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Updated: May 26, 2025
"Let us make haste, Demoiselle Mahiette," said the youngest of the three, who was also the largest, to the provincial, "I greatly fear that we shall arrive too late; they told us at the Chatelet that they were going to take him directly to the pillory." "Ah, bah! what are you saying, Demoiselle Oudarde Musnier?" interposed the other Parisienne. "There are two hours yet to the pillory.
"What!" demanded Mahiette, "that poor woman to whom we are carrying this cake?" Oudarde nodded affirmatively. "Precisely. You will see her presently at her window on the Greve. She has the same opinion as yourself of these vagabonds of Egypt, who play the tambourine and tell fortunes to the public. No one knows whence comes her horror of the gypsies and Egyptians.
She was absorbed in that revery which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and which ends only after having communicated the emotion, from vibration to vibration, even to the very last fibres of the heart. Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, "And did they ever learn what became of la Chantefleurie?" Mahiette made no reply.
He was unbound, the crowd dispersed. Near the Grand Pont, Mahiette, who was returning with her two companions, suddenly halted, "By the way, Eustache! what did you do with that cake?" "Mother," said the child, "while you were talking with that lady in the bole, a big dog took a bite of my cake, and then I bit it also." "What, sir, did you eat the whole of it?" she went on.
Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air. "The singular point is," observed Oudarde, "that la sachette has the same idea about the Egyptian woman." "What is la sachette?" asked Mahiette. "He!" said Oudarde, "Sister Gudule." "And who is Sister Gudule?" persisted Mahiette. "You are certainly ignorant of all but your Reims, not to know that!" replied Oudarde. "'Tis the recluse of the Rat-Hole."
"Drowned!" resumed Mahiette, "who could have told good Father Guybertant, when he passed under the bridge of Tingueux with the current, singing in his barge, that one day 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.
She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted. When she withdrew her head from the window, her countenance was inundated with tears. "What do you call that woman?" she asked Oudarde. Oudarde replied, "We call her Sister Gudule." "And I," returned Mahiette, "call her Paquette la Chantefleurie."
She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, "Black bread." "Come," said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, "here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours." She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied, "A sack."
At least, that is the way in which monsieur the cure of Saint-Remy explains why these women are colder and hungrier than other poor women, when they are old." "Yes," remarked Gervaise, "but the gypsies?" "One moment, Gervaise!" said Oudarde, whose attention was less impatient. "What would be left for the end if all were in the beginning? Continue, Mahiette, I entreat you. That poor Chantefleurie!"
The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette and Oudarde, and the other woman and the child recoiled even to the parapet of the quay. Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole. "Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the Egyptian who is calling me!"
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