Text 3 of 3
CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.
Victor Hugo · about 340 minutes
CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.
When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was
received with a general murmur of pleasure. On the part of the
audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified which one
experiences at the theatre at the end of the last entr’acte of
the comedy, when the curtain rises and the conclusion is about to
begin. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting
their suppers sooner.
The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards
his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench.
Night was fully set in. The candles, whose number had not been
increased, cast so little light, that the walls of the hall could
not be seen. The shadows there enveloped all objects in a sort of
mist. A few apathetic faces of judges alone could be dimly
discerned. Opposite them, at the extremity of the long hall, they
could see a vaguely white point standing out against the sombre
background. This was the accused.
She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue had
installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he seated
himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too much
self-complacency at his success,—“The accused has confessed all.”
“Bohemian girl,” the president continued, “have you avowed all
your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phœbus de
Châteaupers.”
Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.
“Anything you like,” she replied feebly, “but kill me quickly!”
“Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts,”
said the president, “the chamber is ready to hear you in your
charge.”
Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to
read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the
pleader, an oration in Latin, wherein all the proofs of the suit
were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations
from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are
not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The
orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had
finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his
brow, and his eyes from his head.
All at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted
himself, and his glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid,
became menacing.
“Gentlemen,” he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was not in
his copy book), “Satan is so mixed up in this affair, that here
he is present at our debates, and making sport of their majesty.
Behold!”
So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing
Charmolue gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it
appropriate to do the same, and had seated himself on his
haunches, reproducing to the best of his ability, with his
forepaws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the
king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the
reader remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This
incident, this last proof, produced a great effect. The goat’s
hoofs were tied, and the king’s procurator resumed the thread of
his eloquence.
It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here is the
concluding phrase; let the reader add the hoarse voice and the
breathless gestures of Master Charmolue,
“_Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente,
intentione criminis existente, in nomine sanctæ ecclesiæ
Nostræ-Dominæ Parisiensis quæ est in saisina habendi omnimodam
altam et bassam justitiam in illa hac intemerata Civitatis
insula, tenore præsentium declaremus nos requirere, primo,
aliquamdam pecuniariam indemnitatem; secundo, amendationem
honorabilem ante portalium maximum Nostræ-Dominæ, ecclesiæ
cathedralis; tertio, sententiam in virtute cujus ista styrga cum
sua capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto_ la Grève, _seu in
insula exeunte in fluvio Secanæ, juxta pointam juardini regalis,
executatæ sint!_”[45]
He put on his cap again and seated himself.
“_Eheu!_” sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, “_bassa
latinitas_—bastard latin!”
Another man in a black gown rose near the accused; he was her
lawyer. The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble.
“Advocate, be brief,” said the president.
“Monsieur the President,” replied the advocate, “since the
defendant has confessed the crime, I have only one word to say to
these gentlemen. Here is a text from the Salic law; ‘If a witch
hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted of it, she shall pay a
fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount to two hundred sous
of gold.’ May it please the chamber to condemn my client to the
fine?”
“An abrogated text,” said the advocate extraordinary of the king.
“_Nego_, I deny it,” replied the advocate.
“Put it to the vote!” said one of the councillors; “the crime is
manifest, and it is late.”
They proceeded to take a vote without leaving the room. The
judges signified their assent without giving their reasons, they
were in a hurry. Their capped heads were seen uncovering one
after the other, in the gloom, at the lugubrious question
addressed to them by the president in a low voice. The poor
accused had the appearance of looking at them, but her troubled
eye no longer saw.
Then the clerk began to write; then he handed a long parchment to
the president.
Then the unhappy girl heard the people moving, the pikes
clashing, and a freezing voice saying to her,—
“Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem good to our lord
the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a tumbrel, in
your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your neck, before
the grand portal of Notre-Dame, and you will there make an
apology with a wax torch of the weight of two pounds in your
hand, and thence you will be conducted to the Place de Grève,
where you will be hanged and strangled on the town gibbet; and
likewise your goat; and you will pay to the official three lions
of gold, in reparation of the crimes by you committed and by you
confessed, of sorcery and magic, debauchery and murder, upon the
person of the Sieur Phœbus de Châteaupers. May God have mercy on
your soul!”
“Oh! ’tis a dream!” she murmured; and she felt rough hands
bearing her away.
CHAPTER IV. _LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA_—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE
WHO ENTER HERE.
In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was
almost as much of it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon
piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had
always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it was, in some sort,
another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind, and
mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and
reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it
was a sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison,
sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. These mighty
buildings, whose mode of formation and _vegetation_ we have
elsewhere explained, had not simply _foundations_, but, so to
speak, roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers,
galleries, and staircases, like the construction above. Thus
churches, palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their
bodies. The cellars of an edifice formed another edifice, into
which one descended instead of ascending, and which extended its
subterranean grounds under the external piles of the monument,
like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the
mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains
of the banks.
At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of
Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons.
The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew
constantly narrower and more gloomy. They were so many zones,
where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante could never
imagine anything better for his hell. These tunnels of cells
usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like
bottom, where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those
condemned to death. A miserable human existence, once interred
there; farewell light, air, life, _ogni speranza_—every hope; it
only came forth to the scaffold or the stake. Sometimes it rotted
there; human justice called this _forgetting_. Between men and
himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers
weighing down upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive
bastille was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock,
which barred him off from the rest of the world.
It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the
_oubliettes_ excavated by Saint-Louis, in the _inpace_ of the
Tournelle, that la Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned
to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colossal
court-house over her head. Poor fly, who could not have lifted
even one of its blocks of stone!
Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such
an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to
break so frail a creature.
There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any
one who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen
her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as
night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a
human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes;
snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and
a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed
under her by the sweating of the prison walls; without motion,
almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer;
Phœbus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of Paris, the
dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the
officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood,
the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her
mind, sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a
hideous nightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and
horrible struggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up
above ground, and which was no longer audible at the depth where
the unhappy girl had fallen.
Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In
that misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish
her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than
day from night. All this was mixed, broken, floating,
disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she
no longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only
dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into
nothingness.
Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two
or three occasions, the sound of a trapdoor opening somewhere
above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light,
and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.
Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer was the sole
communication which was left her with mankind.
A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her
head, the dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the
vault, and a drop of water dropped from them at regular
intervals. She listened stupidly to the noise made by this drop
of water as it fell into the pool beside her.
This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was
the only movement which still went on around her, the only clock
which marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all
the noise made on the surface of the earth.
To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in
that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over
her foot or her arm, and she shuddered.
How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a
recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against
some one, then of having been herself carried away, and of waking
up in darkness and silence, chilled to the heart. She had dragged
herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles,
and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all
around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered
with moisture and a truss of straw; but neither lamp nor
air-hole. Then she had seated herself on that straw and,
sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude, on the last
stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the
black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that
melancholy labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in
her head, and had left her in stupor.
At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were
of the same color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a
louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he brought
her bread and jug of water. She raised her head, and beheld a ray
of reddish light passing through the crevices in the sort of
trapdoor contrived in the roof of the _inpace_.
At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its
rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the
lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door being too low
to admit of her seeing their heads. The light pained her so
acutely that she shut her eyes.
When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was
deposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood
before her. A monk’s black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the
same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person,
neither face nor hands. It was a long, black shroud standing
erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving. She
gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre. But
neither he nor she spoke. One would have pronounced them two
statues confronting each other. Two things only seemed alive in
that cavern; the wick of the lantern, which sputtered on account
of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of water from the
roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous
splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric
waves on the oily water of the pool.
At last the prisoner broke the silence.
“Who are you?”
“A priest.”
The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.
The priest continued, in a hollow voice,—
“Are you prepared?”
“For what?”
“To die.”
“Oh!” said she, “will it be soon?”
“To-morrow.”
Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her
breast.
“’Tis very far away yet!” she murmured; “why could they not have
done it to-day?”
“Then you are very unhappy?” asked the priest, after a silence.
“I am very cold,” she replied.
She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy
wretches who are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the
recluse of the Tour-Roland, and her teeth chattered.
The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from
beneath his cowl.
“Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!”
“Yes,” she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had
given her. “The day belongs to every one, why do they give me
only night?”
“Do you know,” resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, “why
you are here?”
“I thought I knew once,” she said, passing her thin fingers over
her eyelids, as though to aid her memory, “but I know no longer.”
All at once she began to weep like a child.
“I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am
afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body.”
“Well, follow me.”
So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen
to her very soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold
upon her.
“Oh!” she murmured, “’tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?”
The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the sinister
visage which had so long pursued her; that demon’s head which had
appeared at la Falourdel’s, above the head of her adored Phœbus;
that eye which she last had seen glittering beside a dagger.
This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus
driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture,
roused her from her stupor. It seemed to her that the sort of
veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. All the
details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal scene at
la Falourdel’s to her condemnation to the Tournelle, recurred to
her memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but
distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs,
half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering, were
revived by the sombre figure which stood before her, as the
approach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with
invisible ink, to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her
that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously.
“Hah!” she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive
trembling, “’tis the priest!”
Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated,
with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still
trembling.
The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long
been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor
lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently
contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has
suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning,
and holds it panting in his talons.
She began to murmur in a low voice,—
“Finish! finish! the last blow!” and she drew her head down in
terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of
the butcher’s axe.
“So I inspire you with horror?” he said at length.
She made no reply.
“Do I inspire you with horror?” he repeated.
Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.
“Yes,” said she, “the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he
has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months!
Had it not been for him, my God, how happy it should have been!
It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who
killed him! my Phœbus!”
Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,—
“Oh! wretch, who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then,
hate me so? Alas! what have you against me?”
“I love thee!” cried the priest.
Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an
idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes
of flame.
“Dost thou understand? I love thee!” he cried again.
“What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.
He resumed,—
“The love of a damned soul.”
Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the
weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.
“Listen,” said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come
over him; “you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I
have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively
interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night when
it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us.
Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.”
“So was I!” she sighed feebly.
“Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed
myself to be so. I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid
light. No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than
mine. Priests consulted me on chastity; doctors, on doctrines.
Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister to me, and a
sister sufficed. Not but that with age other ideas came to me.
More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman’s form passed
by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I
had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once,
convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a
miserable wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting,
prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my
soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women.
Moreover, I had but to open a book, and all the impure mists of
my brain vanished before the splendors of science. In a few
moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I
found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence
of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon
sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed
occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the
fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished
him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with me, it is the
fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal
force. Listen. One day—”
Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish
break from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.
He resumed,—
“One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I
reading then? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was
reading. The window opened upon a Square. I heard a sound of
tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my
revery, I glanced into the Square. What I beheld, others saw
beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human
eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was midday, the
sun was shining brightly,—a creature was dancing. A creature so
beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and
have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her
if she had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were
black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs
through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her
feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly
turning wheel. Around her head, in her black tresses, there were
disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and formed a coronet
of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with spangles, blue,
and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night.
Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like
two scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh!
what a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even
in the sunlight! Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised,
intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I
looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that
fate was seizing hold of me.”
The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he
continued,—
“Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and
hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan
had already set for me. The creature before my eyes possessed
that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell.
It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly
lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman’s soul. It was
an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light. At the
moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a
beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun
gave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon,
and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you
had come thence for my perdition. I believed it.”
Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added,
coldly,—
“I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by
little; your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the
mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened
was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt
pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once, you
began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was
still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee.
Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemed to me
that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I was
forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head
was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you
disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the
reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from
my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the
window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base.
The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas!
something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had
come upon me from which I could not flee.”
He made another pause and went on,—
“Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did
not know. I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister,
the altar, work, books,—follies! Oh, how hollow does science
sound when one in despair dashes against it a head full of
passions! Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth between
my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous
apparition which had one day crossed the space before me. But
this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre, funereal,
gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the
imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.
“Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever
in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt
even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I
desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to
see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I
had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with
reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would
efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I
sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you
twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you
always. Then—how stop myself on that slope of hell?—then I no
longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the
demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I
became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you
under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street
corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every
evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more
bewitched, more lost!
“I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy,
zingara. How could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a
trial would free me from the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno
d’Ast; he had her burned, and was cured. I knew it. I wanted to
try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in
front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no
more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of
abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There
were two of us. We already had you in our power, when that
miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin
your unhappiness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing
what to do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the
official.
“I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d’Ast. I also had a
confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that,
as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there
you could not escape from me; that you had already possessed me a
sufficiently long time to give me the right to possess you in my
turn. When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. ’Tis
madness to halt midway in the monstrous! The extreme of crime has
its deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight
upon the truss of straw in a dungeon!
“Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you
when we met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm
which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats
and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its
terrible sides which made me shrink back.
“Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought
would have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought
that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue
this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and
insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all
powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! ’tis fate which
has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the
machine which I had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the
end.
“One day,—again the sun was shining brilliantly—I behold a man
pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality
in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest.”
He ceased.
The young girl could find but one word:
“Oh, my Phœbus!”
“Not that name!” said the priest, grasping her arm violently.
“Utter not that name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, ’tis
that name which has ruined us! or, rather we have ruined each
other by the inexplicable play of fate! you are suffering, are
you not? you are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon
envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom
of your soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man
who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeon within me;
within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in my soul.
“Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I
was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of the
priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When
you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was
there.—Den of wolves!—It was my crime, it was my gallows that I
beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for every
witness, every proof, every plea; I could count each of your
steps in the painful path; I was still there when that ferocious
beast—oh! I had not foreseen torture! Listen. I followed you to
that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped and handled, half
naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your
foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and
die, that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I
should have felt such rapture,—I beheld it encased in that
horrible boot, which converts the limbs of a living being into
one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! while I looked on at that, I held
beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast.
