Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

“Patience!” replied Mahiette: “we shall soon come to the child. In ‘66, sixteen years ago this very month, on Saint Paula’s Day, Paquette gave birth to a little girl. Poor thing! Great was her joy; she had long wished for a child. Her mother, good woman, who never knew how to do anything but shut her eyes to her daughter’s faults,—her mother was dead. Paquette had no one left to love, no one to love her. Five years had passed since her fall, and Chantefleurie was but a miserable creature. She was alone, alone in the world, pointed at, hooted after in the street, beaten by the police, mocked by little ragged boys. And then, she was now twenty years old; and twenty is old age to such women. Vice had ceased to bring her in much more than her fringe-making used to do; every fresh wrinkle took away another coin. Winter was once more a hard season for her; wood was again scarce upon her hearth, and bread in her cupboard. She could no longer work; for when she took to a life of pleasure she learned to be lazy, and she suffered far more than before, because in learning to be lazy she became accustomed to pleasure,—at least, that’s the way the priest of Saint-Remy explains it to us that such women feel cold and hunger more than other poor folks do when they are old.”

“Yes,” remarked Gervaise; “but the gipsies?”

“One moment, Gervaise!” said Oudarde, whose attention was less impatient. “What would there be left for the end, if everything came at the beginning? Go on, Mahiette, please. Poor Chantefleurie!”

Mahiette continued:—

“So she was very wretched, very unhappy, and her tears wore deep furrows in her cheeks. But in her shame, her disgrace, and her misery, it seemed to her that she should feel less ashamed, less disgraced, and less miserable, if she had something to love or some one to love her. It must be a child; for only a child could be innocent enough for that. She recognized this after trying to love a thief,—the only man who would have anything to say to her; but after a little she saw that even the thief despised her. Women of that sort must have a lover or a child to fill up their hearts, otherwise they are very unhappy. As she could not have a lover, she gave herself up to longing for a child; and as she had never given over being pious, she prayed night and day that the good God would give her one. The good God had pity on her, and gave her a little girl. I cannot describe to you her delight; she covered it with a perfect rain of tears, kisses, and caresses. She nursed her child herself, made swaddling-clothes for it of her own coverlet,—the only one she had on her bed,—and no longer felt cold or hungry. She grew handsome again. An old maid makes a young mother.⁹ She took to her former trade; her old friends came back to see her, and she readily found customers for her wares, and with the price of all these iniquities she bought baby linen, caps, and bibs, lace gowns and little satin bonnets, without ever thinking of buying herself another coverlet.—Master Eustache, didn’t I tell you not to eat that cake?—It is certain that little Agnès,—that was the child’s name, her given name; for as to a surname, Chantefleurie had long since ceased to have one,—it is certain that the little thing was more tricked out with ribbons and embroidery than a dauphiness from Dauphiny! Among other things, she had a pair of tiny shoes, the like of which even King Louis XI himself surely never had! Her mother sewed and embroidered them herself; she put all the dainty arts of her fringe-making into them, and as many intricate stitches as would make a gown for the Holy Virgin. They were the two sweetest little pink shoes imaginable. They were no longer than my thumb, and you must have seen the child’s tiny feet slip out of them, or you would never have believed they could have gone in. To be sure, those little feet were so small, so pink, and so pretty!—pinker than the satin of the shoes!—When you have children of your own, Oudarde, you will know that there is nothing prettier than those little feet and hands!”

“I ask nothing better,” said Oudarde, sighing; “but I must wait the good pleasure of Master Andry Musnier.”

“Besides,” resumed Mahiette, “Paquette’s child had not merely pretty feet. I saw her when she was only four months old; she was a perfect love! Her eyes were bigger than her mouth, and she had the finest black hair, which curled already! She would have made a splendid brunette if she had lived to be sixteen. Her mother became more and more crazy about her every day. She fondled her, kissed her, tickled her, washed her, decked her out, almost ate her up! She lost her head over her; she thanked God for her. Her pretty little pink feet particularly were an endless wonder, the cause of a perfect delirium of joy! Her lips were forever pressed to them; she could never cease admiring their smallness. She would put them into the tiny shoes, take them out again, admire them, wonder at them, hold them up to the light, pity them when they tried to walk upon the bed, and would gladly have spent her life on her knees, putting the shoes on and off those feet, as if they had been those of an infant Jesus.”

