“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.”
So saying, she threw her arms round the officer’s neck; she looked up at him, supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and all in tears. Her delicate neck rubbed against his cloth doublet with its rough embroideries.
She writhed on her knees, her beautiful body half naked.
The intoxicated captain pressed his ardent lips to those lovely African shoulders.
The young girl, her eyes bent on the ceiling, as she leaned backwards, quivered, all palpitating, beneath this kiss.
All at once, above Phoebus’s head she beheld another head; a green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near this face was a hand grasping a poniard.—It was the face and hand of the priest; he had broken the door and he was there.
Phoebus could not see him.
The young girl remained motionless, frozen with terror, dumb, beneath that terrible apparition, like a dove which should raise its head at the moment when the hawk is gazing into her nest with its round eyes.
She could not even utter a cry.
She saw the poniard descend upon Phoebus, and rise again, reeking.
“Maledictions!” said the captain, and fell.
She fainted.
At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted upon her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of the watch they were carrying away the captain, bathed in his blood the priest had disappeared; the window at the back of the room which opened on the river was wide open; they picked up a cloak which they supposed to belong to the officer and she heard them saying around her,
“‘Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”
BOOK EIGHTH.
CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.
Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering mortal anxiety.
For a whole month they had not known what had become of la Esmeralda, which greatly pained the Duke of Egypt and his friends the vagabonds, nor what had become of the goat, which redoubled Gringoire’s grief.
One evening the gypsy had disappeared, and since that time had given no signs of life.
All search had proved fruitless.
Some tormenting bootblacks had told Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his wife was virginal.
He had been able to form a judgment as to the unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the resistance of that chastity to the second power.
Accordingly, he was at ease on that score.
Still he could not understand this disappearance.
It was a profound sorrow.
He would have grown thin over it, had that been possible.
He had forgotten everything, even his literary tastes, even his great work, De figuris regularibus et irregularibus, which it was his intention to have printed with the first money which he should procure (for he had raved over printing, ever since he had seen the “Didascalon” of Hugues de Saint Victor, printed with the celebrated characters of Vindelin de Spire).
One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle, he perceived a considerable crowd at one of the gates of the Palais de Justice.