When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a
second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that
it still bleeds.”
He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the
claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed
wound.
The prisoner recoiled with horror.
“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think
yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is.
Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with
all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the
least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s
salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the
other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God,
in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet;
to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams and one’s thoughts,
and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to
have nothing to offer her but a priest’s dirty cassock, which
will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s
jealousy and one’s rage, while she lavishes on a miserable,
blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that
body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much
sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of
another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to
think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for
whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to
behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in
torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the
leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the
fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks,
or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture
is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning
arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your
teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors which turn you incessantly, as
upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love, of jealousy, and
of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few ashes
on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration
which trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me
with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young
girl! Have pity upon me!”
The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against
the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and
listened to him.
When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low
voice,—
“Oh my Phœbus!”
The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.
“I beseech you,” he cried, “if you have any heart, do not repulse
me! Oh! I love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name,
unhappy girl, it is as though you crushed all the fibres of my
heart between your teeth. Mercy! If you come from hell I will go
thither with you. I have done everything to that end. The hell
where you are, shall be paradise; the sight of you is more
charming than that of God! Oh! speak! you will have none of me? I
should have thought the mountains would be shaken in their
foundations on the day when a woman would repulse such a love.
Oh! if you only would! Oh! how happy we might be. We would flee—I
would help you to flee,—we would go somewhere, we would seek that
spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest,
where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we
would pour our two souls into each other, and we would have a
thirst for ourselves which we would quench in common and
incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustible love.”
She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.
“Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!”
The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with
his eyes fixed upon his hand.
“Well, yes!” he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, “insult
me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us
make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the
Grève, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to
see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never
felt the power of my love for you.—Oh! follow me. You shall take
your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as
long as you will. But come. To-morrow! to-morrow! the gallows!
your execution! Oh! save yourself! spare me!”
He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag her
away.
She fixed her eye intently on him.
“What has become of my Phœbus?”
“Ah!” said the priest, releasing her arm, “you are pitiless.”
“What has become of Phœbus?” she repeated coldly.
“He is dead!” cried the priest.
“Dead!” said she, still icy and motionless “then why do you talk
to me of living?”
He was not listening to her.
“Oh! yes,” said he, as though speaking to himself, “he certainly
must be dead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his
heart with the point. Oh! my very soul was at the end of the
dagger!”
The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and
pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural
force.
“Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the
blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be
thine, priest! Never! never! Nothing shall unite us! not hell
itself! Go, accursed man! Never!”
The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled
his feet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again,
and slowly began the ascent of the steps which led to the door;
he opened the door and passed through it.
All at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear; it wore a
frightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and
despair,—
“I tell you he is dead!”
She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer
any sound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water
which made the pool palpitate amid the darkness.
CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.
I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than
the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her
child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for
Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a
shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has
so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk,
that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She
smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself
whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be
absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile
creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see
it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round
head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it
is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is
laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles
lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls
about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the
paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses,
without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes
the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and
earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays
around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun
which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets
of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her
heart melt as fire melts wax.
But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of
charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe,
become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe is no
longer anything but an instrument of torture which eternally
crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fibre
which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of
an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it.
One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark
blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents
from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of
wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Grève. She was
somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her ears in order
to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation, on her knees,
of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years.
This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already
said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more
to quit it except at death. The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland
alone knew how many bitter imprecations, touching complaints,
prayers and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that
charming bauble of rose-colored satin. Never was more despair
bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful thing.
It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently
than usual; and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud
and monotonous voice which rent the heart.
“Oh my daughter!” she said, “my daughter, my poor, dear little
child, so I shall never see thee more! It is over! It always
seems to me that it happened yesterday! My God! my God! it would
have been better not to give her to me than to take her away so
soon. Did you not know that our children are part of ourselves,
and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in
God? Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord!
to have taken her from me thus; you could never have looked at me
with her, when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she
laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my
breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you
would have taken pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me
the only love which lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so
miserable a creature, that you could not look at me before
condemning me?—Alas! Alas! here is the shoe; where is the foot?
where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter! my daughter!
what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees
have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is
not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one
minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for all
eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your garment
trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you would be
obliged to give me back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty
little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for
fifteen years? Good Virgin! good Virgin of heaven! my infant
Jesus has been taken from me, has been stolen from me; they
devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her
bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my
daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want
your angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh!
I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my
forehead, and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if
you keep my child from me! you see plainly that my arms are all
bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?—Oh! give me only salt
and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a
sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God, I am only a vile
sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion for
the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as through an
opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once, just once more, a
single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I
would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will
be grown up now!—Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I
shall never see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go
there myself. Oh! what misery to think that here is her shoe, and
that that is all!”
The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation
and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with
sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother who has lost her
child, it is always the first day. That grief never grows old.
The mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart
remains dark.
At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in
front of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or
struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest
corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said, that she sought
to plunge her head into the stone in order not to hear them. This
time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start, and
listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said,—
“They are going to hang a gypsy to-day.”
With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling
itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her
air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the Place de
Grève. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against the
permanent gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busying himself
with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain.
There were some people standing about.
The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked
nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question.
All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a
pretext of reading the public breviary, but who was much less
occupied with the “lectern of latticed iron,” than with the
gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from
time to time. She recognized monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a
holy man.
“Father,” she inquired, “whom are they about to hang yonder?”
The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her
question. Then he said,—
“I know not.”
“Some children said that it was a gypsy,” went on the recluse.
“I believe so,” said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.
“Sister,” said the archdeacon, “do you then hate the gypsies
heartily?”
“Do I hate them!” exclaimed the recluse, “they are vampires,
stealers of children! They devoured my little daughter, my child,
my only child! I have no longer any heart, they devoured it!”
She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.
“There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have cursed,”
she resumed; “it is a young one, of the age which my daughter
would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter. Every time that
that young viper passes in front of my cell, she sets my blood in
a ferment.”
“Well, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, icy as a sepulchral
statue; “that is the one whom you are about to see die.”
His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.
The recluse writhed her arms with joy.
“I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! Thanks,
priest!” she cried.
And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the
grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flashing,
with her shoulder striking against the wall, with the wild air of
a female wolf in a cage, who has long been famished, and who
feels the hour for her repast drawing near.
CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.
Phœbus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When
Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king, had
said to poor Esmeralda; “He is dying,” it was an error or a jest.
When the archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl; “He is
dead,” the fact is that he knew nothing about it, but that he
believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not doubt it,
that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to
give favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any
man would have done the same in his place.
It was not that Phœbus’s wound had not been serious, but it had
not been as much so as the archdeacon believed. The physician, to
whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him at the first
moment, had feared for his life during the space of a week, and
had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the upper
hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications
and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man
under the physician’s very nose. It was while he was still lying
on the leech’s pallet that he had submitted to the interrogations
of Philippe Lheulier and the official inquisitors, which had
annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself
better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment,
and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the
progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself
very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal
suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was
necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against la
Esmeralda. They had supposed Phœbus to be dead, and that was the
end of the matter.
Phœbus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his
company in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Isle-de-France, a
few stages from Paris.
After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this
suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous
figure in it. On the whole, he did not know what to think of the
whole affair. Superstitious, and not given to devoutness, like
every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to question
himself about this adventure, he did not feel assured as to the
goat, as to the singular fashion in which he had met La
Esmeralda, as to the no less strange manner in which she had
allowed him to divine her love, as to her character as a gypsy,
and lastly, as to the surly monk. He perceived in all these
incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress,
perhaps the devil; a comedy, in short, or to speak in the
language of that day, a very disagreeable mystery, in which he
played a very awkward part, the role of blows and derision. The
captain was quite put out of countenance about it; he experienced
that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably
defined,—
Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl.
Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised abroad,
that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any
case it would not go beyond the courts of the Tournelle. In this
he was not mistaken, there was then no _Gazette des Tribunaux;_
and as not a week passed which had not its counterfeiter to boil,
or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some one of the
innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to
seeing in all the squares the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed,
with sleeves stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the
ladders, and the pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it.
Fashionable society of that day hardly knew the name of the
victim who passed by at the corner of the street, and it was the
populace at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse
fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public
highways, like the braising-pan of the baker or the
slaughter-house of the knacker. The executioner was only a sort
of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.
Hence Phœbus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the
enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning
the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it
mattered little which to him), and as to the issue of the trial.
But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction,
Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phœbus’s heart, like the
physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.
Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village
of farriers, and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long line of
poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders the grand
road on both sides for half a league; a tail (queue), in short,
as its name imports.
Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a
charming dowry; accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and
assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohemian affair
must be completely finished and forgotten, the amorous cavalier
arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the Gondelaurier
mansion.
He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had
assembled in the Place du Parvis, before the portal of
Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was the month of May; he
supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some
festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly
ascended the stairs to his beautiful betrothed.
She was alone with her mother.
The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and
Phœbus’s long absences, still weighed on Fleur-de-Lys’s heart.
Nevertheless, when she beheld her captain enter, she thought him
so handsome, his doublet so new, his baldrick so shining, and his
air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble
damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blond
hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed entirely
in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of
coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were
swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better.
Phœbus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left
the village maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated with
Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to our officer so eager and gallant
an air, that his peace was immediately made. Madame de
Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big
arm-chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s
reproaches, they expired in tender cooings.
The young girl was seated near the window still embroidering her
grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her
chair, and she was addressing her caressing reproaches to him in
a low voice.
“What has become of you these two long months, wicked man?”
“I swear to you,” replied Phœbus, somewhat embarrassed by the
question, “that you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to
dreaming.”
She could not repress a smile.
“Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A
fine beauty, in sooth!”
“Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.
“And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to
say farewell?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to
avoid the second.
“But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to
see me a single time?”
Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed.
“Because—the service—and then, charming cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.
“Yes, wounded!”
“Wounded!”
The poor child was completely upset.
“Oh! do not be frightened at that,” said Phœbus, carelessly, “it
was nothing. A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?”
“What is that to me?” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her
beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Oh! you do not say what you
think when you speak thus. What sword cut was that? I wish to
know all.”
“Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fédy, you
know? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open
a few inches of skin for each other. That is all.”
The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of
honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In
fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with
fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely
reassured.
“Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phœbus!” said she. “I do
not know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a villanous man. And whence
arose this quarrel?”
Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre
power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a
means of extricating himself for his prowess.
“Oh! how do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair
cousin,” he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation,
“what noise is this in the Cathedral Square?”
He approached the window.
“Oh! _Mon Dieu_, fair cousin, how many people there are on the
Place!”
“I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys; “it appears that a witch is to
do penance this morning before the church, and thereafter to be
hung.”
The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda’s
affair was concluded, that he was but little disturbed by
Fleur-de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions.
“What is the name of this witch?”
“I do not know,” she replied.
“And what is she said to have done?”
She shrugged her white shoulders.
“I know not.”
“Oh, _mon Dieu Jésus!_” said her mother; “there are so many
witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing
their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in
the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his
register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window.
“Good Lord! you are right, Phœbus,” said she. “The rabble is
indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!
Do you know, Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The
entrance of King Charles VII., when, also, there were many
people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak
of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,—does it not?—the
effect of something very old, and upon me of something very
young. Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They
even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses
came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that
they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was
very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier
of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very
fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their
oriflammes waving red before the eye. There were some with
pennons and some with banners. How can I tell? the Sire de Calan
with a pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant with a banner; the Sire de
Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ’tis a sad thing to think that
all that has existed and exists no longer!”
The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager.
Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of his
betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance
plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This
gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phœbus, dazzled
by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can
any one love anything but a fair skin?”
Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to
him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring
sunshine.
“Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, “we are to
be married three months hence; swear to me that you have never
loved any other woman than myself.”
“I swear it, fair angel!” replied Phœbus, and his passionate
glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing
Fleur-de-Lys.
Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on
terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the
apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus observed it,
and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange
ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her
betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had
re-awakened, not with all its freshness but with all its ardor;
after all, there is no great harm in tasting one’s wheat while it
is still in the blade; I do not know whether these ideas passed
through his mind, but one thing is certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was
suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked
round and saw that her mother was no longer there.
“Good heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “how very warm I
am!”
“I think, in fact,” replied Phœbus, “that it cannot be far from
midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains.”
“No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, I
need air.”
And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she
rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.
Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her.
The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as
the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and
sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the timid
Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.
An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring
streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little
wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would not have
sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a thick hedge
of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this
thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial
bearings of the bishop. The large doors of the church were
closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the
Place, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of
thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in
a park of artillery.
The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The
spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort
which possess the privilege of bringing out and calling together
the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise
which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In
that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than
men.
From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the
general clamor.
“Ohé! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?”
“Fool! ’tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift!
the good God is going to cough Latin in her face! That is always
done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that you wish, go to
the Grève.”
“I will go there, afterwards.”
“Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a
confessor?”
“It appears so, La Bechaigne.”
“You see what a pagan she is!”
“’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to
deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a
layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of
the bishopric.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!”
This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon
the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with
that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle
behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling.
“Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she
would see your hand!”
At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of
Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The
last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when
all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense
shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs,
“There she is!”
Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not
see.
“Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?”
“No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes
which she had closed through fear.
A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by
cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched
upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The
sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the
crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode
several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their
black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques
Charmolue paraded at their head.
In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her
back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her
long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the
foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat
and shoulders.
Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a
raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and
knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the
charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower.
Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of
green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the
windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which
she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.
At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held
together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would
have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being
thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is
not made for such shocks.
“Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair
cousin, ’tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.”
So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on the
tumbrel. He was very pale.
“What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered.
“What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?”
