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CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
Victor Hugo · about 109 minutes
CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
The priest whom the young girls had observed at the top of the
North tower, leaning over the Place and so attentive to the dance
of the gypsy, was, in fact, Archdeacon Claude Frollo.
Our readers have not forgotten the mysterious cell which the
archdeacon had reserved for himself in that tower. (I do not
know, by the way be it said, whether it be not the same, the
interior of which can be seen to-day through a little square
window, opening to the east at the height of a man above the
platform from which the towers spring; a bare and dilapidated
den, whose badly plastered walls are ornamented here and there,
at the present day, with some wretched yellow engravings
representing the façades of cathedrals. I presume that this hole
is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and that, consequently,
it wages a double war of extermination on the flies).
Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon ascended the
staircase to the tower, and shut himself up in this cell, where
he sometimes passed whole nights. That day, at the moment when,
standing before the low door of his retreat, he was fitting into
the lock the complicated little key which he always carried about
him in the purse suspended to his side, a sound of tambourine and
castanets had reached his ear. These sounds came from the Place
du Parvis. The cell, as we have already said, had only one window
opening upon the rear of the church. Claude Frollo had hastily
withdrawn the key, and an instant later, he was on the top of the
tower, in the gloomy and pensive attitude in which the maidens
had seen him.
There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and one
thought. All Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires of
its edifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills—with its
river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to and fro
through its streets,—with the clouds of its smoke,—with the
mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in its
doubled folds; but out of all the city, the archdeacon gazed at
one corner only of the pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that
throng at but one figure,—the gypsy.
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this
look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was
a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and
tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body,
barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree
is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more
marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of
the petrified smile which contracted his face,—one would have
said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his
eyes.
The gypsy was dancing; she was twirling her tambourine on the tip
of her finger, and tossing it into the air as she danced
Provençal sarabands; agile, light, joyous, and unconscious of the
formidable gaze which descended perpendicularly upon her head.
The crowd was swarming around her; from time to time, a man
accoutred in red and yellow made them form into a circle, and
then returned, seated himself on a chair a few paces from the
dancer, and took the goat’s head on his knees. This man seemed to
be the gypsy’s companion. Claude Frollo could not distinguish his
features from his elevated post.
From the moment when the archdeacon caught sight of this
stranger, his attention seemed divided between him and the
dancer, and his face became more and more gloomy. All at once he
rose upright, and a quiver ran through his whole body: “Who is
that man?” he muttered between his teeth: “I have always seen her
alone before!”
Then he plunged down beneath the tortuous vault of the spiral
staircase, and once more descended. As he passed the door of the
bell chamber, which was ajar, he saw something which struck him;
he beheld Quasimodo, who, leaning through an opening of one of
those slate penthouses which resemble enormous blinds, appeared
also to be gazing at the Place. He was engaged in so profound a
contemplation, that he did not notice the passage of his adopted
father. His savage eye had a singular expression; it was a
charmed, tender look. “This is strange!” murmured Claude. “Is it
the gypsy at whom he is thus gazing?” He continued his descent.
At the end of a few minutes, the anxious archdeacon entered upon
the Place from the door at the base of the tower.
“What has become of the gypsy girl?” he said, mingling with the
group of spectators which the sound of the tambourine had
collected.
“I know not,” replied one of his neighbors, “I think that she has
gone to make some of her fandangoes in the house opposite,
whither they have called her.”
In the place of the gypsy, on the carpet, whose arabesques had
seemed to vanish but a moment previously by the capricious
figures of her dance, the archdeacon no longer beheld any one but
the red and yellow man, who, in order to earn a few testers in
his turn, was walking round the circle, with his elbows on his
hips, his head thrown back, his face red, his neck outstretched,
with a chair between his teeth. To the chair he had fastened a
cat, which a neighbor had lent, and which was spitting in great
affright.
“Notre-Dame!” exclaimed the archdeacon, at the moment when the
juggler, perspiring heavily, passed in front of him with his
pyramid of chair and his cat, “What is Master Pierre Gringoire
doing here?”
The harsh voice of the archdeacon threw the poor fellow into such
a commotion that he lost his equilibrium, together with his whole
edifice, and the chair and the cat tumbled pell-mell upon the
heads of the spectators, in the midst of inextinguishable
hootings.
It is probable that Master Pierre Gringoire (for it was indeed
he) would have had a sorry account to settle with the neighbor
who owned the cat, and all the bruised and scratched faces which
surrounded him, if he had not hastened to profit by the tumult to
take refuge in the church, whither Claude Frollo had made him a
sign to follow him.
The cathedral was already dark and deserted; the side-aisles were
full of shadows, and the lamps of the chapels began to shine out
like stars, so black had the vaulted ceiling become. Only the
great rose window of the façade, whose thousand colors were
steeped in a ray of horizontal sunlight, glittered in the gloom
like a mass of diamonds, and threw its dazzling reflection to the
other end of the nave.
When they had advanced a few paces, Dom Claude placed his back
against a pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire. The gaze was
not the one which Gringoire feared, ashamed as he was of having
been caught by a grave and learned person in the costume of a
buffoon. There was nothing mocking or ironical in the priest’s
glance, it was serious, tranquil, piercing. The archdeacon was
the first to break the silence.
“Come now, Master Pierre. You are to explain many things to me.
And first of all, how comes it that you have not been seen for
two months, and that now one finds you in the public squares, in
a fine equipment in truth! Motley red and yellow, like a Caudebec
apple?”
“Messire,” said Gringoire, piteously, “it is, in fact, an amazing
accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it than a cat
coiffed with a calabash. ’Tis very ill done, I am conscious, to
expose messieurs the sergeants of the watch to the liability of
cudgelling beneath this cassock the humerus of a Pythagorean
philosopher. But what would you have, my reverend master? ’tis
the fault of my ancient jerkin, which abandoned me in cowardly
wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the pretext that it
was falling into tatters, and that it required repose in the
basket of a rag-picker. What is one to do? Civilization has not
yet arrived at the point where one can go stark naked, as ancient
Diogenes wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and ’tis
not in the month of January that one can successfully attempt to
make humanity take this new step. This garment presented itself,
I took it, and I left my ancient black smock, which, for a
hermetic like myself, was far from being hermetically closed.
Behold me then, in the garments of a stage-player, like Saint
Genest. What would you have? ’tis an eclipse. Apollo himself
tended the flocks of Admetus.”
“’Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in!” replied the
archdeacon.
“I agree, my master, that ’tis better to philosophize and
poetize, to blow the flame in the furnace, or to receive it from
carry cats on a shield. So, when you addressed me, I was as
foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But what would you have,
messire? One must eat every day, and the finest Alexandrine
verses are not worth a bit of Brie cheese. Now, I made for Madame
Marguerite of Flanders, that famous epithalamium, as you know,
and the city will not pay me, under the pretext that it was not
excellent; as though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for
four crowns! Hence, I was on the point of dying with hunger.
Happily, I found that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said
to this jaw,—perform some feats of strength and of equilibrium:
nourish thyself. _Ale te ipsam_. A pack of beggars who have
become my good friends, have taught me twenty sorts of herculean
feats, and now I give to my teeth every evening the bread which
they have earned during the day by the sweat of my brow. After
all, _concedo_, I grant that it is a sad employment for my
intellectual faculties, and that man is not made to pass his life
in beating the tambourine and biting chairs. But, reverend
master, it is not sufficient to pass one’s life, one must earn
the means for life.”
Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his deep-set eye
assumed so sagacious and penetrating an expression, that
Gringoire felt himself, so to speak, searched to the bottom of
the soul by that glance.
“Very good, Master Pierre; but how comes it that you are now in
company with that gypsy dancer?”
“In faith!” said Gringoire, “’tis because she is my wife and I am
her husband.”
The priest’s gloomy eyes flashed into flame.
“Have you done that, you wretch!” he cried, seizing Gringoire’s
arm with fury; “have you been so abandoned by God as to raise
your hand against that girl?”
“On my chance of paradise, monseigneur,” replied Gringoire,
trembling in every limb, “I swear to you that I have never
touched her, if that is what disturbs you.”
“Then why do you talk of husband and wife?” said the priest.
Gringoire made haste to relate to him as succinctly as possible,
all that the reader already knows, his adventure in the Court of
Miracles and the broken-crock marriage. It appeared, moreover,
that this marriage had led to no results whatever, and that each
evening the gypsy girl cheated him of his nuptial right as on the
first day. “’Tis a mortification,” he said in conclusion, “but
that is because I have had the misfortune to wed a virgin.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the archdeacon, who had been
gradually appeased by this recital.
“’Tis very difficult to explain,” replied the poet. “It is a
superstition. My wife is, according to what an old thief, who is
called among us the Duke of Egypt, has told me, a foundling or a
lost child, which is the same thing. She wears on her neck an
amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to meet her parents
some day, but which will lose its virtue if the young girl loses
hers. Hence it follows that both of us remain very virtuous.”
“So,” resumed Claude, whose brow cleared more and more, “you
believe, Master Pierre, that this creature has not been
approached by any man?”
“What would you have a man do, Dom Claude, as against a
superstition? She has got that in her head. I assuredly esteem as
a rarity this nunlike prudery which is preserved untamed amid
those Bohemian girls who are so easily brought into subjection.
But she has three things to protect her: the Duke of Egypt, who
has taken her under his safeguard, reckoning, perchance, on
selling her to some gay abbé; all his tribe, who hold her in
singular veneration, like a Notre-Dame; and a certain tiny
poignard, which the buxom dame always wears about her, in some
nook, in spite of the ordinances of the provost, and which one
causes to fly out into her hands by squeezing her waist. ’Tis a
proud wasp, I can tell you!”
The archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions.
La Esmeralda, in the judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffensive
and charming creature, pretty, with the exception of a pout which
was peculiar to her; a naïve and passionate damsel, ignorant of
everything and enthusiastic about everything; not yet aware of
the difference between a man and a woman, even in her dreams;
made like that; wild especially over dancing, noise, the open
air; a sort of woman bee, with invisible wings on her feet, and
living in a whirlwind. She owed this nature to the wandering life
which she had always led. Gringoire had succeeded in learning
that, while a mere child, she had traversed Spain and Catalonia,
even to Sicily; he believed that she had even been taken by the
caravan of Zingari, of which she formed a part, to the kingdom of
Algiers, a country situated in Achaia, which country adjoins, on
one side Albania and Greece; on the other, the Sicilian Sea,
which is the road to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said
Gringoire, were vassals of the King of Algiers, in his quality of
chief of the White Moors. One thing is certain, that la Esmeralda
had come to France while still very young, by way of Hungary.
From all these countries the young girl had brought back
fragments of queer jargons, songs, and strange ideas, which made
her language as motley as her costume, half Parisian, half
African. However, the people of the quarters which she frequented
loved her for her gayety, her daintiness, her lively manners, her
dances, and her songs. She believed herself to be hated, in all
the city, by but two persons, of whom she often spoke in terror:
the sacked nun of the Tour-Roland, a villanous recluse who
cherished some secret grudge against these gypsies, and who
cursed the poor dancer every time that the latter passed before
her window; and a priest, who never met her without casting at
her looks and words which frightened her.
