Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“And I,” said Mahiette, “I call her Paquette la Chantefleurie!”
Then, with her finger on her lips, she signed to the amazed Oudarde to look through the bars of the
window in her turn. Oudarde did so, and saw in that corner, upon which the eye of the recluse was fixed
in gloomy trance, a little shoe of rose-coloured satin covered with gold and silver spangles. Gervaise took
her turn after Oudarde, after which the three women gazing upon the unhappy mother mingled their tears
of distress and compassion.
But neither their scrutiny nor their weeping had stirred the recluse. Her hands remained tightly locked,
her lips silent, her eyes fixed, and to any one who knew her story that little shoe thus gazed at was a
heart-breaking sight.
None of the three women had uttered a word; they dared not speak, not even in a whisper. This deep
silence, this profound grief, this abstraction, in which all things were forgotten save that one, affected
them like the sight of the High Altar at Easter or at Christmastide. A sense of being in some holy place
came upon them; they were ready to fall on their knees.
At length Gervaise, the most inquiring of the three, and therefore the least sensitive, endeavoured to get
speech of the recluse. “Sister Gudule! Sister!” she called repeatedly, raising her voice louder each time.
The recluse never stirred. Not a word, not a glance, not a breath, not a sign of life.
Oudarde, in a softer and more caressing tone, tried in her turn. “Sister!” she called; “Sister Gudule!”
The same silence, the same immobility.
“A strange woman indeed!” cried Gervaise; “no bombard would make her move.”
“Perhaps she is deaf,” suggested Oudarde.
“Or blind,” added Gervaise.
“Perhaps she is dead,” said Mahiette. In truth, if the soul had not actually quitted that inert, motionless,
lethargic body, at least it had withdrawn itself to such inaccessible depths that the perceptions of the
external organs were powerless to reach it.
“There remains nothing for us to do, then,” said Oudarde, “but to leave the cake on the ledge of the
window. But then, some boy will be sure to take it away. What can we do to arouse her?”
Eustache, whose attention up till now had been distracted by the passing of a little cart drawn by a great
dog, now noticed that his three companions were looking at something through the window above him,
and, seized in his turn with curiosity, he mounted upon a stone, stood on tip-toe, and stretched up his
round, rosy face to the hole, crying, “Mother, let me see too!”
At the sound of the child’s clear, fresh, ringing voice the recluse started violently. She turned her head
with the sharp and sudden motion of a steel spring, the two long, fleshless hands drew aside the veil of
hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child a pair of bewildered and despairing eyes.
It was but a glance. “Oh, my God!” she cried, suddenly burying her face in her knees, and it seemed as
if her hoarse voice tore her breast in passing, “in pity do not show me those of others!”
“Good-morrow, dame,” said the child soberly.