she was seen to cast upon all those soldiers her glance which had become wild and frantic once more.
At the moment when Rennet Cousin approached her cell, she showed him so savage a face that he shrank back.
“Monseigneur,” he said, returning to the provost, “which am I to take?”
“The young one.”
“So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult.”
“Poor little dancer with the goat!” said the old sergeant of the watch.
Rennet Cousin approached the window again.
The mother’s eyes made his own droop.
He said with a good deal of timidity,—
“Madam”—
She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice,—
“What do you ask?”
“It is not you,” he said, “it is the other.”
“What other?”
“The young one.”
She began to shake her head, crying,—
“There is no one! there is no one! there is no one!”
“Yes, there is!” retorted the hangman, “and you know it well.
Let me take the young one. I have no wish to harm you.”
She said, with a strange sneer,—
“Ah! so you have no wish to harm me!”
“Let me have the other, madam; ‘tis monsieur the provost who wills it.”
She repeated with a look of madness,—
“There is no one here.”