The mention of this last circumstance disturbed the archdeacon
greatly, though Gringoire paid no attention to his perturbation;
to such an extent had two months sufficed to cause the heedless
poet to forget the singular details of the evening on which he
had met the gypsy, and the presence of the archdeacon in it all.
Otherwise, the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell
fortunes, which protected her against those trials for magic
which were so frequently instituted against gypsy women. And
then, Gringoire held the position of her brother, if not of her
husband. After all, the philosopher endured this sort of platonic
marriage very patiently. It meant a shelter and bread at least.
Every morning, he set out from the lair of the thieves, generally
with the gypsy; he helped her make her collections of targes[34]
and little blanks[35] in the squares; each evening he returned to
the same roof with her, allowed her to bolt herself into her
little chamber, and slept the sleep of the just. A very sweet
existence, taking it all in all, he said, and well adapted to
revery. And then, on his soul and conscience, the philosopher was
not very sure that he was madly in love with the gypsy. He loved
her goat almost as dearly. It was a charming animal, gentle,
intelligent, clever; a learned goat. Nothing was more common in
the Middle Ages than these learned animals, which amazed people
greatly, and often led their instructors to the stake. But the
witchcraft of the goat with the golden hoofs was a very innocent
species of magic. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon,
whom these details seemed to interest deeply. In the majority of
cases, it was sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in
such or such a manner, in order to obtain from him the trick
desired. He had been trained to this by the gypsy, who possessed,
in these delicate arts, so rare a talent that two months had
sufficed to teach the goat to write, with movable letters, the
word “Phœbus.”
“‘Phœbus!’” said the priest; “why ‘Phœbus’?”
“I know not,” replied Gringoire. “Perhaps it is a word which she
believes to be endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She
often repeats it in a low tone when she thinks that she is
alone.”
“Are you sure,” persisted Claude, with his penetrating glance,
“that it is only a word and not a name?”
“The name of whom?” said the poet.
“How should I know?” said the priest.
“This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are something
like Guebrs, and adore the sun. Hence, Phœbus.”
“That does not seem so clear to me as to you, Master Pierre.”
“After all, that does not concern me. Let her mumble her Phœbus
at her pleasure. One thing is certain, that Djali loves me almost
as much as he does her.”
“Who is Djali?”
“The goat.”
The archdeacon dropped his chin into his hand, and appeared to
reflect for a moment. All at once he turned abruptly to Gringoire
once more.
“And do you swear to me that you have not touched her?”
“Whom?” said Gringoire; “the goat?”
“No, that woman.”
“My wife? I swear to you that I have not.”
“You are often alone with her?”
“A good hour every evening.”
Dom Claude frowned.
“Oh! oh! _Solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster_.”
“Upon my soul, I could say the _Pater_, and the _Ave Maria_, and
the _Credo in Deum patrem omnipotentem_ without her paying any
more attention to me than a chicken to a church.”
“Swear to me, by the body of your mother,” repeated the
archdeacon violently, “that you have not touched that creature
with even the tip of your finger.”
“I will also swear it by the head of my father, for the two
things have more affinity between them. But, my reverend master,
permit me a question in my turn.”
“Speak, sir.”
“What concern is it of yours?”
The archdeacon’s pale face became as crimson as the cheek of a
young girl. He remained for a moment without answering; then,
with visible embarrassment,—
“Listen, Master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, so far
as I know. I take an interest in you, and wish you well. Now the
least contact with that Egyptian of the demon would make you the
vassal of Satan. You know that ’tis always the body which ruins
the soul. Woe to you if you approach that woman! That is all.”
“I tried once,” said Gringoire, scratching his ear; “it was the
first day: but I got stung.”
“You were so audacious, Master Pierre?” and the priest’s brow
clouded over again.
“On another occasion,” continued the poet, with a smile, “I
peeped through the keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld the
most delicious dame in her shift that ever made a bed creak under
her bare foot.”
“Go to the devil!” cried the priest, with a terrible look; and,
giving the amazed Gringoire a push on the shoulders, he plunged,
with long strides, under the gloomiest arcades of the cathedral.
CHAPTER III. THE BELLS.
After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre-Dame
thought they noticed that Quasimodo’s ardor for ringing had grown
cool. Formerly, there had been peals for every occasion, long
morning serenades, which lasted from prime to compline; peals
from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the
smaller bells for a wedding, for a christening, and mingling in
the air like a rich embroidery of all sorts of charming sounds.
The old church, all vibrating and sonorous, was in a perpetual
joy of bells. One was constantly conscious of the presence of a
spirit of noise and caprice, who sang through all those mouths of
brass. Now that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral
seemed gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals
had the simple peal, dry and bare, demanded by the ritual,
nothing more. Of the double noise which constitutes a church, the
organ within, the bell without, the organ alone remained. One
would have said that there was no longer a musician in the
belfry. Quasimodo was always there, nevertheless; what, then, had
happened to him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory
still lingered in the bottom of his heart, that the lashes of his
tormentor’s whip reverberated unendingly in his soul, and that
the sadness of such treatment had wholly extinguished in him even
his passion for the bells? or was it that Marie had a rival in
the heart of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great
bell and her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more
amiable and more beautiful?
It chanced that, in the year of grace 1482, Annunciation Day fell
on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of March. That day the air was so
pure and light that Quasimodo felt some returning affection for
his bells. He therefore ascended the northern tower while the
beadle below was opening wide the doors of the church, which were
then enormous panels of stout wood, covered with leather,
bordered with nails of gilded iron, and framed in carvings “very
artistically elaborated.”
On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for some
time at the six bells and shook his head sadly, as though
groaning over some foreign element which had interposed itself in
his heart between them and him. But when he had set them to
swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells moving under his
hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the palpitating octave
ascend and descend that sonorous scale, like a bird hopping from
branch to branch; when the demon Music, that demon who shakes a
sparkling bundle of strette, trills and arpeggios, had taken
possession of the poor deaf man, he became happy once more, he
forgot everything, and his heart expanding, made his face beam.
He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from rope to
rope, he animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like
the leader of an orchestra who is urging on intelligent
musicians.
“Go on,” said he, “go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out all thy
noise into the Place, ’tis a festival to-day. No laziness,
Thibauld; thou art relaxing; go on, go on, then, art thou rusted,
thou sluggard? That is well! quick! quick! let not thy clapper be
seen! Make them all deaf like me. That’s it, Thibauld, bravely
done! Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art the largest, and Pasquier is
the smallest, and Pasquier does best. Let us wager that those who
hear him will understand him better than they understand thee.
Good! good! my Gabrielle, stoutly, more stoutly! Eli! what are
you doing up aloft there, you two Moineaux (sparrows)? I do not
see you making the least little shred of noise. What is the
meaning of those beaks of copper which seem to be gaping when
they should sing? Come, work now, ’tis the Feast of the
Annunciation. The sun is fine, the chime must be fine also. Poor
Guillaume! thou art all out of breath, my big fellow!”
He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of which
vied with each other in leaping and shaking their shining
haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked on here and
there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.
All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large slate
scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower at a
certain height, he beheld on the square a young girl,
fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a carpet,
on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of spectators
collect around her. This sight suddenly changed the course of his
ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals
melted rosin. He halted, turned his back to the bells, and
crouched down behind the projecting roof of slate, fixing upon
the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and tender look which had already
astonished the archdeacon on one occasion. Meanwhile, the
forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the great
disappointment of the lovers of bell ringing, who were listening
in good faith to the peal from above the Pont du Change, and who
went away dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and
given a stone.
CHAPTER IV. ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.
It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of March,
I think it was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache’s day, our
young friend the student, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, perceived, as
he was dressing himself, that his breeches, which contained his
purse, gave out no metallic ring. “Poor purse,” he said, drawing
it from his fob, “what! not the smallest parisis! how cruelly the
dice, beer-pots, and Venus have depleted thee! How empty,
wrinkled, limp, thou art! Thou resemblest the throat of a fury! I
ask you, Messer Cicero, and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, all
dog’s-eared, I behold scattered on the floor, what profits it me
to know, better than any governor of the mint, or any Jew on the
Pont aux Changeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is
worth thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers
parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is worth
thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers tournois
apiece, if I have not a single wretched black liard to risk on
the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no calamity from which
one extricates one’s self with periphrases, _quemadmodum_, and
_verum enim vero!_”
He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as he laced
his boots, but he rejected it at first; nevertheless, it
returned, and he put on his waistcoat wrong side out, an evident
sign of violent internal combat. At last he dashed his cap
roughly on the floor, and exclaimed: “So much the worse! Let come
of it what may. I am going to my brother! I shall catch a sermon,
but I shall catch a crown.”
Then he hastily donned his long jacket with furred half-sleeves,
picked up his cap, and went out like a man driven to desperation.
He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he passed
the Rue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable spits, which
were incessantly turning, tickled his olfactory apparatus, and he
bestowed a loving glance toward the Cyclopean roast, which one
day drew from the Franciscan friar, Calatagirone, this pathetic
exclamation: _Veramente, queste rotisserie sono cosa
stupenda!_[36] But Jehan had not the wherewithal to buy a
breakfast, and he plunged, with a profound sigh, under the
gateway of the Petit-Châtelet, that enormous double trefoil of
massive towers which guarded the entrance to the City.
He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, as
was the usage, at the miserable statue of that Périnet Leclerc
who had delivered up the Paris of Charles VI. to the English, a
crime which his effigy, its face battered with stones and soiled
with mud, expiated for three centuries at the corner of the Rue
de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, as in an eternal pillory.
The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève crossed,
Jehan de Molendino found himself in front of Notre-Dame. Then
indecision seized upon him once more, and he paced for several
minutes round the statue of M. Legris, repeating to himself with
anguish: “The sermon is sure, the crown is doubtful.”
He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,—“Where is
monsieur the archdeacon of Josas?”
“I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower,” said the
beadle; “I should advise you not to disturb him there, unless you
come from some one like the pope or monsieur the king.”
Jehan clapped his hands.
“_Bédiable!_ here’s a magnificent chance to see the famous
sorcery cell!”
This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged
resolutely into the small black doorway, and began the ascent of
the spiral of Saint-Gilles, which leads to the upper stories of
the tower. “I am going to see,” he said to himself on the way.
“By the ravens of the Holy Virgin! it must needs be a curious
thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides so secretly!
’Tis said that he lights up the kitchens of hell there, and that
he cooks the philosopher’s stone there over a hot fire. _Bédieu!_
I care no more for the philosopher’s stone than for a pebble, and
I would rather find over his furnace an omelette of Easter eggs
and bacon, than the biggest philosopher’s stone in the world.”’