Phœbus interrupted her.
“I do not know what you mean.”
He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose
jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had
just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of
penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment
having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch.
“What is the matter with you?” she said to Phœbus, “one would
say, that this woman had disturbed you.”
Phœbus forced a sneer,—
“Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!”
“Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the
end.”
The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat
reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her
eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely la
Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she
was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger,
because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was
pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same
degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of
Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate.
Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some
sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not
let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and
despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a
dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was
still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to
speak.
Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid
cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian,
we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed,
many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them.
The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.
It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves
in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst
of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of
the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges,
which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became
visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in
black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on
the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was
dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very
extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was
visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the
pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests
could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and,
at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the
church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over
the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy
psalms,—
“_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine;
salvum me fac, Deus!_”
“_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad animam
meam_.
“_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_.”
At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned
upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,—
“_Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam
æternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in
vitam._”[46]
This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from
afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life,
caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was
the mass for the dead.
The people listened devoutly.
The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness
in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as
though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to
assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word
in a low tone,—“Phœbus.”
They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat,
which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at
finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard
pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope
about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a
serpent following her.
Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and
a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The
halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later,
a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in
dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they
drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the
crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head,
immediately after the cross-bearer.
“Oh!” she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, “’tis he
again! the priest!”
It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the
sub-chanter, on his right, the chanter, armed with his official
wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide
open, intoning in a strong voice,—
“_De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam_.
“_Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris, et flumem
circumdedit me._”[47]
At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight
beneath the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of
silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale that more than
one person in the crowd thought that one of the marble bishops
who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had risen and was
come to receive upon the brink of the tomb, the woman who was
about to die.
She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that
they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow
wax; she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the
fatal contents of the apology; when they told her to respond with
_Amen_, she responded _Amen_. She only recovered life and force
when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw,
and himself advance alone towards her.
Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of
indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold.
The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she
beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and
desire, over her exposed form. Then he said aloud,—
“Young girl, have you asked God’s pardon for your faults and
shortcomings?”
He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that
he was receiving her last confession): “Will you have me? I can
still save you!”
She looked intently at him: “Begone, demon, or I will denounce
you!”
He gave vent to a horrible smile: “You will not be believed. You
will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have
me?”
“What have you done with my Phœbus?”
“He is dead!” said the priest.
At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head
mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the
balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside
Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes,
looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were
violently contorted.
“Well, die then!” he hissed between his teeth. “No one shall have
you.” Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a
funereal voice:—“_I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus
misericors!_”[48]
This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to
conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon
between the priest and the executioner.
The crowd knelt.
“_Kyrie eleison_,”[49] said the priests, who had remained beneath
the arch of the portal.
“_Kyrie eleison_,” repeated the throng in that murmur which runs
over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.
“_Amen_,” said the archdeacon.
He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his
breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of
priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the
cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of
the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees
in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,—
“_Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt_.”[50]
At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the
beadles’ halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the
nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last
hour of the condemned.
The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the
empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles, and
without voices.
The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to
be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to
notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, during this
entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the
grand portal which represents, according to some, the sacrifice
of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher’s alchemical
operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by
the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.
There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that
contemplation, but at length he turned round; and, at a signal
which he gave, two men clad in yellow, the executioner’s
assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more.
The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the
fatal cart, and proceeding to her last halting-place, was seized,
possibly, with some poignant clinging to life. She raised her
dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut
here and there by a blue trapezium or triangle; then she lowered
them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses;
all at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she
uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at
the corner of the Place, she had just caught sight of him, of her
friend, her lord, Phœbus, the other apparition of her life!
The judge had lied! the priest had lied! it was certainly he, she
could not doubt it; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his
brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by his side!
“Phœbus!” she cried, “my Phœbus!”
And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with love and
rapture, but they were bound.
Then she saw the captain frown, a beautiful young girl who was
leaning against him gazed at him with disdainful lips and
irritated eyes; then Phœbus uttered some words which did not
reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the window
opening upon the balcony, which closed after them.
“Phœbus!” she cried wildly, “can it be you believe it?” A
monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She
remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder
committed on the person of Phœbus de Châteaupers.
She had borne up until that moment. But this last blow was too
harsh. She fell lifeless on the pavement.
“Come,” said Charmolue, “carry her to the cart, and make an end
of it.”
No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the
kings, carved directly above the arches of the portal, a strange
spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with
such impassiveness, with a neck so strained, a visage so hideous
that, in his motley accoutrement of red and violet, he might have
been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths
the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters
for six hundred years. This spectator had missed nothing that had
taken place since midday in front of the portal of Notre-Dame.
And at the very beginning he had securely fastened to one of the
small columns a large knotted rope, one end of which trailed on
the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look on
tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted
past. Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent’s
assistants were preparing to execute Charmolue’s phlegmatic
order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery,
seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands; then he
was seen to glide down the façade, as a drop of rain slips down a
window-pane, rush to the two executioners with the swiftness of a
cat which has fallen from a roof, knock them down with two
enormous fists, pick up the gypsy with one hand, as a child would
her doll, and dash back into the church with a single bound,
lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a formidable
voice,—
“Sanctuary!”
This was done with such rapidity, that had it taken place at
night, the whole of it could have been seen in the space of a
single flash of lightning.
“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” repeated the crowd; and the clapping of
ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s single eye sparkle with joy
and pride.
This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She raised
her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them again
suddenly, as though terrified by her deliverer.
Charmolue was stupefied, as well as the executioners and the
entire escort. In fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the
condemned girl could not be touched. The cathedral was a place of
refuge. All temporal jurisdiction expired upon its threshold.
Quasimodo had halted beneath the great portal, his huge feet
seemed as solid on the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman
pillars. His great, bushy head sat low between his shoulders,
like the heads of lions, who also have a mane and no neck. He
held the young girl, who was quivering all over, suspended from
his horny hands like a white drapery; but he carried her with as
much care as though he feared to break her or blight her. One
would have said that he felt that she was a delicate, exquisite,
precious thing, made for other hands than his. There were moments
when he looked as if not daring to touch her, even with his
breath. Then, all at once, he would press her forcibly in his
arms, against his angular bosom, like his own possession, his
treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His
gnome’s eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness,
sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with
lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the crowd stamped
with enthusiasm, for, at that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of
his own. He was handsome; he, that orphan, that foundling, that
outcast, he felt himself august and strong, he gazed in the face
of that society from which he was banished, and in which he had
so powerfully intervened, of that human justice from which he had
wrenched its prey, of all those tigers whose jaws were forced to
remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, those
executioners, of all that force of the king which he, the meanest
of creatures, had just broken, with the force of God.
And then, it was touching to behold this protection which had
fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a
creature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. They were two
extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact
and aiding each other.
Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had
plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The populace,
fond of all prowess, sought him with their eyes, beneath the
gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily disappeared from
their acclamations. All at once, he was seen to re-appear at one
of the extremities of the gallery of the kings of France; he
traversed it, running like a madman, raising his conquest high in
his arms and shouting: “Sanctuary!” The crowd broke forth into
fresh applause. The gallery passed, he plunged once more into the
interior of the church. A moment later, he re-appeared upon the
upper platform, with the gypsy still in his arms, still running
madly, still crying, “Sanctuary!” and the throng applauded.
Finally, he made his appearance for the third time upon the
summit of the tower where hung the great bell; from that point he
seemed to be showing to the entire city the girl whom he had
saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice which was so rarely
heard, and which he never heard himself, repeated thrice with
frenzy, even to the clouds: “Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”
“Noël! Noël!” shouted the populace in its turn; and that immense
acclamation flew to astonish the crowd assembled at the Grève on
the other bank, and the recluse who was still waiting with her
eyes riveted on the gibbet.
BOOK NINTH.
CHAPTER I. DELIRIUM.
Claude Frollo was no longer in Notre-Dame when his adopted son so
abruptly cut the fatal web in which the archdeacon and the gypsy
were entangled. On returning to the sacristy he had torn off his
alb, cope, and stole, had flung all into the hands of the
stupefied beadle, had made his escape through the private door of
the cloister, had ordered a boatman of the Terrain to transport
him to the left bank of the Seine, and had plunged into the hilly
streets of the University, not knowing whither he was going,
encountering at every step groups of men and women who were
hurrying joyously towards the Pont Saint-Michel, in the hope of
still arriving in time to see the witch hung there,—pale, wild,
more troubled, more blind and more fierce than a night bird let
loose and pursued by a troop of children in broad daylight. He no
longer knew where he was, what he thought, or whether he were
dreaming. He went forward, walking, running, taking any street at
haphazard, making no choice, only urged ever onward away from the
Grève, the horrible Grève, which he felt confusedly, to be behind
him.
In this manner he skirted Mount Sainte-Geneviève, and finally
emerged from the town by the Porte Saint-Victor. He continued his
flight as long as he could see, when he turned round, the
turreted enclosure of the University, and the rare houses of the
suburb; but, when, at length, a rise of ground had completely
concealed from him that odious Paris, when he could believe
himself to be a hundred leagues distant from it, in the fields,
in the desert, he halted, and it seemed to him that he breathed
more freely.
Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see
clearly into his soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that
unhappy girl who had destroyed him, and whom he had destroyed. He
cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had
caused their two destinies to pursue up to their point of
intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without
mercy. He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity
of chastity, of science, of religion, of virtue, on the
uselessness of God. He plunged to his heart’s content in evil
thoughts, and in proportion as he sank deeper, he felt a Satanic
laugh burst forth within him.
And as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived
how large a space nature had prepared there for the passions, he
sneered still more bitterly. He stirred up in the depths of his
heart all his hatred, all his malevolence; and, with the cold
glance of a physician who examines a patient, he recognized the
fact that this malevolence was nothing but vitiated love; that
love, that source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible
things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted like
himself, in making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then
he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, when he
considered the most sinister side of his fatal passion, of that
corrosive, venomous malignant, implacable love, which had ended
only in the gibbet for one of them and in hell for the other;
condemnation for her, damnation for him.
And then his laughter came again, when he reflected that Phœbus
was alive; that after all, the captain lived, was gay and happy,
had handsomer doublets than ever, and a new mistress whom he was
conducting to see the old one hanged. His sneer redoubled its
bitterness when he reflected that out of the living beings whose
death he had desired, the gypsy, the only creature whom he did
not hate, was the only one who had not escaped him.
Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, and
there came to him a jealousy of an unprecedented sort. He
reflected that the people also, the entire populace, had had
before their eyes the woman whom he loved exposed almost naked.
He writhed his arms with agony as he thought that the woman whose
form, caught by him alone in the darkness would have been supreme
happiness, had been delivered up in broad daylight at full
noonday, to a whole people, clad as for a night of
voluptuousness. He wept with rage over all these mysteries of
love, profaned, soiled, laid bare, withered forever. He wept with
rage as he pictured to himself how many impure looks had been
gratified at the sight of that badly fastened shift, and that
this beautiful girl, this virgin lily, this cup of modesty and
delight, to which he would have dared to place his lips only
trembling, had just been transformed into a sort of public bowl,
whereat the vilest populace of Paris, thieves, beggars, lackeys,
had come to quaff in common an audacious, impure, and depraved
pleasure.
And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness which he
might have found upon earth, if she had not been a gypsy, and if
he had not been a priest, if Phœbus had not existed and if she
had loved him; when he pictured to himself that a life of
serenity and love would have been possible to him also, even to
him; that there were at that very moment, here and there upon the
earth, happy couples spending the hours in sweet converse beneath
orange trees, on the banks of brooks, in the presence of a
setting sun, of a starry night; and that if God had so willed, he
might have formed with her one of those blessed couples,—his
heart melted in tenderness and despair.
Oh! she! still she! It was this fixed idea which returned
incessantly, which tortured him, which ate into his brain, and
rent his vitals. He did not regret, he did not repent; all that
he had done he was ready to do again; he preferred to behold her
in the hands of the executioner rather than in the arms of the
captain. But he suffered; he suffered so that at intervals he
tore out handfuls of his hair to see whether it were not turning
white.
Among other moments there came one, when it occurred to him that
it was perhaps the very minute when the hideous chain which he
had seen that morning, was pressing its iron noose closer about
that frail and graceful neck. This thought caused the
perspiration to start from every pore.
There was another moment when, while laughing diabolically at
himself, he represented to himself la Esmeralda as he had seen
her on that first day, lively, careless, joyous, gayly attired,
dancing, winged, harmonious, and la Esmeralda of the last day, in
her scanty shift, with a rope about her neck, mounting slowly
with her bare feet, the angular ladder of the gallows; he figured
to himself this double picture in such a manner that he gave vent
to a terrible cry.
While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, bent,
uprooted everything in his soul, he gazed at nature around him.
At his feet, some chickens were searching the thickets and
pecking, enamelled beetles ran about in the sun; overhead, some
groups of dappled gray clouds were floating across the blue sky;
on the horizon, the spire of the Abbey Saint-Victor pierced the
ridge of the hill with its slate obelisk; and the miller of the
Copeaue hillock was whistling as he watched the laborious wings
of his mill turning. All this active, organized, tranquil life,
recurring around him under a thousand forms, hurt him. He resumed
his flight.
He sped thus across the fields until evening. This flight from
nature, life, himself, man, God, everything, lasted all day long.
Sometimes he flung himself face downward on the earth, and tore
up the young blades of wheat with his nails. Sometimes he halted
in the deserted street of a village, and his thoughts were so
intolerable that he grasped his head in both hands and tried to
tear it from his shoulders in order to dash it upon the pavement.
