Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

The shock had awakened the recluse from her trance. A long shiver ran through her from head to foot,
her teeth chattered, she half raised her head, and pressing her arms to her sides, she took her feet in her
hands as if to warm them.
“Oh, the bitter cold!” she murmured.
“Poor soul!” said Oudarde in deepest pity, “will you have a little fire?”
She shook her head in token of refusal.
“Then,” Oudarde went on, holding out a flask to her, “here is hippocras; that will warm you—drink.”
She shook her head again and looked fixedly at Oudarde, “Water,” she said.
“No, sister,” Oudarde insisted, “that is no drink for a January day. You must have a little hippocras, and
eat this wheaten cake we have baked for you.”
She pushed away the cake Mahiette held out to her, and said, “Some black bread.”
“Come,” said Gervaise, seized with charity in her turn, and taking off her woollen cloak, “here is a
cloak something warmer than yours. Put it round your shoulders.”
But she refused this as she had done the flask and the cake. “A sack,” she answered.
“But you must have something to show that yesterday was a holiday!” urged the good Oudarde.
“I know it well,” answered the recluse; “these two days I have had no water in my pitcher.”
After a moment’s silence she continued, “It is a holiday, so they forget me. They do well. Why should
the world think of me, who think not of it? Cold ashes to a dead brand!”
And as if exhausted by having said thus much, she let her head fall again upon her knees. The
simple-minded, compassionate Oudarde gathering from these last words that the poor woman was still
lamenting at the cold, said once more:
“Then will you not have some fire?”
“Fire!” answered the woman in a strange tone, “and will you make a fire for the poor little one that has
been under the ground these fifteen years?”
She trembled in every limb, her voice shook, her eyes gleamed, she had risen to her knees. Suddenly
she stretched out a thin and bloodless hand and pointed to the child, who gazed at her round-eyed and
wondering. “Take away that child,” she cried, “the Egyptian is coming by!”
Then she fell on her face on the ground, her forehead striking the floor with the sound of stone upon
stone. The three women thought her dead; but a moment afterward she stirred, and they saw her drag
herself on her hands and knees to the corner where the little shoe lay. At this they dared look no longer;
they saw her not, but they heard the sound of a tempest of sighs and kisses, mingled with heartrending
cries and dull blows as of a head being struck against a wall; then, after one of these blows, so violent
that they all three recoiled in horror, deep silence.
“Can she have killed herself?” asked Gervaise, venturing her head through the bars. “Sister! Sister