On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took breath for
a moment, and swore against the interminable staircase by I know
not how many million cartloads of devils; then he resumed his
ascent through the narrow door of the north tower, now closed to
the public. Several moments after passing the bell chamber, he
came upon a little landing-place, built in a lateral niche, and
under the vault of a low, pointed door, whose enormous lock and
strong iron bars he was enabled to see through a loophole pierced
in the opposite circular wall of the staircase. Persons desirous
of visiting this door at the present day will recognize it by
this inscription engraved in white letters on the black wall:
“J’ADORE CORALIE, 1823. SIGNÉ UGÈNE.” “Signé” stands in the text.
“Ugh!” said the scholar; “’tis here, no doubt.”
The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him; he gave
it a gentle push and thrust his head through the opening.
The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable works of
Rembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so many marvellous
engravings, there is one etching in particular, which is supposed
to represent Doctor Faust, and which it is impossible to
contemplate without being dazzled. It represents a gloomy cell;
in the centre is a table loaded with hideous objects; skulls,
spheres, alembics, compasses, hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor
is before this table clad in his large coat and covered to the
very eyebrows with his furred cap. He is visible only to his
waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched
fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and
terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which
gleams from the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark
chamber. This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and
fills the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible
and it is beautiful.
Something very similar to Faust’s cell presented itself to
Jehan’s view, when he ventured his head through the half-open
door. It also was a gloomy and sparsely lighted retreat. There
also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses,
alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a
globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously
with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls
placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge
manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking
corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science,
and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders’ webs; but
there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy
contemplating the flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the
sun.
Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in the
arm-chair, and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom his back
was turned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his
skull; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that bald head,
which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure, as though
desirous of marking, by this external symbol, the archdeacon’s
irresistible clerical vocation.
Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had been
opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence.
The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this circumstance to
examine the cell for a few moments at his leisure. A large
furnace, which he had not at first observed, stood to the left of
the arm-chair, beneath the window. The ray of light which
penetrated through this aperture made its way through a spider’s
circular web, which tastefully inscribed its delicate rose in the
arch of the window, and in the centre of which the insect
architect hung motionless, like the hub of this wheel of lace.
Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of
vases, earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and mattresses of
charcoal. Jehan observed, with a sigh, that there was no
frying-pan. “How cold the kitchen utensils are!” he said to
himself.
In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as
though none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which
Jehan noticed among the utensils of alchemy, and which served no
doubt, to protect the archdeacon’s face when he was working over
some substance to be dreaded, lay in one corner covered with dust
and apparently forgotten. Beside it lay a pair of bellows no less
dusty, the upper side of which bore this inscription incrusted in
copper letters: SPIRA SPERA.
Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the fashion
of the hermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some traced with
ink, others engraved with a metal point. There were, moreover,
Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters,
pell-mell; the inscriptions overflowed at haphazard, on top of
each other, the more recent effacing the more ancient, and all
entangled with each other, like the branches in a thicket, like
pikes in an affray. It was, in fact, a strangely confused
mingling of all human philosophies, all reveries, all human
wisdom. Here and there one shone out from among the rest like a
banner among lance heads. Generally, it was a brief Greek or
Roman device, such as the Middle Ages knew so well how to
formulate.—_Unde? Inde?—Homo homini monstrum—Astra, castra,
nomen, numen._—Μέγα βιβλίον, μέγα κακόν.—_Sapere aude. Fiat ubi
vult_—etc.; sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense,
Ἀναγκοφαγία, which possibly contained a bitter allusion to the
regime of the cloister; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical
discipline formulated in a regular hexameter _Cœlestem dominum
terrestrem dicite dominum_. There was also Hebrew jargon, of
which Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood
nothing; and all were traversed in every direction by stars, by
figures of men or animals, and by intersecting triangles; and
this contributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the
cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back
and forth a pen filled with ink.
The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect of
abandonment and dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils
induced the supposition that their owner had long been distracted
from his labors by other preoccupations. Meanwhile, this master,
bent over a vast manuscript, ornamented with fantastical
illustrations, appeared to be tormented by an idea which
incessantly mingled with his meditations. That at least was
Jehan’s idea, when he heard him exclaim, with the thoughtful
breaks of a dreamer thinking aloud,—
“Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is born
from fire, the moon from the sun; fire is the soul of the
universe; its elementary atoms pour forth and flow incessantly
upon the world through infinite channels! At the point where
these currents intersect each other in the heavens, they produce
light; at their points of intersection on earth, they produce
gold. Light, gold; the same thing! From fire to the concrete
state. The difference between the visible and the palpable,
between the fluid and the solid in the same substance, between
water and ice, nothing more. These are no dreams; it is the
general law of nature. But what is one to do in order to extract
from science the secret of this general law? What! this light
which inundates my hand is gold! These same atoms dilated in
accordance with a certain law need only be condensed in
accordance with another law. How is it to be done? Some have
fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroës,—yes, ’tis
Averroës,—Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left
of the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of
Cordova; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of
ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after the
lapse of eight thousand years.
“The devil!” said Jehan, to himself, “’tis a long while to wait
for a crown!”
“Others have thought,” continued the dreamy archdeacon, “that it
would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But
’tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the
simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it.
Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire.
Flamel! there’s predestination in the name! _Flamma!_ yes, fire.
All lies there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is
in the fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there
are certain feminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and
mysterious, that it suffices to pronounce them during the
operation. Let us read what Manon says on the matter: ‘Where
women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; where they are
despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman is
constantly pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of sunlight.
The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it
should end in long vowels, and resemble words of benediction.’
Yes, the sage is right; in truth, Maria, Sophia, la
Esmeral—Damnation! always that thought!”
And he closed the book violently.
He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away the
idea which assailed him; then he took from the table a nail and a
small hammer, whose handle was curiously painted with cabalistic
letters.
“For some time,” he said with a bitter smile, “I have failed in
all my experiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears my
brain like fire. I have not even been able to discover the secret
of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick and without oil. A
simple matter, nevertheless—”
“The deuce!” muttered Jehan in his beard.
“Hence,” continued the priest, “one wretched thought is
sufficient to render a man weak and beside himself! Oh! how
Claude Pernelle would laugh at me. She who could not turn
Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pursuit of the
great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Zéchiélé!
at every blow dealt by the formidable rabbi, from the depths of
his cell, upon this nail, that one of his enemies whom he had
condemned, were he a thousand leagues away, was buried a cubit
deep in the earth which swallowed him. The King of France
himself, in consequence of once having inconsiderately knocked at
the door of the thermaturgist, sank to the knees through the
pavement of his own Paris. This took place three centuries ago.
Well! I possess the hammer and the nail, and in my hands they are
utensils no more formidable than a club in the hands of a maker
of edge tools. And yet all that is required is to find the magic
word which Zéchiélé pronounced when he struck his nail.”
“What nonsense!” thought Jehan.
“Let us see, let us try!” resumed the archdeacon briskly. “Were I
to succeed, I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of
the nail. Emen-Hétan! Emen-Hétan! That’s not it. Sigéani!
Sigéani! May this nail open the tomb to any one who bears the
name of Phœbus! A curse upon it! Always and eternally the same
idea!”
And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so
deeply on the arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from
view behind the great pile of manuscripts. For the space of
several minutes, all that he saw was his fist convulsively
clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang up, seized a
compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in capital letters,
this Greek word
ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.
“My brother is mad,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been
far more simple to write _Fatum_, every one is not obliged to
know Greek.”
The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and
placed his head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head
is heavy and burning.
The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not know,
he who wore his heart on his sleeve, he who observed only the
good old law of Nature in the world, he who allowed his passions
to follow their inclinations, and in whom the lake of great
emotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off each day by
fresh drains,—he did not know with what fury the sea of human
passions ferments and boils when all egress is denied to it, how
it accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows
out the heart; how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull
convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The
austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface
of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The
merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava,
furious and profound, beneath the snowy brow of Ætna.
We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these
things; but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what
he ought not to have seen, that he had just surprised the soul of
his elder brother in one of its most secret altitudes, and that
Claude must not be allowed to know it. Seeing that the archdeacon
had fallen back into his former immobility, he withdrew his head
very softly, and made some noise with his feet outside the door,
like a person who has just arrived and is giving warning of his
approach.
“Enter!” cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his cell; “I
was expecting you. I left the door unlocked expressly; enter
Master Jacques!”
The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very much
embarrassed by such a visit in such a place, trembled in his
arm-chair. “What! ’tis you, Jehan?”
“’Tis a J, all the same,” said the scholar, with his ruddy,
merry, and audacious face.
Dom Claude’s visage had resumed its severe expression.
“What are you come for?”
“Brother,” replied the scholar, making an effort to assume a
decent, pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his
hands with an innocent air; “I am come to ask of you—”
“What?”
“A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in need,”
Jehan did not dare to add aloud,—“and a little money of which I
am in still greater need.” This last member of his phrase
remained unuttered.
“Monsieur,” said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, “I am greatly
displeased with you.”
“Alas!” sighed the scholar.
Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, and
gazed intently at Jehan.
“I am very glad to see you.”
This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself for a rough
encounter.
“Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. What
affray was that in which you bruised with a cudgel a little
vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?”
“Oh!” said Jehan, “a vast thing that! A malicious page amused
himself by splashing the scholars, by making his horse gallop
through the mire!”
“Who,” pursued the archdeacon, “is that Mahiet Fargel, whose gown
you have torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_, saith the complaint.”
“Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn’t that it?”
“The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know
Latin?”
Jehan did not reply.
“Yes,” pursued the priest shaking his head, “that is the state of
learning and letters at the present day. The Latin tongue is
hardly understood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so odious that ’tis
accounted no ignorance in the most learned to skip a Greek word
without reading it, and to say, ‘_Græcum est non legitur_.’”
The scholar raised his eyes boldly. “Monsieur my brother, doth it
please you that I shall explain in good French vernacular that
Greek word which is written yonder on the wall?”
“What word?”
“ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.”
A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their
high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside
the secret commotions of a volcano. The student hardly noticed
it.
“Well, Jehan,” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “What
is the meaning of yonder word?”
“FATE.”
Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.
“And that word below it, graved by the same hand, _Ἀνάγνεία_,
signifies ‘impurity.’ You see that people do know their Greek.”
And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had
rendered him thoughtful.
Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled
child, judged that the moment was a favorable one in which to
risk his request. Accordingly, he assumed an extremely soft tone
and began,—
“My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to look
savagely upon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and blows
distributed in a fair war to a pack of lads and brats, _quibusdam
marmosetis_? You see, good Brother Claude, that people know their
Latin.”
But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on
the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey
cake. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.
“What are you driving at?” he said dryly.
“Well, in point of fact, this!” replied Jehan bravely, “I stand
in need of money.”
At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon’s visage assumed a
thoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression.
“You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe, putting
the direct taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty houses in a
block, yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven sous, six
deniers, Parisian. It is one half more than in the time of the
brothers Paclet, but it is not much.”
“I need money,” said Jehan stoically.
“You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one
houses should be moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, and
that we could redeem this homage only by paying the reverend
bishop two marks of silver gilt of the price of six livres
parisis. Now, these two marks I have not yet been able to get
together. You know it.”