Towards the hour of sunset, he examined himself again, and found
himself nearly mad. The tempest which had raged within him ever
since the instant when he had lost the hope and the will to save
the gypsy,—that tempest had not left in his conscience a single
healthy idea, a single thought which maintained its upright
position. His reason lay there almost entirely destroyed. There
remained but two distinct images in his mind, la Esmeralda and
the gallows; all the rest was blank. Those two images united,
presented to him a frightful group; and the more he concentrated
what attention and thought was left to him, the more he beheld
them grow, in accordance with a fantastic progression, the one in
grace, in charm, in beauty, in light, the other in deformity and
horror; so that at last la Esmeralda appeared to him like a star,
the gibbet like an enormous, fleshless arm.
One remarkable fact is, that during the whole of this torture,
the idea of dying did not seriously occur to him. The wretch was
made so. He clung to life. Perhaps he really saw hell beyond it.
Meanwhile, the day continued to decline. The living being which
still existed in him reflected vaguely on retracing its steps. He
believed himself to be far away from Paris; on taking his
bearings, he perceived that he had only circled the enclosure of
the University. The spire of Saint-Sulpice, and the three lofty
needles of Saint Germain-des-Prés, rose above the horizon on his
right. He turned his steps in that direction. When he heard the
brisk challenge of the men-at-arms of the abbey, around the
crenelated, circumscribing wall of Saint-Germain, he turned
aside, took a path which presented itself between the abbey and
the lazar-house of the bourg, and at the expiration of a few
minutes found himself on the verge of the Pré-aux-Clercs. This
meadow was celebrated by reason of the brawls which went on there
night and day; it was the hydra of the poor monks of
Saint-Germain: _quod monachis Sancti-Germaini pratensis hydra
fuit, clericis nova semper dissidiorum capita suscitantibus_. The
archdeacon was afraid of meeting some one there; he feared every
human countenance; he had just avoided the University and the
Bourg Saint-Germain; he wished to re-enter the streets as late as
possible. He skirted the Pré-aux-Clercs, took the deserted path
which separated it from the Dieu-Neuf, and at last reached the
water’s edge. There Dom Claude found a boatman, who, for a few
farthings in Parisian coinage, rowed him up the Seine as far as
the point of the city, and landed him on that tongue of abandoned
land where the reader has already beheld Gringoire dreaming, and
which was prolonged beyond the king’s gardens, parallel to the
Ile du Passeur-aux-Vaches.
The monotonous rocking of the boat and the ripple of the water
had, in some sort, quieted the unhappy Claude. When the boatman
had taken his departure, he remained standing stupidly on the
strand, staring straight before him and perceiving objects only
through magnifying oscillations which rendered everything a sort
of phantasmagoria to him. The fatigue of a great grief not
infrequently produces this effect on the mind.
The sun had set behind the lofty Tour-de-Nesle. It was the
twilight hour. The sky was white, the water of the river was
white. Between these two white expanses, the left bank of the
Seine, on which his eyes were fixed, projected its gloomy mass
and, rendered ever thinner and thinner by perspective, it plunged
into the gloom of the horizon like a black spire. It was loaded
with houses, of which only the obscure outline could be
distinguished, sharply brought out in shadows against the light
background of the sky and the water. Here and there windows began
to gleam, like the holes in a brazier. That immense black obelisk
thus isolated between the two white expanses of the sky and the
river, which was very broad at this point, produced upon Dom
Claude a singular effect, comparable to that which would be
experienced by a man who, reclining on his back at the foot of
the tower of Strasbourg, should gaze at the enormous spire
plunging into the shadows of the twilight above his head. Only,
in this case, it was Claude who was erect and the obelisk which
was lying down; but, as the river, reflecting the sky, prolonged
the abyss below him, the immense promontory seemed to be as
boldly launched into space as any cathedral spire; and the
impression was the same. This impression had even one stronger
and more profound point about it, that it was indeed the tower of
Strasbourg, but the tower of Strasbourg two leagues in height;
something unheard of, gigantic, immeasurable; an edifice such as
no human eye has ever seen; a tower of Babel. The chimneys of the
houses, the battlements of the walls, the faceted gables of the
roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the tower of Nesle, all these
projections which broke the profile of the colossal obelisk added
to the illusion by displaying in eccentric fashion to the eye the
indentations of a luxuriant and fantastic sculpture.
Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he found himself,
believed that he saw, that he saw with his actual eyes, the bell
tower of hell; the thousand lights scattered over the whole
height of the terrible tower seemed to him so many porches of the
immense interior furnace; the voices and noises which escaped
from it seemed so many shrieks, so many death groans. Then he
became alarmed, he put his hands on his ears that he might no
longer hear, turned his back that he might no longer see, and
fled from the frightful vision with hasty strides.
But the vision was in himself.
When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each
other by the light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the
effect of a constant going and coming of spectres about him.
There were strange noises in his ears; extraordinary fancies
disturbed his brain. He saw neither houses, nor pavements, nor
chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of indeterminate objects
whose edges melted into each other. At the corner of the Rue de
la Barillerie, there was a grocer’s shop whose porch was
garnished all about, according to immemorial custom, with hoops
of tin from which hung a circle of wooden candles, which came in
contact with each other in the wind, and rattled like castanets.
He thought he heard a cluster of skeletons at Montfaucon clashing
together in the gloom.
“Oh!” he muttered, “the night breeze dashes them against each
other, and mingles the noise of their chains with the rattle of
their bones! Perhaps she is there among them!”
In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. After a
few strides he found himself on the Pont Saint-Michel. There was
a light in the window of a ground-floor room; he approached.
Through a cracked window he beheld a mean chamber which recalled
some confused memory to his mind. In that room, badly lighted by
a meagre lamp, there was a fresh, light-haired young man, with a
merry face, who amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very
audaciously attired young girl; and near the lamp sat an old
crone spinning and singing in a quavering voice. As the young man
did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman’s ditty
reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet
frightful,—
“Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!
File, file, ma quenouille,
File sa corde au bourreau,
Qui siffle dans le préau,
Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!
“La belle corde de chanvre!
Semez d’Issy jusqu’à Vanvre
Du chanvre et non pas du blé.
Le voleur n’a pas volé
La belle corde de chanvre.
“Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!
Pour voir la fille de joie,
Prendre au gibet chassieux,
Les fenêtres sont des yeux.
Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!”[51]
Thereupon the young man laughed and caressed the wench. The crone
was la Falourdel; the girl was a courtesan; the young man was his
brother Jehan.
He continued to gaze. That spectacle was as good as any other.
He saw Jehan go to a window at the end of the room, open it, cast
a glance on the quay, where in the distance blazed a thousand
lighted casements, and he heard him say as he closed the sash,—
“’Pon my soul! How dark it is; the people are lighting their
candles, and the good God his stars.”
Then Jehan came back to the hag, smashed a bottle standing on the
table, exclaiming,—
“Already empty, _cor-bœuf!_ and I have no more money! Isabeau, my
dear, I shall not be satisfied with Jupiter until he has changed
your two white nipples into two black bottles, where I may suck
wine of Beaune day and night.”
This fine pleasantry made the courtesan laugh, and Jehan left the
room.
Dom Claude had barely time to fling himself on the ground in
order that he might not be met, stared in the face and recognized
by his brother. Luckily, the street was dark, and the scholar was
tipsy. Nevertheless, he caught sight of the archdeacon prone upon
the earth in the mud.
“Oh! oh!” said he; “here’s a fellow who has been leading a jolly
life, to-day.”
He stirred up Dom Claude with his foot, and the latter held his
breath.
“Dead drunk,” resumed Jehan. “Come, he’s full. A regular leech
detached from a hogshead. He’s bald,” he added, bending down,
“’tis an old man! _Fortunate senex!_”
Then Dom Claude heard him retreat, saying,—
“’Tis all the same, reason is a fine thing, and my brother the
archdeacon is very happy in that he is wise and has money.”
Then the archdeacon rose to his feet, and ran without halting,
towards Notre-Dame, whose enormous towers he beheld rising above
the houses through the gloom.
At the instant when he arrived, panting, on the Place du Parvis,
he shrank back and dared not raise his eyes to the fatal edifice.
“Oh!” he said, in a low voice, “is it really true that such a
thing took place here, to-day, this very morning?”
Still, he ventured to glance at the church. The front was sombre;
the sky behind was glittering with stars. The crescent of the
moon, in her flight upward from the horizon, had paused at the
moment, on the summit of the light hand tower, and seemed to have
perched itself, like a luminous bird, on the edge of the
balustrade, cut out in black trefoils.
The cloister door was shut; but the archdeacon always carried
with him the key of the tower in which his laboratory was
situated. He made use of it to enter the church.
In the church he found the gloom and silence of a cavern. By the
deep shadows which fell in broad sheets from all directions, he
recognized the fact that the hangings for the ceremony of the
morning had not yet been removed. The great silver cross shone
from the depths of the gloom, powdered with some sparkling
points, like the milky way of that sepulchral night. The long
windows of the choir showed the upper extremities of their arches
above the black draperies, and their painted panes, traversed by
a ray of moonlight had no longer any hues but the doubtful colors
of night, a sort of violet, white and blue, whose tint is found
only on the faces of the dead. The archdeacon, on perceiving
these wan spots all around the choir, thought he beheld the
mitres of damned bishops. He shut his eyes, and when he opened
them again, he thought they were a circle of pale visages gazing
at him.
He started to flee across the church. Then it seemed to him that
the church also was shaking, moving, becoming endued with
animation, that it was alive; that each of the great columns was
turning into an enormous paw, which was beating the earth with
its big stone spatula, and that the gigantic cathedral was no
longer anything but a sort of prodigious elephant, which was
breathing and marching with its pillars for feet, its two towers
for trunks and the immense black cloth for its housings.
This fever or madness had reached such a degree of intensity that
the external world was no longer anything more for the unhappy
man than a sort of Apocalypse,—visible, palpable, terrible.
For one moment, he was relieved. As he plunged into the side
aisles, he perceived a reddish light behind a cluster of pillars.
He ran towards it as to a star. It was the poor lamp which
lighted the public breviary of Notre-Dame night and day, beneath
its iron grating. He flung himself eagerly upon the holy book in
the hope of finding some consolation, or some encouragement
there. The hook lay open at this passage of Job, over which his
staring eye glanced,—
“And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice,
and the hair of my flesh stood up.”
On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind man
feels when he feels himself pricked by the staff which he has
picked up. His knees gave way beneath him, and he sank upon the
pavement, thinking of her who had died that day. He felt so many
monstrous vapors pass and discharge themselves in his brain, that
it seemed to him that his head had become one of the chimneys of
hell.
It would appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no
longer thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the
demon. At length some strength returned to him; it occurred to
him to take refuge in his tower beside his faithful Quasimodo. He
rose; and, as he was afraid, he took the lamp from the breviary
to light his way. It was a sacrilege; but he had got beyond
heeding such a trifle now.
He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a secret
fright which must have been communicated to the rare passers-by
in the Place du Parvis by the mysterious light of his lamp,
mounting so late from loophole to loophole of the bell tower.
All at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found himself
at the door of the highest gallery. The air was cold; the sky was
filled with hurrying clouds, whose large, white flakes drifted
one upon another like the breaking up of river ice after the
winter. The crescent of the moon, stranded in the midst of the
clouds, seemed a celestial vessel caught in the ice-cakes of the
air.
He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, through the
railing of slender columns which unites the two towers, far away,
through a gauze of mists and smoke, the silent throng of the
roofs of Paris, pointed, innumerable, crowded and small like the
waves of a tranquil sea on a sum-mer night.
The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted to earth and heaven an
ashy hue.
At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice.
Midnight rang out. The priest thought of midday; twelve o’clock
had come back again.
“Oh!” he said in a very low tone, “she must be cold now.”
All at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at
the same instant, he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a form, a
woman, appear from the opposite angle of the tower. He started.
Beside this woman was a little goat, which mingled its bleat with
the last bleat of the clock.
He had strength enough to look. It was she.
She was pale, she was gloomy. Her hair fell over her shoulders as
in the morning; but there was no longer a rope on her neck, her
hands were no longer bound; she was free, she was dead.
She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her head.
She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the sky. The
supernatural goat followed her. He felt as though made of stone
and too heavy to flee. At every step which she took in advance,
he took one backwards, and that was all. In this way he retreated
once more beneath the gloomy arch of the stairway. He was chilled
by the thought that she might enter there also; had she done so,
he would have died of terror.
She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway,
and paused there for several minutes, stared intently into the
darkness, but without appearing to see the priest, and passed on.
She seemed taller to him than when she had been alive; he saw the
moon through her white robe; he heard her breath.
When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase again,
with the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing
himself to be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his
extinguished lamp still in his hand; and as he descended the
spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear a voice laughing and
repeating,—
“A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and
the hair of my flesh stood up.”
CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.
Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down
to the time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. These
sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and barbarous
jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a species of islands
which rose above the level of human justice. Every criminal who
landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many
places of asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of impunity by the
side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which strove to
correct each other. The palaces of the king, the hôtels of the
princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum.
Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was
temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a
refuge in 1467.
His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he
must beware of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he
fell back into the flood. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado,
kept good guard around the place of refuge, and lay in watch
incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a vessel. Hence,
condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a
cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey,
beneath the porch of a church; in this manner the asylum was a
prison as much as any other. It sometimes happened that a solemn
decree of parliament violated the asylum and restored the
condemned man to the executioner; but this was of rare
occurrence. Parliaments were afraid of the bishops, and when
there was friction between these two robes, the gown had but a
poor chance against the cassock. Sometimes, however, as in the
affair of the assassins of Petit-Jean, the headsman of Paris, and
in that of Emery Rousseau, the murderer of Jean Valleret, justice
overleaped the church and passed on to the execution of its
sentences; but unless by virtue of a decree of Parliament, woe to
him who violated a place of asylum with armed force! The reader
knows the manner of death of Robert de Clermont, Marshal of
France, and of Jean de Châlons, Marshal of Champagne; and yet the
question was only of a certain Perrin Marc, the clerk of a
money-changer, a miserable assassin; but the two marshals had
broken the doors of St. Méry. Therein lay the enormity.
