Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

But if the child be lost, these thousand images of joy, of delight, of tenderness crowded round the little
shoe become so many pictures of horror. The pretty embroidered thing is then an instrument of torture
eternally racking the mother’s heart. It is still the same string that vibrates—the deepest, most sensitive
of the human heart—but instead of the caressing touch of an angel’s hand, it is a demon’s horrid clutch
upon it.
One morning, as the May sun rose into one of those deep blue skies against which Garofalo loves to set
his Descents from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of wheels and horses and the
clanking of iron in the Place de Grève. But little moved by it, she knotted her hair over her ears to
deaden the sound, and resumed her contemplation of the object she had been adoring on her knees for
fifteen years. That little shoe, as we have already said, was to her the universe. Her thoughts were
wrapped up in it, never to leave it till death. What bitter imprecations she had sent up to heaven, what
heart-rending plaints, what prayers and sobs over this charming rosy toy, the gloomy cell of the
Tour-Roland alone knew. Never was greater despair lavished upon a thing so engaging and so pretty.
On this morning it seemed as though her grief found more than usually violent expression, and her
lamentations could be heard in the street as she cried aloud in monotonous tones that wrung the heart:
“Oh, my child!” she moaned, “my child! my dear and hapless babe! shall I never see thee more? All
hope is over! It seems to me always as if it had happened but yesterday. My God! my God! to have taken
her from me so soon, it had been better never to have given her to me at all. Knowest thou not that our
children are flesh of our flesh, and that a mother who has lost her child believes no longer in God? Ah,
wretched that I am, to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord! to have taken her from me so! Thou canst
never have looked upon us together—when I warmed her, all sweet and rosy, at my fire—when I suckled
her—when I made her little feet creep up my bosom to my lips! Ah, hadst thou seen that, Lord, thou
wouldst have had pity on my joy—hadst not taken from me the only thing left for me to love! Was I so
degraded a creature, Lord, that thou couldst not look at me before condemning me? Woe! woe is
me!—there is the shoe—but the foot—where is it?—where is the rest—where is the child? My babe, my
babe! what have they done with thee? Lord, give her back to me! For fifteen years have I worn away my
knees in prayer to thee, O God—is that not enough? Give her back to me for one day, one hour, one
minute—only one minute, Lord, and then cast me into hell for all eternity! Ah, did I but know where to
find one corner of the hem of thy garment, I would cling to it with both hands and importune thee till
thou wast forced to give me back my child! See its pretty little shoe—hast thou no pity on it, Lord? Canst
thou condemn a poor mother to fifteen years of such torment? Holy Virgin—dear mother in heaven! my
Infant Jesus—they have taken it from me—they have stolen it, they have devoured it on the wild
moor—have drunk its blood—have gnawed its bones; Blessed Virgin, have pity on me! My babe—I want
my babe! What care I that she is in paradise? I will have none of your angels—I want my child! I am a
lioness, give me my cub. Oh, I will writhe on the ground—I will dash my forehead against the
stones—will damn myself, and curse thee, Lord, if thou keepest my child from me! Thou seest that my
arms are gnawed all over—has the good God no pity? Oh, give me but a little black bread and salt, only
let me have my child to warm me like the sun! Alas! O Lord my God, I am the vilest of sinners, but my
child made me pious—I was full of religion out of love for her, and I beheld thee through her smiles as
through an opening in heaven. Oh, let me only once, once more only, once more draw this little shoe on
to her sweet rosy little foot, and I will die, Holy Mother, blessing thee! Ah, fifteen years—she will be a
woman grown now! Unhappy child! is it then indeed true that I shall never see her more?—not even in
heaven, for there I shall never go. Oh, woe is me! to have to say, There is her shoe, and that is all I shall
ever have of her!”