Produced by David Widger and Pat Castevens
THE WANDERING JEW
By Eugene Sue
BOOK IV.
PART SECOND.--THE CHASTISEMENT.
PROLOGUE.--THE BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF TWO WORLDS.
I. The Masquerade
II. The Contrast
III. The Carouse
IV. The Farewell
V. The Florine
VI. Mother Sainte-Perpetue
VII. The Temptation
VIII. Mother Bunch and Mdlle. De Cardoville
IX. The Encounters--The Meeting
XI. Discoveries
XII. The Penal Code
XIII. Burglary
PROLOGUE.--THE BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF TWO WORLDS.
As the eagle, perched upon the cliff, commands an all-comprehensive
view--not only of what happens on the plains and in the woodlands, but of
matters occurring upon the heights, which its aerie overlooks, so may the
reader have sights pointed out to him, which lie below the level of the
unassisted eye.
In the year 1831, the powerful Order of the Jesuits saw fit to begin to
act upon information which had for some time been digesting in their
hands.
As it related to a sum estimated at no less than thirty or forty millions
of francs, it is no wonder that they should redouble all exertions to
obtain it from the rightful owners.
These were, presumably, the descendants of Marius, Count of Rennepont, in
the reign of Louis XIV. of France.
They were distinguished from other men by a simple token, which all, in
the year above named, had in their hands.
It was a bronze medal, bearing these legends on reverse and obverse:
VICTIM
of
L. C. D. J.
Pray for me!
PARIS,
February the 13th, 1682.
IN PARIS
Rue St Francois, No. 3,
In a century and a half
you will be.
February the 13th, 1832.
PRAY FOR ME!
Those who had this token were descendants of a family whom, a hundred and
fifty years ago, persecution scattered through the world, in emigration
and exile; in changes of religion, fortune and name. For this
family--what grandeur, what reverses, what obscurity, what lustre, what
penury, what glory! How many crimes sullied, how many virtues honored it!
The history of this single family is the history of humanity! Passing
through many generations, throbbing in the veins of the poor and the
rich, the sovereign and the bandit, the wise and the simple, the coward
and the brave, the saint and the atheist, the blood flowed on to the year
we have named.
Seven representatives summed up the virtue, courage, degradation,
splendor, and poverty of the race. Seven: two orphan twin daughters of
exiled parents, a dethroned prince, a humble missionary priest, a man of
the middle class, a young lady of high name and large fortune, and a
working man.
Fate scattered them in Russia, India, France, and America.
The orphans, Rose and Blanche Simon, had left their dead mother's grave
in Siberia, under charge of a trooper named Francis Baudoin, alias
Dagobert, who was as much attached to them as he had been devoted to
their father, his commanding general.
On the road to France, this little party had met the first check, in the
only tavern of Mockern village. Not only had a wild beast showman, known
as Morok the lion-tamer, sought to pick a quarrel with the inoffensive
veteran, but that failing, had let a panther of his menagerie loose upon
the soldier's horse. That horse had carried Dagobert, under General
Simon's and the Great Napoleon's eyes, through many battles; had borne
the General's wife (a Polish lady under the Czar's ban) to her home of
exile in Siberia, and their children now across Russia and Germany, but
only to perish thus cruelly. An unseen hand appeared in a manifestation
of spite otherwise unaccountable. Dagobert, denounced as a French spy,
and his fair young companions accused of being adventuresses to help his
designs, had so kindled at the insult, not less to him than to his old
commander's daughters, that he had taught the pompous burgomaster of
Mockern a lesson, which, however, resulted in the imprisonment of the
three in Leipsic jail.
General Simon, who had vainly sought to share his master's St. Helena
captivity, had gone to fight the English in India. But notwithstanding
his drilling of Radja-sings sepoys, they had been beaten by the troops
taught by Clive, and not only was the old king of Mundi slain, and the
realm added to the Company's land, but his son, Prince Djalma, taken
prisoner. However, at length released, he had gone to Batavia, with
General Simon. The prince's mother was a Frenchwoman, and among the
property she left him in the capital of Java, the general was delighted
to find just such another medal as he knew was in his wife's possession.