Such respect was cherished for places of refuge that, according
to tradition, animals even felt it at times. Aymoire relates that
a stag, being chased by Dagobert, having taken refuge near the
tomb of Saint-Denis, the pack of hounds stopped short and barked.
Churches generally had a small apartment prepared for the
reception of supplicants. In 1407, Nicolas Flamel caused to be
built on the vaults of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, a chamber
which cost him four livres six sous, sixteen farthings, parisis.
At Notre-Dame it was a tiny cell situated on the roof of the side
aisle, beneath the flying buttresses, precisely at the spot where
the wife of the present janitor of the towers has made for
herself a garden, which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon what
a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a porter’s wife is to a
Semiramis.
It was here that Quasimodo had deposited la Esmeralda, after his
wild and triumphant course. As long as that course lasted, the
young girl had been unable to recover her senses, half
unconscious, half awake, no longer feeling anything, except that
she was mounting through the air, floating in it, flying in it,
that something was raising her above the earth. From time to time
she heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice of Quasimodo in her
ear; she half opened her eyes; then below her she confusedly
beheld Paris checkered with its thousand roofs of slate and
tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, above her head the frightful
and joyous face of Quasimodo. Then her eyelids drooped again; she
thought that all was over, that they had executed her during her
swoon, and that the misshapen spirit which had presided over her
destiny, had laid hold of her and was bearing her away. She dared
not look at him, and she surrendered herself to her fate. But
when the bellringer, dishevelled and panting, had deposited her
in the cell of refuge, when she felt his huge hands gently
detaching the cord which bruised her arms, she felt that sort of
shock which awakens with a start the passengers of a vessel which
runs aground in the middle of a dark night. Her thoughts awoke
also, and returned to her one by one. She saw that she was in
Notre-Dame; she remembered having been torn from the hands of the
executioner; that Phœbus was alive, that Phœbus loved her no
longer; and as these two ideas, one of which shed so much
bitterness over the other, presented themselves simultaneously to
the poor condemned girl; she turned to Quasimodo, who was
standing in front of her, and who terrified her; she said to
him,—
“Why have you saved me?”
He gazed at her with anxiety, as though seeking to divine what
she was saying to him. She repeated her question. Then he gave
her a profoundly sorrowful glance and fled. She was astonished.
A few moments later he returned, bearing a package which he cast
at her feet. It was clothing which some charitable women had left
on the threshold of the church for her.
Then she dropped her eyes upon herself and saw that she was
almost naked, and blushed. Life had returned.
Quasimodo appeared to experience something of this modesty. He
covered his eyes with his large hand and retired once more, but
slowly.
She made haste to dress herself. The robe was a white one with a
white veil,—the garb of a novice of the Hôtel-Dieu.
She had barely finished when she beheld Quasimodo returning. He
carried a basket under one arm and a mattress under the other. In
the basket there was a bottle, bread, and some provisions. He set
the basket on the floor and said, “Eat!” He spread the mattress
on the flagging and said, “Sleep.”
It was his own repast, it was his own bed, which the bellringer
had gone in search of.
The gypsy raised her eyes to thank him, but she could not
articulate a word. She dropped her head with a quiver of terror.
Then he said to her.—
“I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not? Do not look at me;
only listen to me. During the day you will remain here; at night
you can walk all over the church. But do not leave the church
either by day or by night. You would be lost. They would kill
you, and I should die.”
She was touched and raised her head to answer him. He had
disappeared. She found herself alone once more, meditating upon
the singular words of this almost monstrous being, and struck by
the sound of his voice, which was so hoarse yet so gentle.
Then she examined her cell. It was a chamber about six feet
square, with a small window and a door on the slightly sloping
plane of the roof formed of flat stones. Many gutters with the
figures of animals seemed to be bending down around her, and
stretching their necks in order to stare at her through the
window. Over the edge of her roof she perceived the tops of
thousands of chimneys which caused the smoke of all the fires in
Paris to rise beneath her eyes. A sad sight for the poor gypsy, a
foundling, condemned to death, an unhappy creature, without
country, without family, without a hearthstone.
At the moment when the thought of her isolation thus appeared to
her more poignant than ever, she felt a bearded and hairy head
glide between her hands, upon her knees. She started (everything
alarmed her now) and looked. It was the poor goat, the agile
Djali, which had made its escape after her, at the moment when
Quasimodo had put to flight Charmolue’s brigade, and which had
been lavishing caresses on her feet for nearly an hour past,
without being able to win a glance. The gypsy covered him with
kisses.
“Oh! Djali!” she said, “how I have forgotten thee! And so thou
still thinkest of me! Oh! thou art not an ingrate!”
At the same time, as though an invisible hand had lifted the
weight which had repressed her tears in her heart for so long,
she began to weep, and, in proportion as her tears flowed, she
felt all that was most acrid and bitter in her grief depart with
them.
Evening came, she thought the night so beautiful that she made
the circuit of the elevated gallery which surrounds the church.
It afforded her some relief, so calm did the earth appear when
viewed from that height.
CHAPTER III. DEAF.
On the following morning, she perceived on awaking, that she had
been asleep. This singular thing astonished her. She had been so
long unaccustomed to sleep! A joyous ray of the rising sun
entered through her window and touched her face. At the same time
with the sun, she beheld at that window an object which
frightened her, the unfortunate face of Quasimodo. She
involuntarily closed her eyes again, but in vain; she fancied
that she still saw through the rosy lids that gnome’s mask,
one-eyed and gap-toothed. Then, while she still kept her eyes
closed, she heard a rough voice saying, very gently,—
“Be not afraid. I am your friend. I came to watch you sleep. It
does not hurt you if I come to see you sleep, does it? What
difference does it make to you if I am here when your eyes are
closed! Now I am going. Stay, I have placed myself behind the
wall. You can open your eyes again.”
There was something more plaintive than these words, and that was
the accent in which they were uttered. The gypsy, much touched,
opened her eyes. He was, in fact, no longer at the window. She
approached the opening, and beheld the poor hunchback crouching
in an angle of the wall, in a sad and resigned attitude. She made
an effort to surmount the repugnance with which he inspired her.
“Come,” she said to him gently. From the movement of the gypsy’s
lips, Quasimodo thought that she was driving him away; then he
rose and retired limping, slowly, with drooping head, without
even daring to raise to the young girl his gaze full of despair.
“Do come,” she cried, but he continued to retreat. Then she
darted from her cell, ran to him, and grasped his arm. On feeling
her touch him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb. He raised his
suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading him back to her
quarters, his whole face beamed with joy and tenderness. She
tried to make him enter the cell; but he persisted in remaining
on the threshold. “No, no,” said he; “the owl enters not the nest
of the lark.”
Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her goat
asleep at her feet. Both remained motionless for several moments,
considering in silence, she so much grace, he so much ugliness.
Every moment she discovered some fresh deformity in Quasimodo.
Her glance travelled from his knock knees to his humped back,
from his humped back to his only eye. She could not comprehend
the existence of a being so awkwardly fashioned. Yet there was so
much sadness and so much gentleness spread over all this, that
she began to become reconciled to it.
He was the first to break the silence. “So you were telling me to
return?”
She made an affirmative sign of the head, and said, “Yes.”
He understood the motion of the head. “Alas!” he said, as though
hesitating whether to finish, “I am—I am deaf.”
“Poor man!” exclaimed the Bohemian, with an expression of kindly
pity.
He began to smile sadly.
“You think that that was all that I lacked, do you not? Yes, I am
deaf, that is the way I am made. ’Tis horrible, is it not? You
are so beautiful!”
There lay in the accents of the wretched man so profound a
consciousness of his misery, that she had not the strength to say
a word. Besides, he would not have heard her. He went on,—
“Never have I seen my ugliness as at the present moment. When I
compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor
unhappy monster that I am! Tell me, I must look to you like a
beast. You, you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of
a bird! I am something frightful, neither man nor animal, I know
not what, harder, more trampled under foot, and more unshapely
than a pebble stone!”
Then he began to laugh, and that laugh was the most heartbreaking
thing in the world. He continued,—
“Yes, I am deaf; but you shall talk to me by gestures, by signs.
I have a master who talks with me in that way. And then, I shall
very soon know your wish from the movement of your lips, from
your look.”
“Well!” she interposed with a smile, “tell me why you saved me.”
He watched her attentively while she was speaking.
“I understand,” he replied. “You ask me why I saved you. You have
forgotten a wretch who tried to abduct you one night, a wretch to
whom you rendered succor on the following day on their infamous
pillory. A drop of water and a little pity,—that is more than I
can repay with my life. You have forgotten that wretch; but he
remembers it.”
She listened to him with profound tenderness. A tear swam in the
eye of the bellringer, but did not fall. He seemed to make it a
sort of point of honor to retain it.
“Listen,” he resumed, when he was no longer afraid that the tear
would escape; “our towers here are very high, a man who should
fall from them would be dead before touching the pavement; when
it shall please you to have me fall, you will not have to utter
even a word, a glance will suffice.”
Then he rose. Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccentric being
still aroused some compassion in her. She made him a sign to
remain.
“No, no,” said he; “I must not remain too long. I am not at my
ease. It is out of pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I
shall go to some place where I can see you without your seeing
me: it will be better so.”
He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.
“Here,” said he, “when you have need of me, when you wish me to
come, when you will not feel too much horror at the sight of me,
use this whistle. I can hear this sound.”
He laid the whistle on the floor and fled.
CHAPTER IV. EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.
Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la
Esmeralda. Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing
which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long
in one extremity. The gypsy had suffered so much, that nothing
was left her but astonishment. With security, hope had returned
to her. She was outside the pale of society, outside the pale of
life, but she had a vague feeling that it might not be impossible
to return to it. She was like a dead person, who should hold in
reserve the key to her tomb.
She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted her,
gradually departing. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue,
Jacques Charmolue, were effaced from her mind, all, even the
priest.
And then, Phœbus was alive; she was sure of it, she had seen him.
To her the fact of Phœbus being alive was everything. After the
series of fatal shocks which had overturned everything within
her, she had found but one thing intact in her soul, one
sentiment,—her love for the captain. Love is like a tree; it
sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through our
whole being, and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart
in ruins.
And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is
this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid
than when it has no reason in it.
La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no
doubt. No doubt it was terrible that he also should have been
deceived; that he should have believed that impossible thing,
that he could have conceived of a stab dealt by her who would
have given a thousand lives for him. But, after all, she must not
be too angry with him for it; had she not confessed her crime?
had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to torture? The
fault was entirely hers. She should have allowed her finger nails
to be torn out rather than such a word to be wrenched from her.
In short, if she could but see Phœbus once more, for a single
minute, only one word would be required, one look, in order to
undeceive him, to bring him back. She did not doubt it. She was
astonished also at many singular things, at the accident of
Phœbus’s presence on the day of the penance, at the young girl
with whom he had been. She was his sister, no doubt. An
unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it,
because she needed to believe that Phœbus still loved her, and
loved her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was
needed, simple and credulous as she was? And then, in this
matter, were not appearances much more against her than against
him? Accordingly, she waited. She hoped.
Let us add that the church, that vast church, which surrounded
her on every side, which guarded her, which saved her, was itself
a sovereign tranquillizer. The solemn lines of that architecture,
the religious attitude of all the objects which surrounded the
young girl, the serene and pious thoughts which emanated, so to
speak, from all the pores of that stone, acted upon her without
her being aware of it. The edifice had also sounds fraught with
such benediction and such majesty, that they soothed this ailing
soul. The monotonous chanting of the celebrants, the responses of
the people to the priest, sometimes inarticulate, sometimes
thunderous, the harmonious trembling of the painted windows, the
organ, bursting forth like a hundred trumpets, the three
belfries, humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra
on which bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending
incessantly from the voice of a throng to that of one bell,
dulled her memory, her imagination, her grief. The bells, in
particular, lulled her. It was something like a powerful
magnetism which those vast instruments shed over her in great
waves.
Thus every sunrise found her more calm, breathing better, less
pale. In proportion as her inward wounds closed, her grace and
beauty blossomed once more on her countenance, but more
thoughtful, more reposeful. Her former character also returned to
her, somewhat even of her gayety, her pretty pout, her love for
her goat, her love for singing, her modesty. She took care to
dress herself in the morning in the corner of her cell for fear
some inhabitants of the neighboring attics might see her through
the window.
When the thought of Phœbus left her time, the gypsy sometimes
thought of Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole connection,
the sole communication which remained to her with men, with the
living. Unfortunate girl! she was more outside the world than
Quasimodo. She understood not in the least the strange friend
whom chance had given her. She often reproached herself for not
feeling a gratitude which should close her eyes, but decidedly,
she could not accustom herself to the poor bellringer. He was too
ugly.
She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the
ground. This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance
from time to time during the first few days. She did her best not
to turn aside with too much repugnance when he came to bring her
her basket of provisions or her jug of water, but he always
perceived the slightest movement of this sort, and then he
withdrew sadly.
Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood
pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the
goat and the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and
ill-formed head,—
“My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should
like to be wholly a beast like that goat.”
She gazed at him in amazement.
He replied to the glance,—
“Oh! I well know why,” and he went away.
On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell
(which he never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was
singing an old Spanish ballad, the words of which she did not
understand, but which had lingered in her ear because the gypsy
women had lulled her to sleep with it when she was a little
child. At the sight of that villanous form which made its
appearance so abruptly in the middle of her song, the young girl
paused with an involuntary gesture of alarm. The unhappy
bellringer fell upon his knees on the threshold, and clasped his
large, misshapen hands with a suppliant air. “Oh!” he said,
sorrowfully, “continue, I implore you, and do not drive me away.”
