I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world
than the ideas which awake in a mother's heart at the sight
of her child's tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for
festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the
very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step.
That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible
for it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her
child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she
asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and
if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the
sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks she
sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous, with its
delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes
whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling
on the carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the
mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer
time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the
grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big
dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with
the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds
sand in the flower-beds and earth in the paths. Everything
laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath
of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting
among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this
to the mother, and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.
But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy,
of charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe,
become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe
is no longer anything but an instrument of torture which
eternally crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the
same fibre which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive;
but instead of an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is
wrenching at it.
One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those
dark blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his
Descents from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard
a sound of wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Gr¨¨ve.
She was somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her
ears in order to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation,
on her knees, of the inanimate object which she had
adored for fifteen years. This little shoe was the universe
to her, as we have already said. Her thought was shut up in
it, and was destined never more to quit it except at death.
The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland alone knew how many bitter
imprecations, touching complaints, prayers and sobs she had
wafted to heaven in connection with that charming bauble of
rose-colored satin. Never was more despair bestowed upon a
prettier and more graceful thing.
It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more
violently than usual; and she could be heard outside
lamenting in a loud and monotonous voice which rent the heart.
"Oh my daughter!" she said, "my daughter, my poor, dear
little child, so I shall never see thee more! It is over!
It always seems to me that it happened yesterday! My God!
my God! it would have been better not to give her to me
than to take her away so soon. Did you not know that our
children are part of ourselves, and that a mother who has lost
her child no longer believes in God? Ah! wretch that I am
to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord! to have taken her
from me thus; you could never have looked at me with her,
when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she
laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up
my breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my
God, you would have taken pity on my joy; you would not
have taken from me the only love which lingered, in my heart!
Was I then, Lord, so miserable a creature, that you could not
look at me before condemning me?--Alas! Alas! here is the
shoe; where is the foot? where is the rest? Where is the
child? My daughter! my daughter! what did they do with
thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees have been
worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is not
that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one
minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for
all eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your
garment trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you
would be obliged to give me back my child! Have you no
pity on her pretty little shoe? Could you condemn a poor
mother to this torture for fifteen years? Good Virgin! good
Virgin of heaven! my infant Jesus has been taken from me,
has been stolen from me; they devoured her on a heath, they
drank her blood, they cracked her bones! Good Virgin, have
pity upon me. My daughter, I want my daughter! What is
it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want your angel, I
want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh! I will
writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my forehead,
and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if you
keep my child from me! you see plainly that my arms are all
bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?--Oh! give me
only salt and black bread, only let me have my daughter to
warm me like a sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my
God, I am only a vile sinner; but my daughter made me pious.
I was full of religion for the love of her, and I beheld you
through her smile as through an opening into heaven. Oh!
if I could only once, just once more, a single time, put this
shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I would die blessing you,
good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will be grown up now!
--Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I shall never
see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go there
myself. Oh! what misery to think that here is her shoe,
and that that is all!"
The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her
consolation and her despair for so many years, and her vitals
were rent with sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother
who has lost her child, it is always the first day. That grief
never grows old. The mourning garments may grow white and
threadbare, the heart remains dark.
At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children
passed in front of the cell. Every time that children crossed
her vision or struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into
the darkest corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said,
that she sought to plunge her head into the stone in order not
to hear them. This time, on the contrary, she drew herself
upright with a start, and listened eagerly. One of the little
boys had just said,--
"They are going to hang a gypsy to-day."
With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen
fling itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed
to her air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the
Place de Gr¨¨ve. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against
the permanent gibbet, and the hangman's assistant was busying
himself with adjusting the chains which had been rusted
by the rain. There were some people standing about.
The laughing group of children was already far away. The
sacked nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she
might question. All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a
priest making a pretext of reading the public breviary, but
who was much less occupied with the "lectern of latticed
iron," than with the gallows, toward which he cast a fierce
and gloomy glance from time to time. She recognized monsieur
the archdeacon of Josas, a holy man.
"Father," she inquired, "whom are they about to hang yonder?"
The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated
her question. Then he said,--
"I know not."
"Some children said that it was a gypsy," went on the recluse.
"I believe so," said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.
"Sister," said the archdeacon, "do you then hate the
gypsies heartily?"
"Do I hate them!" exclaimed the recluse, " they are vampires,
stealers of children! They devoured my little daughter,
my child, my only child! I have no longer any heart,
they devoured it!"
She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.
"There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have
cursed," she resumed; "it is a young one, of the age which
my daughter would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter.
Every time that that young viper passes in front of my cell,
she sets my blood in a ferment."
"Well, sister, rejoice," said the priest, icy as a sepulchral
statue; "that is the one whom you are about to see die."
His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.
The recluse writhed her arms with joy.
"I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither!
Thanks, priest!" she cried.
And she began to pace up and down with long strides
before the grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her
eyes flashing, with her shoulder striking against the wall,
with the wild air of a female wolf in a cage, who has long
been famished, and who feels the hour for her repast drawing near.
CHAPTER VI.