The unseen hand of enmity had reached to him, for letters miscarried, and
he did not know either his wife's decease or that he had twin daughters.
By a trick, on the eve of the steamship leaving Batavia for the Isthmus
of Suez, Djalma was separated from his friend, and sailing for Europe
alone, the latter had to follow in another vessel.
The missionary priest trod the war trails of the wilderness, with that
faith and fearlessness which true soldiers of the cross should evince. In
one of these heroic undertakings, Indians had captured him, and dragging
him to their village under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, they had
nailed him in derision to a cross, and prepared to scalp him.
But if an unseen hand of a foe smote or stabbed at the sons of Rennepont,
a visible interpositor had often shielded them, in various parts of the
globe.
A man, seeming of thirty years of age, very tall, with a countenance as
lofty as mournful, marked by the black eyebrows meeting, had thrown
himself--during a battle's height--between a gun of a park which General
Simon was charging and that officer. The cannon vomited its hail of
death, but when the flame and smoke had passed, the tall man stood erect
as before, smiling pityingly on the gunner, who fell on his knees as
frightened as if he beheld Satan himself. Again, as General Simon lay
upon the lost field of Waterloo, raging with his wounds, eager to die
after such a defeat, this same man staunched his hurts, and bade him live
for his wife's sake.
Years after, wearing the same unalterable look, this man accosted
Dagobert in Siberia, and gave him for General Simon's wife, the diary and
letters of her husband, written in India, in little hope of them ever
reaching her hands. And at the year our story opens, this man unbarred
the cell-door of Leipsic jail, and let Dagobert and the orphans out, free
to continue their way into France.
On the other hand, when the scalping-knife had traced its mark around the
head of Gabriel the missionary, and when only the dexterous turn and tug
would have removed the trophy, a sudden apparition had terrified the
superstitious savages. It was a woman of thirty, whose brown tresses
formed a rich frame around a royal face, toned down by endless sorrowing.
The red-skins shrank from her steady advance, and when her hand was
stretched out between them and their young victim, they uttered a howl of
alarm, and fled as if a host of their foemen were on their track. Gabriel
was saved, but all his life he was doomed to bear that halo of martyrdom,
the circling sweep of the scalper's knife.
He was a Jesuit. By the orders of his society he embarked for Europe. We
should say here, that he, though owning a medal of the seven described,
was unaware that he should have worn it. His vessel was driven by storms
to refit at the Azores, where he had changed ship into the same as was
bearing Prince Djalma to France, via Portsmouth.
But the gales followed him, and sated their fury by wrecking the "Black
Eagle" on the Picardy coast. This was at the same point as were a
disabled Hamburg steamer, among whose passengers where Dagobert and his
two charges, was destroyed the same night. Happily the tempest did not
annihilate them all. There were saved, Prince Djalma and a countryman of
his, one Faringhea, a Thuggee chief, hunted out of British India;
Dagobert, and Rose and Blanche Simon, whom Gabriel had rescued. These
survivors had recovered, thanks to the care they had received in
Cardoville House, a country mansion which had sheltered them, and except
the prince and the Strangler chief, the others were speedily able to go
on to Paris.
The old grenadier and the orphans--until General Simon should be heard
from--dwelt in the former's house. His son had kept it, from his mother's
love for the life-long home. It was such a mean habitation as a workman
like Agricola Baudoin could afford to pay the rent of, and far from the
fit abode of the daughters of the Duke de Ligny and Marshal of France,
which Napoleon had created General Simon, though the rank had only
recently been approved by the restoration.
But in Paris the unknown hostile hand showed itself more malignant than
ever.
The young lady of high name and large fortune was Adrienne de Cardoville,
whose aunt, the Princess de Saint-Dizier, was a Jesuit. Through her and
her accomplices' machinations, the young lady's forward yet virtuous,
wildly aspiring but sensible, romantic but just, character was twisted
into a passable reason for her immurement in a mad-house.
