Bab Bab 41 · THE MOTHER.

. THE MOTHER.

I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than

the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her

child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for

Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a

shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has

so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk,

that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She

smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself

whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be

absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile

creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see

it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round

head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it

is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is

laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles

lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls

about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the

paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses,

without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes

the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and

earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays

around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun

which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets

of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her

heart melt as fire melts wax.

But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of

charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe,

become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe is no

longer anything but an instrument of torture which eternally

crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fibre

which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of

an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it.

One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark

blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents

from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of

wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Grève. She was

somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her ears in order

to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation, on her knees,

of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years.

This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already

said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more

to quit it except at death. The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland

alone knew how many bitter imprecations, touching complaints,

prayers and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that

charming bauble of rose-colored satin. Never was more despair

bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful thing.

It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently

than usual; and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud

and monotonous voice which rent the heart.

“Oh my daughter!” she said, “my daughter, my poor, dear little

child, so I shall never see thee more! It is over! It always

seems to me that it happened yesterday! My God! my God! it would

have been better not to give her to me than to take her away so

soon. Did you not know that our children are part of ourselves,

and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in

God? Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord!

to have taken her from me thus; you could never have looked at me

with her, when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she

laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my

breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you

would have taken pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me

the only love which lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so

miserable a creature, that you could not look at me before

condemning me?—Alas! Alas! here is the shoe; where is the foot?

where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter! my daughter!

what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees

have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is

not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one

minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for all

eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your garment

trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you would be

obliged to give me back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty

little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for

fifteen years? Good Virgin! good Virgin of heaven! my infant

Jesus has been taken from me, has been stolen from me; they

devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her

bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my

daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want

your angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh!

I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my

forehead, and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if

you keep my child from me! you see plainly that my arms are all

bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?—Oh! give me only salt

and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a

sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God, I am only a vile

sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion for

the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as through an

opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once, just once more, a

single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I

would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will

be grown up now!—Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I

shall never see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go

there myself. Oh! what misery to think that here is her shoe, and

that that is all!”

The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation

and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with

sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother who has lost her

child, it is always the first day. That grief never grows old.

The mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart

remains dark.

At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in

front of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or

struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest

corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said, that she sought

to plunge her head into the stone in order not to hear them. This

time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start, and

listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said,—

“They are going to hang a gypsy to-day.”

With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling

itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her

air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the Place de

Grève. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against the

permanent gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busying himself

with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain.

There were some people standing about.

The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked

nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question.

All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a

pretext of reading the public breviary, but who was much less

occupied with the “lectern of latticed iron,” than with the

gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from

time to time. She recognized monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a

holy man.

“Father,” she inquired, “whom are they about to hang yonder?”

The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her

question. Then he said,—

“I know not.”

“Some children said that it was a gypsy,” went on the recluse.

“I believe so,” said the priest.

Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.

“Sister,” said the archdeacon, “do you then hate the gypsies

heartily?”

“Do I hate them!” exclaimed the recluse, “they are vampires,

stealers of children! They devoured my little daughter, my child,

my only child! I have no longer any heart, they devoured it!”

She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.

“There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have cursed,”

she resumed; “it is a young one, of the age which my daughter

would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter. Every time that

that young viper passes in front of my cell, she sets my blood in

a ferment.”

“Well, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, icy as a sepulchral

statue; “that is the one whom you are about to see die.”

His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.

The recluse writhed her arms with joy.

“I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! Thanks,

priest!” she cried.

And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the

grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flashing,

with her shoulder striking against the wall, with the wild air of

a female wolf in a cage, who has long been famished, and who

feels the hour for her repast drawing near.