“A very pretty story,” said Gervaise in a low voice; “but what has all this to do with gipsies?”

“This,” replied Mahiette. “There came one day to Rheims some very queer-looking men on horseback. They were beggars and vagrants roaming about the country, under the lead of their duke and their counts. They were swarthy, all had curly hair, and silver rings in their ears. The women were even uglier than the men. Their faces were blacker, and always uncovered; they wore shabby blouses, with an old bit of cloth woven of cords tied over their shoulders, and their hair hung down like a horse’s tail. The children wallowing under their feet would have frightened a monkey. A band of outlaws! They all came in a direct line from Lower Egypt to Rheims by way of Poland. People said that the Pope had confessed them, and ordered them, by way of penance, to travel through the world for seven years in succession, without ever sleeping in beds. So they called themselves penitents, and smelt horribly. It seems that they were once Saracens, so they must have believed in Jupiter; and they demanded ten Tours pounds from every crosiered and mitered archbishop, bishop, and abbot. It was a papal bull that gave them this right. They came to Rheims to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers and the Emperor of Germany. You may imagine that this was quite enough reason for forbidding them to enter the town. So the whole band encamped near the Porte de Braine with a good grace, on that hill where there is a mill, close by the old chalk-pits; and every one in Rheims made haste to visit them. They looked into your hand and told you most marvellous things; they were quite capable of predicting to Judas that he should be pope! And yet there were evil reports of their having stolen children, cut purses, and eaten human flesh. Wise folks said to the simple, ‘Keep away from them!’ and then went themselves in secret. It was a perfect rage. The fact is, they said things that would have amazed a cardinal. Mothers boasted loudly of their children, after the gipsies had read all sorts of miracles written in their hands in Turkish and in heathen tongues. One had an emperor for her son, another a pope, and another a captain. Poor Chantefleurie was seized with curiosity; she longed to know what her child would be, and whether her pretty little Agnès would not one day be Empress of Armenia, or something of that sort. So she carried her to the gipsies; and the gipsies admired the child, caressed her, and kissed her with their black mouths, and wondered at her little hand, alas! to the great delight of her mother. They were particularly charmed with her pretty feet and her pretty shoes. The child was not a year old then. She already lisped a few words, laughed at her mother like a little madcap, was round and fat, and had a thousand enchanting little tricks like those of the angels in paradise. She was sorely afraid of the gipsy women, and cried. But her mother kissed her the harder, and went away charmed with the good luck which the fortune-tellers had promised her Agnès. She was to be beautiful, virtuous, and a queen. She therefore returned to her garret in the Rue Folle-Peine, quite proud of carrying a queen in her arms. Next day she took advantage of a moment while the child was asleep on her bed (for she always had it sleep in her own bed), softly left the door ajar, and ran out to tell a neighbor in the Rue de la Sechesserie that her daughter Agnes would one day have the King of England and the Duke of Ethiopia to wait upon her at table, and a hundred other surprising things. On her return, hearing no sound as she climbed the stairs, she said to herself, ‘Good! baby is still asleep.’ She found the door much wider open than she had left it; but she went in, poor mother! and ran to the bed. The child was gone; the place was empty. There was nothing left of the child but one of her pretty little shoes. She rushed from the room, flew down the stairs, and began to beat the walls with her head, crying, ‘My child! my child! Where is my child? Who has taken away my child?’ The street was deserted, the house stood alone; no one could give her any information. She went through the town, searched every street, ran up and down all day long, mad, distracted, terrible, staring in at doors and windows, like a wild beast that has lost its young. She was breathless, disheveled, fearful to look upon, and there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped the passers-by, and cried, ‘My daughter! my daughter! my pretty little daughter! If any one will give me back my daughter, I will be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall devour my heart if he will.’ She met the priest of Saint-Remy, and said to him: ‘I will dig the ground with my nails, only give me back my child!’ It was heartrending, Oudarde; and I saw a very hard-hearted man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the attorney, weep. Ah, poor mother! When night came, she went home. During her absence a neighbor had seen two gipsy women go slyly upstairs with a bundle in their arms, then shut the door again and hurry away. After they had gone, a child’s cries were heard, coming from Paquette’s room. The mother laughed wildly, flew over the stairs as if she had wings, burst open her door, and went in. A frightful thing had happened, Oudarde! Instead of her lovely little Agnès, so rosy and so fresh, who was a gift from the good God, there lay a hideous little monster, blind, lame, deformed, squalling, and crawling about the brick floor. She hid her eyes in horror. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘can the witches have changed my daughter into this horrible beast?’ The little club-foot was hastily removed; he would have driven her mad. He was the monstrous offspring of some gipsy woman given over to the devil. He seemed to be about four years old, and spoke a language which was no human tongue; such words were quite impossible. Chantefleurie flung herself upon the little shoe,—all that was left her of all that she had loved. She lay there so long, motionless, silent, apparently not breathing, that the neighbors thought she must be dead. Suddenly she trembled from head to foot, covered her precious relic with frantic kisses, and burst into sobs as if her heart were broken. I assure you that we all wept with her. She said: ‘Oh, my little girl! my pretty little girl! where are you?’ And that would have wrung your hearts. I cry now when I think of it. Our children, you see, are the very marrow of our bones. My poor Eustache! you are so handsome! If you only knew what a darling he is! Yesterday he said to me, ‘I mean to be one of the city guard, I do.’ Oh, my Eustache! if I were to lose you!—Chantefleurie got up all at once and began to run about Rheims, shouting, ‘To the gipsy camp! to the gipsy camp! Guard, burn the witches!’ The gipsies were gone. It was night. No one could follow them. Next day, two leagues away from Rheims, on a heath between Gueux and Tilloy, were found the remains of a great fire, some ribbons which had belonged to Paquette’s child, drops of blood, and some goats’ dung. The night just passed happened to be a Saturday night. No one doubted any longer that the gipsies had kept their Sabbath on that heath, and that they had devoured the child in company with Beelzebub, as the Mahometans do. When Chantefleurie heard these horrible things, she did not shed a tear; she moved her lips as if to speak, but could not. Next day her hair was grey. On the following day she had disappeared.”

