Page:Victor Hugo - Notre-Dame de Paris (tr. Hapgood, 1888).djvu/251

Rh revery which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and which ends only after having communicated the emotion, from vibration to vibration, even to the very last iibres of the heart. Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, " And did they ever learn what became of la Chantefleurie?"

Mahiette made no reply. Gervaise repeated her question, and shook her arm, calling her by name. Mahiette appeared to awaken from her thoughts.

"What became of la Chantefleurie?" she said, repeating mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in her ear; then, making an effort to recall her attention to the meaning of her words, "Ah!" she continued briskly, "no one ever found out."

She added, after a pause,—

"Some said that she had been seen to quit Reims at night-fall by the Fléchembault gate; others, at daybreak, by the old Basee gate. A poor man found her gold cross hanging on the stone cross in the field where the fair is held. It was that ornament which had wrought her ruin, in '61. It was a gift from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette had never been willing to part with it, wretched a? she had been. She had clung to it as to life itself. So, when we saw that cross abandoned, we all thought that she was dead. Nevertheless, there were people of the Cabaret les Vantes, who said that they had seen her pass along the road to Paris, walking on the pebbles with her bare feet. But, in that case, she must have gone out through the Porte de Vesle, and all this does not agree. Or, to speak more truly, I believe that she actually did depart by the Porte de Vesle, but departed from this world."

"I do not understand you," said Gervaise.

"La Vesle," replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, "is the river."

"Poor Chantefleurie!" said Oudarde, with a shiver, "drowned!"

"Drowned!" resumed Mahiette; "who could have told good Father Guybertant, when he passed under the bridge of Tingueux with the current, singing in his barge, that one day