Book VII
That is to give passage to King Charles VI, no doubt!”“Godmother!” exclaimed Berangère, whose quick and restless eyes were suddenly attracted to the top of the towers of Notre Dame. “Who is that man in black up there?” All the girls looked up. A man was leaning with his elbows on the topmost parapet of the northern tower which looked towards the Grève. It was a priest—as could be seen by his dress—and they could clearly distinguish his face, which was resting on his two hands. He stood as motionless as a statue, and in his gaze, fixed steadily on the Place beneath him, there was something of the immobility of the kite looking down upon the sparrow’s nest it has just discovered.“It is Monsieur the Archdeacon of Josas,” said Fleur-de-Lys.“You must have good sight to recognise him at this distance,” observed La Gaillefontaine.“How he glares at the little dancer!” said Diane de Christeuil.“Then let the Egyptian beware,” said Fleur-de-Lys, “for he loves not Egypt.”“’Tis a pity he should look at her like that,” added Amelotte de Montmichel, “for she dances most bewitchingly.”“Cousin Phœ,” said Fleur-de-Lys impulsively, “since you know this gipsy girl, will you not beckon to her to come up here—it will divert us.”“Oh, yes!” cried the other girls, clapping their hands gleefully.“What a madcap idea!” replied Phœbus. “Doubtless she has forgotten me, and I do not even know her name. However, as you wish it, mesdamoiselles, I will see what I can do.” And leaning over the balcony he called out, “Little one!”The dancing girl was not playing her tambourine at that moment. She turned her head towards the spot from which the voice came, her brilliant eyes caught sight of Phœbus, and she suddenly stood still.“Little one,” repeated the captain, and he motioned to her to come up.The girl looked at him again, and then blushed as if a flame had risen to her cheeks, and taking her tambourine under her arm, she made her way through the gaping crowd towards the door of the house whence Phœbus called her, her step slow and uncertain, and with the troubled glance of a bird yielding to the fascination of a serpent.A moment later the tapestry was raised, and the gipsy appeared on the threshold of the room, flushed, shy, panting, her great eyes lowered, not daring to advance a step farther.Berangère clapped her hands.But the dancing girl stood motionless in the doorway. Her sudden appearance produced a curious effect on the group. There is no doubt that a vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer animated the whole party, and that the brilliant uniform was the target at which they aimed all their coquettish darts; also, from the time of his being present there had arisen among them a certain covert rivalry, scarcely acknowledged to themselves, but which was none the less constantly revealed in their gestures and in their remarks. Nevertheless, as they all possessed much the same degree of beauty, they fought with the same weapons, and each might reasonably hope for victory. The arrival of the gipsy roughly destroyed this equilibrium. Her beauty was of so rare a quality that the moment she entered the room she seemed to illuminate it with a sort of light peculiar to herself. In this restricted space, in this rich frame of sombre hangings and dark panelling, she was incomparably more beautiful and radiant than in the open square. It was like bringing a torch out of the daylight into the shade. The noble maidens were dazzled by her in spite of themselves. Each one felt that her beauty had in some degree suffered. Consequently they instantly and with one accord changed their line of battle (if we may be allowed the term) without a single word having passed between them. For the instincts of women understand and respond to one another far quicker than the intelligence of men. A common foe stood in their midst; they all felt it, and combined for defence. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a whole glass of water; to diffuse a certain amount of ill temper throughout a gathering of pretty women, it is only necessary for one still prettier to arrive upon the scene, especially if there is but one man of the company.Thus the gipsy girl’s reception was glacial in its coldness. They looked her up and down, then turned to each other, and all was said; they were confederates. Meanwhile the girl, waiting in vain for them to address her, was so covered with confusion that she dared not raise her eyes.The captain was the first to break the silence. “I’ faith,” he said, with his air of fatuous assurance, “a bewitching creature! What say you, fair cousin?”This remark, which a more tactful admirer would at least have made in an undertone, was not calculated to allay the feminine jealousy so sharply on the alert in the presence of the gipsy girl.Fleur-de-Lys answered her
fiancé in an affected tone of contemptuous indifference, “Ah, not amiss.”The others put their heads together and whispered.At last Madame Aloïse, not the least jealous of the party because she was so for her daughter, accosted the dancer:“Come hither, little one.”“Come hither, little one,” repeated, with comical dignity, Berangère, who would have reached about to her elbow.The Egyptian advanced towards the noble lady.“Pretty one,” said Phœbus, impressively advancing on his side a step or two towards her, “I know not if I enjoy the supreme felicity of being remembered by you; but—”She interrupted him, with a smile and a glance of infinite sweetness—“Oh, yes,” she said.“She has a good memory,” observed Fleur-de-Lys.“Well,” resumed Phœbus, “but you fled in a great hurry that evening. Were you frightened of me?”“Oh, no,” answered the gipsy. And in the tone of this “Oh, no,” following on the “Oh, yes,” there was an indefinable something which stabbed poor Fleur-de-Lys to the heart.“You left in your stead, ma belle,” continued the soldier, whose tongue was loosened now that he spoke to a girl of the streets, “a wry-faced, one-eyed hunchback varlet—the Bishop’s bell-ringer, by what I can hear. They tell me he is an archdeacon’s bastard and a devil by birth. He has a droll name too—Ember Week—Palm Sunday—Shrove Tuesday—something of that kind—some bell-ringing festival name, at any rate. And so he had the assurance to carry you off, as if you were made for church beadles! It was like his impudence. And what the devil did he want with you, this screech-owl, eh?”“I do not know,” she answered.“Conceive of such insolence! A bell-ringer to carry off a girl, like a vicomte—a clown poaching on a gentleman’s preserves! Unheard-of presumption! For the rest, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the roughest groom that ever curried a rascal; and I can tell you, for your satisfaction, that your bell-ringer’s hide got a thorough dressing at his hands.”“Poor man!” murmured the gipsy, recalling at these words the scene of the pillory.The captain burst out laughing.
