r hoped for anything, she no longer knew what she wished,
except that she did not wish them to take her daughter.

Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night man,
under the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew from it also the double
ladder, which he immediately set up against the gallows. Five or six of
the provost's men armed themselves with picks and crowbars, and Tristan
betook himself, in company with them, towards the window.

"Old woman," said the provost, in a severe tone, "deliver up to us that
girl quietly."

She looked at him like one who does not understand.

"_Tete Dieu_!" continued Tristan, "why do you try to prevent this
sorceress being hung as it pleases the king?"

The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way.

"Why? She is my daughter."

The tone in which she pronounced these words made even Henriet Cousin
shudder.

"I am sorry for that," said the provost, "but it is the king's good
pleasure."

She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh,--

"What is your king to me? I tell you that she is my daughter!"

"Pierce the wall," said Tristan.

In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to dislodge
one course of stone below the window. When the mother heard the picks
and crowbars mining her fortress, she uttered a terrible cry; then she
began to stride about her cell with frightful swiftness, a wild beasts'
habit which her cage had imparted to her. She no longer said anything,
but her eyes flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the very soul.

All at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it with
both fists upon the workmen. The stone, badly flung (for her hands
trembled), touched no one, and fell short under the feet of Tristan's
horse. She gnashed her teeth.

In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad
daylight; a beautiful rose color enlivened the ancient, decayed chimneys
of the Pillar-House. It was the hour when the earliest windows of the
great city open joyously on the roofs. Some workmen, a few fruit-sellers
on their way to the markets on their asses, began to traverse the Greve;
they halted for a moment before this group of soldiers clustered round
the Rat-Hole, stared at it with an air of astonishment and passed on.

The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, covering her
with her body, in front of her, with staring eyes, listening to the poor
child, who did not stir, but who kept murmuring in a lo