“A terrible story indeed,” said Oudarde, “and one that would make a Burgundian weep!”

“I am no longer surprised,” added Gervaise, “that the fear of the gipsies haunts you so.”

“And you had all the more reason,” continued Oudarde, “to run away with your Eustache just now, because these are also Polish gipsies.”

“Not at all,” said Gervaise; “they say they came from Spain and Catalonia.”

“Catalonia? That may be,” replied Oudarde; “Polonia, Catalonia, Valonia,—those places are all one to me; I always mix them up. There’s one thing sure; they are gipsies.”

“And their teeth are certainly long enough to eat little children. And I should not be a bit surprised if Smeralda ate a little too, for all her dainty airs. Her white goat plays too many clever tricks to be all right.”

Mahiette walked on in silence. She was absorbed in that sort of reverie which seems to be the continuation of a painful story, and which does not cease until it has imparted its own emotion, throb by throb, to the innermost fibers of the heart. Gervaise, however, addressed her: “And did no one ever know what became of Chantefleurie?” Mahiette made no answer. Gervaise repeated the question, shaking her arm and calling her by name as she did so. Mahiette seemed to wake from her dream.

“What became of Chantefleurie?” she said, mechanically repeating the words whose sound was still fresh in her ear; then, making an effort to fix her attention upon the meaning of the words, she said quickly, “Oh, no one ever knew.”

She added, after a pause:—

“Some said they saw her leave Rheims at dusk by the Porte Fléchembault; others, at daybreak, by the old Porte Basée. A poor man found her gold cross hanging to the stone cross in the fairgrounds. It was that trinket which caused her ruin in ‘61. It was a gift from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette never would part with it, however poor she might be. She clung to it like her own life. So when this cross was found, we all thought that she was dead. Still, there were people at Cabaret-les-Vautes who said they saw her pass by on the road to Paris, walking barefoot over the stones. But in that case she must have left town by the Porte de Vesle, and all these stories don’t agree; or, rather, I believe she did actually leave by the Porte de Vesle, but that she left this world.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Gervaise.

“The Vesle,” replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, “is the river.”

“Poor Chantefleurie!” said Oudarde, with a shudder; “drowned!”

