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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not listen to me. Then I bit into it, also." "'Tis a terrible child!" said the mother, smiling and scolding at one and the same time. "Do you see, Oudarde? He already eats all the fruit from the cherry-tree in our orchard of Charlerange. So his grandfather says that he will be a captain. Just let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache.
Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to sigh in company with Mahiette. But Gervaise, more curious, had not finished her questions. "And the monster?" she said suddenly, to Mahiette. "What monster?" inquired the latter. "The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in Chantefleurie's chamber, in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it?
"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.
"And the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?" "'Tis their horses that are worth seeing," said Oudarde, "caparisoned as they are after the fashion of their country!"
"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.
A long shiver traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet in her hands as though to warm them, "Oh, how cold it is!" "Poor woman!" said Oudarde, with great compassion, "would you like a little fire?" She shook her head in token of refusal.
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."
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."
Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Oudarde to thrust her head through the window and look. Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the recluse were fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver.
"But," resumed the good Oudarde, "you must have perceived to some extent, that yesterday was a festival." "I do perceive it," said the recluse; "'tis two days now since I have had any water in my crock." She added, after a silence, "'Tis a festival, I am forgotten. People do well. Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it? Cold charcoal makes cold ashes."
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