“I know that I stand in need of money,” repeated Jehan for the
third time.
“And what are you going to do with it?”
This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan’s
eyes. He resumed his dainty, caressing air.
“Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with any
evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in the
taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the streets of
Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey, _cum meo
laquasio_. No, brother, ’tis for a good work.”
“What good work?” demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.
“Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the infant of a
poor Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three
florins, and I should like to contribute to it.”
“What are names of your two friends?”
“Pierre l’Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison.”[37]
“Hum,” said the archdeacon; “those are names as fit for a good
work as a catapult for the chief altar.”
It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of names for
his two friends. He realized it too late.
“And then,” pursued the sagacious Claude, “what sort of an
infant’s outfit is it that is to cost three florins, and that for
the child of a Haudriette? Since when have the Haudriette widows
taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes?”
Jehan broke the ice once more.
“Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see Isabeau la
Thierrye to-night; in the Val-d’ Amour!”
“Impure wretch!” exclaimed the priest.
“Ἀναγνεία!” said Jehan.
This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice,
perchance, from the wall of the cell, produced a singular effect
on the archdeacon. He bit his lips and his wrath was drowned in a
crimson flush.
“Begone,” he said to Jehan. “I am expecting some one.”
The scholar made one more effort.
“Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy
something to eat.”
“How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?” demanded Dom
Claude.
“I have lost my copy books.
“Where are you in your Latin humanities?”
“My copy of Horace has been stolen.”
“Where are you in Aristotle?”
“I’ faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that
the errors of heretics have always had for their lurking place
the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I
care not to tear my religion on his metaphysics.”
“Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, “at the king’s last entry,
there was a young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore
embroidered on the housings of his horse this device, upon which
I counsel you to meditate: _Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”
The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his
ear, his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien.
All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of
a wagtail.
“So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to
buy a crust at a baker’s shop?”
“_Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”
At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head
in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an
expression of despair: “Ὀτοτοτοτοτοῖ.”
“What is the meaning of this, sir?” demanded Claude, surprised at
this freak.
“What indeed!” said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his
impudent eyes into which he had just thrust his fists in order to
communicate to them the redness of tears; “’tis Greek! ’tis an
anapæst of Æschylus which expresses grief perfectly.”
And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made
the archdeacon smile. It was Claude’s fault, in fact: why had he
so spoiled that child?
“Oh! good Brother Claude,” resumed Jehan, emboldened by this
smile, “look at my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the
world more tragic than these boots, whose soles are hanging out
their tongues?”
The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.
“I will send you some new boots, but no money.”
“Only a poor little parisis, brother,” continued the suppliant
Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in
God, I will be a regular Pythagoras of science and virtue. But
one little parisis, in mercy! Would you have famine bite me with
its jaws which are gaping in front of me, blacker, deeper, and
more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose of a monk?”
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: “_Qui non laborat_—”
Jehan did not allow him to finish.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “to the devil then! Long live joy! I will
live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go
and see the wenches.” And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the
wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets.
The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.
“Jehan, you have no soul.”
“In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of
another something which has no name.”
“Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways.”
“Oh, come now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother
and the alembics on the furnace, “everything is preposterous
here, both ideas and bottles!”
“Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know
whither you are going?”
“To the wine-shop,” said Jehan.
“The wine-shop leads to the pillory.”
“’Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that
one, Diogenes would have found his man.”
“The pillory leads to the gallows.”
“The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the
whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.”
“The gallows leads to hell.”
“’Tis a big fire.”
“Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.”
“The beginning will have been good.”
At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the
staircase.
“Silence!” said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth,
“here is Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added, in a low
voice; “have a care never to speak of what you shall have seen or
heard here. Hide yourself quickly under the furnace, and do not
breathe.”
The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to
him.
“By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing.”
“Silence! I promise.”
“You must give it to me.”
“Take it, then!” said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse
at him.
Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.
CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.
The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien.
The first point which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the
reader will readily surmise, had ensconced himself in his nook in
such a manner as to enable him to see and hear everything at his
good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garments and the
visage of this new-corner. There was, nevertheless, some
sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a
cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness. He was very
gray and wrinkled, and not far from his sixtieth year, his eyes
blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip pendulous, and his
hands large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is to
say, no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had
a nose very far from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled
down in his hole, in despair at being obliged to pass an
indefinite time in such an uncomfortable attitude, and in such
bad company.
The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive
this personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on
a stool near the door, and, after several moments of a silence
which appeared to be a continuation of a preceding meditation, he
said to him in a rather patronizing way, “Good day, Master
Jacques.”
“Greeting, master,” replied the man in black.
There was in the two ways in which “Master Jacques” was
pronounced on the one hand, and the “master” by preeminence on
the other, the difference between monseigneur and monsieur,
between _domine_ and _domne_. It was evidently the meeting of a
teacher and a disciple.
“Well!” resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence which
Master Jacques took good care not to disturb, “how are you
succeeding?”
“Alas! master,” said the other, with a sad smile, “I am still
seeking the stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of gold.”
Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. “I am not talking to you
of that, Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your
magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you call him? the butler of
the Court of Accounts? Does he confess his witchcraft? Have you
been successful with the torture?”
“Alas! no,” replied Master Jacques, still with his sad smile; “we
have not that consolation. That man is a stone. We might have him
boiled in the Marché aux Pourceaux, before he would say anything.
Nevertheless, we are sparing nothing for the sake of getting at
the truth; he is already thoroughly dislocated, we are applying
all the herbs of Saint John’s day; as saith the old comedian
Plautus,—
‘Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque,
Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.’
Nothing answers; that man is terrible. I am at my wit’s end over
him.”
“You have found nothing new in his house?”
“I’ faith, yes,” said Master Jacques, fumbling in his pouch;
“this parchment. There are words in it which we cannot
comprehend. The criminal advocate, Monsieur Philippe Lheulier,
nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he learned in that
matter of the Jews of the Rue Kantersten, at Brussels.”
So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. “Give it here,”
said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this writing:
“Pure magic, Master Jacques!” he exclaimed. “‘Emen-Hétan!’ ’Tis
the cry of the vampires when they arrive at the witches’ sabbath.
_Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!_ ’Tis the command which
chains the devil in hell. _Hax, pax, max!_ that refers to
medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques!
you are procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts: this
parchment is abominable.”
“We will put the man to the torture once more. Here again,” added
Master Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, “is something that
we have found at Marc Cenaine’s house.”
It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which
covered Dom Claude’s furnace.
“Ah!” said the archdeacon, “a crucible for alchemy.”
“I will confess to you,” continued Master Jacques, with his timid
and awkward smile, “that I have tried it over the furnace, but I
have succeeded no better than with my own.”
The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. “What has he
engraved on his crucible? _Och! och!_ the word which expels
fleas! That Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I verily believe that
you will never make gold with this! ’Tis good to set in your
bedroom in summer and that is all!”
“Since we are talking about errors,” said the king’s procurator,
“I have just been studying the figures on the portal below before
ascending hither; is your reverence quite sure that the opening
of the work of physics is there portrayed on the side towards the
Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven nude figures which stand at
the feet of Notre-Dame, that which has wings on his heels is
Mercurius?”
“Yes,” replied the priest; “’tis Augustin Nypho who writes it,
that Italian doctor who had a bearded demon who acquainted him
with all things. However, we will descend, and I will explain it
to you with the text before us.”
“Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, bowing to the earth. “By the
way, I was on the point of forgetting. When doth it please you
that I shall apprehend the little sorceress?”
“What sorceress?”
“That gypsy girl you know, who comes every day to dance on the
church square, in spite of the official’s prohibition! She hath a
demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which reads, which writes,
which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to
hang all Bohemia. The prosecution is all ready; ’twill soon be
finished, I assure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that
dancer! The handsomest black eyes! Two Egyptian carbuncles! When
shall we begin?”
The archdeacon was excessively pale.
“I will tell you that hereafter,” he stammered, in a voice that
was barely articulate; then he resumed with an effort, “Busy
yourself with Marc Cenaine.”
“Be at ease,” said Charmolue with a smile; “I’ll buckle him down
again for you on the leather bed when I get home. But ’tis a
devil of a man; he wearies even Pierrat Torterue himself, who
hath hands larger than my own. As that good Plautus saith,—
‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’
The torture of the wheel and axle! ’Tis the most effectual! He
shall taste it!”
Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to
Charmolue,—
“Master Pierrat—Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc
Cenaine.”
“Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like
Mummol. What an idea to go to the witches’ sabbath! a butler of
the Court of Accounts, who ought to know Charlemagne’s text;
_Stryga vel masca!_—In the matter of the little girl,—Smelarda,
as they call her,—I will await your orders. Ah! as we pass
through the portal, you will explain to me also the meaning of
the gardener painted in relief, which one sees as one enters the
church. Is it not the Sower? Hé! master, of what are you
thinking, pray?”
Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to
him. Charmolue, following the direction of his glance, perceived
that it was fixed mechanically on the great spider’s web which
draped the window. At that moment, a bewildered fly which was
seeking the March sun, flung itself through the net and became
entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous spider
made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound,
rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore
antennæ, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head.
“Poor fly!” said the king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical
court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as
though roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive
violence.
“Master Jacques,” he cried, “let fate take its course!” The
procurator wheeled round in affright; it seemed to him that
pincers of iron had clutched his arm. The priest’s eye was
staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the horrible
little group of the spider and the fly.
“Oh, yes!” continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to
proceed from the depths of his being, “behold here a symbol of
all. She flies, she is joyous, she is just born; she seeks the
spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but let her come in
contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it,
the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let
things take their course, Master Jacques, ’tis fate! Alas!
Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also! Thou
wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other
care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal
truth; but in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window
which opens upon the other world,—upon the world of brightness,
intelligence, and science—blind fly! senseless, learned man! thou
hast not perceived that subtle spider’s web, stretched by destiny
betwixt the light and thee—thou hast flung thyself headlong into
it, and now thou art struggling with head broken and mangled
wings between the iron antennæ of fate! Master Jacques! Master
Jacques! let the spider work its will!”
“I assure you,” said Charmolue, who was gazing at him without
comprehending him, “that I will not touch it. But release my arm,
master, for pity’s sake! You have a hand like a pair of pincers.”
The archdeacon did not hear him. “Oh, madman!” he went on,
without removing his gaze from the window. “And even couldst thou
have broken through that formidable web, with thy gnat’s wings,
thou believest that thou couldst have reached the light? Alas!
that pane of glass which is further on, that transparent
obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, which
separates all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have
overcome it? Oh, vanity of science! how many wise men come flying
from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems
vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!”
He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him
back from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him.
Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of reality by
addressing to him this question: “Come, now, master, when will
you come to aid me in making gold? I am impatient to succeed.”
The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. “Master
Jacques read Michel Psellus’ ‘_Dialogus de Energia et Operatione
Dæmonum_.’ What we are doing is not wholly innocent.”
“Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it,” said Jacques
Charmolue. “But one must practise a bit of hermetic science when
one is only procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court,
at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only speak low.”
