Dame Zudár drew nearer, she now went right up to the window.
"You would like me to speak in a lower key, no doubt? Well, I may do that. You see how close I am standing to you, you could touch my body with the barrel of your musket. But you won't touch me, I know, for now it is I who am the destroyer."
And with that she laid her large, broad, muscular palm on the little girl's tender shoulder.
"This child is now eight years old. When she was born her father cursed her, her mother kicked her out, and her nurse confided her to a she-wolf that she might either kill it or bring it up along with her own whelps—which is much about the same thing. It is the foolish old story, the old grey wolf carried off the brat and brought it up; the old headsman nourished the innocent little girl, and defended her against all the wild beasts of the forest. Do I make the fable quite clear to you?"
A stifled moan was the sole reply.
"And then Heaven's lightning descended upon your house, misfortune was a constant visitor upon you, you soon had a pair of corpses under your roof, and there was no end to your affliction. Now I should say that that looked very much like a curse upon you.
"Yes, a curse pursued your family. When you had securely fastened the door behind you, you used to weep and wail like any beggar; yes, and no beggar at your door would have thanked you for the chance of exchanging his lot with yours."
To this there was no reply from behind the window.
The defiant features of the virago were illuminated by the candle which the child now held again in her hand. She seemed to cast a dark shadow upon the very night around her—the darkest of dark shadows.
And now she went right up to the window so that she could actually whisper through it.