Page:Victor Hugo - Notre-Dame de Paris (tr. Hapgood, 1888).djvu/291

Rh Meanwhile, the good dame had risen angrily,—"Come now, gypsy, if neither you nor your goat can dance for us, what are you doing here?"

The gypsy walked slowly towards the door, without making any reply. But the nearer she approached it, the more her pace slackened. An irresistible magnet seemed to hold her. Suddenly she turned her eyes, wet with tears, towards Phœbus, and halted.

"True God!" exclaimed the captain, "that's not the way to depart. Come back and dance something for us. By the way, my sweet love, what is your name?"

"La Esmeralda," said the dancer, never taking her eyes from him.

At this strange name, a burst of wild laughter broke from the young girls.

"Here's a terrible name for a young lady," said Diane.

"You see well enough," retorted Amelotte, "that she is an enchantress."

"My dear," exclaimed Dame Aloïse solemnly, "your parents did not commit the sin of giving you that name at the baptismal font."

In the meantime, several minutes previously, Bérangère had coaxed the goat into a corner of the room with a marchpane cake, without any one having noticed her. In an instant they had become good friends. The curious child had detached the bag from the goat's neck, had opened it, and had emptied out its contents on the rush matting; it was an alphabet, each letter of which was separately inscribed on a tiny block of boxwood. Hardly had these playthings been spread out on the matting, when the child, with surprise, beheld the goat (one of whose "miracles" this was no doubt), draw out certain letters with its golden hoof, and arrange them, with gentle pushes, in a certain order. In a moment they constituted a word, which the goat seemed to have been trained to write, so little hesitation did it show in forming it, and Bérangère suddenly exclaimed, clasping her hands in admiration,—

"Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, see what the goat has just done!"