This asylum adjoined St. Mary's Convent, into which Rose and Blanche
Simon were deceitfully conducted. To secure their removal, Dagobert had
been decoyed into the country, under pretence of showing some of General
Simon's document's to a lawyer; his son Agricola arrested for treason, on
account of some idle verses the blacksmith poet was guilty of, and his
wife rendered powerless, or, rather, a passive assistant, by the
influence of the confessional! When Dagobert hurried back from his wild
goose chase, he found the orphans gone: Mother Bunch (a fellow-tenant of
the house, who had been brought up in the family) ignorant, and his wife
stubbornly refusing to break the promise she had given her confessor, and
acquaint a single soul where she had permitted the girls to be taken. In
his rage, the soldier rashly accused that confessor, but instead of
arresting the Abbe Dubois, it was Mrs. Baudoin whom the magistrate felt
compelled to arrest, as the person whom alone he ventured to commit for
examination in regard to the orphans' disappearance. Thus triumphs, for
the time being, the unseen foe.
The orphans in a nunnery; the dethroned prince a poor castaway in a
foreign land; the noble young lady in a madhouse; the missionary priest
under the thumb of his superiors.
As for the man of the middle class, and the working man, who concluded
the list of this family, we are to read of them, as well as of the
others, in the pages which now succeed these.
CHAPTER I.
THE MASQUERADE.
The following day to that on which Dagobert's wife (arrested for not
accounting for the disappearance of General Simon's daughters) was led
away before a magistrate, a noisy and animated scene was transpiring on
the Place du Chatelet, in front of a building whose first floor and
basement were used as the tap-rooms of the "Sucking Calf" public-house.
A carnival night was dying out.
Quite a number of maskers, grotesquely and shabbily bedecked, had rushed
out of the low dance-houses in the Guildhall Ward, and were roaring out
staves of songs as they crossed the square. But on catching sight of a
second troop of mummers running about the water-side, the first party
stopped to wait for the others to come up, rejoicing, with many a shout,
in hopes of one of those verbal battles of slang and smutty talk which
made Vade so illustrious.
This mob--nearly all its members half seas over, soon swollen by the many
people who have to be up early to follow their crafts--suddenly
concentrated in one of the corners of the square, so that a pale,
deformed girl, who was going that way, was caught in the human tide. This
was Mother Bunch. Up with the lark, she was hurrying to receive some work
from her employer. Remembering how a mob had treated her when she had
been arrested in the streets only the day before, by mistake, the poor
work-girl's fears may be imagined when she was now surrounded by the
revellers against her will. But, spite of all her efforts--very feeble,
alas!--she could not stir a step, for the band of merry-makers, newly
arriving, had rushed in among the others, shoving some of them aside,
pushing far into the mass, and sweeping Mother Bunch--who was in their
way--clear over to the crowd around the public-house.
The new-comers were much finer rigged out than the others, for they
belonged to the gay, turbulent class which goes frequently to the
Chaumiere, the Prado, the Colisee, and other more or less rowdyish haunts
of waltzers, made up generally of students, shop-girls, and counter
skippers, clerks, unfortunates, etc., etc.
This set, while retorting to the chaff of the other party, seemed to be
very impatiently expecting some singularly desired person to put in her
appearance.
The following snatches of conversation, passing between clowns and
columbines, pantaloons and fairies, Turks and sultans, debardeurs and
debardeuses, paired off more or less properly, will give an idea of the
importance of the wished-for personage.
"They ordered the spread to be for seven in the morning, so their
carriages ought to have come up afore now."
"Werry like, but the Bacchanal Queen has got to lead off the last dance
in the Prado."
"I wish to thunder I'd 'a known that, and I'd 'a stayed there to see
her--my beloved Queen!"
"Gobinet; if you call her your beloved Queen again, I'll scratch you!
Here's a pinch for you, anyhow!"
"Ow, wow, Celeste! hands off! You are black-spotting the be-yutiful white
satin jacket my mamma gave me when I first came out as Don Pasqually!"
"Why did you call the Bacchanal Queen your beloved, then? What am I, I'd
like to know?"