At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication, which
proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue’s uneasy
ear.
“What’s that?” he inquired.
It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his
hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust
and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the
whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast. As
he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, and he
accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and alarmed the
procurator.
“’Tis a cat of mine,” said the archdeacon, quickly, “who is
regaling herself under there with a mouse.”
This explanation satisfied Charmolue.
“In fact, master,” he replied, with a respectful smile, “all
great philosophers have their familiar animal. You know what
Servius saith: ‘_Nullus enim locus sine genio est_,—for there is
no place that hath not its spirit.’”
But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on the part
of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had some figures
on the façade to study together, and the two quitted the cell, to
the accompaniment of a great “ouf!” from the scholar, who began
to seriously fear that his knee would acquire the imprint of his
chin.
CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN
PRODUCE.
“_Te Deum laudamus_!” exclaimed Master Jehan, creeping out from
his hole, “the screech-owls have departed. Och! och! Hax! pax!
max! fleas! mad dogs! the devil! I have had enough of their
conversation! My head is humming like a bell tower. And mouldy
cheese to boot! Come on! Let us descend, take the big brother’s
purse and convert all these coins into bottles!”
He cast a glance of tenderness and admiration into the interior
of the precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed up his
boots, dusted his poor half sleeves, all gray with ashes,
whistled an air, indulged in a sportive pirouette, looked about
to see whether there were not something more in the cell to take,
gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet in glass
which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, on
Isabeau la Thierrye, finally pushed open the door which his
brother had left unfastened, as a last indulgence, and which he,
in his turn, left open as a last piece of malice, and descended
the circular staircase, skipping like a bird.
In the midst of the gloom of the spiral staircase, he elbowed
something which drew aside with a growl; he took it for granted
that it was Quasimodo, and it struck him as so droll that he
descended the remainder of the staircase holding his sides with
laughter. On emerging upon the Place, he laughed yet more
heartily.
He stamped his foot when he found himself on the ground once
again. “Oh!” said he, “good and honorable pavement of Paris,
cursed staircase, fit to put the angels of Jacob’s ladder out of
breath! What was I thinking of to thrust myself into that stone
gimlet which pierces the sky; all for the sake of eating bearded
cheese, and looking at the bell-towers of Paris through a hole in
the wall!”
He advanced a few paces, and caught sight of the two screech
owls, that is to say, Dom Claude and Master Jacques Charmolue,
absorbed in contemplation before a carving on the façade. He
approached them on tiptoe, and heard the archdeacon say in a low
tone to Charmolue: “’Twas Guillaume de Paris who caused a Job to
be carved upon this stone of the hue of lapis-lazuli, gilded on
the edges. Job represents the philosopher’s stone, which must
also be tried and martyrized in order to become perfect, as saith
Raymond Lulle: _Sub conservatione formæ specificæ salva anima_.”
“That makes no difference to me,” said Jehan, “’tis I who have
the purse.”
At that moment he heard a powerful and sonorous voice articulate
behind him a formidable series of oaths. “_Sang Dieu!
Ventre-Dieu! Bédieu! Corps de Dieu! Nombril de Belzébuth! Nom
d’un pape! Corne et tonnerre_.”
“Upon my soul!” exclaimed Jehan, “that can only be my friend,
Captain Phœbus!”
This name of Phœbus reached the ears of the archdeacon at the
moment when he was explaining to the king’s procurator the dragon
which is hiding its tail in a bath, from which issue smoke and
the head of a king. Dom Claude started, interrupted himself and,
to the great amazement of Charmolue, turned round and beheld his
brother Jehan accosting a tall officer at the door of the
Gondelaurier mansion.
It was, in fact, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers. He was backed up
against a corner of the house of his betrothed and swearing like
a heathen.
“By my faith! Captain Phœbus,” said Jehan, taking him by the
hand, “you are cursing with admirable vigor.”
“Horns and thunder!” replied the captain.
“Horns and thunder yourself!” replied the student. “Come now,
fair captain, whence comes this overflow of fine words?”
“Pardon me, good comrade Jehan,” exclaimed Phœbus, shaking his
hand, “a horse going at a gallop cannot halt short. Now, I was
swearing at a hard gallop. I have just been with those prudes,
and when I come forth, I always find my throat full of curses, I
must spit them out or strangle, _ventre et tonnerre!_”
“Will you come and drink?” asked the scholar.
This proposition calmed the captain.
“I’m willing, but I have no money.”
“But I have!”
“Bah! let’s see it!”
Jehan spread out the purse before the captain’s eyes, with
dignity and simplicity. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, who had
abandoned the dumbfounded Charmolue where he stood, had
approached them and halted a few paces distant, watching them
without their noticing him, so deeply were they absorbed in
contemplation of the purse.
Phœbus exclaimed: “A purse in your pocket, Jehan! ’tis the moon
in a bucket of water, one sees it there but ’tis not there. There
is nothing but its shadow. Pardieu! let us wager that these are
pebbles!”
Jehan replied coldly: “Here are the pebbles wherewith I pave my
fob!”
And without adding another word, he emptied the purse on a
neighboring post, with the air of a Roman saving his country.
“True God!” muttered Phœbus, “targes, big-blanks, little blanks,
mailles,[38] every two worth one of Tournay, farthings of Paris,
real eagle liards! ’Tis dazzling!”
Jehan remained dignified and immovable. Several liards had rolled
into the mud; the captain in his enthusiasm stooped to pick them
up. Jehan restrained him.
“Fye, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!”
Phœbus counted the coins, and turning towards Jehan with
solemnity, “Do you know, Jehan, that there are three and twenty
sous parisis! whom have you plundered to-night, in the Street
Cut-Weazand?”
Jehan flung back his blonde and curly head, and said,
half-closing his eyes disdainfully,—
“We have a brother who is an archdeacon and a fool.”
“_Corne de Dieu!_” exclaimed Phœbus, “the worthy man!”
“Let us go and drink,” said Jehan.
“Where shall we go?” said Phœbus; “‘To Eve’s Apple.’”
“No, captain, to ‘Ancient Science.’ An old woman sawing a basket
handle;[39] ’tis a rebus, and I like that.”
“A plague on rebuses, Jehan! the wine is better at ‘Eve’s Apple’;
and then, beside the door there is a vine in the sun which cheers
me while I am drinking.”
“Well! here goes for Eve and her apple,” said the student, and
taking Phœbus’s arm. “By the way, my dear captain, you just
mentioned the Rue Coupe-Gueule[40] That is a very bad form of
speech; people are no longer so barbarous. They say,
Coupe-Gorge[41].”
The two friends set out towards “Eve’s Apple.” It is unnecessary
to mention that they had first gathered up the money, and that
the archdeacon followed them.
The archdeacon followed them, gloomy and haggard. Was this the
Phœbus whose accursed name had been mingled with all his thoughts
ever since his interview with Gringoire? He did not know it, but
it was at least a Phœbus, and that magic name sufficed to make
the archdeacon follow the two heedless comrades with the stealthy
tread of a wolf, listening to their words and observing their
slightest gestures with anxious attention. Moreover, nothing was
easier than to hear everything they said, as they talked loudly,
not in the least concerned that the passers-by were taken into
their confidence. They talked of duels, wenches, wine pots, and
folly.
At the turning of a street, the sound of a tambourine reached
them from a neighboring square. Dom Claude heard the officer say
to the scholar,—
“Thunder! Let us hasten our steps!”
“Why, Phœbus?”
“I’m afraid lest the Bohemian should see me.”
“What Bohemian?”
“The little girl with the goat.”
“La Smeralda?”
“That’s it, Jehan. I always forget her devil of a name. Let us
make haste, she will recognize me. I don’t want to have that girl
accost me in the street.”
“Do you know her, Phœbus?”
Here the archdeacon saw Phœbus sneer, bend down to Jehan’s ear,
and say a few words to him in a low voice; then Phœbus burst into
a laugh, and shook his head with a triumphant air.
“Truly?” said Jehan.
“Upon my soul!” said Phœbus.
“This evening?”
“This evening.”
“Are you sure that she will come?”
“Are you a fool, Jehan? Does one doubt such things?”
“Captain Phœbus, you are a happy gendarme!”
The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His teeth
chattered; a visible shiver ran through his whole body. He halted
for a moment, leaned against a post like a drunken man, then
followed the two merry knaves.
At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed
their conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their
lungs the ancient refrain,—
Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux
Se font pendre comme des veaux[42].
CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.
The illustrious wine shop of “Eve’s Apple” was situated in the
University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue
de la Bâtonnier. It was a very spacious and very low hall on the
ground floor, with a vaulted ceiling whose central spring rested
upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow; tables everywhere,
shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, always a large number
of drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a window on the street, a vine
at the door, and over the door a flaring piece of sheet-iron,
painted with an apple and a woman, rusted by the rain and turning
with the wind on an iron pin. This species of weather-vane which
looked upon the pavement was the signboard.
Night was falling; the square was dark; the wine-shop, full of
candles, flamed afar like a forge in the gloom; the noise of
glasses and feasting, of oaths and quarrels, which escaped
through the broken panes, was audible. Through the mist which the
warmth of the room spread over the window in front, a hundred
confused figures could be seen swarming, and from time to time a
burst of noisy laughter broke forth from it. The passers-by who
were going about their business, slipped past this tumultuous
window without glancing at it. Only at intervals did some little
ragged boy raise himself on tiptoe as far as the ledge, and hurl
into the drinking-shop, that ancient, jeering hoot, with which
drunken men were then pursued: “Aux Houls, saouls, saouls,
saouls!”
Nevertheless, one man paced imperturbably back and forth in front
of the tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no further
from it than a pikeman from his sentry-box. He was enveloped in a
mantle to his very nose. This mantle he had just purchased of the
old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the “Eve’s Apple,” no doubt
to protect himself from the cold of the March evening, possibly
also, to conceal his costume. From time to time he paused in
front of the dim window with its leaden lattice, listened,
looked, and stamped his foot.
At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was what he
appeared to be waiting for. Two boon companions came forth. The
ray of light which escaped from the door crimsoned for a moment
their jovial faces.
The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the watch
under a porch on the other side of the street.
“_Corne et tonnerre!_” said one of the comrades. “Seven o’clock
is on the point of striking. ’Tis the hour of my appointed
meeting.”
“I tell you,” repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, “that
I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, _indignus qui
inter mala verba habitat_. I have a lodging in the Rue
Jean-Pain-Mollet, _in vico Johannis Pain-Mollet_. You are more
horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. Every one knows
that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but
you have a nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the
hospital.”
“Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other.
The other replied staggering, “It pleases you to say so, Phœbus;
but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.”
The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave
friends, the captain and the scholar. It appears that the man who
was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, for he
slowly followed all the zigzags that the scholar caused the
captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had retained
all his self-possession. By listening to them attentively, the
man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the following
interesting conversation,—
“_Corbacque!_ Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know
that I must leave you. Here it is seven o’clock. I have an
appointment with a woman.”
