Gringoire broke out into a cold perspiration. Charmolue took from the table the gypsy's tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner, asked the latter,--"What o'clock is it?"
The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded hoof, and struck seven blows.
It was, in fact, seven o'clock. A movement of terror ran through the crowd.
Gringoire could not endure it.
"He is destroying himself!" he cried aloud; "You see well that he does not know what he is doing.""Silence among the louts at the end of the hail!" said the bailiff sharply.
Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manoeuvres of the tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks connected with the date of the day, the month of the year, etc., which the reader has already witnessed. And, by virtue of an optical illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same spectators who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square Djali's innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of the Palais de Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil.
It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, which Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract with his hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of Phoebus. The witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy, that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire.
However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali's graceful evolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed imprecations of the spectators any longer reached her mind.
In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice,--"Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat implicated in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the king's arches of the watch, Phoebus de Chateaupers. Do you persist in denying it?""Horror!" exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. "My Phoebus! Oh, this is hell!""Do you persist in your denial?" demanded the president coldly.
"Do I deny it?" she said with terrible accents; and she rose with flashing eyes.
The president continued squarely,--
"Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge?"She replied in a broken voice,--
"I have already told you. I do not know. 'Twas a priest, a priest whom I do not know; an infernal priest who pursues me!""That is it," retorted the judge; "the surly monk.""Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl--""Of Egypt," said the judge.
Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly,--"In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the application of the torture.""Granted," said the president.
The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a horrible mouth which had just devoured her.
When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the little goat mourning.
The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to his duty.
"What an annoying and vexatious hussy," said an aged judge, "to get herself put to the question when one has not supped!"