"You are my beloved, but not my Queen, for there is only one moon in the
nights of nature, and only one Bacchanal Queen in the nights at the
Prado."
"That's a bit from a valentine! You can't come over me with such
rubbish."
"Gobinet's right! the Queen was an out-and-outer tonight!"
"In prime feather!"
"I never saw her more on the go!"
"And, my eyes! wasn't her dress stunning?"
"Took your breath away!"
"Crushing!"
"Heavy!"
"Im-mense!"
"The last kick!"
"No one but she can get up such dresses."
"And, then, the dance!"
"Oh, yes! it was at once bounding waving, twisting! There is not such
another bayadere under the night-cap of the sky!"
"Gobinet, give me back my shawl directly. You have already spoilt it by
rolling it round your great body. I don't choose to have my things ruined
for hulking beasts who call other women bayaderes!"
"Celeste, simmer down. I am disguised as a Turk, and, when I talk of
bayaderes, I am only in character."
"Your Celeste is like them all, Gobinet; she's jealous of the Bacchanal
Queen."
"Jealous!--do you think me jealous? Well now! that's too bad. If I chose
to be as showy as she is they would talk of me as much. After all, it's
only a nickname that makes her reputation! nickname!"
"In that you have nothing to envy her--since you are called Celeste!"
"You know well enough, Gobinet, that Celeste is my real name."
"Yes; but it's fancied a nickname--when one looks in your face."
"Gobinet, I will put that down to your account."
"And Oscar will help you to add it up, eh?"
"Yes; and you shall see the total. When I carry one, the remainder will
not be you."
"Celeste, you make me cry! I only meant to say that your celestial name
does not go well with your charming little face, which is still more
mischievous than that of the Bacchanal Queen."
"That's right; wheedle me now, wretch!"
"I swear by the accursed head of my landlord, that, if you liked, you
could spread yourself as much as the Bacchanal Queen--which is saying a
great deal."
"The fact is, that the Bacchanal had cheek enough, in all conscience."
"Not to speak of her fascinating the bobbies!"
"And magnetizing the beaks."
"They may get as angry as they please; she always finishes by making them
laugh."
"And they all call her: Queen!"
"Last night she charmed a slop (as modest as a country girl) whose purity
took up arms against the famous dance of the Storm-blown Tulip."
"What a quadrille! Sleepinbuff and the Bacchanal Queen, having opposite
to them Rose-Pompon and Ninny Moulin!"
"And all four making tulips as full-blown as could be!"
"By-the-bye, is it true what they say of Ninny Moulin?"
"What?"
"Why that he is a writer, and scribbles pamphlets on religion."
"Yes, it is true. I have often seen him at my employer's, with whom he
deals; a bad paymaster, but a jolly fellow!"
"And pretends to be devout, eh?"
"I believe you, my boy--when it is necessary; then he is my Lord
Dumoulin, as large as life. He rolls his eyes, walks with his head on one
side, and his toes turned in; but, when the piece is played out, he slips
away to the balls of which he is so fond. The girls christened him Ninny
Moulin. Add, that he drinks like a fish, and you have the photo of the
cove. All this doesn't prevent his writing for the religious newspapers;
and the saints, whom he lets in even oftener than himself, are ready to
swear by him. You should see his articles and his tracts--only see, not
read!--every page is full of the devil and his horns, and the desperate
fryings which await your impious revolutionists--and then the authority
of the bishops, the power of the Pope--hang it! how could I know it all?
This toper, Ninny Moulin, gives good measure enough for their money!"
"The fact is, that he is both a heavy drinker and a heavy swell. How he
rattled on with little Rose-Pompon in the dance and the full-blown
tulip!"
"And what a rum chap he looked in his Roman helmet and top-boots."
"Rose-Pompon dances divinely, too; she has the poetic twist."
"And don't show her heels a bit!"
"Yes; but the Bacchanal Queen is six thousand feet above the level of any
common leg-shaker. I always come back to her step last night in the
full-blown tulip."
"It was huge!"
"It was serene!"
"If I were father of a family, I would entrust her with the education of
my sons!"
