is wide enough. Enter three
abreast, as at the breach of Pontoise. Let us make an end of it, death
of Mahom! I will make two pieces of the first man who draws back!"

Placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the
soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and
advanced towards the Rat-Hole.

When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung aside
her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall by her side.
Then great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes; they flowed down
her cheeks through a furrow, like a torrent through a bed which it has
hollowed for itself.

At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so supplicating,
so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that more than one old
convict-warder around Tristan who must have devoured human flesh wiped
his eyes.

"Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There is one thing
which I must say to you. She is my daughter, do you see? my dear little
daughter whom I had lost! Listen. It is quite a history. Consider that
I knew the sergeants very well. They were always good to me in the
days when the little boys threw stones at me, because I led a life of
pleasure. Do you see? You will leave me my child when you know! I was a
poor woman of the town. It was the Bohemians who stole her from me. And
I kept her shoe for fifteen years. Stay, here it is. That was the kind
of foot which she had. At Reims! La Chantefleurie! Rue Folle-Peine!
Perchance, you knew about that. It was I. In your youth, then, there was
a merry time, when one passed good hours. You will take pity on me, will
you not, gentlemen? The gypsies stole her from me; they hid her from me
for fifteen years. I thought her dead. Fancy, my good friends, believed
her to be dead. I have passed fifteen years here in this cellar, without
a fire in winter. It is hard. The poor, dear little shoe! I have cried
so much that the good God has heard me. This night he has given my
daughter back to me. It is a miracle of the good God. She was not dead.
You will not take her from me, I am sure. If it were myself, I would
say nothing; but she, a child of sixteen! Leave her time to see the sun!
What has she done to you? nothing at all. Nor have I. If you did but
know that she is all I have, that I am old, that she is a blessing which
the Holy Virgin has sent to me! And then, you are all so good! You did
not know that she was my daughter; but now you do