She did not wish to pain him, and resumed her lay, trembling all
over. By degrees, however, her terror disappeared, and she
yielded herself wholly to the slow and melancholy air which she
was singing. He remained on his knees with hands clasped, as in
prayer, attentive, hardly breathing, his gaze riveted upon the
gypsy’s brilliant eyes.
On another occasion, he came to her with an awkward and timid
air. “Listen,” he said, with an effort; “I have something to say
to you.” She made him a sign that she was listening. Then he
began to sigh, half opened his lips, appeared for a moment to be
on the point of speaking, then he looked at her again, shook his
head, and withdrew slowly, with his brow in his hand, leaving the
gypsy stupefied. Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the
wall, there was one to whom he was particularly attached, and
with which he often seemed to exchange fraternal glances. Once
the gypsy heard him saying to it,—
“Oh! why am not I of stone, like you!”
At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had advanced to the edge of
the roof, and was looking into the Place over the pointed roof of
Saint-Jean le Rond. Quasimodo was standing behind her. He had
placed himself in that position in order to spare the young girl,
as far as possible, the displeasure of seeing him. All at once
the gypsy started, a tear and a flash of joy gleamed
simultaneously in her eyes, she knelt on the brink of the roof
and extended her arms towards the Place with anguish, exclaiming:
“Phœbus! come! come! a word, a single word in the name of heaven!
Phœbus! Phœbus!” Her voice, her face, her gesture, her whole
person bore the heartrending expression of a shipwrecked man who
is making a signal of distress to the joyous vessel which is
passing afar off in a ray of sunlight on the horizon.
Quasimodo leaned over the Place, and saw that the object of this
tender and agonizing prayer was a young man, a captain, a
handsome cavalier all glittering with arms and decorations,
prancing across the end of the Place, and saluting with his plume
a beautiful lady who was smiling at him from her balcony.
However, the officer did not hear the unhappy girl calling him;
he was too far away.
But the poor deaf man heard. A profound sigh heaved his breast;
he turned round; his heart was swollen with all the tears which
he was swallowing; his convulsively-clenched fists struck against
his head, and when he withdrew them there was a bunch of red hair
in each hand.
The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as he
gnashed his teeth,—
“Damnation! That is what one should be like! ’Tis only necessary
to be handsome on the outside!”
Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraordinary
agitation,—
“Oh! there he is alighting from his horse! He is about to enter
that house!—Phœbus!—He does not hear me! Phœbus!—How wicked that
woman is to speak to him at the same time with me! Phœbus!
Phœbus!”
The deaf man gazed at her. He understood this pantomime. The poor
bellringer’s eye filled with tears, but he let none fall. All at
once he pulled her gently by the border of her sleeve. She turned
round. He had assumed a tranquil air; he said to her,—
“Would you like to have me bring him to you?”
She uttered a cry of joy.
“Oh! go! hasten! run! quick! that captain! that captain! bring
him to me! I will love you for it!”
She clasped his knees. He could not refrain from shaking his head
sadly.
“I will bring him to you,” he said, in a weak voice. Then he
turned his head and plunged down the staircase with great
strides, stifling with sobs.
When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything except the
handsome horse hitched at the door of the Gondelaurier house; the
captain had just entered there.
He raised his eyes to the roof of the church. La Esmeralda was
there in the same spot, in the same attitude. He made her a sad
sign with his head; then he planted his back against one of the
stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch, determined to wait until
the captain should come forth.
In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days which
precede a wedding. Quasimodo beheld many people enter, but no one
come out. He cast a glance towards the roof from time to time;
the gypsy did not stir any more than himself. A groom came and
unhitched the horse and led it to the stable of the house.
The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la Esmeralda
on the roof, Phœbus, no doubt, at the feet of Fleur-de-Lys.
At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night. Quasimodo
fixed his gaze in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon she was no more
than a whiteness amid the twilight; then nothing. All was
effaced, all was black.
Quasimodo beheld the front windows from top to bottom of the
Gondelaurier mansion illuminated; he saw the other casements in
the Place lighted one by one, he also saw them extinguished to
the very last, for he remained the whole evening at his post. The
officer did not come forth. When the last passers-by had returned
home, when the windows of all the other houses were extinguished,
Quasimodo was left entirely alone, entirely in the dark. There
were at that time no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame.
Meanwhile, the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion remained
lighted, even after midnight. Quasimodo, motionless and
attentive, beheld a throng of lively, dancing shadows pass
athwart the many-colored painted panes. Had he not been deaf, he
would have heard more and more distinctly, in proportion as the
noise of sleeping Paris died away, a sound of feasting, laughter,
and music in the Gondelaurier mansion.
Towards one o’clock in the morning, the guests began to take
their leave. Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched them all
pass out through the porch illuminated with torches. None of them
was the captain.
He was filled with sad thoughts; at times he looked upwards into
the air, like a person who is weary of waiting. Great black
clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks beneath the
starry dome of night. One would have pronounced them spiders’
webs of the vault of heaven.
In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long window on the
balcony, whose stone balustrade projected above his head, open
mysteriously. The frail glass door gave passage to two persons,
and closed noiselessly behind them; it was a man and a woman.
It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in
recognizing in the man the handsome captain, in the woman the
young lady whom he had seen welcome the officer in the morning
from that very balcony. The place was perfectly dark, and a
double crimson curtain which had fallen across the door the very
moment it closed again, allowed no light to reach the balcony
from the apartment.
The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man could
judge, without hearing a single one of their words, appeared to
abandon themselves to a very tender tête-à-tête. The young girl
seemed to have allowed the officer to make a girdle for her of
his arm, and gently repulsed a kiss.
Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was all the
more pleasing to witness because it was not meant to be seen. He
contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that happiness. After
all, nature was not dumb in the poor fellow, and his human
sensibility, all maliciously contorted as it was, quivered no
less than any other. He thought of the miserable portion which
Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of
love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that he should
never do anything but behold the felicity of others. But that
which rent his heart most in this sight, that which mingled
indignation with his anger, was the thought of what the gypsy
would suffer could she behold it. It is true that the night was
very dark, that la Esmeralda, if she had remained at her post
(and he had no doubt of this), was very far away, and that it was
all that he himself could do to distinguish the lovers on the
balcony. This consoled him.
Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and more animated. The
young lady appeared to be entreating the officer to ask nothing
more of her. Of all this Quasimodo could distinguish only the
beautiful clasped hands, the smiles mingled with tears, the young
girl’s glances directed to the stars, the eyes of the captain
lowered ardently upon her.
Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but
feebly, the door of the balcony suddenly opened once more and an
old dame appeared; the beauty seemed confused, the officer
assumed an air of displeasure, and all three withdrew.
A moment later, a horse was champing his bit under the porch, and
the brilliant officer, enveloped in his night cloak, passed
rapidly before Quasimodo.
The bellringer allowed him to turn the corner of the street, then
he ran after him with his ape-like agility, shouting: “Hey there!
captain!”
The captain halted.
“What wants this knave with me?” he said, catching sight through
the gloom of that hipshot form which ran limping after him.
Meanwhile, Quasimodo had caught up with him, and had boldly
grasped his horse’s bridle: “Follow me, captain; there is one
here who desires to speak with you!
“_Cornemahom_!” grumbled Phœbus, “here’s a villanous; ruffled
bird which I fancy I have seen somewhere. Holà master, will you
let my horse’s bridle alone?”
“Captain,” replied the deaf man, “do you not ask me who it is?”
“I tell you to release my horse,” retorted Phœbus, impatiently.
“What means the knave by clinging to the bridle of my steed? Do
you take my horse for a gallows?”
Quasimodo, far from releasing the bridle, prepared to force him
to retrace his steps. Unable to comprehend the captain’s
resistance, he hastened to say to him,—
“Come, captain, ’tis a woman who is waiting for you.” He added
with an effort: “A woman who loves you.”
“A rare rascal!” said the captain, “who thinks me obliged to go
to all the women who love me! or who say they do. And what if, by
chance, she should resemble you, you face of a screech-owl? Tell
the woman who has sent you that I am about to marry, and that she
may go to the devil!”
“Listen,” exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking to overcome his
hesitation with a word, “come, monseigneur! ’tis the gypsy whom
you know!”
This word did, indeed, produce a great effect on Phœbus, but not
of the kind which the deaf man expected. It will be remembered
that our gallant officer had retired with Fleur-de-Lys several
moments before Quasimodo had rescued the condemned girl from the
hands of Charmolue. Afterwards, in all his visits to the
Gondelaurier mansion he had taken care not to mention that woman,
the memory of whom was, after all, painful to him; and on her
side, Fleur-de-Lys had not deemed it politic to tell him that the
gypsy was alive. Hence Phœbus believed poor “Similar” to be dead,
and that a month or two had elapsed since her death. Let us add
that for the last few moments the captain had been reflecting on
the profound darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness,
the sepulchral voice of the strange messenger; that it was past
midnight; that the street was deserted, as on the evening when
the surly monk had accosted him; and that his horse snorted as it
looked at Quasimodo.
“The gypsy!” he exclaimed, almost frightened. “Look here, do you
come from the other world?”
And he laid his hand on the hilt of his dagger.
“Quick, quick,” said the deaf man, endeavoring to drag the horse
along; “this way!”
Phœbus dealt him a vigorous kick in the breast.
Quasimodo’s eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himself on the
captain. Then he drew himself up stiffly and said,—
“Oh! how happy you are to have some one who loves you!”
He emphasized the words “some one,” and loosing the horse’s
bridle,—
“Begone!”
Phœbus spurred on in all haste, swearing. Quasimodo watched him
disappear in the shades of the street.
“Oh!” said the poor deaf man, in a very low voice; “to refuse
that!”
He re-entered Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp and climbed to the
tower again. The gypsy was still in the same place, as he had
supposed.
She flew to meet him as far off as she could see him. “Alone!”
she cried, clasping her beautiful hands sorrowfully.
“I could not find him,” said Quasimodo coldly.
“You should have waited all night,” she said angrily.
He saw her gesture of wrath, and understood the reproach.
“I will lie in wait for him better another time,” he said,
dropping his head.
“Begone!” she said to him.
He left her. She was displeased with him. He preferred to have
her abuse him rather than to have afflicted her. He had kept all
the pain to himself.
From that day forth, the gypsy no longer saw him. He ceased to
come to her cell. At the most she occasionally caught a glimpse
at the summit of the towers, of the bellringer’s face turned
sadly to her. But as soon as she perceived him, he disappeared.
We must admit that she was not much grieved by this voluntary
absence on the part of the poor hunchback. At the bottom of her
heart she was grateful to him for it. Moreover, Quasimodo did not
deceive himself on this point.
She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius
about her. Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand
during her slumbers. One morning she found a cage of birds on her
window. There was a piece of sculpture above her window which
frightened her. She had shown this more than once in Quasimodo’s
presence. One morning, for all these things happened at night,
she no longer saw it, it had been broken. The person who had
climbed up to that carving must have risked his life.
Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath
the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song,
as though to lull her to sleep. The lines were unrhymed, such as
a deaf person can make.
Ne regarde pas la figure,
Jeune fille, regarde le cœur.
Le cœur d’un beau jeune homme est souvent difforme.
Il y a des cœurs où l’amour ne se conserve pas.
Jeune fille, le sapin n’est pas beau,
N’est pas beau comme le peuplier,
Mais il garde son feuillage l’hiver.
Hélas! à quoi bon dire cela?
Ce qui n’est pas beau a tort d’être;
La beauté n’aime que la beauté,
Avril tourne le dos à janvier.
La beauté est parfaite,
La beauté peut tout,
La beauté est la seule chose qui n’existe pas à demi.
Le corbeau ne vole que le jour,
Le hibou ne vole que la nuit,
Le cygne vole la nuit et le jour.[52]
One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled
with flowers. One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but
cracked vase of glass. It had allowed the water with which it had
been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were
withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common,
but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained
fresh and crimson.
I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda
took the faded nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.
That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower.
She troubled herself very little about it. She passed her days in
caressing Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house,
in talking to herself about Phœbus, and in crumbling up her bread
for the swallows.
She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo. The poor
bellringer seemed to have disappeared from the church. One night,
nevertheless, when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her
handsome captain, she heard something breathing near her cell.
She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon, a shapeless
mass lying across her door on the outside. It was Quasimodo
asleep there upon the stones.
CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.
In the meantime, public rumor had informed the archdeacon of the
miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he
learned it, he knew not what his sensations were. He had
reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. In that matter he was
tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering. The
human heart (Dom Claude had meditated upon these matters) can
contain only a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is
saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop
more to enter it.
Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an
end on this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive,
and Phœbus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life,
were beginning again. And Claude was weary of all this.
When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the
cloister. He appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor
at the services. He closed his door against all, even against the
bishop. He remained thus immured for several weeks. He was
believed to be ill. And so he was, in fact.
What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the
unfortunate man contending? Was he giving final battle to his
formidable passion? Was he concocting a final plan of death for
her and of perdition for himself?
His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to
his door, knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score
of times. Claude did not open.
He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his
window. From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see
la Esmeralda’s chamber. He often saw herself with her goat,
sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the little attentions of
the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate and submissive
ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and
memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled the singular
look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain
evening. He asked himself what motive could have impelled
Quasimodo to save her. He was the witness of a thousand little
scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of
which, viewed from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared
very tender to him. He distrusted the capriciousness of women.
Then he felt a jealousy which he could never have believed
possible awakening within him, a jealousy which made him redden
with shame and indignation: “One might condone the captain, but
this one!” This thought upset him.