"It was that step, however, which offended the bobby's modesty."
"The fact is, it was a little free."
"Free as air--so the policeman comes up to her, and says: 'Well, my
Queen, is your foot to keep on a-goin' up forever?' 'No, modest warrior!'
replies the Queen; 'I practice the step only once every evening, to be
able to dance it when I am old. I made a vow of it, that you might become
an inspector.'"
"What a comic card!"
"I don't believe she will remain always with Sleepinbuff."
"Because he has been a workman?"
"What nonsense! it would preciously become us, students and shop-boys, to
give ourselves airs! No; but I am astonished at the Queen's fidelity."
"Yes--they've been a team for three or four good months."
"She's wild upon him, and he on her."
"They must lead a gay life."
"Sometimes I ask myself where the devil Sleepinbuff gets all the money he
spends. It appears that he pays all last night's expenses, three
coaches-and-four, and a breakfast this morning for twenty, at ten francs
a-head."
"They say he has come into some property. That's why Ninny Moulin, who
has a good nose for eating and drinking, made acquaintance with him last
night--leaving out of the question that he may have some designs on the
Bacchanal Queen."
"He! In a lot! He's rather too ugly. The girls like to dance with him
because he makes people laugh--but that's all. Little Rose-Pompon, who is
such a pretty creature, has taken him as a harmless chap-her-own, in the
absence of her student."
"The coaches! the coaches!" exclaimed the crowd, all with one voice.
Forced to stop in the midst of the maskers, Mother Bunch had not lost a
word of this conversation, which was deeply painful to her, as it
concerned her sister, whom she had not seen for a long time. Not that the
Bacchanal Queen had a bad heart; but the sight of the wretched poverty of
Mother Bunch--a poverty which she had herself shared, but which she had
not had the strength of mind to bear any longer--caused such bitter grief
to the gay, thoughtless girl, that she would no more expose herself to
it, after she had in vain tried to induce her sister to accept
assistance, which the latter always refused, knowing that its source
could not be honorable.
"The coaches! the coaches!" once more exclaimed the crowd, as they
pressed forward with enthusiasm, so that Mother Bunch, carried on against
her will, was thrust into the foremost rank of the people assembled to
see the show.
It was, indeed, a curious sight. A man on horseback, disguised as a
postilion, his blue jacket embroidered with silver, and enormous tail
from which the powder escaped in puffs, and a hat adorned with long
ribbons, preceded the first carriage, cracking his whip, and crying with
all his might: "Make way for the Bacchanal Queen and her court!"
In an open carriage, drawn by four lean horses, on which rode two old
postilions dressed as devils, was raised a downright pyramid of men and
women, sitting, standing, leaning, in every possible variety of odd,
extravagant, and grotesque costume; altogether an indescribable mass of
bright colors, flowers, ribbons, tinsel and spangles. Amid this heap of
strange forms and dresses appeared wild or graceful countenances, ugly or
handsome features--but all animated by the feverish excitement of a
jovial frenzy--all turned with an expression of fanatical admiration
towards the second carriage, in which the Queen was enthroned, whilst
they united with the multitude in reiterated shouts of "Long live the
Bacchanal Queen."
This second carriage, open like the first, contained only the four
dancers of the famous step of the Storm-blown Tulip--Ninny Moulin, Rose
Pompon, Sleepinbuff, and the Bacchanal Queen.
Dumoulin, the religious writer, who wished to dispute possession of Mme.
de la Sainte-Colombe with his patron, M. Rodin--Dumoulin, surnamed Ninny
Moulin, standing on the front cushions, would have presented a
magnificent study for Callot or Gavarni, that eminent artist, who unites
with the biting strength and marvellous fancy of an illustrious
caricaturist, the grace, the poetry, and the depth of Hogarth.
