Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

speaking to me just now it was just like music. Oh, Father in heaven, have I found my child again? Could
any one believe such a story? Surely, nothing can kill one, for I have not died of joy.” And she began
clapping her hands and laughing as she cried: “Oh, we are going to be so happy!”
At that moment the cell resounded to the clank of arms and the galloping of horses, coming apparently
from the Pont Notre Dame and hastening nearer and nearer along the quay. The girl threw herself in
anguish into the sachette’s arms.
“Save me! save me! Mother, they are coming!”
The recluse grew pale. “Oh, heaven! what dost thou say? I had forgotten; they are pursuing thee. What
hast thou done?”
“I know not,” answered the unhappy girl, “but I am condemned to death.”
“To death!” said Gudule, staggering as if struck by thunder-bolt. “Death!” she repeated slowly, and
fixed her daughter with wide staring eyes.
“Yes, mother,” repeated the girl distractedly, “they want to kill me. They are coming to hang me. That
gallows is for me. Save me! save me! Here they come; oh, save me!”
The recluse stood for a moment as if petrified, then shook her head in doubt, and finally burst into a fit
of laughter—the horrid laughter of her former days.
“Oh, oh, no! ’tis a dream thou art telling me. What, I should have lost her for fifteen years, and then
should find her, but only for a minute! And they would take her from me now—now that she is so
beautiful, that she is a woman grown, that she speaks to me and loves me! And now they would come and
devour her under my very eyes—who am her mother! Oh, no, such things are not possible. God would
never permit it.”
The cavalcade now apparently made a halt, and a distant voice could be heard saying: “This way,
Messire Tristan! The priest told us we should find her at the Rat-Hole.” The tramp of horses commenced
again.
The recluse started up with a cry of despair: “Fly, fly, my child! It all comes back to me now. Thou art
right. They seek thy death! Horror! Malediction!—Fly!”
She thrust her head through the window, but drew it back again hastily.
“Stay where you are,” she said in a quick, terrified whisper, convulsively pressing the hand of the girl,
who was already more dead than alive. “Keep still, do not breathe, there are soldiers everywhere. Thou
canst not go out. It is too late.”
Her eyes were dry and burning. For a few moments she did not speak, but paced her cell with rapid
steps, stopping at intervals to pluck out whole strands of her gray hair and tear them with her teeth.
“They are coming,” she said suddenly; “I will speak to them. Do thou hide in that corner. They will not
see thee. I will tell them that thou hast escaped—that I let thee go!”
She carried her daughter to a corner of the cell which could not be seen from outside; made her crouch
down; disposed her carefully so that neither foot nor hand came beyond the shadow; spread her long