His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the gypsy
was alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb which had
persecuted him for a whole day vanished, and the flesh returned
to goad him. He turned and twisted on his couch at the thought
that the dark-skinned maiden was so near him.
Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to
him in all the attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most.
He beheld her outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes
closed, her beautiful bare throat covered with Phœbus’s blood, at
that moment of bliss when the archdeacon had imprinted on her
pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy girl, though half
dead, had felt. He beheld her, again, stripped by the savage
hands of the torturers, allowing them to bare and to enclose in
the boot with its iron screw, her tiny foot, her delicate rounded
leg, her white and supple knee. Again he beheld that ivory knee
which alone remained outside of Torterue’s horrible apparatus.
Lastly, he pictured the young girl in her shift, with the rope
about her neck, shoulders bare, feet bare, almost nude, as he had
seen her on that last day. These images of voluptuousness made
him clench his fists, and a shiver run along his spine.
One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin and
priestly blood, that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed,
flung on a surplice over his shirt, and left his cell, lamp in
hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.
He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected
the cloister with the church, and he always had about him, as the
reader knows, the key of the staircase leading to the towers.
CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.
That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell, full of
oblivion, of hope, and of sweet thoughts. She had already been
asleep for some time, dreaming as always, of Phœbus, when it
seemed to her that she heard a noise near her. She slept lightly
and uneasily, the sleep of a bird; a mere nothing waked her. She
opened her eyes. The night was very dark. Nevertheless, she saw a
figure gazing at her through the window; a lamp lighted up this
apparition. The moment that the figure saw that la Esmeralda had
perceived it, it blew out the lamp. But the young girl had had
time to catch a glimpse of it; her eyes closed again with terror.
“Oh!” she said in a faint voice, “the priest!”
All her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of
lightning. She fell back on her bed, chilled.
A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her
shudder so that she straightened herself up in a sitting posture,
wide awake and furious.
The priest had just slipped in beside her. He encircled her with
both arms.
She tried to scream and could not.
“Begone, monster! begone assassin!” she said, in a voice which
was low and trembling with wrath and terror.
“Mercy! mercy!” murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her
shoulder.
She seized his bald head by its remnant of hair and tried to
thrust aside his kisses as though they had been bites.
“Mercy!” repeated the unfortunate man. “If you but knew what my
love for you is! ’Tis fire, melted lead, a thousand daggers in my
heart.”
She stopped his two arms with superhuman force.
“Let me go,” she said, “or I will spit in your face!”
He released her. “Vilify me, strike me, be malicious! Do what you
will! But have mercy! love me!”
Then she struck him with the fury of a child. She made her
beautiful hands stiff to bruise his face. “Begone, demon!”
“Love me! love me! pity!” cried the poor priest returning her
blows with caresses.
All at once she felt him stronger than herself.
“There must be an end to this!” he said, gnashing his teeth.
She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his power. She
felt a wanton hand straying over her. She made a last effort, and
began to cry: “Help! Help! A vampire! a vampire!”
Nothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with anguish.
“Hush!” said the panting priest.
All at once, as she struggled and crawled on the floor, the
gypsy’s hand came in contact with something cold and metallic—it
was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsive hope,
raised it to her lips and blew with all the strength that she had
left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.
“What is that?” said the priest.
Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous
arm. The cell was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it
was that held him thus; but he heard teeth chattering with rage,
and there was just sufficient light scattered among the gloom to
allow him to see above his head the blade of a large knife.
The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo. He
assumed that it could be no one but he. He remembered to have
stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle which was stretched across
the door on the outside. But, as the newcomer did not utter a
word, he knew not what to think. He flung himself on the arm
which held the knife, crying: “Quasimodo!” He forgot, at that
moment of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.
In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee
rested on his breast.
From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo;
but what was to be done? how could he make the other recognize
him? the darkness rendered the deaf man blind.
He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did
not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching his head;
the moment was critical. All at once, his adversary seemed
stricken with hesitation.
“No blood on her!” he said in a dull voice.
It was, in fact, Quasimodo’s voice.
Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of
the cell; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him,
the moon had risen a few moments before.
When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays
fell upon the priest’s countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in
the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the priest and
shrank back.
The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld
with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest
who menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.
The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of
wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.
The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the
gypsy’s door,—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned
voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me
first.”
So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest,
beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was
quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands
and burst into a frantic laugh,—“Approach,” she said to the
priest.
She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.
She would certainly have struck him.
Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she
was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot
irons,—
“Ah! I know that Phœbus is not dead!”
The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and,
quivering with rage, darted back under the vault of the
staircase.
When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just
saved the gypsy.
“It was getting rusty,” he said, as he handed it back to her;
then he left her alone.
The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back
exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was
becoming gloomy once more.
The priest had groped his way back to his cell.
It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!
He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: “No one shall
have her.”
BOOK TENTH.
CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE DES
BERNARDINS.
As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was
turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and
other disagreeable things for the principal personages in this
comedy, he had not cared to identify himself with the matter
further. The outcasts with whom he had remained, reflecting that,
after all, it was the best company in Paris,—the outcasts had
continued to interest themselves in behalf of the gypsy. He had
thought it very simple on the part of people who had, like
herself, nothing else in prospect but Charmolue and Torterue, and
who, unlike himself, did not gallop through the regions of
imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their remarks, he
had learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge in
Notre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation
to go and see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little
goat, and that was all. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of
strength during the day for his living, and at night he was
engaged in composing a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for
he remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills,
and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occupied
himself with annotating the fine work of Baudry-le-Rouge, Bishop
of Noyon and Tournay, _De Cupa Petrarum_, which had given him a
violent passion for architecture, an inclination which had
replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it
was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an
intimate relation between hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had
passed from the love of an idea to the love of the form of that
idea.
One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the
corner of a mansion called “For-l’Évêque” (the Bishop’s
Tribunal), which stood opposite another called “For-le-Roi” (the
King’s Tribunal). At this For-l’Évêque, there was a charming
chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on the street.
Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior sculptures. He was
in one of those moments of egotistical, exclusive, supreme,
enjoyment when the artist beholds nothing in the world but art,
and the world in art. All at once he feels a hand laid gravely on
his shoulder. He turns round. It was his old friend, his former
master, monsieur the archdeacon.
He was stupefied. It was a long time since he had seen the
archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of those solemn and
impassioned men, a meeting with whom always upsets the
equilibrium of a sceptical philosopher.
The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, during
which Gringoire had time to observe him. He found Dom Claude
greatly changed; pale as a winter’s morning, with hollow eyes,
and hair almost white. The priest broke the silence at length, by
saying, in a tranquil but glacial tone,—
“How do you do, Master Pierre?”
“My health?” replied Gringoire. “Eh! eh! one can say both one
thing and another on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole.
I take not too much of anything. You know, master, that the
secret of keeping well, according to Hippocrates; _id est: cibi,
potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint_.”
“So you have no care, Master Pierre?” resumed the archdeacon,
gazing intently at Gringoire.
“None, i’ faith!”
“And what are you doing now?”
“You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones,
and the manner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out.”
The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises
only one corner of the mouth.
“And that amuses you?”
“’Tis paradise!” exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the
sculptures with the fascinated air of a demonstrator of living
phenomena: “Do you not think, for instance, that yon
metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much adroitness,
delicacy and patience? Observe that slender column. Around what
capital have you seen foliage more tender and better caressed by
the chisel. Here are three raised bosses of Jean Maillevin. They
are not the finest works of this great master. Nevertheless, the
naïvete, the sweetness of the faces, the gayety of the attitudes
and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which is mingled with
all the defects, render the little figures very diverting and
delicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is not
diverting?”
“Yes, certainly!” said the priest.
“And if you were to see the interior of the chapel!” resumed the
poet, with his garrulous enthusiasm. “Carvings everywhere. ’Tis
as thickly clustered as the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a
very devout, and so peculiar a fashion that I have never beheld
anything like it elsewhere!”
Dom Claude interrupted him,—
“You are happy, then?”
Gringoire replied warmly;—
“On my honor, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love
stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less
treacherous.”
The priest laid his hand on his brow. It was his habitual
gesture.
“Really?”
“Stay!” said Gringoire, “one has one’s pleasures!” He took the
arm of the priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter
the staircase turret of For-l’Évêque. “Here is a staircase! every
time that I see it I am happy. It is of the simplest and rarest
manner of steps in Paris. All the steps are bevelled underneath.
Its beauty and simplicity consist in the interspacing of both,
being a foot or more wide, which are interlaced, interlocked,
fitted together, enchained enchased, interlined one upon another,
and bite into each other in a manner that is truly firm and
graceful.”
“And you desire nothing?”
“No.”
“And you regret nothing?”
“Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life.”
“What men arrange,” said Claude, “things disarrange.”
“I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “and I hold
all things in equilibrium.”
“And how do you earn your living?”
“I still make epics and tragedies now and then; but that which
brings me in most is the industry with which you are acquainted,
master; carrying pyramids of chairs in my teeth.”
“The trade is but a rough one for a philosopher.”
“’Tis still equilibrium,” said Gringoire. “When one has an idea,
one encounters it in everything.”
“I know that,” replied the archdeacon.
After a silence, the priest resumed,—
“You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?”
“Poor, yes; unhappy, no.”
At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two
interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company
of the king’s unattached archers, their lances borne high, an
officer at their head. The cavalcade was brilliant, and its march
resounded on the pavement.
“How you gaze at that officer!” said Gringoire, to the
archdeacon.
“Because I think I recognize him.”
“What do you call him?”
“I think,” said Claude, “that his name is Phœbus de Châteaupers.”
“Phœbus! A curious name! There is also a Phœbus, Comte de Foix. I
remember having known a wench who swore only by the name of
Phœbus.”
“Come away from here,” said the priest. “I have something to say
to you.”
From the moment of that troop’s passing, some agitation had
pierced through the archdeacon’s glacial envelope. He walked on.
Gringoire followed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all
who had once approached that man so full of ascendency. They
reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly
deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.
“What have you to say to me, master?” Gringoire asked him.
“Do you not think that the dress of those cavaliers whom we have
just seen is far handsomer than yours and mine?”
Gringoire tossed his head.
“I’ faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those
scales of iron and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you
walk, the same noise as the Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!”
“So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome
fellows in their military doublets?”
“Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their
armor, their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in
rags. I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a
lion.”
“That is singular,” said the priest dreamily. “Yet a handsome
uniform is a beautiful thing.”
Gringoire, perceiving that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him
to go and admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back
clapping his hands.
“If you were less engrossed with the fine clothes of men of war,
monsieur the archdeacon, I would entreat you to come and see this
door. I have always said that the house of the Sieur Aubry had
the most superb entrance in the world.”
“Pierre Gringoire,” said the archdeacon, “What have you done with
that little gypsy dancer?”
“La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly.”
“Was she not your wife?”
“Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of
it. By the way,” added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a
half bantering way, “are you still thinking of her?”
“And you think of her no longer?”
“Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty
that little goat was!”
“Had she not saved your life?”
“’Tis true, pardieu!”
“Well, what has become of her? What have you done with her?”
“I cannot tell you. I believe that they have hanged her.”
“You believe so?”
“I am not sure. When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I
retired from the game.”
“That is all you know of it?”
“Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame,
and that she was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I
have not been able to discover whether the goat was saved with
her, and that is all I know.”
“I will tell you more,” cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto
low, slow, and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. “She has in
fact, taken refuge in Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will
reclaim her, and she will be hanged on the Grève. There is a
decree of parliament.”
“That’s annoying,” said Gringoire.
The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.
“And who the devil,” resumed the poet, “has amused himself with
soliciting a decree of reintegration? Why couldn’t they leave
parliament in peace? What harm does it do if a poor girl takes
shelter under the flying buttresses of Notre-Dame, beside the
swallows’ nests?”
“There are satans in this world,” remarked the archdeacon.
“’Tis devilish badly done,” observed Gringoire.
The archdeacon resumed after a silence,—
“So, she saved your life?”
“Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little
less and I should have been hanged. They would have been sorry
for it to-day.”
“Would not you like to do something for her?”
“I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself
in some villanous affair?”
“What matters it?”
“Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have
two great works already begun.”
The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he
affected, a violent gesture betrayed his internal convulsions
from time to time.
“How is she to be saved?”
Gringoire said to him; “Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_,
which means in Turkish, ‘God is our hope.’”
“How is she to be saved?” repeated Claude dreamily.
Gringoire smote his brow in his turn.
“Listen, master. I have imagination; I will devise expedients for
you. What if one were to ask her pardon from the king?”
“Of Louis XI.! A pardon!”
“Why not?”
“To take the tiger’s bone from him!”
Gringoire began to seek fresh expedients.
“Well, stay! Shall I address to the midwives a request
accompanied by the declaration that the girl is with child!”
This made the priest’s hollow eye flash.
“With child! knave! do you know anything of this?”
Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say, “Oh, no,
not I! Our marriage was a real _forismaritagium_. I stayed
outside. But one might obtain a respite, all the same.”
“Madness! Infamy! Hold your tongue!”
“You do wrong to get angry,” muttered Gringoire. “One obtains a
respite; that does no harm to any one, and allows the midwives,
who are poor women, to earn forty deniers parisis.”
The priest was not listening to him!
“But she must leave that place, nevertheless!” he murmured, “the
decree is to be executed within three days. Moreover, there will
be no decree; that Quasimodo! Women have very depraved tastes!”
He raised his voice: “Master Pierre, I have reflected well; there
is but one means of safety for her.”
“What? I see none myself.”
“Listen, Master Pierre, remember that you owe your life to her. I
will tell you my idea frankly. The church is watched night and
day; only those are allowed to come out, who have been seen to
enter. Hence you can enter. You will come. I will lead you to
her. You will change clothes with her. She will take your
doublet; you will take her petticoat.”
