know it. Oh! I love
her! Monsieur, the grand provost. I would prefer a stab in my own vitals
to a scratch on her finger! You have the air of such a good lord! What
I have told you explains the matter, does it not? Oh! if you have had
a mother, monsiegneur! you are the captain, leave me my child! Consider
that I pray you on my knees, as one prays to Jesus Christ! I ask nothing
of any one; I am from Reims, gentlemen; I own a little field inherited
from my uncle, Mahiet Pradon. I am no beggar. I wish nothing, but I do
want my child! oh! I want to keep my child! The good God, who is the
master, has not given her back to me for nothing! The king! you say the
king! It would not cause him much pleasure to have my little daughter
killed! And then, the king is good! she is my daughter! she is my own
daughter! She belongs not to the king! she is not yours! I want to go
away! we want to go away! and when two women pass, one a mother and the
other a daughter, one lets them go! Let us pass! we belong in Reims. Oh!
you are very good, messieurs the sergeants, I love you all. You will not
take my dear little one, it is impossible! It is utterly impossible, is
it not? My child, my child!"

We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, of the tears
which she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands which she clasped and
then wrung, of the heart-breaking smiles, of the swimming glances,
of the groans, the sighs, the miserable and affecting cries which she
mingled with her disordered, wild, and incoherent words. When she became
silent Tristan l'Hermite frowned, but it was to conceal a tear which
welled up in his tiger's eye. He conquered this weakness, however, and
said in a curt tone,--

"The king wills it."

Then he bent down to the ear of Rennet Cousin, and said to him in a very
low tone,--

"Make an end of it quickly!" Possibly, the redoubtable provost felt his
heart also failing him.

The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell. The mother offered
no resistance, only she dragged herself towards her daughter and threw
herself bodily upon her. The gypsy beheld the soldiers approach. The
horror of death reanimated her,--

"Mother!" she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress, "Mother!
they are coming! defend me!"

"Yes, my love, I am defending you!" replied the mother, in a dying
voice; and clasping her closely in her arms, she covered her with
kisses. The two lying thus on the earth, the mother upon the d