“Drowned!” returned Mahiette; “and who could have told good father Guybertaut, when he floated down the river beneath the Pont de Tinquex, singing in his boat, that his dear little Paquette would one day pass under that same bridge, but without boat or song?”

“And the little shoe?” asked Gervaise.

“It disappeared with the mother,” replied Mahiette.

“Poor little shoe!” said Oudarde.

Oudarde, a fat and tender-hearted woman, would have been quite content to sigh in company with Mahiette; but Gervaise, who was more curious, had not come to the end of her questions.

“And the monster?” she suddenly said to Mahiette.

“What monster?” asked the latter.

“The little gipsy monster left by the witches in Chantefleurie’s room in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it? I really hope you drowned it too.”

“Not a bit of it,” replied Mahiette.

“What! You burned it then? After all, that was better. A sorcerer’s child!”

“Nor that either, Gervaise. My lord the archbishop took an interest in the gipsy child; he exorcised it, blessed it, carefully took the devil out of the boy’s body, and sent him to Paris to be exposed upon the wooden bed at Notre-Dame, as a foundling.”

“These bishops,” grumbled Gervaise, “never do anything like other people, just because they are so learned. Just think, Oudarde, of putting the devil among the foundlings! For that little monster is sure to have been the devil. Well, Mahiette, what did they do with him in Paris! I’m sure no charitable person would take him.”

“I don’t know,” replied the native of Rheims; “it was just at that very time that my husband bought the clerk’s office at Beru, two leagues away from town, and we thought no more about the matter; particularly as near Beru there are the two hills of Cernay, which quite hide the spires of the Rheims cathedral.”

While talking thus, the three worthy women had reached the Place de Grève. In their preoccupation, they had passed the public breviary of the Tour-Roland without stopping, and were proceeding mechanically towards the pillory, around which the crowd increased momentarily. Probably the sight which at this instant attracted every eye would have made them completely forget the Rat-Hole, and the visit which they meant to pay, if the sturdy six-year-old Eustache, whom Mahiette led by the hand, had not suddenly reminded them of it by saying, as if some instinct warned him that the Rat-Hole lay behind him, “Mother, may I eat the cake now?”

Had Eustache been more crafty, that is to say less greedy, he would have waited still longer, and would not have risked the timid question, “Mother, may I eat the cake now?” until they were safe at home again, at Master Andry Musnier’s house, in the University, in the Rue Madame-la-Valence, when both branches of the Seine and the five bridges of the City would have been between the Rat-Hole and the cake.

This same question, a very rash one at the time that Eustache asked it, roused Mahiette’s attention.

“By the way,” she exclaimed, “we are forgetting the recluse! Show me your Rat-Hole, that I may carry her my cake.”

“Directly,” said Oudarde. “It’s a true charity.”

This was not at all to Eustache’s liking.

“Oh, my cake! my cake!” he whined, hunching up first one shoulder and then the other,—always a sign of extreme displeasure in such cases.

The three women retraced their steps, and as they approached the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two:—

“It will never do for all three of us to peep in at the hole at once, lest we should frighten the sachette. You two must pretend to be reading the Lord’s Prayer in the breviary while I put my nose in at the window; she knows me slightly. I’ll tell you when to come.”

She went to the window alone. As soon as she looked in, profound pity was expressed in every feature, and her bright frank face changed color as quickly as if it had passed from sunlight into moonlight; her eyes grew moist, her mouth quivered as if she were about to weep. A moment later, she put her finger to her lips and beckoned to Mahiette.

Mahiette silently joined her, on tiptoe as if by the bedside of a dying person.

It was indeed a sad sight which lay before the two women, as they gazed without moving or breathing through the grated window of the Rat-Hole.

