tty little pink foot, I
would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will be
grown up now!--Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I shall never
see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go there myself. Oh!
what misery to think that here is her shoe, and that that is all!"

The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation and her
despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with sobs as on the
first day; because, for a mother who has lost her child, it is always
the first day. That grief never grows old. The mourning garments may
grow white and threadbare, the heart remains dark.

At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in front
of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or struck
her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest corner of her
sepulchre, and one would have said, that she sought to plunge her head
into the stone in order not to hear them. This time, on the contrary,
she drew herself upright with a start, and listened eagerly. One of the
little boys had just said,--

"They are going to hang a gypsy to-day."

With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling itself upon
a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her air-hole, which
opened as the reader knows, on the Place de Greve. A ladder had, in
fact, been raised up against the permanent gibbet, and the hangman's
assistant was busying himself with adjusting the chains which had been
rusted by the rain. There were some people standing about.

The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked nun
sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question. All at
once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a pretext of
reading the public breviary, but who was much less occupied with the
"lectern of latticed iron," than with the gallows, toward which he cast
a fierce and gloomy glance from time to time. She recognized monsieur
the archdeacon of Josas, a holy man.

"Father," she inquired, "whom are they about to hang yonder?"

The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her question.
Then he said,--

"I know not."

"Some children said that it was a gypsy," went on the recluse.

"I believe so," said the priest.

Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.

"Sister," said the archdeacon, "do you then hate the gypsies heartily?"

"Do I hate them!" exclaimed the recluse, "they are vam