when you wish me to come
He turned to go. Unhappy as the gipsy girl herself was, this grotesque creature awakened some compassion in her. She signed to him to remain.
“No, no,”he returned, “I may not stay here too long. I am not at my ease while you look at me. It is only from pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I will go to a spot where I can see you without being seen in my turn. It will be better.”
He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.
“Here,”he said, “when you have need of me, when you wish me to come, when you are not too disgusted to look at me, then sound this whistle; I can hear that.”
He laid the whistle on the floor and hastened away.
Chapter 4 – Earthenware and Crystal
The days succeeded one another.
Little by little tranquility returned to Esmeralda’s spirits. Excess of suffering, like excess of joy, is a condition too violent to last. The human heart is incapable of remaining long in any extreme. The gipsy had endured such agonies that her only remaining emotion at its recollection was amazement.
With the feeling of security hope returned to her. She was outside the pale of society, of life; but she had a vague sense that it was not wholly impossible that she should re–enter it — as if dead but having in reserve a key to open her tomb.
The terrible images that had so long haunted her withdrew by degrees. All the grewsome phantoms — Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, and the rest, even the priest himself — faded from her mind.
And then — Ph?bus was living; she was sure of it, she had seen him.
The fact of Ph?bus being alive was all in all to her. After the series of earthquake shocks that had overturned everything, left no stone standing on another in her soul, one feeling alone had stood fast, and that was her love for the soldier. For love is like a tree; it grows of itself, strikes its roots deep into our being, and often continues to flourish and keep green over a heart in ruins.
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