“Come!”he growled between his teeth. “Forward! we must continue the search. I will not sleep till the gipsy has been hanged.”
Nevertheless, he lingered a moment before mounting. Gudule hung between life and death as she saw him scanning the Place with the restless look of the hound that instinctively feels himself near the lair of his quarry, and is reluctant to go away. At last he shook his head, and sprang into the saddle.
Gudule’s heart, so horribly contracted, now expanded, and she whispered, with a glance towards her daughter, whom she had not ventured to look at since the arrival of her pursuers, “Saved!”
All this time the poor child had remained in her corner, without breathing, without moving a muscle, death staring her in the face. She had lost no word of the scene between Gudule and Tristan, and each pang of her mother’s had echoed in her own heart. She had heard each successive crack of the thread that held her suspended over the abyss, and twenty times she thought to see it snap. Only now did she begin to take breath and feel the ground steady under her feet.
At this moment she heard a voice call to the provost: “Corbœuf! Monsieur the Provost, it’s none of my business as a man-at-arms to hang witches. The rabble populace is put down; I leave you to do your own work alone. You will permit me to return to my company, who are meanwhile without a captain.”
The voice was that of Phœbus de Châteaupers. What passed in her breast is impossible to describe. He was there, her friend, her protector, her safeguard, her refuge—her Phœbus! She started to her feet, and before her mother could prevent her had sprung to the loophole, crying:
“Phœbus! To me, my Phœbus!”
Phœbus was no longer there. He had just galloped round the corner of the Rue de la Coutellerie. But Tristan had not yet gone away.
The recluse rushed at her daughter with a snarl of rage and dragged her violently back, her nails entering the flesh of the girl’s neck. But the mother turned tigress has no thought of careful handling. Too late. Tristan had seen it all.
“Hé! hé!”he chuckled with a grin that bared all his teeth and made his face wolfish; “two mice in the trap!”
“I suspected as much,”said the soldier. Tristan slapped him on the shoulder. “Thou are a good cat! Now, then,”he added, “where is Henriet Cousin?”
A man, having neither the dress nor the appearance of a soldier, stepped out from their ranks. He wore a suit half gray, half brown, with leather sleeves, and carried a coil of rope in his great hand. This man was in constant attendance on Tristan, who was in constant attendance on Louis XI.
“Friend,”said Tristan l’Hermite, “I conclude that this is the witch we are in search of. Thou wilt hang me that one. Hast thou thy ladder?”
“There is one under the shed at the Maison-aux-Piliers,”answered the man. “Is it at the gallows over there we’re to do the job?”he continued, pointing to the gibbet.
“Yes.”
“So, ho!”said the man, with a coarse laugh more brutal even than the provost’s, “we shall not have far to go!”
“Make haste,”said Tristan, “and do thy laughing afterward.”