Oudarde replied,-"We call her Sister Gudule."
"And I," returned Mahiette, "call her Paquette la Chantefleurie."
Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Oudarde to thrust her head through the window and look.
Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the recluse were fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver.
Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing upon the unhappy mother, began to weep.
But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse. Her hands remained clasped; her lips mute; her eyes fixed; and that little shoe, thus gazed at, broke the heart of any one who knew her history.
The three women had not yet uttered a single word; they dared not speak, even in a low voice. This deep silence, this deep grief, this profound oblivion in which everything had disappeared except one thing, produced upon them the effect of the grand altar at Christmas or Easter. They remained silent, they meditated, they were ready to kneel. It seemed to them that they were ready to enter a church on the day of Tenebrae.
At length Gervaise, the most curious of the three, and consequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak: "Sister! Sister Gudule!"
She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time. The recluse did not move; not a word, not a glance, not a sigh, not a sign of life.
Oudarde, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing voice,--"Sister!" said she, "Sister Sainte-Gudule!"
The same silence; the same immobility.
"A singular woman!" exclaimed Gervaise, "and one not to be moved by a catapult!"
"Perchance she is deaf," said Oudarde.
"Perhaps she is blind," added Gervaise.
"Dead, perchance," returned Mahiette.
It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the exterior organs no longer penetrated.
"Then we must leave the cake on the window," said Oudarde; "some scamp will take it. What shall we do to rouse her?"
Eustache, who, up to that moment had been diverted by a little carriage drawn by a large dog, which had just passed, suddenly perceived that his three conductresses were gazing at something through the window, and, curiosity taking possession of him in his turn, he climbed upon a stone post, elevated himself on tiptoe, and applied his fat, red face to the opening, shouting, "Mother, let me see too!"
At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child's voice, the recluse trembled; she turned her head with the sharp, abrupt movement of a steel spring, her long, fleshless hands cast aside the hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child, bitter, astonished, desperate eyes. This glance was but a lightning flash.