If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say, less greedy, he would have continued to wait, and would only have hazarded that simple question, "Mother, can I eat the cake, now?" on their return to the University, to Master Andry Musnier's, Rue Madame la Valence, when he had the two arms of the Seine and the five bridges of the city between the Rat-Hole and the cake.
This question, highly imprudent at the moment when Eustache put it, aroused Mahiette's attention.
"By the way," she exclaimed, "we are forgetting the recluse! Show me the Rat-Hole, that I may carry her her cake."
"Immediately," said Oudarde, "'tis a charity."
But this did not suit Eustache.
"Stop! my cake!" said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with his shoulders, which, in such cases, is the supreme sign of discontent.
The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the vicinity of the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two,-"We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the recluse. Do you two pretend to read the Dominus in the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the aperture; the recluse knows me a little. I will give you warning when you can approach."
She proceeded alone to the window. At the moment when she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping. A moment later, she laid her finger on her lips, and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and look.
Mahiette, much touched, stepped up in silence, on tiptoe, as though approaching the bedside of a dying person.
It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented itself to the eyes of the two women, as they gazed through the grating of the Rat-Hole, neither stirring nor breathing.
The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched ceiling, and viewed from within, it bore a considerable resemblance to the interior of a huge bishop's mitre. On the bare flagstones which formed the floor, in one corner, a woman was sitting, or rather, crouching. Her chin rested on her knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. Thus doubled up, clad in a brown sack, which enveloped her entirely in large folds, her long, gray hair pulled over in front, falling over her face and along her legs nearly to her feet, she presented, at the first glance, only a strange form outlined against the dark background of the cell, a sort of dusky triangle, which the ray of daylight falling through the opening, cut roughly into two shades, the one sombre, the other illuminated. It was one of those spectres, half light, half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb, or leaning against the grating of a prison cell.