“Leave me then! I see stars and lances of fire. You are like the
Château de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter.”
“By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too
much rabidness. By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?”
“Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher’s shop,
_parva boucheria_.”
“Jehan! my friend Jehan! You know that I made an appointment with
that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can
only take her to the Falourdel’s, the old crone of the bridge,
and that I must pay for a chamber. The old witch with a white
moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity’s sake! Have we
drunk up the whole of the curé’s purse? Have you not a single
parisis left?”
“The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just
and savory condiment for the table.”
“Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense! Tell me,
Jehan of the devil! have you any money left? Give it to me,
_bédieu!_ or I will search you, were you as leprous as Job, and
as scabby as Cæsar!”
“Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the
Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie.”
“Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue
Galiache is good, very good. But in the name of heaven collect
your wits. I must have a sou parisis, and the appointment is for
seven o’clock.”
“Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain,—
“Quand les rats mangeront les cas,
Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras;
Quand la mer, qui est grande et lée
Sera à la Saint-Jean gelée,
On verra, par-dessus la glace,
Sortir ceux d’Arras de leur place.”[43]
“Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the
entrails of your mother!” exclaimed Phœbus, and he gave the
drunken scholar a rough push; the latter slipped against the
wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Augustus. A
remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a
drinker, prompted Phœbus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of
those pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at
the corner of all the street posts of Paris, and which the rich
blight with the name of “a rubbish-heap.” The captain adjusted
Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the
very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass.
Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain’s
heart. “So much the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its
passage!” he said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off.
The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted
for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by
indecision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he also strode off in
pursuit of the captain.
We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky,
and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader.
On emerging into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phœbus
perceived that some one was following him. On glancing sideways
by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow crawling after him along
the walls. He halted, it halted; he resumed his march, it resumed
its march. This disturbed him not overmuch. “Ah, bah!” he said to
himself, “I have not a sou.”
He paused in front of the College d’Autun. It was at this college
that he had sketched out what he called his studies, and, through
a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never
passed the façade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal
Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the
affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of
Horace, _Olim truncus eram ficulnus_. He had done this with so
much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, _Eduensis
episcopus_, had become almost effaced. Therefore, he halted
before the statue according to his wont. The street was utterly
deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder
knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching
him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe
that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it
halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal
Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phœbus two intent eyes, full
of that vague light which issues in the night time from the
pupils of a cat.
The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a
highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue,
this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in
circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler
about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his
memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and
finally broke the silence with a forced laugh.
“Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce
upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son
of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your hand near by here.
In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true
cross set in silver.”
The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and
descended upon the arm of Phœbus with the grip of an eagle’s
talon; at the same time the shadow spoke,—
“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!”
“What, the devil!” said Phœbus, “you know my name!”
“I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle,
with his sepulchral voice. “You have a _rendezvous_ this
evening.”
“Yes,” replied Phœbus in amazement.
“At seven o’clock.”
“In a quarter of an hour.”
“At la Falourdel’s.”
“Precisely.”
“The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”
“Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.”
“Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”
“_Confiteor_,—I confess—.”
“Who is called—?”
“La Smeralda,” said Phœbus, gayly. All his heedlessness had
gradually returned.
At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phœbus in a
fury.
“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, thou liest!”
Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s
inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he
disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air
with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the
presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the
cloak,—any one who could have beheld this would have been
frightened. There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and
the statue.
“Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which
rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers! Thou wilt not dare
repeat it.”
“Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly.
The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom,
superstitions,—he had forgotten all at that moment. He no longer
beheld anything but a man, and an insult.
“Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage.
He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear
makes a man tremble: “Here! On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords!
Blood on the pavement!”
But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary on
guard and ready to parry,—
“Captain Phœbus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness,
“you forget your appointment.”
The rages of men like Phœbus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is
calmed by a drop of cold water. This simple remark caused the
sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.
“Captain,” pursued the man, “to-morrow, the day after to-morrow,
a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut
your throat; but go first to your rendezvous.”
“In sooth,” said Phœbus, as though seeking to capitulate with
himself, “these are two charming things to be encountered in a
rendezvous,—a sword and a wench; but I do not see why I should
miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have both.”
He replaced his sword in its scabbard.
“Go to your rendezvous,” said the man.
“Monsieur,” replied Phœbus with some embarrassment, “many thanks
for your courtesy. In fact, there will be ample time to-morrow
for us to chop up father Adam’s doublet into slashes and
buttonholes. I am obliged to you for allowing me to pass one more
agreeable quarter of an hour. I certainly did hope to put you in
the gutter, and still arrive in time for the fair one, especially
as it has a better appearance to make the women wait a little in
such cases. But you strike me as having the air of a gallant man,
and it is safer to defer our affair until to-morrow. So I will
betake myself to my rendezvous; it is for seven o’clock, as you
know.” Here Phœbus scratched his ear. “Ah. _Corne Dieu!_ I had
forgotten! I haven’t a sou to discharge the price of the garret,
and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She
distrusts me.”
“Here is the wherewithal to pay.”
Phœbus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip into his a large piece
of money. He could not refrain from taking the money and pressing
the hand.
“_Vrai Dieu!_” he exclaimed, “you are a good fellow!”
“One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I have been
wrong and that you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some
corner whence I can see whether this woman is really the one
whose name you uttered.”
“Oh!” replied Phœbus, “’tis all one to me. We will take, the
Sainte-Marthe chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel
hard by.”
“Come then,” said the shadow.
“At your service,” said the captain, “I know not whether you are
Messer Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this
evening; to-morrow I will repay you all my debts, both of purse
and sword.”
They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few
minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that they were
on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses.
“I will first show you the way,” said Phœbus to his companion, “I
will then go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near
the Petit-Châtelet.”
His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they
had been walking side by side. Phœbus halted before a low door,
and knocked roughly; a light made its appearance through the
cracks of the door.
“Who is there?” cried a toothless voice.
“_Corps-Dieu! Tête-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu!_” replied the captain.
The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-comers to see an
old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman
was bent double, clad in tatters, with a shaking head, pierced
with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish clout; wrinkled
everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips retreated under
her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which
gave her the whiskered look of a cat.
The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there
were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled
chimney-piece, spiders’ webs in all the corners, in the middle a
staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty child among
the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, a wooden
ladder, which ended in a trapdoor in the ceiling.
On entering this lair, Phœbus’s mysterious companion raised his
mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a
Saracen, hastened to “make the sun shine in a crown” as saith our
admirable Régnier.
“The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he.
The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown
in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the black mantle
had given to Phœbus. While her back was turned, the bushy-headed
and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes, adroitly
approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in its place
a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.
The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called
them, to follow her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them.
On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on a coffer,
and, Phœbus, like a frequent visitor of the house, opened a door
which opened on a dark hole. “Enter here, my dear fellow,” he
said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a
word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phœbus bolt it,
and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag.
The light had disappeared.
CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.
Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent
than Phœbus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk
than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several
moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him.
It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at
the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A
vertical section of this kennel, as Phœbus had so justly styled
it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither
window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from
standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust,
and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire;
rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit
of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose coolness
afforded him some relief.
What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the
archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.
In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phœbus,
Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by
him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps
dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these
images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed
in his mind a horrible group.
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that
he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking
of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The
trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a
tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put
his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in
the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to
emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phœbus, twirling
his moustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful
figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld her rise from below like
a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his
eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled and whirled
around him; he no longer saw nor heard anything.
When he recovered himself, Phœbus and Esmeralda were alone seated
on the wooden coffer beside the lamp which made these two
youthful figures and a miserable pallet at the end of the attic
stand out plainly before the archdeacon’s eyes.
Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a
spider’s web upon which rain has fallen, allowed a view, through
its rent meshes, of a corner of the sky, and the moon lying far
away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds.
The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her long,
drooping lashes shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, to whom
she dared not lift her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with
a charmingly unconscious gesture, she traced with the tip of her
finger incoherent lines on the bench, and watched her finger. Her
foot was not visible. The little goat was nestling upon it.
The captain was very gallantly clad; he had tufts of embroidery
at his neck and wrists; a great elegance at that day.
It was not without difficulty that Dom Claude managed to hear
what they were saying, through the humming of the blood, which
was boiling in his temples.
(A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace affair. It
is a perpetual “I love you.” A musical phrase which is very
insipid and very bald for indifferent listeners, when it is not
ornamented with some _fioriture;_ but Claude was not an
indifferent listener.)
“Oh!” said the young girl, without raising her eyes, “do not
despise me, monseigneur Phœbus. I feel that what I am doing is
not right.”
“Despise you, my pretty child!” replied the officer with an air
of superior and distinguished gallantry, “despise you,
_tête-Dieu!_ and why?”
“For having followed you!”
“On that point, my beauty, we don’t agree. I ought not to despise
you, but to hate you.”
The young girl looked at him in affright: “Hate me! what have I
done?”
“For having required so much urging.”
“Alas!” said she, “’tis because I am breaking a vow. I shall not
find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue. But what
matters it? What need have I of father or mother now?”
So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, moist
with joy and tenderness.
“Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phœbus. La
Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear dropped from
her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said,—“Oh! monseigneur, I
love you.”
Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue surrounded the
young girl, that Phœbus did not feel completely at his ease
beside her. But this remark emboldened him: “You love me!” he
said with rapture, and he threw his arm round the gypsy’s waist.
He had only been waiting for this opportunity.
The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the
point of a poniard which he wore concealed in his breast.
“Phœbus,” continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her waist from
the captain’s tenacious hands, “You are good, you are generous,
you are handsome; you saved me, me who am only a poor child lost
in Bohemia. I had long been dreaming of an officer who should
save my life. ’Twas of you that I was dreaming, before I knew
you, my Phœbus; the officer of my dream had a beautiful uniform
like yours, a grand look, a sword; your name is Phœbus; ’tis a
beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your
sword, Phœbus, that I may see it.”
“Child!” said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword with a
smile.
The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade; examined the cipher on
the guard with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, saying,—
“You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.” Phœbus
again profited by the opportunity to impress upon her beautiful
bent neck a kiss which made the young girl straighten herself up
as scarlet as a poppy. The priest gnashed his teeth over it in
the dark.
“Phœbus,” resumed the gypsy, “let me talk to you. Pray walk a
little, that I may see you at full height, and that I may hear
your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”
The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of
satisfaction,—
“What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, have you seen me
in my archer’s ceremonial doublet?”
“Alas! no,” she replied.
“It is very handsome!”
Phœbus returned and seated himself beside her, but much closer
than before.
“Listen, my dear—”
The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty hand on
his mouth, with a childish mirth and grace and gayety.
“No, no, I will not listen to you. Do you love me? I want you to
tell me whether you love me.”
“Do I love thee, angel of my life!” exclaimed the captain, half
kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for
thee. I love thee, and I have never loved any one but thee.”
The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many
similar conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath,
without committing a single mistake. At this passionate
declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served
for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.
“Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment when one should die!”
