Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

consciousness that she was not saying what she should have said.
Here another soldier came up, crying: “Monseigneur, the old wife lies. The witch cannot have got away
by the Rue du Mouton, for the chain was across the street all night, and the watchman saw no one pass.”
“What hast thou to say to that?” asked Tristan, whose countenance grew every moment more
forbidding.
She strove to offer a bold front to this fresh incident. “Why, monseigneur, I do not know; I must have
made a mistake, I suppose. In fact, now I come to think of it, I believe she crossed the water.”
“That’s at the opposite side of the Place,” said the provost. “And then it’s not very likely that she
should want to return to the city where they were making search for her. Thou liest, old woman!”
“Besides,” added the first soldier, “there’s no boat either on this side or the other.”
“She will have swam across then,” said the recluse, fighting her ground inch by inch.
“Do women swim?” said the soldier.
“Tête-Dieu! old woman, thou liest, thou liest!” cried Tristan angrily. “I’ve a good mind to leave the
witch and take thee instead. A little quarter of an hour’s question would soon drag the truth out of thy
old throat. Come. Thou shalt go along with us!”
She caught eagerly at these words.
“As you will, my lord; do as you say. The question! I am quite ready to submit to it. Carry me with you.
Quick! let us go at once!—and meantime,” thought she, “my daughter can escape.”
“Mort-Dieu!” said the provost, “what a thirst for the rack! This crazy old wife’s quite beyond my
comprehension.”
A grizzled old sergeant of the watch now stepped out of the ranks and addressed the provost. “Crazy
indeed, monseigneur! If she let the gipsy go, ’tis not her fault, for she has no love for gipsy women. For
fifteen years I’ve held the watch here, and every night I hear her calling down curses without end on
these Bohemian women. If the one we’re looking for is, as I believe, the little dancer with the goat, she
hated her beyond all the rest.”
Gudule gathered up her strength:
“Yes, her beyond all the rest,” she repeated.
The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch confirmed what the old sergeant had said. Tristan
l’Hermite, despairing of getting anything out of the recluse, turned his back on her, and, with
irrepressible anxiety, she saw him slowly return to his horse.
“Come!” he growled between his teeth. “Forward! we must continue the search. I will not sleep till the
gipsy has been hanged.”
Nevertheless, he lingered a moment before mounting. Gudule hung between life and death as she saw
him scanning the Place with the restless look of the hound that instinctively feels himself near the lair of
his quarry, and is reluctant to go away. At last he shook his head, and sprang into the saddle.