In any place it would have been a touching spectacle to see a beautiful girl—so fresh, so pure, so kind, and so unprotected—hastening thus to succour so much of misery, of deformity and wickedness. On a pillory, it became sublime.
The people themselves were overcome by it, and clapped their hands, shouting, “Noël! Noël!”
It was at this moment that the recluse, through the loophole of her cell, caught sight of the gipsy girl on the steps of the pillory, and launched her sinister imprecation: “Cursed be thou, daughter of Egypt! cursed! cursed!”