Phœbus found “the moment” favorable for robbing her of another
kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook.
“Die!” exclaimed the amorous captain, “What are you saying, my
lovely angel? ’Tis a time for living, or Jupiter is only a scamp!
Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing! _Corne-de-bœuf_, what a
jest! It is not that. Listen, my dear Similar, Esmenarda—Pardon!
you have so prodigiously Saracen a name that I never can get it
straight. ’Tis a thicket which stops me short.”
“Good heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought my name pretty
because of its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would
that I were called Goton.”
“Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! ’tis a name
to which one must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know
it by heart, all will go smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar;
I adore you passionately. I love you so that ’tis simply
miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over it—”
The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who?”
“What matters that to us?” said Phœbus; “do you love me?”
“Oh!”—said she.
“Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the
great devil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest
woman in the world. We will have a pretty little house somewhere.
I will make my archers parade before your windows. They are all
mounted, and set at defiance those of Captain Mignon. There are
_voulgiers, cranequiniers_ and hand _couleveiniers_[44]. I will
take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the storehouse
of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white
harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners
of the trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber
of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aides of the
mint; a devilish fine array, in short! I will conduct you to see
the lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. All women
love that.”
For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming
thoughts, was dreaming to the sound of his voice, without
listening to the sense of his words.
“Oh! how happy you will be!” continued the captain, and at the
same time he gently unbuckled the gypsy’s girdle.
“What are you doing?” she said quickly. This “act of violence”
had roused her from her revery.
“Nothing,” replied Phœbus, “I was only saying that you must
abandon all this garb of folly, and the street corner when you
are with me.”
“When I am with you, Phœbus!” said the young girl tenderly.
She became pensive and silent once more.
The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist
without resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child’s
corsage, and disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the
panting priest beheld the gypsy’s beautiful shoulder emerge from
the gauze, as round and brown as the moon rising through the
mists of the horizon.
The young girl allowed Phœbus to have his way. She did not appear
to perceive it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.
Suddenly she turned towards him,—
“Phœbus,” she said, with an expression of infinite love,
“instruct me in thy religion.”
“My religion!” exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, “I
instruct you in my religion! _Corne et tonnerre!_ What do you
want with my religion?”
“In order that we may be married,” she replied.
The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and
disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.
“Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”
The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her
breast.
“My beautiful love,” resumed Phœbus, tenderly, “what nonsense is
this? A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less
loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!”
While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely
near the gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around
her supple and delicate waist, his eye flashed more and more, and
everything announced that Monsieur Phœbus was on the verge of one
of those moments when Jupiter himself commits so many follies
that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.
But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly
rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for the passage of
his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest,
hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was
quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love
and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given over in
disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in
his-veins; his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all
those loosened pins. Any one who could, at that moment, have seen
the face of the unhappy man glued to the wormeaten bars, would
have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the
depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye
shone like a candle through the cracks of the door.
All at once, Phœbus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy’s
gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy,
awoke with a start; she recoiled hastily from the enterprising
officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck and shoulders,
red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful
arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame
which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and
motionless, one would have declared her a statue of Modesty. Her
eyes were lowered.
But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet
which she wore about her neck.
“What is that?” he said, seizing this pretext to approach once
more the beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.
“Don’t touch it!” she replied, quickly, “’tis my guardian. It
will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so.
Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine! My mother! My poor mother!
My mother! Where art thou? Come to my rescue! Have pity, Monsieur
Phœbus, give me back my gorgerette!”
Phœbus retreated amid said in a cold tone,—
“Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!”
“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same
time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside
her. “I do not love thee, my Phœbus? What art thou saying, wicked
man, to break my heart? Oh, take me! take all! do what you will
with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet! What matters
to me my mother! ’Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee!
Phœbus, my beloved Phœbus, dost thou see me? ’Tis I. Look at me;
’tis the little one whom thou wilt surely not repulse, who comes,
who comes herself to seek thee. My soul, my life, my body, my
person, all is one thing—which is thine, my captain. Well, no! We
will not marry, since that displeases thee; and then, what am I?
a miserable girl of the gutters; whilst thou, my Phœbus, art a
gentleman. A fine thing, truly! A dancer wed an officer! I was
mad. No, Phœbus, no; I will be thy mistress, thy amusement, thy
pleasure, when thou wilt; a girl who shall belong to thee. I was
only made for that, soiled, despised, dishonored, but what
matters it?—beloved. I shall be the proudest and the most joyous
of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phœbus, when I am no
longer good to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still.
Others will embroider scarfs for you; ’tis I, the servant, who
will care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your
doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will have that pity, will
you not, Phœbus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phœbus, all this
belongs to thee, only love me! We gypsies need only air and
love.”
So saying, she threw her arms round the officer’s neck; she
looked up at him, supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and all
in tears. Her delicate neck rubbed against his cloth doublet with
its rough embroideries. She writhed on her knees, her beautiful
body half naked. The intoxicated captain pressed his ardent lips
to those lovely African shoulders. The young girl, her eyes bent
on the ceiling, as she leaned backwards, quivered, all
palpitating, beneath this kiss.
All at once, above Phœbus’s head she beheld another head; a
green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near
this face was a hand grasping a poniard. It was the face and hand
of the priest; he had broken the door and he was there. Phœbus
could not see him. The young girl remained motionless, frozen
with terror, dumb, beneath that terrible apparition, like a dove
which should raise its head at the moment when the hawk is gazing
into her nest with its round eyes.
She could not even utter a cry. She saw the poniard descend upon
Phœbus, and rise again, reeking.
“Maledictions!” said the captain, and fell.
She fainted.
At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in
her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted upon her
lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the
executioner.
When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of
the watch they were carrying away the captain, bathed in his
blood the priest had disappeared; the window at the back of the
room which opened on the river was wide open; they picked up a
cloak which they supposed to belong to the officer and she heard
them saying around her,
“’Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”
BOOK EIGHTH.
CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.
Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering mortal
anxiety. For a whole month they had not known what had become of
la Esmeralda, which greatly pained the Duke of Egypt and his
friends the vagabonds, nor what had become of the goat, which
redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One evening the gypsy had
disappeared, and since that time had given no signs of life. All
search had proved fruitless. Some tormenting bootblacks had told
Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont
Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after
the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and
besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his
wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the
unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the
amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the
resistance of that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he
was at ease on that score.
Still he could not understand this disappearance. It was a
profound sorrow. He would have grown thin over it, had that been
possible. He had forgotten everything, even his literary tastes,
even his great work, _De figuris regularibus et irregularibus_,
which it was his intention to have printed with the first money
which he should procure (for he had raved over printing, ever
since he had seen the “Didascalon” of Hugues de Saint Victor,
printed with the celebrated characters of Vindelin de Spire).
One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle,
he perceived a considerable crowd at one of the gates of the
Palais de Justice.
“What is this?” he inquired of a young man who was coming out.
“I know not, sir,” replied the young man. “’Tis said that they
are trying a woman who hath assassinated a gendarme. It appears
that there is sorcery at the bottom of it, the archbishop and the
official have intervened in the case, and my brother, who is the
archdeacon of Josas, can think of nothing else. Now, I wished to
speak with him, but I have not been able to reach him because of
the throng, which vexes me greatly, as I stand in need of money.”
“Alas! sir,” said Gringoire, “I would that I could lend you some,
but, my breeches are worn to holes, and ’tis not crowns which
have done it.”
He dared not tell the young man that he was acquainted with his
brother the archdeacon, to whom he had not returned after the
scene in the church; a negligence which embarrassed him.
The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow the
crowd which was mounting the staircase of the great chamber. In
his opinion, there was nothing like the spectacle of a criminal
process for dissipating melancholy, so exhilaratingly stupid are
judges as a rule. The populace which he had joined walked and
elbowed in silence. After a slow and tiresome march through a
long, gloomy corridor, which wound through the court-house like
the intestinal canal of the ancient edifice, he arrived near a
low door, opening upon a hall which his lofty stature permitted
him to survey with a glance over the waving heads of the rabble.
The hall was vast and gloomy, which latter fact made it appear
still more spacious. The day was declining; the long, pointed
windows permitted only a pale ray of light to enter, which was
extinguished before it reached the vaulted ceiling, an enormous
trellis-work of sculptured beams, whose thousand figures seemed
to move confusedly in the shadows, many candles were already
lighted here and there on tables, and beaming on the heads of
clerks buried in masses of documents. The anterior portion of the
hall was occupied by the crowd; on the right and left were
magistrates and tables; at the end, upon a platform, a number of
judges, whose rear rank sank into the shadows, sinister and
motionless faces. The walls were sown with innumerable
fleurs-de-lis. A large figure of Christ might be vaguely descried
above the judges, and everywhere there were pikes and halberds,
upon whose points the reflection of the candles placed tips of
fire.
“Monsieur,” Gringoire inquired of one of his neighbors, “who are
all those persons ranged yonder, like prelates in council?”
“Monsieur,” replied the neighbor, “those on the right are the
counsellors of the grand chamber; those on the left, the
councillors of inquiry; the masters in black gowns, the messires
in red.”
“Who is that big red fellow, yonder above them, who is sweating?”
pursued Gringoire.
“It is monsieur the president.”
“And those sheep behind him?” continued Gringoire, who as we have
seen, did not love the magistracy, which arose, possibly, from
the grudge which he cherished against the Palais de Justice since
his dramatic misadventure.
“They are messieurs the masters of requests of the king’s
household.”
“And that boar in front of him?”
“He is monsieur the clerk of the Court of Parliament.”
“And that crocodile on the right?”
“Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king.”
“And that big, black tom-cat on the left?”
“Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator of the king in the
Ecclesiastical Court, with the gentlemen of the officialty.”
“Come now, monsieur,” said Gringoire, “pray what are all those
fine fellows doing yonder?”
“They are judging.”
“Judging whom? I do not see the accused.”
“’Tis a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She has her back turned
to us, and she is hidden from us by the crowd. Stay, yonder she
is, where you see a group of partisans.”
“Who is the woman?” asked Gringoire. “Do you know her name?”
“No, monsieur, I have but just arrived. I merely assume that
there is some sorcery about it, since the official is present at
the trial.”
“Come!” said our philosopher, “we are going to see all these
magistrates devour human flesh. ’Tis as good a spectacle as any
other.”
“Monsieur,” remarked his neighbor, “think you not, that Master
Jacques Charmolue has a very sweet air?”
“Hum!” replied Gringoire. “I distrust a sweetness which hath
pinched nostrils and thin lips.”
Here the bystanders imposed silence upon the two chatterers. They
were listening to an important deposition.
