The cobbler of Nîmes

Meanwhile a very different scene had been enacted in the kitchen, where Babet had confronted the cobbler and poured upon his devoted head a volley of questions. She had gone out with Rosaline early, before there was even a hint of approaching catastrophe, and she could not understand the swift march of events, and her suspicious soul was possessed with a rooted distrust of the poor hunchback, who had not yet rallied from Rosaline’s accusations, striking home as they did after the guilty hours of his temptation. The two had shut themselves in the kitchen with the dog, and le Bossu sat by the fire, an expression of dull despair upon his face, while Babet stood over him, her arms akimbo and her keen black eyes riveted upon him. Like Rosaline, she questioned his motive for coming to the house at all.

“What brought you here this morning, Petit Bossu?” she demanded harshly; “we needed no new shoes.”

The cobbler’s face darkened. “Nom de St. Denis!” he exclaimed; “have you nothing better to do than to suspect your friends at such a time?”

“Yet you came—and why?” persisted Babet.

The hunchback threw out his hands with a gesture of impatience.

“There is no reason why I should explain to you,” he retorted contemptuously.

“Ah!” ejaculated Babet, in a tone of dark suspicion, “what do you expect me to think of such obstinate silence? You must be a wicked man—I have always heard that hunchbacks were malicious; how could you give mademoiselle up? Why did you not let her escape through the woods, beast?”

The cobbler was tried beyond endurance.

“Mother of Heaven!” he cried bitterly, “do you think that I would injure a hair of mademoiselle’s head? She could not escape; M. de Baudri had two circles of sentries about the place, and I knew it. There were men below the cataract—in the woods—to attempt to pass them would have been to risk her life. You were in the snare; I tried to keep her away from the house, but I could not, and they would have found her anywhere in the end.”

Babet threw back her head with a snort; she had the air of an old war-horse scenting the battle from afar.

“You knew a great deal about it,” she remarked maliciously; “couldn’t you warn us?”

He sighed; a weary resignation was settling down on his heart. It seemed that no one thought well of him, or expected good from him.

“I knew nothing of it until this morning,” he said coldly, “and then too late to help you. I am lame, and M. de Baudri rides a fine horse. Nevertheless, I got here five minutes before him—but that was too late.”

His face and his voice began to convince even Babet, and a faint pang of remorse smote her heart, which, after all, was angered only on Rosaline’s account. She left off questioning him and walked to and fro in the kitchen, trying to collect her thoughts, and the process was much impeded by the even tramp of the sentry, which sounded distinctly enough on the gravel path outside the windows. Once or twice, when the soldier’s back was turned, Babet shook her fist at it, uttering threats in language that was more fervent than pious.

“My poor lamb!” she muttered, her thoughts returning to Rosaline, “what will she do in the hands of this wolf? Nom de Ciel! if I could but tear his throat!”

The hunchback did not heed her; he was staring at the floor with vacant eyes. He meant to save mademoiselle if he could, but how? His lips moved now and then, and his brown hands twitched nervously, but his ears were straining to catch the slightest sound. Presently Babet turned around, as if a sudden thought had flashed upon her; she picked up the tongs from beside the fire, and hiding them under her apron walked deliberately out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. The sound brought the sentry at a run, and they met face to face. Without a word, Babet lifted the tongs, and, snapping them on to the brim of his hat, flung it over the hedge.

“There, you varlet!” she exclaimed, holding the tongs close to the end of his nose, “learn to take off your hat to a decent woman, who’s old enough to be your mother, and stop staring in the window with those goggle eyes of yours. I’m no jail-bird, I tell you!”

“Mother!” ejaculated the astonished dragoon, “you old gray cat! Dame! if I do not wring your neck for your impudence when M. le Capitaine has gone.”

“Humph!” retorted Babet, grimly, “you’ll find it tough, mon fils. Your hat is in the briar bush, my lad;” and she walked back into the house with a grim smile of triumph, leaving the soldier cursing her while he searched for his hat.

