Page:Victor Hugo - Notre-Dame de Paris (tr. Hapgood, 1888).djvu/252

238 his dear little Paquette would also pass beneath that bridge, but without song or boat.

"And the little shoe?" asked Gervaise.

"Disappeared with the mother," replied Mahiette.

"Poor little shoe!" said Oudarde.

Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to sigh in company with Mahiette. But Gervaise, more curious, had not finished her questions.

"And the monster?" she said suddenly, to Mahiette.

"What monster?" inquired the latter.

"The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in Chantefleurie's chamber, in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it? I hope you drowned it also."

"No." replied Mahiette.

"What? You burned it then? In sooth, that is more just. A witch child!"

"Neither the one nor the other, Gervaise. Monseigneur the archbishop interested himself in the child of Egypt, exorcised it, blessed it, removed the devil carefully from its body, and sent it to Paris, to be exposed on the wooden bed at Notre-Dame, as a foundling."

"Those bishops!" grumbled Gervaise, "because they are learned, they do nothing like anybody else. I just put it to you, Oudarde, the idea of placing the devil among the foundlings! For that little monster was assuredly the devil. Well, Mahiette, what did they do with it in Paris? I am quite sure that no charitable person wanted it."

"I do not know," replied the Rémoise; "'twas just at that time that my husband bought the office of notary, at Beru, two leagues from the town, and we were no longer occupied with that story; besides, in front of Beru, stand the two hills of Cernay, which hide the towers of the cathedral in Reims from view."

While chatting thus, the three worthy bourgeoises had arrived at the Place de Grève. In their absorption, they had passed the public breviary of the Tour-Roland without stopping, and took their way mechanically towards the pillory around which the throng was growing more dense with every