“Messeigneurs,” said an old woman in the middle of the hall,
whose form was so concealed beneath her garments that one would
have pronounced her a walking heap of rags; “Messeigneurs, the
thing is as true as that I am la Falourdel, established these
forty years at the Pont Saint Michel, and paying regularly my
rents, lord’s dues, and quit rents; at the gate opposite the
house of Tassin-Caillart, the dyer, which is on the side up the
river—a poor old woman now, but a pretty maid in former days, my
lords. Some one said to me lately, ‘La Falourdel, don’t use your
spinning-wheel too much in the evening; the devil is fond of
combing the distaffs of old women with his horns. ’Tis certain
that the surly monk who was round about the temple last year, now
prowls in the City. Take care, La Falourdel, that he doth not
knock at your door.’ One evening I was spinning on my wheel,
there comes a knock at my door; I ask who it is. They swear. I
open. Two men enter. A man in black and a handsome officer. Of
the black man nothing could be seen but his eyes, two coals of
fire. All the rest was hat and cloak. They say to me,—‘The
Sainte-Marthe chamber.’—’Tis my upper chamber, my lords, my
cleanest. They give me a crown. I put the crown in my drawer, and
I say: ‘This shall go to buy tripe at the slaughter-house of la
Gloriette to-morrow.’ We go up stairs. On arriving at the upper
chamber, and while my back is turned, the black man disappears.
That dazed me a bit. The officer, who was as handsome as a great
lord, goes down stairs again with me. He goes out. In about the
time it takes to spin a quarter of a handful of flax, he returns
with a beautiful young girl, a doll who would have shone like the
sun had she been coiffed. She had with her a goat; a big
billy-goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That
set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the goat! I
love not those beasts, they have a beard and horns. They are so
like a man. And then, they smack of the witches, sabbath.
However, I say nothing. I had the crown. That is right, is it
not, Monsieur Judge? I show the captain and the wench to the
upper chamber, and I leave them alone; that is to say, with the
goat. I go down and set to spinning again—I must inform you that
my house has a ground floor and story above. I know not why I
fell to thinking of the surly monk whom the goat had put into my
head again, and then the beautiful girl was rather strangely
decked out. All at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something
falls on the floor and the window opens. I run to mine which is
beneath it, and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and
fall into the water. It was a phantom clad like a priest. It was
a moonlight night. I saw him quite plainly. He was swimming in
the direction of the city. Then, all of a tremble, I call the
watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not knowing just at
the first moment what the matter was, and being merry, they beat
me. I explain to them. We go up stairs, and what do we find? my
poor chamber all blood, the captain stretched out at full length
with a dagger in his neck, the girl pretending to be dead, and
the goat all in a fright. ‘Pretty work!’ I say, ‘I shall have to
wash that floor for more than a fortnight. It will have to be
scraped; it will be a terrible job.’ They carried off the
officer, poor young man, and the wench with her bosom all bare.
But wait, the worst is that on the next day, when I wanted to
take the crown to buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in its place.”
The old woman ceased. A murmur of horror ran through the
audience.
“That phantom, that goat,—all smacks of magic,” said one of
Gringoire’s neighbors.
“And that dry leaf!” added another.
“No doubt about it,” joined in a third, “she is a witch who has
dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering
officers.”
Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as
altogether alarming and probable.
“Goody Falourdel,” said the president majestically, “have you
nothing more to communicate to the court?”
“No, monseigneur,” replied the crone, “except that the report has
described my house as a hovel and stinking; which is an
outrageous fashion of speaking. The houses on the bridge are not
imposing, because there are such multitudes of people; but,
nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are
wealthy folk, and married to very proper and handsome women.”
The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile rose,—
“Silence!” said he. “I pray the gentlemen not to lose sight of
the fact that a dagger was found on the person of the accused.
Goody Falourdel, have you brought that leaf into which the crown
which the demon gave you was transformed?
“Yes, monseigneur,” she replied; “I found it again. Here it is.”
A bailiff handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a
doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, who
gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical
court, and thus it made the circuit of the hall.
“It is a birch leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmolue. “A fresh
proof of magic.”
A counsellor took up the word.
“Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black
man, whom you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the
Seine, with his priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the
two handed you the crown?” The old woman pondered for a moment
and then said,—
“The officer.”
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“Ah!” thought Gringoire, “this makes some doubt in my mind.”
But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king,
interposed once more.
“I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken
at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he
had a vague idea when the black man accosted him that the latter
might be the surly monk, added that the phantom had pressed him
eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the accused; and upon
his, the captain’s, remarking that he had no money, he had given
him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence,
that crown is the money of hell.”
This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts
of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience.
“You have the documents, gentlemen,” added the king’s advocate,
as he took his seat; “you can consult the testimony of Phœbus de
Châteaupers.”
At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the
throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda.
She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and
spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her
hollow eyes were terrible. Alas!
“Phœbus!” she said, in bewilderment; “where is he? O
messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether
he still lives?”
“Hold your tongue, woman,” replied the president, “that is no
affair of ours.”
“Oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me if he is alive!” she repeated,
clasping her beautiful emaciated hands; and the sound of her
chains in contact with her dress, was heard.
“Well!” said the king’s advocate roughly, “he is dying. Are you
satisfied?”
The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal’s seat, speechless,
tearless, white as a wax figure.
The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap
and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand.
“Bailiff, bring in the second accused.”
All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the
great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with
horns and hoofs of gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on
the threshold, stretching out its neck as though, perched on the
summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an immense horizon.
Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over the
table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees;
then it rolled gracefully on its mistress’s feet, soliciting a
word or a caress; but the accused remained motionless, and poor
Djali himself obtained not a glance.
“Eh, why—’tis my villanous beast,” said old Falourdel, “I
recognize the two perfectly!”
Jacques Charmolue interfered.
“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 instituted 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 Débonnaire 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 hall!” said the
bailiff sharply.
Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manœuvres 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 _Phœbus_. The
witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared
irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy,
that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-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, Phœbus de Châteaupers. Do you persist
in denying it?”
“Horror!” exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands.
“My Phœbus! Oh, this is hell!”
“Do you persist in your denial?” demanded the president coldly.
“Do I deny it?” she said with terrible accents; and she rose with
flashing 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.
The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the
command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably
firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the
officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized
door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which
produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a
horrible mouth which had just devoured her.
When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the
little goat mourning.
The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having
remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a
long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president
replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to
his duty.
“What an annoying and vexatious hussy,” said an aged judge, “to
get herself put to the question when one has not supped!”
CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A
DRY LEAF.
After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors,
which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at midday, La
Esmeralda, still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust
by the police into a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in
form, occupied the ground floor of one of those great towers,
which, even in our own century, still pierce through the layer of
modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient
Paris. There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening
than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an enormous iron
door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had been
constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was
lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson
reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one
corner, of all radiance. The iron grating which served to close
the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the
mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower
extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set
flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths
of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the
light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the
room, frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In
the centre lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the
ground, over which hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached
to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in
the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares,
filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap
on the coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in
the chamber only a confused mass of horrible things.
This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.
On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the
official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces,
leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the iron
instruments on the coals.
In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this
chamber she was stricken with horror.
The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one
side, the priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk,
inkhorn, and a table were in one corner.
Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a very sweet
smile.
“My dear child,” said he, “do you still persist in your denial?”
“Yes,” she replied, in a dying voice.
“In that case,” replied Charmolue, “it will be very painful for
us to have to question you more urgently than we should like.
Pray take the trouble to seat yourself on this bed. Master
Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close the door.”
Pierrat rose with a growl.
“If I shut the door,” he muttered, “my fire will go out.”
“Well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue, “leave it open then.”
Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That leather bed
on which so many unhappy wretches had writhed, frightened her.
Terror chilled the very marrow of her bones; she stood there
bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from Charmolue, the two
assistants took her and placed her in a sitting posture on the
bed. They did her no harm; but when these men touched her, when
that leather touched her, she felt all her blood retreat to her
heart. She cast a frightened look around the chamber. It seemed
to her as though she beheld advancing from all quarters towards
her, with the intention of crawling up her body and biting and
pinching her, all those hideous implements of torture, which as
compared to the instruments of all sorts she had hitherto seen,
were like what bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects
and birds.
“Where is the physician?” asked Charmolue.
“Here,” replied a black gown whom she had not before noticed.
She shuddered.
“Mademoiselle,” resumed the caressing voice of the procucrator of
the Ecclesiastical court, “for the third time, do you persist in
denying the deeds of which you are accused?”
This time she could only make a sign with her head.
“You persist?” said Jacques Charmolue. “Then it grieves me
deeply, but I must fulfil my office.”
“Monsieur le Procureur du Roi,” said Pierrat abruptly, “How shall
we begin?”
Charmolue hesitated for a moment with the ambiguous grimace of a
poet in search of a rhyme.
“With the boot,” he said at last.
The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and
men, that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which
has no power in itself.
The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At
the same time, the two assistants began to fumble among their
hideous arsenal.
At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child
quivered like a dead frog which is being galvanized. “Oh!” she
murmured, so low that no one heard her; “Oh, my Phœbus!” Then she
fell back once more into her immobility and her marble silence.
This spectacle would have rent any other heart than those of her
judges. One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being
tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell. The
miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and
racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being who was
about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners and
pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain
of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible
mills of torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of
Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had bared that charming leg, that
tiny foot, which had so often amazed the passers-by with their
delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.
“’Tis a shame!” muttered the tormentor, glancing at these
graceful and delicate forms.
Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled
at that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the
unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes,
beheld the boot approach; she soon beheld her foot encased
between iron plates disappear in the frightful apparatus. Then
terror restored her strength.
“Take that off!” she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with
her hair all dishevelled: “Mercy!”
She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the
king’s procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak
and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a
bee with a lump of lead on its wing.
At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two
coarse hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung
from the ceiling.
“For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?”
demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.
“I am innocent.”
“Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to
your charge?”
“Alas, monseigneur, I do not know.”
“So you deny them?”
“All!”
“Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.
Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was
contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible
cries which have no orthography in any human language.
“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” he said to
the gypsy.
“All!” cried the wretched girl. “I confess! I confess! Mercy!”
She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture.
Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so
pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!
“Humanity forces me to tell you,” remarked the king’s procurator,
“that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.”
“I certainly hope so!” said she. And she fell back upon the
leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang
suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.
“Come, fair one, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, raising
her. “You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which
hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne’s neck.”
Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,
“Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your
participation in the feasts, witches’ sabbaths, and witchcrafts
of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer.”
“Yes,” she said, so low that her words were lost in her
breathing.
“You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to
appear in the clouds to call together the witches’ sabbath, and
which is beheld by socerers alone?”
“Yes.”
“You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those
abominable idols of the Templars?”
“Yes.”
“To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of
a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit?”
“Yes.”
“Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the
demon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on
the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and
assassinated a captain named Phœbus de Châteaupers?”
She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and
replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or
agitation,—
“Yes.”
It was evident that everything within her was broken.
“Write, clerk,” said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers,
“Release the prisoner, and take her back to the court.”
When the prisoner had been “unbooted,” the procurator of the
ecclesiastical court examined her foot, which was still swollen
with pain. “Come,” said he, “there’s no great harm done. You
shrieked in good season. You could still dance, my beauty!”
Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality,—
“Behold justice enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen!
Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we have acted with all
possible gentleness.”