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"Is she recovering?" asked the Marquis, who stood by, watching Coursegol's efforts. "I do not know; but see, sir, it seemed to me that she moved." The Marquis came nearer. As he did so Tiepoletta opened her eyes. She looked anxiously about her, then faintly murmured a few words in a strange tongue. "She speaks," said the Marquis, "but what does she say? She seems frightened and distressed."
It was to this race that Tiepoletta belonged; and though the color of her hair, the delicacy of her features and the fairness of her skin did not accord with her supposed origin, her memory hinted at nothing that did not harmonize with what had been told her concerning her parentage. It is not the aim of this story to investigate the truth or the falsity of this assertion.
"She wishes to see her child," exclaimed Coursegol, departing on the run. During his absence Tiepoletta regained her senses sufficiently to recollect what had happened; but she was so weak that she could scarcely speak. Still, when Coursegol appeared with the child in his arms, she smiled and extended her hands. "Kiss her, but do not take her," said the Marquis.
It was the first time he had ever exercised his skill on a woman, and this pure and lovely face had made a deep impression on his heart. He would willingly have given a generous share of his own blood to hear Tiepoletta speak, to see her smile upon him. "Look, sir," said he, "how beautiful she is! She certainly cannot be twenty years old. Her skin is as fine as satin, and what hair!
She had the same luxuriant golden hair, the same large, dark eyes, the same energy, the same sweetness of disposition and of voice. The Marquis and Coursegol, who had seen the gypsy, and who still remembered her, were often struck by the strong resemblance that seemed to make Tiepoletta live again in Dolores.
"You are not strong enough for that yet." Tiepoletta understood and obeyed. Then she said gently in bad French: "My Dolores." "Dolores! That is a pretty name!" remarked Coursegol, pleased to hear the poor woman speak. "You will keep her, will you not?" said Tiepoletta, entreatingly. "You will not give her to those who will maltreat her? Make an honest girl of her.
That Tiepoletta had Bohemian blood in her veins; that she had, as a child, been stolen from her friends; that she was the fruit of some mysterious love affair; all these hypotheses were equally plausible, but there was nothing to prove that the first was not the true one, nor had her imagination ever engaged in a search for any other; but the people of her tribe seemed to suspect that she was of different blood, for they evidently regarded her with aversion.
Tiepoletta, a prey to the most intense anxiety, had detected the interchange of divers signs that convinced her they were only waiting for her to fall asleep to steal her child from her. She watched. At eight o'clock the men had gone to stroll around the suburbs of the city; the old women were dozing; the young people were laughing and teasing one another, and the children were sound asleep.
It was the shock of this meeting that caused the noise which had roused Tiepoletta from her slumber. A stormy sea could not have appeared more angry, or formed more formidable billows. One might have called it a fragmentary episode of the universal deluge. Five minutes more than sufficed to give Tiepoletta an idea of the extent of the inundation.
Envious of his beauty, his authority and his lovely young wife, one of his comrades had assassinated him and made Tiepoletta a widow some time before she was to become a mother. Six months went by, during which they seemed to respect her grief. Then, in a cave near the Pont du Gard, she gave birth to a daughter.
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