Chapter III

End of the Crown which was Turned into a Dry Leaf

When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was received with a general murmur of pleasure. On the part of the audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting their suppers sooner.

The little goat also bleated with joy. She tried to run towards his mistress, but they had tied her to the bench.

She had dragged herself to her place. Charmolue seated himself, then rose and said,—“The accused has confessed all.”

“Bohemian girl,” the president continued, “have you avowed all your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phoebus de Châteaupers.”

Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.

“Anything you like,” she replied, “but kill me quickly!”

“Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts,” said the president, “the chamber is ready to hear you in your charge.”

Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the pleader, an oration in Latin, describing all the proofs that piled up, flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite author.

Then the clerk began to write; then he handed a long parchment to the president.

The unhappy girl heard the people moving and a freezing voice saying to her,—

“Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem good to our lord the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a tumbrel, in your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your neck, before the grand portal of Notre-Dame, and you will there make an apology with a wax torch of the weight of two pounds in your hand, and thence you will be conducted to the Place de Grève, where you will be hanged; and likewise your goat; and you will pay to the official three lions of gold, in reparation of the crimes by you committed and by you confessed, of sorcery and magic, debauchery and murder, upon the person of the Sieur Phoebus de Châteaupers. May God have mercy on your soul!”

“Oh! ’tis a dream!” she murmured; and she felt rough hands bearing her away.

Chapter IV

Leave All Hope Behind, Ye Who Enter Here

There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried. Anyone who could have seener in this state, after having seen her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as night, cold as death, crouching beside a jug and a loaf. She no longer had the power to suffer; Phoebus, the sun, the streets of Paris, dancing; the priest, the blood, the torture; all this was distant, lost in the gloom.

Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In that cell, she could no longer distinguish her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality. She had barely noticed on two or three occasions, the sound of a trapdoor opening somewhere above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.

How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against someone, then of having been herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness and silence. She had dragged herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles, and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered with moisture and a truss of straw; that there was no lamp, nor air-hole.

At length, one day, or one night, she heard above her a louder noise than usual. She raised her head, and saw a ray of reddish light passing through the crevices in the trapdoor.

At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its rusty hinges, turned, and she saw a lantern, a hand, and the lower portions of the bodies of two men. The light burned her eyes, so she had to closed them.

When she opened them again the door was closed; a man alone stood before her. A monk’s black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person, neither face nor hands.

At last the prisoner broke the silence.

“Who are you?”

“A priest.”

He continued, in a hollow voice,—

“Are you prepared?”

“For what?”

“To die.”

“Oh!” said she, “will it be soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her breast.

“’Tis very far away yet!” she murmured.

“Then you are very unhappy?” asked the priest, after a silence.

“I am very cold,” she replied.

She took her feet in her hands, and her teeth chattered.

The priest looked the dungeon.

“Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!”

“Yes,” she replied. “The day belongs to every one, why do they give me only night?”

“Do you know,” resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, “why you are here?”

“I thought I knew once,” she said, “but I know no longer.”

All at once she began to weep like a child.

“I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body.”

“Well, follow me.”

So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen to her very soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold upon her.

“Oh!” she murmured, “’tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?”

The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the demon’s head which had appeared at la Falourdel’s, above the head of her adored Phoebus; that eye which she last had seen glittering beside a dagger.

It seemed to her that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously.

“Hah!” she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive trembling, “’tis the priest!”

She began to murmur in a low voice,—

“Finish! finish! the last blow!” and she drew her head down in terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of the butcher’s axe.

“So I inspire you with horror?” he said at length.

She made no reply.

“Do I inspire you with horror?” he repeated.

Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.

“Yes,” said she, “Here he has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months! Had it not been for him, my God, how happy it should have been! It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who killed him! my Phoebus!”

Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,—

“Oh! Who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then, hate me so? Alas! What have you against me?”

“I love you!” cried the priest.

Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes of flame.

“Do you understand? I love you!” he cried again.

“What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.

He resumed,—

“The love of a damned soul.”

Both remained silent for several minutes.

“Listen,” said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come over him; “you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I have hardly dared to say to myself. Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.”

“So was I!” she sighed feebly.

“Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed myself to be so. I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid light. No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than mine. More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman’s form passed by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once, raised the chain of iron vows which bind me. But fasting, prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women. Yet, one day I was leaning on the window of my cell. I heard a sound of tambourine and music. I glanced into the Square. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was midday, the sun was shining brightly,—a creature was dancing. A creature so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin. Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised, intoxicated, I allowed myself to gaze upon you. I looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that fate was seizing hold of me.”

The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he continued,—

“Your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once, you began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee. Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. I was forced to remain until the end. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared. But alas! something had come upon me from which I could not flee.”

He made another pause and went on,—

“Since then, there was within me a man I did not know. I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were. I waited for you under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every evening I returned to myself more charmed, more bewitched, more lost!

“First I tried to have you forbidden the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no more. Then the idea of abducting you occurred to me. That miserable officer came up. Finally, no longer knowing what to do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the official.

“I had a confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that, as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there you could not escape from me.

“One day,—again the sun was shining brilliantly—I behold a man pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest.”

He ceased.

The young girl could find but one word:

“Oh, my Phoebus!”

“Not that name!” said the priest, grasping her arm violently. “Utter not that name! You are suffering, are you not? You are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom of your soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeon within me.

“Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of the priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was there. I followed you to that chamber of anguish. I held you stripped and handled, half naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I held your foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and die. I held beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast. When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that it still bleeds.”

He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed wound.

The prisoner recoiled with horror.

“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think yourself unhappy; alas! alas! You know not what unhappiness is. Oh! To love a woman! To be a priest! To be hated! To love with all the fury of one’s soul! Torture me with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young girl! Have pity upon me!”

The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and listened to him.

When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low voice,—

“Oh my Phoebus!”

The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.

“I beseech you,” he cried, “if you have any heart, do not repulse me! Oh! I love you! I am a wretch! Oh! how happy we might be. We would flee—I would help you to flee,—we would go somewhere, we would seek that spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest, where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we would pour our two souls into each other.”

She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.

“Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!”

The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with his eyes fixed upon his hand.

“Well, yes!” he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, “insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! But come, come. Oh! Follow me. You shall take your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as long as you will. But come. Tomorrow! The gallows! Your execution! Oh! Save yourself! Spare me!”

He seized her arm, he tried to drag her away.

She fixed her eye intently on him.

“What has become of my Phoebus?”

“Ah!” said the priest, releasing her arm, “you are pitiless.”

“What has become of Phoebus?” she repeated coldly.

“He is dead!” cried the priest.

“Dead!” said she, still icy and motionless “then why do you talk to me of living?”

The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural force.

“Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be thine, priest! Never! never! Nothing shall unite us! Not hell itself! Go, accursed man! Never!”

The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He got up, picked up his lantern again, and slowly began the ascent of the steps.

She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer any sound audible in the cell.