“Corne de bœuf! your pity is as well-placed as a feather in a sow’s tail! May I have a paunch like a pope, if—” He drew up short. “Crave your pardon, mesdames! I believe I was on the point of forgetting myself.”“Fie, sir!” said La Gaillefontaine.“He speaks to this creature in her own language,” said Fleur-de-Lys under her breath, her vexation increasing with every moment. Nor was this vexation diminished by seeing the captain delighted with the gipsy girl, but still more with himself, turn on his heel and repeat with blatant and soldier-like gallantry: “A lovely creature on my soul!”“Very barbarously dressed!” observed Diane de Christeuil, showing her white teeth.This remark was a flash of light to the others. It showed them where to direct their attack on the gipsy. There being no vulnerable spot in her beauty, they threw themselves upon her dress.“That is very true,” said La Montmichel. “Pray, how comest thou to be running thus barenecked about the streets, without either gorget or kerchief?”“And a petticoat so short as to fill one with alarm,” added La Gaillefontaine.“My girl,” continued Fleur-de-Lys spitefully, “thou wilt certainly be fined for that gold belt.”“My poor girl,” said Diane, with a cruel smile, “if thou hadst the decency to wear sleeves on thy arms, they would not be so burned by the sun.”It was a sight worthy of a more intelligent spectator than Phœbus, to watch how these high-born maidens darted their envenomed tongues, and coiled and glided and wound serpent-like about the hapless dancing girl. Smiling and cruel, they pitilessly searched and appraised all her poor artless finery of spangles and tinsel. Then followed the heartless laugh, the cutting irony, humiliation without end. Sarcasm, supercilious praise, and spiteful glances descended on the gipsy girl from every side. One might have judged them to be those high-born Roman ladies who amused themselves by thrusting golden pins into the bosom of a beautiful slave, or graceful greyhounds circling with distended nostrils and flaming eyes round some poor hind of the forest, and only prevented by their master’s eye from devouring it piecemeal. And what was she after all to these high-born damsels but a miserable dancing girl of the streets? They seemed to ignore the fact of her presence altogether, and spoke of her to her face as of something degraded and unclean, though diverting enough to make jest of.The Egyptian was not insensible to these petty stings. From time to time a blush of shame burned in her cheek, a flash of anger in her eyes; a disdainful retort seemed to tremble on her lips, and she made the little contemptuous pout with which the reader is familiar. But she remained silent, motionless, her eyes fixed on Phœbus with a look of resignation infinitely sweet and sad. In this gaze there mingled, too, both joy and tenderness; she seemed to restrain herself for fear of being driven away.As for Phœbus, he laughed and took the gipsy’s part with a mixture of impertinence and pity.“Let them talk, child!” he said, jingling his gold spurs. “Doubtless your costume is somewhat strange and extravagant; but when a girl is so charming as you, what does it matter?”
