Part 52 (1/2)

”If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of the goat.” He was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more simple in those days than a suit of sorcery inst.i.tuted against an animal. We find, among others in the accounts of the provost's office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the expenses of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, ”executed for their demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens in which to place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood purchased at the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the bread, the last repast of the victim fraternally shared by the executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and food for the sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of Louis le Debonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms which presume to appear in the air.

Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: ”If the demon which possesses this goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms, persists in its deeds of witchcraft, if it alarms the court with them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in requisition against it the gallows or the stake. 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 ravis.h.i.+ng dancer, who had so often dazzled the pa.s.sers-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 h.e.l.l!”

”Do you persist in your denial?” demanded the president coldly.

”Do I deny it?” she said with terrible accents; and she rose with flas.h.i.+ng 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.