Notre-Dame de Paris
prayer to the good God for it. So the good God took pity on her,
and gave her a little daughter. I will not speak to you of her
joy; it was a fury of tears, and caresses, and kisses. She nursed
her child herself, made swaddling-bands for it out of her
coverlet, the only one which she had on her bed, and no longer
felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in
consequence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry
claimed her once more; men came to see la Chantefleurie; she
found customers again for her merchandise, and out of all these
horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices with
shoulder-straps of lace, and tiny bonnets of satin, without even
thinking of buying herself another coverlet.—Master Eustache, I
have already told you not to eat that cake.—It is certain that
little Agnès, that was the child’s name, a baptismal name, for it
was a long time since la Chantefleurie had had any surname—it is
certain that that little one was more swathed in ribbons and
embroideries than a dauphiness of Dauphiny! Among other things,
she had a pair of little shoes, the like of which King Louis XI.
certainly never had! Her mother had stitched and embroidered them
herself; she had lavished on them all the delicacies of her art
of embroideress, and all the embellishments of a robe for the
good Virgin. They certainly were the two prettiest little pink
shoes that could be seen. They were no longer than my thumb, and
one had to see the child’s little feet come out of them, in order
to believe that they had been able to get into them. ’Tis true
that those little feet were so small, so pretty, so rosy! rosier
than the satin of the shoes! When you have children, Oudarde, you
will find that there is nothing prettier than those little hands
and feet.”
“I ask no better,” said Oudarde with a sigh, “but I am waiting
until it shall suit the good pleasure of M. Andry Musnier.”
“However, Paquette’s child had more that was pretty about it
besides its feet. I saw her when she was only four months old;
she was a love! She had eyes larger than her mouth, and the most
charming black hair, which already curled. She would have been a
magnificent brunette at the age of sixteen! Her mother became
more crazy over her every day. She kissed her, caressed her,
tickled her, washed her, decked her out, devoured her! She lost
her head over her, she thanked God for her. Her pretty, little
rosy feet above all were an endless source of wonderment, they
were a delirium of joy! She was always pressing her lips to them,
and she could never recover from her amazement at their
smallness. She put them into the tiny shoes, took them out,
admired them, marvelled at them, looked at the light through
them, was curious to see them try to walk on her bed, and would
gladly have passed her life on her knees, putting on and taking
off the shoes from those feet, as though they had been those of
an Infant Jesus.”
“The tale is fair and good,” said Gervaise in a low tone; “but
where do gypsies come into all that?”
“Here,” replied Mahiette. “One day there arrived in Reims a very
queer sort of people. They were beggars and vagabonds who were
roaming over the country, led by their duke and their counts.
They were browned by exposure to the sun, they had closely
curling hair, and silver rings in their ears. The women were
still uglier than the men. They had blacker faces, which were
always uncovered, a miserable frock on their bodies, an old cloth
woven of cords bound upon their shoulder, and their hair hanging
like the tail of a horse. The children who scrambled between
their legs would have frightened as many monkeys. A band of
excommunicates. All these persons came direct from lower Egypt to
Reims through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was said,
and had prescribed to them as penance to roam through the world
for seven years, without sleeping in a bed; and so they were
called penancers, and smelt horribly. It appears that they had
formerly been Saracens, which was why they believed in Jupiter,
and claimed ten livres of Tournay from all archbishops, bishops,
and mitred abbots with croziers. A bull from the Pope empowered
them to do that. They came to Reims to tell fortunes in the name
of the King of Algiers, and the Emperor of Germany. You can
readily imagine that no more was needed to cause the entrance to
the town to be forbidden them. Then the whole band camped with
good grace outside the gate of Braine, on that hill where stands
a mill, beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And
everybody in Reims vied with his neighbor in going to see them.
They looked at your hand, and told you marvellous prophecies;
they were equal to predicting to Judas that he would become Pope.
Nevertheless, ugly rumors were in circulation in regard to them;
about children stolen, purses cut, and human flesh devoured. The
wise people said to the foolish: “Don’t go there!” and then went
themselves on the sly. It was an infatuation. The fact is, that
they said things fit to astonish a cardinal. Mothers triumphed
greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians had read in
their hands all sorts of marvels written in pagan and in Turkish.
