Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

BOOK ELEVENTH. CHAPTER 1. THE LITTLE SHOE. (continued)

"Let me have the other, madam; 'tis monsieur the provost who wills it."

She repeated with a look of madness,--

"There is no one here."

"I tell you that there is!" replied the executioner. "We have all seen that there are two of you."

"Look then!" said the recluse, with a sneer. "Thrust your head through the window."

The executioner observed the mother's finger-nails and dared not.

"Make haste!" shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his troops in a circle round the Rat-Hole, and who sat on his horse beside the gallows.

Rennet returned once more to the provost in great embarrassment. He had flung his rope on the ground, and was twisting his hat between his hands with an awkward air.

"Monseigneur," he asked, "where am I to enter?"

"By the door."

"There is none."

"By the window."

"'Tis too small."

"Make it larger," said Tristan angrily. "Have you not pickaxes?"

The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of her cavern. She no longer hoped for anything, she no longer knew what she wished, except that she did not wish them to take her daughter.

Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night man, under the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew from it also the double ladder, which he immediately set up against the gallows. Five or six of the provost's men armed themselves with picks and crowbars, and Tristan betook himself, in company with them, towards the window.