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IX . The Dry Leaf For a whole month nobody knew what had happened to Esmeralda . Gringoire looked for her all over Paris and missed the goat very much . Then one day he went into the Palace of Justice and found a crowd in one of the courts . A girl was being tried there for magic and murder . “ Who is she ? ” he asked , and a man beside him said , “ A gypsy . She killed a captain with the help of a ghost monk and a goat . ” The poet pushed forward and saw that it was his wife . She was thin and pale , and she sat without moving among the guards , with the goat standing beside her . The old woman of the bridge , Mother Falourdel , told the judges that a captain had come to her house with a monk in a black cloak , and that the monk had vanished like a ghost . Then the captain had come back with the gypsy girl . After a while she had heard a cry and found the captain on the floor , with a dagger wound . And the next morning , she said , the silver coin that the captain had given her had changed into a dry leaf . She showed the leaf to the judges , and it went from hand to hand round the court . “ It is a birch leaf , ” said Master Jacques Charmolue , the king’s lawyer , and he looked very serious . “ Proof of magic . ” “ Where is Phoebus ? ” cried Esmeralda suddenly . “ Oh , sirs , before you kill me , tell me if he is still alive ! ” “ Be quiet , woman , ” said the judge , “ that is not our business . ” Then Charmolue held out the tambourine to the goat and asked it the time , and the goat struck seven times . He emptied the little bag of letters onto the floor , and Djali picked out the word PHOEBUS . The people in the court were horrified . Surely the goat was a devil , and the girl was a witch . But Esmeralda would not confess . “ I did not do it ! ” she cried again and again . “ It was the priest , a priest whom I do not know , the one who follows me everywhere . ” “ She will not tell the truth , ” said Charmolue in his soft voice . “ I ask for the torture . ” They took her down to a low , round room under the ground , where a fire was burning and strange iron tools hung on the walls . Pierrat Torterue , who had whipped Quasimodo on the pillory , was waiting there . They put her foot into a thing made of wood and iron , which they called the boot . Charmolue asked her again if she would confess , and she said no . Pierrat turned a handle , and the boot closed on her foot . She screamed , “ I confess ! I confess ! Mercy ! ”
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