One had an emperor; another, a pope; another, a captain. Poor
Chantefleurie was seized with curiosity; she wished to know about
herself, and whether her pretty little Agnès would not become
some day Empress of Armenia, or something else. So she carried
her to the Egyptians; and the Egyptian women fell to admiring the
child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it with their black
mouths, and to marvelling over its little band, alas! to the
great joy of the mother. They were especially enthusiastic over
her pretty feet and shoes. The child was not yet a year old. She
already lisped a little, laughed at her mother like a little mad
thing, was plump and quite round, and possessed a thousand
charming little gestures of the angels of paradise.
“She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her
mother kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the
good fortune which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnès.
She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a queen. So she returned to her
attic in the Rue Folle-Peine, very proud of bearing with her a
queen. The next day she took advantage of a moment when the child
was asleep on her bed, (for they always slept together), gently
left the door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in
the Rue de la Séchesserie, that the day would come when her
daughter Agnès would be served at table by the King of England
and the Archduke of Ethiopia, and a hundred other marvels. On her
return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself:
‘Good! the child is still asleep!’ She found her door wider open
than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to
the bed.—The child was no longer there, the place was empty.
Nothing remained of the child, but one of her pretty little
shoes. She flew out of the room, dashed down the stairs, and
began to beat her head against the wall, crying: ‘My child! who
has my child? Who has taken my child?’ The street was deserted,
the house isolated; no one could tell her anything about it. She
went about the town, searched all the streets, ran hither and
thither the whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible,
snuffing at doors and windows like a wild beast which has lost
its young. She was breathless, dishevelled, frightful to see, and
there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped
the passers-by and cried: ‘My daughter! my daughter! my pretty
little daughter! If any one will give me back my daughter, I will
be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall eat my heart
if he will.’ She met M. le Curé of Saint-Remy, and said to him:
‘Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails, but give
me back my child!’ It was heartrending, Oudarde; and I saw a very
hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah! poor
mother! In the evening she returned home. During her absence, a
neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in
their arms, then descend again, after closing the door. After
their departure, something like the cries of a child were heard
in Paquette’s room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter,
ascended the stairs as though on wings, and entered.—A frightful
thing to tell, Oudarde! Instead of her pretty little Agnès, so
rosy and so fresh, who was a gift of the good God, a sort of
hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed, deformed, was crawling
and squalling over the floor. She hid her eyes in horror. ‘Oh!’
said she, ‘have the witches transformed my daughter into this
horrible animal?’ They hastened to carry away the little
club-foot; he would have driven her mad. It was the monstrous
child of some gypsy woman, who had given herself to the devil. He
appeared to be about four years old, and talked a language which
was no human tongue; there were words in it which were
impossible. La Chantefleurie flung herself upon the little shoe,
all that remained to her of all that she loved. She remained so
long motionless over it, mute, and without breath, that they
thought she was dead. Suddenly she trembled all over, covered her
relic with furious kisses, and burst out sobbing as though her
heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping also.
She said: ‘Oh, my little daughter! my pretty little daughter!
where art thou?’—and it wrung your very heart. I weep still when
I think of it. Our children are the marrow of our bones, you
see.—My poor Eustache! thou art so fair!—If you only knew how
nice he is! yesterday he said to me: ‘I want to be a gendarme,
that I do.’ Oh! my Eustache! if I were to lose thee!—All at once
la Chantefleurie rose, and set out to run through Reims,
screaming: ‘To the gypsies’ camp! to the gypsies’ camp! Police,
to burn the witches!’ The gypsies were gone. It was pitch dark.
They could not be followed. On the morrow, two leagues from
Reims, on a heath between Gueux and Tilloy, the remains of a
large fire were found, some ribbons which had belonged to
Paquette’s child, drops of blood, and the dung of a ram. The
night just past had been a Saturday. There was no longer any
doubt that the Egyptians had held their Sabbath on that heath,
and that they had devoured the child in company with Beelzebub,
as the practice is among the Mahometans. When La Chantefleurie
learned these horrible things, she did not weep, she moved her
lips as though to speak, but could not. On the morrow, her hair
was gray. On the second day, she had disappeared.
“’Tis in truth, a frightful tale,” said Oudarde, “and one which
would make even a Burgundian weep.”
“I am no longer surprised,” added Gervaise, “that fear of the