“You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?”
She replied by a negative sign of the head, and her pensive glance fixed itself upon the vault of the ceiling.
“What the deuce is she thinking of?” thought Gringoire, staring at what she was gazing at; “ ’tis impossible that it can be that stone dwarf carved in the keystone of that arch, which thus absorbs her attention. What the deuce! I can bear the comparison!”
He raised his voice, “Mademoiselle!”
She seemed not to hear him.
He repeated, still more loudly, “Mademoiselle Esmeralda!”
Trouble wasted. The young girl’s mind was elsewhere, and Gringoire’s voice had not the power to recall it. Fortunately, the goat interfered. She began to pull her mistress gently by the sleeve.
“What dost thou want, Djali?” said the gypsy, hastily, as though suddenly awakened.
“She is hungry,” said Gringoire, charmed to enter into conversation. Esmeralda began to crumble some bread, which Djali ate gracefully from the hollow of her hand.
Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to resume her revery. He hazarded a delicate question.
“So you don’t want me for your husband?”
The young girl looked at him intently, and said, “No.”
“For your lover?” went on Gringoire.
She pouted, and replied, “No.”
“For your friend?” pursued Gringoire.
She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary reflection, “Perhaps.”
This “perhaps,” so dear to philosophers, emboldened Gringoire.
“Do you know what friendship is?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the gypsy; “it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.”
“And love?” pursued Gringoire.
“Oh! love!” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. “That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.”
The street dancer had a beauty as she spoke thus, that struck Gringoire singularly, and seemed to him in perfect keeping with the almost oriental exaltation of her words. Her pure, red lips half smiled; her serene and candid brow became troubled, at intervals, under her thoughts, like a mirror under the breath; and from beneath her long, drooping, black eyelashes, there escaped a sort of ineffable light, which gave to her profile that ideal serenity which Raphael found at the mystic point of intersection of virginity, maternity, and divinity.
Nevertheless, Gringoire continued—
“What must one be then, in order to please you?”
“A man.”
“And I—” said he, “what, then, am I?”
“A man has a helmet on his head, a sword in his hand, and golden spurs on his heels.”
“Good,” said Gringoire, “without a horse, no man. Do you love any one?”
“As a lover?—”
“Yes.”
She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar expression: “That I shall know soon.”
“Why not this evening?” resumed the poet tenderly. “Why not me?”
She cast a grave glance upon him and said—
“I can never love a man who cannot protect me.”
Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found herself two hours previously. This memory, effaced by his own adventures of the evening, now recurred to him. He smote his brow.
“By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to have begun there. Pardon my foolish absence of mind. How did you contrive to escape from the claws of Quasimodo?”
This question made the gypsy shudder.
“Oh! the horrible hunchback,” said she, hiding her face in her hands. And she shuddered as though with violent cold.
“Horrible, in truth,” said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; “but how did you manage to escape him?”
La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained silent.
“Do you know why he followed you?” began Gringoire again, seeking to return to his question by a circuitous route.
“I don’t know,” said the young girl, and she added hastily, “but you were following me also, why were you following me?”
“In good faith,” responded Gringoire, “I don’t know either.”
Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed the table with his knife. The young girl smiled and seemed to be gazing through the wall at something. All at once she began to sing in a barely articulate voice—
Quando las pintadas aves,
Mudas estan, y la tierra—[16]
She broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali.
“That’s a pretty animal of yours,” said Gringoire.
“She is my sister,” she answered.
“Why are you called la Esmeralda?” asked the poet.
“I do not know.”
“But why?”
She drew from her bosom a sort of little oblong bag, suspended from her neck by a string of adrézarach beads. This bag exhaled a strong odor of camphor. It was covered with green silk, and bore in its centre a large piece of green glass, in imitation of an emerald.
“Perhaps it is because of this,” said she.
Gringoire was on the point of taking the bag in his hand. She drew back.
“Don’t touch it! It is an amulet. You would injure the charm or the charm would injure you.”
The poet’s curiosity was more and more aroused.
“Who gave it to you?”
She laid one finger on her mouth and concealed the amulet in her bosom. He tried a few more questions, but she hardly replied.
“What is the meaning of the words, la Esmeralda?”
“I don’t know,” said she.
“To what language do they belong?”
“They are Egyptian, I think.”
“I suspected as much,” said Gringoire, “you are not a native of France?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are your parents alive?”
She began to sing, to an ancient air—
Mon père est oiseau,
Ma mère est oiselle.
Je passe l’eau sans nacelle,
Je passe l’eau sans bateau,
Ma mère est oiselle,
Mon père est oiseau.[17]
“Good,” said Gringoire. “At what age did you come to France?”
“When I was very young.”
“And when to Paris?”
“Last year. At the moment when we were entering the papal gate I saw a reed warbler flit through the air, that was at the end of August; I said,