Babet did not return to the kitchen; she proceeded up the stairs to the room where Rosaline was talking to M. de Baudri. The door was closed; but refined scruples were not among the good housekeeper’s faults, and she calmly applied her ear to the keyhole, all the while clasping the tongs fiercely under her apron; and for the next twenty minutes her face was a picture. More than once she had her hand on the latch, but prudence finally prevailed, and three minutes before M. de Baudri emerged, she made her way cautiously back to the kitchen. She had heard enough to understand the whole, and she descended upon the cobbler like an avalanche, carrying all before her. In the storm of her indignation she could not remain silent, and she poured out the whole story of M. de Baudri’s shameless persecution of his prisoner. Le Bossu had long ago learned the lesson of self-control, and he listened with composure, though his face seemed to have aged since the morning.

“Mon Dieu!” cried Babet, regardless now of the sentry’s stare, “he would force that white dove to marry him! That villain de Baudri—may the bon Dieu blast him as the great chestnut-tree yonder was blasted with lightning! He—the rogue—would make mademoiselle sell herself to him to save old madame and her lover. Woe is me, why did that man d’Aguesseau ever come here?”

The hunchback looked up, surprise in his dull eyes.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, “save her lover? Her lover is safe in the Cévennes.”

“Much you know!” retorted the woman, scornfully; “it seems that he was captured this morning.”

The cobbler was silent a moment, thinking deeply.

“I do not believe it,” he said quietly.

“You think it a lie of that devil’s?” asked Babet, eagerly.

He nodded. “M. de Baudri is doing it to force her to yield,” he said slowly; “he has sworn to marry her. I do not believe that he has taken one Huguenot prisoner to-day, save—” he stopped, and looked out of the window at the sentry, who kept staring in with a furious face.

“Dieu, what a fiend!” exclaimed Babet, thrusting her tongs into the fire, where they would heat, after casting a vicious glance toward the window. “He has given mademoiselle until to-morrow morning to decide,” she added.

“What will she do?” the cobbler asked in a strange voice.

“Do? oh, I know her!” the woman retorted with a snort; “to save those two she would die. She’ll marry him unless—” Babet thrust the tongs deeper in the coals, “unless I wring his neck!”

“That cannot be done,” remarked le Bossu, soberly, “but something must be done to-night.”

“What?” snapped his companion, “what can a hunchback and an old woman do? A pretty pair of birds for such an emergency. Leer away, young man; I have the tongs ready for you!” she added in an aside, her fierce eyes on the window.

“Has she one true friend with influence in Nîmes?” the cobbler asked.

Babet shook her head, and then, after a moment’s thought,—

“There is Père Ambroise,” she said.

Le Bossu’s face brightened. “Good!” he said, “the priest can do much; and now, I am a Catholic, Babet, but as there is a God in heaven, I mean no harm! Is there any boy or man who could carry a message amongst the Camisards?”

Babet had grown reckless in her misery over mademoiselle; she did not hesitate to reply.

“There is the blacksmith’s boy at St. Césaire,” she said, “a good child, and active as a wild hare. What do you want of him?”

“If possible, I must find M. d’Aguesseau,” he replied, “and also Père Ambroise; I cannot do both without help.”

“And if M. d’Aguesseau is in prison,” suggested Babet, grimly.

“The will of Heaven be done,” replied the cobbler, calmly, “but Père Ambroise shall be here before dawn,” and he rose as he spoke.

“How will you get out?” asked the woman, eying him curiously.

“You will see,” he rejoined, and quietly gathering up his bag of tools, he left the kitchen and walked through the hall.

M. de Baudri had just left by the front way, and the cobbler went out at the back of the house. There was a high row of box beside the path, and dropping on his hands and knees he crept along behind it, past the sentry on that side. He had to move very slowly and softly, avoiding every dry twig and even the dead leaves, but he reached the outer hedge at last. Here there was a hole, through which Truffe passed in and out. The cobbler thrust his bag through and then followed it; his face and hands were scratched, but what of that? He rose from his knees in the open road, and, shaking off the dust, shouldered his load and walked on, limping more painfully than usual. He had to pass one guard, but this man did not know that he had been in the house and saw nothing unusual in the appearance of the little cobbler of St. Antoine.

“You are late, le Bossu,” he said good-naturedly.

“The shoes fit too well,” retorted the hunchback, coolly, “and my patron is rich.”

“Pardieu!” the soldier exclaimed with a laugh. “I will borrow to-morrow morning. We have a bag of heretics here.”

“Mère de Dieu, burn them,—all but the shoes!” said le Bossu, and walked calmly on.