“Mon Dieu!” cried La Gaillefontaine, drawing up her swanlike neck, with a bitter smile. “It is evident that Messieurs the King’s archers take fire easily at the bright gipsy eyes.”“Why not?” said Phœbus.At this rejoinder, uttered carelessly by the captain, as one throws a stone at random without troubling to see where it falls, Colombe began to laugh and Amelotte and Diane and Fleur-de-Lys, though a tear rose at the same time to the eye of the latter.The gipsy girl, who had dropped her eyes as Colombe and La Gaillefontaine spoke, raised them now all radiant with joy and pride and fixed them again on Phœbus. At that moment she was dazzlingly beautiful.The elder lady, while she observed the scene, felt vaguely incensed without knowing exactly why.“Holy Virgin!” she suddenly exclaimed, “what is this rubbing against my legs? Ah, the horrid beast!”It was the goat, just arrived in search of its mistress, and which, in hurrying towards her, had got its horns entangled in the voluminous folds of the noble lady’s gown, which always billowed round her wherever she sat.This caused a diversion, and the gipsy silently freed the little creature.“Ah, it is the little goat with the golden hoofs!” cried Berangère, jumping with joy.The gipsy girl crouched on her knees and pressed her cheek fondly against the goat’s sleek head, as if begging its forgiveness for having left it behind.At this Diane bent over and whispered in Colombe’s ear:“Ah, how did I not think of it before? This is the gipsy girl with the goat. They say she is a witch, and that her goat performs some truly miraculous tricks.”“Very well,” said Colombe; “then let the goat amuse us in its turn, and show us a miracle.”Diane and Colombe accordingly addressed the gipsy eagerly.“Girl, make thy goat perform a miracle for us.”“I do not know what you mean,” answered the gipsy.“A miracle—a conjuring trick—a feat of witchcraft, in fact.”“I do not understand,” she repeated, and fell to caressing the pretty creature again, murmuring fondly. “Djali! Djali!”At that moment Fleur-de-Lys remarked a little embroidered leather bag hanging round the goat’s neck. “What is that?” she asked of the gipsy.The gipsy raised her large eyes to her and answered gravely, “That is my secret.”Meanwhile the lady of the house had risen. “Come, gipsy girl,” she exclaimed angrily; “if thou and thy goat will not dance for us, what do you here?”Without a word the gipsy rose and turned towards the door. But the nearer she approached it, the more reluctant became her step. An irresistible magnet seemed to hold her back. Suddenly she turned her brimming eyes on Phœbus, and stood still.
“Vrai Dieu!” cried the captain, “you shall not leave us thus. Come back and dance for us. By-the-bye, sweetheart, how are you called?”“Esmeralda,” answered the dancing girl, without taking her eyes off him.At this strange name the girls burst into a chorus of laughter. “Truly a formidable name for a demoiselle!” sneered Diane.“You see now,” said Amelotte, “that she is a sorceress.”“Child,” exclaimed Dame Aloïse solemnly, “your parents never drew that name for you out of the baptismal font!” For some minutes past Berangère, to whom nobody was paying any attention, had managed to entice the goat into a corner with a piece of marchpane, and immediately they had become the best of friends. The inquisitive child had then detached the little bag from the goat’s neck, opened it, and emptied its contents on to the floor. It was an alphabet, each letter being written separately on a small tablet of wood. No sooner were these toys displayed on the matting than, to the child’s delighted surprise, the goat (of whose
miracles this was no doubt one) proceeded to separate certain letters with her golden fore-foot, and by dint of pushing them gently about arranged them in a certain order. In a minute they formed a word, which the goat seemed practised in composing, to judge by the ease with which she accomplished the task. Berangère clasped her hands in admiration.“Godmother Fleur-de-Lys,” she cried, “come and see what the goat has done!”Fleur-de-Lys ran to look, and recoiled at the sight. The letters disposed upon the floor formed the word,
P-H-O-E-B-U-S.
“The goat put that word together?” she asked excitedly.“Yes, godmother,” answered Berangère. It was impossible to doubt it; the child could not spell.“So this is the secret,” thought Fleur-de-Lys. By this time the rest of the party had come forward to look—the mother, the girls, the gipsy, the young soldier.The Bohemian saw the blunder the goat had involved her in. She turned red and white, and then began to tremble like a guilty creature before the captain, who gazed at her with a smile of satisfaction and astonishment.
“Phœbus!” whispered the girls in amazement; “that is the name of the captain!”“You have a wonderful memory!” said Fleur-de-Lys to the stupefied gipsy girl. Then, bursting into tears: “Oh,” she sobbed, “she is a sorceress!” While a still more bitter voice whispered in her inmost heart, “She is a rival!” And she swooned in her mother’s arms.“My child! my child!” cried the terrified mother. “Begone, diabolical gipsy!”In a trice Esmeralda gathered up the unlucky letters, made a sign to Djali, and quitted the room by one door, as they carried Fleur-de-Lys out by another. Captain Phœbus, left alone, hesitated a moment between the two doors—then followed the gipsy girl.