The cell was small, wider than it was long, with a vaulted roof, and seen from within looked like the inside of an exaggerated bishop’s miter. Upon the bare stone floor, in a corner, sat, or rather crouched a woman. Her chin rested on her knees, which her crossed arms pressed closely against her breast. Bent double in this manner, clad in brown sackcloth, which covered her loosely from head to foot, her long grey locks drawn forward and falling over her face, down her legs to her feet, she seemed at first sight some strange shape outlined against the dark background of the cell, a sort of blackish triangle, which the ray of light entering at the window divided into two distinct bands of light and shadow. She looked like one of those specters, half darkness and half light, which we see in dreams, and in the extraordinary work of Goya,—pale, motionless, forbidding, cowering upon a tomb or clinging to the grating of a dungeon. It was neither man nor woman, nor living being, nor any definite form; it was a figure; a sort of vision in which the real and the imaginary were blended like twilight and daylight. Beneath her disheveled hair, which fell to the ground, the outlines of a stern and emaciated profile were barely visible; the tip of one bare foot just peeped from the hem of her garment, seeming to be curled up on the hard, cold floor. The little of human form which could be dimly seen beneath that mourning garb made the beholder shudder.

This figure, which seemed rooted to the ground, appeared to have neither motion, thought, nor breath. In that thin sackcloth, in January, lying half naked on a granite floor, without fire, in the darkness of a dungeon, whose slanting window never admitted the sun, only the icy blast, she did not seem to suffer, or even to feel.

She seemed to have been turned to stone like her cell, to ice like the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes were fixed. At the first glance, she seemed a specter, at the second, a statue.

And yet at intervals her blue lips were parted by a breath, and trembled; but they seemed as dead and as destitute of will as leaves blowing in the wind.

Yet her dull eyes gazed with an ineffable expression, a deep, mournful, serious, perpetually fixed expression, on a corner of the cell hidden from those outside; her look seemed to connect all the somber thoughts of her distressed soul with some mysterious object.

Such was the creature who was called “the recluse” from her habitation, and “sachette” from her dress.

The three women—for Gervaise had joined Mahiette and Oudarde—peered through the window. Their heads cut off the faint light which entered the dungeon; but the wretched inmate seemed unconscious of her loss, and paid no attention to them. “Don’t disturb her,” said Oudarde in low tones; “she is in one of her ecstatic fits: she is praying.”

But Mahiette still gazed with ever-increasing anxiety at the wan, wrinkled face, and those disheveled locks, and her eyes filled with tears. “How strange that would be!” she muttered.

She put her head through the iron bars, and at last contrived to get a glimpse of the corner upon which the unhappy woman’s eyes were forever riveted.

When she withdrew her head from the window, her face was bathed in tears.

“What is that woman’s name?” she asked Oudarde.

Oudarde answered,—

“We call her Sister Gudule.”

“And I,” returned Mahiette,—“I call her Paquette Chantefleurie.”

Then, putting her finger to her lip, she signed to the amazed Oudarde to put her head through the aperture and look.

Oudarde looked, and saw, in the corner upon which the recluse’s eye was fixed in such sad ecstasy, a tiny pink satin shoe, embroidered with gold and silver spangles.

Gervaise looked in after Oudarde, and then the three women began to weep at the sight of that miserable mother.

However, neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse. Her hands were still clasped, her lips dumb, her eyes set; and to those who knew her story it was heartrending to see her sit and gaze at that little shoe.

The three had not yet breathed a word; they dared not speak, even in a whisper. This profound silence, this great grief, this entire oblivion of all but one thing, affected them like the high altar at Easter or at Christmas-tide. They were silent, absorbed, ready to fall upon their knees. They felt as if they had just gone into church on Holy Saturday and heard the Tenebrœ.

At last Gervaise, the most curious, and consequently the least sensitive of the three, made an attempt to draw the recluse into conversation: “Sister! Sister Gudule!”

She repeated the call three times, raising her voice each time. The recluse did not stir; there was not a word, not a look, not a sign of life.

Oudarde, in her turn, in a gentler and more affectionate tone, said, “Sister! holy Sister Gudule!”

The same silence, the same absolute repose as before.

“What a strange woman!” cried Gervaise; “I don’t believe she would mind a cannonade!”

“Perhaps she’s deaf,” said Oudarde.

“Maybe blind,” added Gervaise.

“Perhaps dead,” said Mahiette.

Certainly, if the soul had not already quitted that inert, torpid, lethargic body, it had at least withdrawn into it and concealed itself in depths to which the perceptions of the external organs did not penetrate.

“We shall have to leave the cake on the window-sill,” said Oudarde; “but then some boy will steal it. How can we rouse her?”

