“If he should be a spy! If it should be a conspiracy! Don’t go; and take back from her the box.”
These words, breathed into the ear of the pastry-cook by his wife, froze the impromptu courage which had possessed him.
“Eh’ I’ll just go out and say two words to him, and rid you of him quickly,” cried the pastry-cook, opening the door and rushing out.
The old lady, passive as an infant, and almost dazed, reseated herself upon the chair. The honest merchant was not slow in reappearing; his face, naturally red, and still more flushed by the heat of his oven, had suddenly become livid; such a great fright agitated him that his legs trembled and his eyes looked like those of a drunken man.
“Do you wish to have our heads cut off, miserable aristocrat?” he shrieked at her with fury. “Just show us your heels, never come back here again, and don’t count any more on me to furnish you the stuff for conspiracy.”
As he ejaculated these words, the pastry-cook tried to take from the old lady the little box which she had put in one of her pockets. But scarcely had the bold hands of the pastry-cook touched her vestments than the Unknown, preferring to face the dangers of her way home without other defense than God, rather than to lose that which she had come to purchase, recovered the agility of her youth; she darted toward the door, opened it abruptly, and disappeared before the eyes of the stupefied and trembling woman and her husband.
As soon as the Unknown found herself outside, she began walking rapidly; but her strength soon failed her, for she heard the spy by whom she was pitilessly followed make the snow craunch under the pressure of his heavy steps. She was obliged to stop—he stopped. She dared neither to speak to him nor to look at him, whether on account of the fear with which she was seized or from lack of intelligence. She continued her way, walking slowly; thereupon the man slackened his steps so as to remain standing at a distance which permitted him to keep his eye upon her. He seemed to be the very shadow of that old woman. Nine o’clock was striking when the silent couple repassed in front of the church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of all souls, even the most infirm, that a feeling of calm should succeed one of violent agitation, for if our feelings are infinite, our organs are limited. And so the Unknown, not experiencing any harm from her supposed persecutor, chose to see in him a secret friend, eager to protect her. She reconstructed all the circumstances which had accompanied the Stranger’s appearances, as if to find plausible arguments for that consoling opinion, and she then took pleasure in recognizing in him good rather than evil intentions.
Forgetting the fright which that man had inspired in the pastry-cook, she advanced with a firm step into the higher regions of the Faubourg Saint-Martin. After a half-hour of walking, she reached a house situated near the junction formed by the main street of the Faubourg and that which leads to the Barrière de Pantin. Even to-day that spot is one of the most deserted of all Paris. The north wind, passing over the Buttes Chaumont and from Bellville, whistles athwart the houses, or rather the hovels, scattered about in that almost uninhabited valley where the dividing lines are walls made of earth and bones. That desolate place seemed to be the natural asylum of misery and despair. The man who had persisted in the pursuit of the poor creature who had the hardihood to traverse those silent streets at night seemed impressed by the spectacle presented to his eyes. He rested pensively, standing and in an attitude of hesitation, in the feeble light of a lantern whose uncertain rays with difficulty pierced the mist.
Fear gave eyes to the old woman, who fancied that she could perceive something sinister in the features of the Stranger. She felt her terrors reawake, and profited by the sort of uncertainty which had retarded the man’s advance to glide in the darkness toward the door of the lonely house. She pressed a spring, and disappeared like a ghost.
The Stranger, immobile, contemplated that house, which stood in some sort as the type of the miserable habitations of the quarter. That rickety hovel, built of rubble, was covered by a coat of yellow plaster, so deeply cracked that one thought to see it tumble before the least effort of the wind. The roof, of brown tiles and covered with moss, had so sunk in several places as to make it seem likely to give way under the weight of the snow. Each floor there had three windows, whose sashes, rotted by dampness and disjointed by the action of the sun, announced that the cold must penetrate into the room. That isolated house resembled an old tower which time had forgotten to destroy. A feeble light shone through the windows which irregularly cleft the mansard roof by which the poor edifice was crowned, while all the rest of the house was in complete obscurity. The old woman climbed, not without difficulty, the steep and rough staircase, whose length was supplied with a rope in the guise of a baluster. She knocked mysteriously at the door of the apartment which she found in the attic, and dropped hastily upon a chair which an old man offered her.