The Dream | Page 2

the street, the snow was blown in
the child's face, and the threshold was almost barred by the white
masses; then she moved away to the side, against the virgins placed
above the base of the arch. These are the companions of Agnes, the

saints who served as her escort: three at her right--Dorothea, who was
fed in prison by miraculous bread; Barbe, who lived in a tower; and
Genevieve, whose heroism saved Paris: and three at her left--Agatha,
whose breast was torn; Christina, who was put to torture by her father;
and Cecilia, beloved by the angels. Above these were statues and
statues; three close ranks mounting with the curves of the arches,
decorating them with chaste triumphant figures, who, after the suffering
and martyrdom of their earthly life, were welcomed by a host of
winged cherubim, transported with ecstasy into the Celestial Kingdom.
There had been no shelter for the little waif for a long time, when at last
the clock struck eight and daylight came. The snow, had she not
trampled it down, would have come up to her shoulders. The old door
behind her was covered with it, as if hung with ermine, and it looked as
white as an altar, beneath the grey front of the church, so bare and
smooth that not even a single flake had clung to it. The great saints,
those of the sloping surface especially, were clothed in it, and were
glistening in purity from their feet to their white beards. Still higher, in
the scenes of the tympanum, the outlines of the little saints of the
arches were designed most clearly on a dark background, and this
magic sect continued until the final rapture at the marriage of Agnes,
which the archangels appeared to be celebrating under a shower of
white roses. Standing upon her pillar, with her white branch of palm
and her white lamp, the Virgin Child had such purity in the lines of her
body of immaculate snow, that the motionless stiffness of cold seemed
to congeal around her the mystic transports of victorious youth. And at
her feet the other child, so miserable, white with snow--she also grew
so stiff and pale that it seemed as if she were turning to stone, and
could scarcely be distinguished from the great images above her.
At last, in one of the long line of houses in which all seemed to be
sleeping, the noise from the drawing up of a blind made her raise her
eyes. It was at her right hand, in the second story of a house at the side
of the Cathedral. A very handsome woman, a brunette about forty years
of age, with a placid expression of serenity, was just looking out from
there, and in spite of the terrible frost she kept her uncovered arm in the
air for a moment, having seen the child move. Her calm face grew sad

with pity and astonishment. Then, shivering, she hastily closed the
window. She carried with her the rapid vision of a fair little creature
with violet-coloured eyes under a head-covering of an old silk
handkerchief. The face was oval, the neck long and slender as a lily,
and the shoulders drooping; but she was blue from cold, her little hands
and feet were half dead, and the only thing about her that still showed
life was the slight vapour of her breath.
The child remained with her eyes upturned, looking at the house
mechanically. It was a narrow one, two stories in height, very old, and
evidently built towards the end of the fifteenth century. It was almost
sealed to the side of the Cathedral, between two buttresses, like a wart
which had pushed itself between the two toes of a Colossus. And thus
supported on each side, it was admirably preserved, with its stone
basement, its second story in wooden panels, ornamented with bricks,
its roof, of which the framework advanced at least three feet beyond the
gable, its turret for the projecting stairway at the left corner, where
could still be seen in the little window the leaden setting of long ago.
At times repairs had been made on account of its age. The tile-roofing
dated from the reign of Louis XIV, for one easily recognised the work
of that epoch; a dormer window pierced in the side of the turret, little
wooden frames replacing everywhere those of the primitive panes; the
three united openings of the second story had been reduced to two, that
of the middle being closed up with bricks, thus giving to the front the
symmetry of the other buildings on the street of a more recent date.
In the basement the changes were equally visible, an oaken door with
mouldings having taken the place of the old