Page:Victor Hugo - Notre-Dame de Paris (tr. Hapgood, 1888).djvu/557

Rh along the quay. The gypsy threw herself with anguish into the arms of the sacked nun.

"Save me! save me! mother! they are coming!"

"Oh, heaven! what are you saying? I had forgotten! They are in pursuit of you! What have you done?"

"I know not," replied the unhappy child; "but I am condemned to die."

"To die!" said Gudule, staggering as though struck by lightning; "to die!" she repeated slowly, gazing at her daughter with staring eyes.

"Yes, mother," replied the frightened young girl, "they want to kill me. They are coming to seize me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They are coming! Save me!"

The recluse remained for several moments motionless and petrified, then she moved her head in sign of doubt, and suddenly giving vent to a burst of laughter, but with that terrible laugh which had come back to her,—

"Ho! ho! no! 'tis a dream of which you are telling me. Ah, yes! I lost her, that lasted fifteen years, and then I found her again, and that lasted a minute! And they would take her from me again! And now, when she is beautiful, when she is grown up, when she speaks to me, when she loves me; it is now that they would come to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother! Oh! no! these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such things as that."

Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say in the distance,—

"This way, Messire Tristan! The priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-Hole." The noise of the horses began again.

The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair.

"Fly! fly! my child! All comes back to me. You are right. It is your death! Horror! Maledictions! Fly!"

She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again hastily.

"Remain," she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than