Ninny Moulin, who was about thirty-five years of age, wore very much back
upon his head a Roman helmet of silver paper. A voluminous plume of black
feathers, rising from a red wood holder, was stuck on one side of this
headgear, breaking the too classic regularity of its outline. Beneath
this casque, shone forth the most rubicund and jovial face, that ever was
purpled by the fumes of generous wine. A prominent nose, with its
primitive shape modestly concealed beneath a luxuriant growth of pimples,
half red, half violet, gave a funny expression to a perfectly beardless
face; while a large mouth, with thick lips turning their insides
outwards, added to the air of mirth and jollity which beamed from his
large gray eyes, set flat in his head.
On seeing this joyous fellow, with a paunch like Silenus, one could not
help asking how it was, that he had not drowned in wine, a hundred times
over, the gall, bile, and venom which flowed from his pamphlets against
the enemies of Ultramontanism, and how his Catholic beliefs could float
upwards in the midst of these mad excesses of drink and dancing. The
question would have appeared insoluble, if one had not remembered how
many actors, who play the blackest and most hateful first robbers on the
stage, are, when off it, the best fellow in the world.
The weather being cold, Ninny Moulin wore a kind of box-coat, which,
being half-open, displayed his cuirass of scales, and his flesh-colored
pantaloons, finishing just below the calf in a pair of yellow tops to his
boots. Leaning forward in front of the carriage, he uttered wild shouts
of delight, mingled with the words: "Long live the Bacchanal
Queen!"--after which, he shook and whirled the enormous rattle he held in
his hand. Standing beside him, Sleepinbuff waved on high a banner of
white silk, on which were the words: "Love and joy to the Bacchanal
Queen!"
Sleepinbuff was about twenty-five years of age. His countenance was gay
and intelligent, surrounded by a collar of chestnut-colored whiskers; but
worn with late hours and excesses, it expressed a singular mixture of
carelessness and hardihood, recklessness and mockery; still, no base or
wicked passion had yet stamped there its fatal impress. He was the
perfect type of the Parisian, as the term is generally applied, whether
in the army, in the provinces, on board a king's ship, or a merchantman.
It is not a compliment, and yet it is far from being an insult; it is an
epithet which partakes at once of blame, admiration, and fear; for if, in
this sense, the Parisian is often idle and rebellious, he is also quick
at his work, resolute in danger, and always terribly satirical and fond
of practical jokes.
He was dressed in a very flashy style. He wore a black velvet jacket with
silver buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, trousers with broad blue stripes, a
Cashmere shawl for a girdle with ends loosely floating, and a chimney-pot
hat covered with flowers and streamers. This disguise set off his light,
easy figure to great advantage.
At the back of the carriage, standing up on the cushions, were Rose
Pompon and the Bacchanal Queen.
Rose-Pompon, formerly a fringe-maker, was about seventeen years old, and
had the prettiest and most winning little face imaginable. She was gayly
dressed in debardeur costume. Her powdered wig, over which was smartly
cocked on one side an orange and green cap laced with silver, increased
the effect of her bright black eyes, and of her round, carnation cheeks.
She wore about her neck an orange-colored cravat, of the same material as
her loose sash. Her tight jacket and narrow vest of light green velvet,
with silver ornaments, displayed to the best advantage a charming figure,
the pliancy of which must have well suited the evolutions of the Storm
blown Tulip. Her large trousers, of the same stuff and color as the
jacket, were not calculated to hide any of her attractions.
The Bacchanal Queen, being at the least a head taller, leaned with one
hand on the shoulder of Rose-Pompon. Mother Bunch's sister ruled, like a
true monarch, over this mad revelry, which her very presence seemed to
inspire, such influence had her own mirth and animation over all that
surrounded her.
She was a tall girl of about twenty years of age, light and graceful,
with regular features, and a merry, racketing air. Like her sister, she
had magnificent chestnut hair, and large blue eyes; but instead of being
soft and timid, like those of the young sempstress, the latter shone with
indefatigable ardor in the pursuit of pleasure. Such was the energy of
her vivacious constitution, that, notwithstanding many nights and days
passed in one continued revel, her complexion was as pure, her cheeks as
rosy, her neck as fresh and fair, as if she had that morning issued from
some peaceful home. Her costume, though singular and fantastic, suited
her admirably. It was composed of a tight, long-waisted bodice in cloth
of gold, trimmed with great bunches of scarlet ribbon, the ends of which
streamed over her naked arms, and a short petticoat of scarlet velvet,
ornamented with golden beads and spangles. This petticoat reached half
way down a leg, at once trim and strong, in a white silk stocking, and
red buskin with brass heel.
