“Vanished with the mother.”
“Poor little shoe!” sighed Oudarde; fat, tender-hearted creature, she would have been very well pleased to go on sighing in company with Mahiette; but Gervaise, of a more inquiring disposition, was not at an end of her questions.
“And the little monster?” she suddenly said to Mahiette.
“What monster?”
“The little gipsy monster left by the black witches in the place of Chantefleurie’s little girl. What was done with it? I trust you had it drowned?”
“No,” answered Mahiette, “we did not.”
“What? burned, then? I’ faith, a better way for a witch’s spawn!”
“Neither drowned nor burned, Gervaise. His Lordship the archbishop took pity on the child of Egypt, exorcised it, blessed it, carefully cast the devil out of its body, and then sent it to Paris to be exposed as a foundling on the wooden bed in front of Notre-Dame.”
“Ah, these bishops,” grumbled Gervaise; “because they are learned, forsooth, they can never do anything like other folks! Think of it, Oudarde—to put the devil among the foundlings! for of course the little monster was the devil. Well, Mahiette, and what did they do with him in Paris? I’ll answer for it that no charitable person would have it.”
“I know not,” answered the lady of Reims. “It was just at the time when my husband purchased the office of clerk to the Court of Justice at Beru, two leagues distant from the city, and we thought no further of the story, particularly that just in front of Beru are the two little hills of Cernay, which hide the towers of the Cathedral from view.”
Meanwhile, the three worthy burgher wives had reached the Place de Grève. Absorbed in conversation, however, they had passed the public breviary of the Tour-Roland without noticing it, and were directing their steps mechanically towards the pillory round which the crowd increased from moment to moment. It is possible that the sight which at that instant drew all eyes towards it would have completely driven the Rat-Hole and the pious halt they intended making there from their minds, had not fat, six-year-old Eustache, dragging at Mahiette’s side, recalled it to them suddenly.
“Mother,” said he, as if some instinct apprised him that they had left the Rat-Hole behind, “now may I eat the cake?”
Had Eustache been more astute, that is to say, less greedy, he would have waited, and not till they had returned to the University, to Maitre Andry Musnier’s house in the Rue Madame-la-Valence, and he had put the two arms of the Seine and the five bridges of the city between the Rat-Hole and the cake, would he have hazarded this question.
Imprudent though the question was on Eustache’s part, it recalled his mother to her charitable purpose.
“That reminds me,” exclaimed she, “we were forgetting the nun! Show me this Rat-Hole of yours, that I may give her the cake.”
“Right gladly,” said Oudarde; “it will be a charity.”
This was quite out of Eustache’s reckoning.