Eustache, who had thus far been absorbed in a little wagon drawn by a big dog, which was just passing, suddenly noticed that his three companions were looking at something through the window, and, seized by curiosity in his turn, he scrambled upon a post, stood on tiptoe, and put his fat, rosy face to the opening, shouting,

“Mother, let me see, too!”

At the sound of this childish voice, clear, fresh, and ringing, the recluse trembled. She turned her head with the abrupt, quick, motion of a steel spring, her long, thin hands brushed the hair from her face, and she fixed her astonished, unhappy, despairing eyes upon the child. The look was like a flash of lightning.

“Oh, my God!” she instantly exclaimed, hiding her head upon her knees, and it seemed as if her hoarse voice tore her chest, “at least do not show me those of others!”

“Good-morning, madame,” said the child, gravely.

But the shock had, as it were, aroused the recluse. A long shudder ran through her entire frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she half raised her head, and said, as she pressed her elbows to her sides and took her feet in her hands as if to warm them,—

“Oh, how bitterly cold!”

“Poor woman!” said Oudarde, pitifully; “would you like a little fire?”

She shook her head in token of refusal.

“Well,” added Oudarde, offering her a bottle, “here is some hippocras, which will warm you; drink.”

She again shook her head, looked steadily at Oudarde, and answered, “Water.”

Oudarde insisted. “No, sister, water is no fit drink for January. You must drink a little hippocras, and eat this wheaten cake, which we have made for you.”

She put aside the cake which Mahiette offered her, and said, “Some black bread.”

“Come,” said Gervaise, feeling a charitable impulse in her turn, and unfastening her woollen mantle, “here is a covering somewhat warmer than yours. Throw this over your shoulders.”

She refused the mantle as she had the bottle and the cake, and answered, “A cloth.”

“But,” resumed the kind-hearted Oudarde, “you must have seen that yesterday was a holiday.”

“I knew it,” said the recluse; “for two days I have had no water in my jug.”

She added after a pause: “On a holiday, every one forgets me. They do well. Why should people remember me, who never think of them? When the fire goes out, the ashes are soon cold.”

And as if wearied by so many words, she let her head fall upon her knees once more. The simple and charitable Oudarde, who interpreted her last words as another complaint of the cold, answered innocently, “Then wouldn’t you like a little fire?”

“Fire!” said the recluse in a singular tone; “and will you give me a little for the poor baby too,—the baby who has been under ground these fifteen years?”

She trembled in every limb, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed; she had risen to her knees; she suddenly stretched her thin white hand towards the child, who was looking at her in surprise.

“Take away that child!” she cried. “The gipsy woman will soon pass by.”

Then she fell face downwards, and her forehead struck the floor, with the sound of one stone upon another. The three women thought her dead. But a moment later she stirred, and they saw her drag herself upon her hands and knees to the corner where the little shoe lay. They dared not look longer; they turned away their eyes; but they heard a thousand kisses and a thousand sighs, mingled with agonizing cries and dull blows like those of a head dashed against a wall; then after one of these blows, so violent that they all three started, they heard nothing more.

“Has she killed herself?” said Gervaise, venturing to put her head through the bars. “Sister! Sister Gudule!”

“Sister Gudule!” repeated Oudarde.

“Oh, heavens! She does not move!” exclaimed Gervaise. “Can she indeed be dead? Gudule! Gudule!”

Mahiette, until now so choked by emotion that she could not speak, made an effort. “Wait a minute,” she said; then going to the window, she cried, “Paquette! Paquette Chantefleurie!”

A child who innocently blows on an ill-lighted firecracker and makes it explode in his face, is no more alarmed than was Mahiette at the effect of the name so suddenly flung into Sister Gudule’s cell.

The recluse trembled from head to foot, sprang to her bare feet, and rushed to the window with such flaming eyes that Mahiette, Oudarde, the other woman and the child retreated to the farthest edge of the quay.

But still the forbidding face of the recluse remained pressed against the window-bars. “Oh! oh!” she screamed with a terrible laugh, “the gipsy woman calls me!”

At this instant the scene which was passing at the pillory caught her wild eye. Her brow wrinkled with horror; she stretched her skeleton arms from her cell and cried in a voice which sounded like a death-rattle, “Have you come again, you daughter of Egypt? Is it you who call me, you child-stealer? Well! may you be accursed! accursed! accursed! accursed!”