Never had any Spanish dancer a more supple, elastic, and tempting form,
than this singular girl, who seemed possessed with the spirit of dancing
and perpetual motion, for, almost every moment, a slight undulation of
head, hips, and shoulders seemed to follow the music of an invisible
orchestra; while the tip of her right foot, placed on the carriage door
in the most alluring manner, continued to beat time--for the Bacchanal
Queen stood proudly erect upon the cushions.
A sort of gilt diadem, the emblem of her noisy sovereignty, hung with
little bells, adorned her forehead. Her long hair, in two thick braids,
was drawn back from her rosy cheeks, and twisted behind her head. Her
left hand rested on little Rose-Pompon's shoulder, and in her right she
held an enormous nosegay, which she waved to the crowd, accompanying each
salute with bursts of laughter.
It would be difficult to give a complete idea of this noisily animated
and fantastic scene, which included also a third carriage, filled, like
the first, with a pyramid of grotesque and extravagant masks. Amongst the
delighted crowd, one person alone contemplated the picture with deep
sorrow. It was Mother Bunch, who was still kept, in spite of herself, in
the first rank of spectators.
Separated from her sister for a long time, she now beheld her in all the
pomp of her singular triumph, in the midst of the cries of joy, and the
applause of her companions in pleasure. Yet the eyes of the young
sempstress grew dim with tears; for, though the Bacchanal Queen seemed to
share in the stunning gayety of all around her--though her face was
radiant with smiles, and she appeared fully to enjoy the splendors of her
temporary elevation--yet she had the sincere pity of the poor workwoman,
almost in rags, who was seeking, with the first dawn of morning, the
means of earning her daily bread.
Mother Bunch had forgotten the crowd, to look only at her sister, whom
she tenderly loved--only the more tenderly, that she thought her
situation to be pitied. With her eyes fixed on the joyous and beautiful
girl, her pale and gentle countenance expressed the most touching and
painful interest.
All at once, as the brilliant glance of the Bacchanal Queen travelled
along the crowd, it lighted on the sad features of Mother Bunch.
"My sister!" exclaimed Cephyse--such was the name of the Bacchanal
Queen--"My sister!"--and with one bound, light as a ballet-dancer, she
sprang from her movable throne (which fortunately just happened to be
stopping), and, rushing up to the hunchback, embraced her affectionately.
All this had passed so rapidly, that the companions of the Bacchanal
Queen, still stupefied by the boldness of her perilous leap, knew not how
to account for it; whilst the masks who surrounded Mother Bunch drew back
in surprise, and the latter, absorbed in the delight of embracing her
sister, whose caresses she returned, did not even think of the singular
contrast between them, which was sure to soon excite the astonishment and
hilarity of the crowd.
Cephyse was the first to think of this, and wishing to save her sister at
least one humiliation, she turned towards the carriage, and said: "Rose
Pompon, throw me down my cloak; and, Ninny Moulin, open the door
directly!"
Having received the cloak, the Bacchanal Queen hastily wrapped it round
her sister, before the latter could speak or move. Then, taking her by
the hand, she said to her: "Come! come!"
"I!" cried Mother Bunch, in alarm. "Do not think of it!"
"I must speak with you. I will get a private room, where we shall be
alone. So make haste, dear little sister! Do not resist before all these
people--but come!"
The fear of becoming a public sight decided Mother Bunch, who, confused
moreover with the adventure, trembling and frightened, followed her
sister almost mechanically, and was dragged by her into the carriage, of
which Ninny Moulin had just opened the door. And so, with the cloak of
the Bacchanal Queen covering Mother Bunch's poor garments and deformed
figure, the crowd had nothing to laugh at, and only wondered what this
meeting could mean, while the coaches pursued their way to the eating
house in the Place du Chatelet.