“So far, it goes well,” remarked the philosopher, “and then?”
“And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain
with hers. You will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved.”
Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. “Stay!”
said he, “that is an idea which would never have occurred to me
unaided.”
At Dom Claude’s proposition, the open and benign face of the poet
had abruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when
an unlucky squall comes up and dashes a cloud across the sun.
“Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?”
“I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I
shall be hanged indubitably.
“That concerns us not.”
“The deuce!” said Gringoire.
“She has saved your life. ’Tis a debt that you are discharging.”
“There are a great many others which I do not discharge.”
“Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary.”
The archdeacon spoke imperiously.
“Listen, Dom Claude,” replied the poet in utter consternation.
“You cling to that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I
should get myself hanged in some one else’s place.”
“What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?”
“Oh! a thousand reasons!”
“What reasons, if you please?”
“What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight,
my good friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of
go-betweens, the fine architecture of Paris to study, three great
books to make, one of them being against the bishops and his
mills; and how can I tell all? Anaxagoras said that he was in the
world to admire the sun. And then, from morning till night, I
have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius,
who is myself, which is very agreeable.”
“A head fit for a mule bell!” muttered the archdeacon. “Oh! tell
me who preserved for you that life which you render so charming
to yourself? To whom do you owe it that you breathe that air,
behold that sky, and can still amuse your lark’s mind with your
whimsical nonsense and madness? Where would you be, had it not
been for her? Do you then desire that she through whom you are
alive, should die? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet,
adorable creature, who is necessary to the light of the world and
more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool, a vain
sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that it
walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to live with
the life which you have stolen from her, as useless as a candle
in broad daylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be
generous in your turn; it was she who set the example.”
The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with
an undecided air, then he became touched, and wound up with a
grimace which made his pallid face resemble that of a new-born
infant with an attack of the colic.
“You are pathetic!” said he, wiping away a tear. “Well! I will
think about it. That’s a queer idea of yours.—After all,” he
continued after a pause, “who knows? perhaps they will not hang
me. He who becomes betrothed does not always marry. When they
find me in that little lodging so grotesquely muffled in
petticoat and coif, perchance they will burst with laughter. And
then, if they do hang me,—well! the halter is as good a death as
any. ’Tis a death worthy of a sage who has wavered all his life;
a death which is neither flesh nor fish, like the mind of a
veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism and
hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and
earth, which leaves you in suspense. ’Tis a philosopher’s death,
and I was destined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die
as one has lived.”
The priest interrupted him: “Is it agreed.”
“What is death, after all?” pursued Gringoire with exaltation. “A
disagreeable moment, a toll-gate, the passage of little to
nothingness. Some one having asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan,
if he were willing to die: ‘Why not?’ he replied; ‘for after my
death I shall see those great men, Pythagoras among the
philosophers, Hecatæus among historians, Homer among poets,
Olympus among musicians.’”
The archdeacon gave him his hand: “It is settled, then? You will
come to-morrow?”
This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.
“Ah! i’ faith no!” he said in the tone of a man just waking up.
“Be hanged! ’tis too absurd. I will not.”
“Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his teeth:
“I’ll find you again!”
“I do not want that devil of a man to find me,” thought
Gringoire; and he ran after Dom Claude. “Stay, monsieur the
archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old friends! You take an
interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and ’tis well. You have
devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your way is
extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had only another
one myself! I beg to say that a luminous inspiration has just
occurred to me. If I possessed an expedient for extricating her
from a dilemma, without compromising my own neck to the extent of
a single running knot, what would you say to it? Will not that
suffice you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged,
in order that you may be content?”
The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience:
“Stream of words! What is your plan?”
“Yes,” resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his
nose with his forefinger in sign of meditation,—“that’s it!—The
thieves are brave fellows!—The tribe of Egypt love her!—They will
rise at the first word!—Nothing easier!—A sudden stroke.—Under
cover of the disorder, they will easily carry her off!—Beginning
to-morrow evening. They will ask nothing better.
“The plan! speak,” cried the archdeacon shaking him.
Gringoire turned majestically towards him: “Leave me! You see
that I am composing.” He meditated for a few moments more, then
began to clap his hands over his thought, crying: “Admirable!
success is sure!”
“The plan!” repeated Claude in wrath.
Gringoire was radiant.
“Come, that I may tell you that very softly. ’Tis a truly gallant
counter-plot, which will extricate us all from the matter.
Pardieu, it must be admitted that I am no fool.”
He broke off.
“Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?”
“Yes. The devil take you!”
“They would have hanged it also, would they not?”
“What is that to me?”
“Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month.
The headsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my
pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”
“Malediction!” exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the executioner.
What means of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be
extracted with the forceps?”
“Very fine, master, this is it.”
Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke to him
in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one
end to the other of the street, though no one was passing. When
he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: “’Tis
well. Farewell until to-morrow.”
“Until to-morrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon
was disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other,
saying to himself in a low voice: “Here’s a grand affair,
Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! ’Tis not written that
because one is of small account one should take fright at a great
enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the
water-wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the
ocean.”
CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.
On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the door of
his cell his brother Jehan du Moulin, who was waiting for him,
and who had beguiled the tedium of waiting by drawing on the wall
with a bit of charcoal, a profile of his elder brother, enriched
with a monstrous nose.
Dom Claude hardly looked at his brother; his thoughts were
elsewhere. That merry scamp’s face whose beaming had so often
restored serenity to the priest’s sombre physiognomy, was now
powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense every day over
that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soul.
“Brother,” said Jehan timidly, “I am come to see you.”
The archdeacon did not even raise his eyes.
“What then?”
“Brother,” resumed the hypocrite, “you are so good to me, and you
give me such wise counsels that I always return to you.”
“What next?”
“Alas! brother, you were perfectly right when you said to
me,—“Jehan! Jehan! _cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum
disciplina_. Jehan, be wise, Jehan, be learned, Jehan, pass not
the night outside of the college without lawful occasion and due
leave of the master. Cudgel not the Picards: _noli, Joannes,
verberare Picardos_. Rot not like an unlettered ass, _quasi
asinus illitteratus_, on the straw seats of the school. Jehan,
allow yourself to be punished at the discretion of the master.
Jehan go every evening to chapel, and sing there an anthem with
verse and orison to Madame the glorious Virgin Mary.”—Alas! what
excellent advice was that!”
“And then?”
“Brother, you behold a culprit, a criminal, a wretch, a
libertine, a man of enormities! My dear brother, Jehan hath made
of your counsels straw and dung to trample under foot. I have
been well chastised for it, and God is extraordinarily just. As
long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and joyous life. Oh!
how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is so charming in
front! Now I have no longer a blank; I have sold my napery, my
shirt and my towels; no more merry life! The beautiful candle is
extinguished and I have henceforth, only a wretched tallow dip
which smokes in my nose. The wenches jeer at me. I drink water. I
am overwhelmed with remorse and with creditors.”
“The rest?” said the archdeacon.
“Alas! my very dear brother, I should like to settle down to a
better life. I come to you full of contrition, I am penitent. I
make my confession. I beat my breast violently. You are quite
right in wishing that I should some day become a licentiate and
sub-monitor in the college of Torchi. At the present moment I
feel a magnificent vocation for that profession. But I have no
more ink and I must buy some; I have no more paper, I have no
more books, and I must buy some. For this purpose, I am greatly
in need of a little money, and I come to you, brother, with my
heart full of contrition.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” said the scholar. “A little money.”
“I have none.”
Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and
resolute: “Well, brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you
that very fine offers and propositions are being made to me in
another quarter. You will not give me any money? No. In that case
I shall become a professional vagabond.”
As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien of Ajax,
expecting to see the lightnings descend upon his head.
The archdeacon said coldly to him,—
“Become a vagabond.”
Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister stairs,
whistling.
At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard of the
cloister, beneath his brother’s window, he heard that window
open, raised his eyes and beheld the archdeacon’s severe head
emerge.
“Go to the devil!” said Dom Claude; “here is the last money which
you will get from me?”
At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which gave the
scholar a big bump on the forehead, and with which Jehan
retreated, both vexed and content, like a dog who had been stoned
with marrow bones.
CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.
The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the Cour de
Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall which surrounded the
city, a goodly number of whose towers had begun, even at that
epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these towers had been converted
into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There was a dram-shop in
the underground story, and the rest in the upper stories. This
was the most lively, and consequently the most hideous, point of
the whole outcast den. It was a sort of monstrous hive, which
buzzed there night and day. At night, when the remainder of the
beggar horde slept, when there was no longer a window lighted in
the dingy façades of the Place, when not a cry was any longer to
be heard proceeding from those innumerable families, those
ant-hills of thieves, of wenches, and stolen or bastard children,
the merry tower was still recognizable by the noise which it
made, by the scarlet light which, flashing simultaneously from
the air-holes, the windows, the fissures in the cracked walls,
escaped, so to speak, from its every pore.
The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through
a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine.
Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub,
representing new sous and dead chickens,[53] with this, pun
below: _Aux sonneurs pour les trépassés_,—The ringers for the
dead.
One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the belfries in
Paris, the sergeants of the watch might have observed, had it
been granted to them to enter the formidable Court of Miracles,
that more tumult than usual was in progress in the vagabonds’
tavern, that more drinking was being done, and louder swearing.
Outside in the Place, there, were many groups conversing in low
tones, as when some great plan is being framed, and here and
there a knave crouching down engaged in sharpening a villanous
iron blade on a paving-stone.
Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered such a
powerful diversion to the ideas which occupied the vagabonds’
lair that evening, that it would have been difficult to divine
from the remarks of the drinkers, what was the matter in hand.
They merely wore a gayer air than was their wont, and some weapon
could be seen glittering between the legs of each of them,—a
sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword or the hook of an old
hackbut.
The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables
were so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that all that
the tavern contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs, all that
were drinking, all that were sleeping, all that were playing, the
well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as much order and
harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There were a few tallow dips
lighted on the tables; but the real luminary of this tavern, that
which played the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an
opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire
was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense
chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron
andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of
mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the
reflection of forge windows stand out so red on the opposite
walls. A big dog gravely seated in the ashes was turning a spit
loaded with meat before the coals.
Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could
distinguish in that multitude, three principal groups which
thronged around three personages already known to the reader. One
of these personages, fantastically accoutred in many an oriental
rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and Bohemia. The
knave was seated on a table with his legs crossed, and in a loud
voice was bestowing his knowledge of magic, both black and white,
on many a gaping face which surrounded him. Another rabble
pressed close around our old friend, the valiant King of Thunes,
armed to the teeth. Clopin Trouillefou, with a very serious air
and in a low voice, was regulating the distribution of an
enormous cask of arms, which stood wide open in front of him and
from whence poured out in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets,
coats of mail, broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and
viretons,[54] like apples and grapes from a horn of plenty. Every
one took something from the cask, one a morion, another a long,
straight sword, another a dagger with a cross-shaped hilt. The
very children were arming themselves, and there were even
cripples in bowls who, in armor and cuirass, made their way
between the legs of the drinkers, like great beetles.
Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial, and
the most numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the midst of
which harangued and swore a flute-like voice, which escaped from
beneath a heavy armor, complete from casque to spurs. The
individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit upon his body, was
so hidden by his warlike accoutrements that nothing was to be
seen of his person save an impertinent, red, snub nose, a rosy
mouth, and bold eyes. His belt was full of daggers and poniards,
a huge sword on his hip, a rusted cross-bow at his left, and a
vast jug of wine in front of him, without reckoning on his right,
a fat wench with her bosom uncovered. All mouths around him were
laughing, cursing, and drinking.
Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female,
running with jugs on their heads, gamblers squatting over taws,
merelles,[55] dice, vachettes, the ardent game of tringlet,
quarrels in one corner, kisses in another, and the reader will
have some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the
light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and
grotesque shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop.
As for the noise, it was like the inside of a bell at full peal.
The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled with
its continual sputtering the intervals of these thousand
dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment to
the other.
In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern, on
the bench inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating with
his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the brands. It was Pierre
Gringoire.
“Be quick! make haste, arm yourselves! we set out on the march in
an hour!” said Clopin Trouillefou to his thieves.
A wench was humming,—
“Bonsoir mon père et ma mère,
Les derniers couvrent le feu.”[56]
Two card players were disputing,—
“Knave!” cried the reddest faced of the two, shaking his fist at
the other; “I’ll mark you with the club. You can take the place
of Mistigri in the pack of cards of monseigneur the king.”
“Ugh!” roared a Norman, recognizable by his nasal accent; “we are
packed in here like the saints of Caillouville!”
“My sons,” the Duke of Egypt was saying to his audience, in a
falsetto voice, “sorceresses in France go to the witches’ sabbath
without broomsticks, or grease, or steed, merely by means of some
magic words. The witches of Italy always have a buck waiting for
them at their door. All are bound to go out through the chimney.”
The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot, dominated
the uproar.
“Hurrah! hurrah!” he was shouting. “My first day in armor!
Outcast! I am an outcast. Give me something to drink. My friends,
my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and I am a gentleman. My
opinion is that if God were a _gendarme_, he would turn robber.
Brothers, we are about to set out on a fine expedition. Lay siege
to the church, burst in the doors, drag out the beautiful girl,
save her from the judges, save her from the priests, dismantle
the cloister, burn the bishop in his palace—all this we will do
in less time than it takes for a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of
soup. Our cause is just, we will plunder Notre-Dame and that will
be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do you know Quasimodo,
ladies? Have you seen him make himself breathless on the big bell
on a grand Pentecost festival! _Corne du Père!_ ’tis very fine!
One would say he was a devil mounted on a man. Listen to me, my
friends; I am a vagabond to the bottom of my heart, I am a member
of the slang thief gang in my soul, I was born an independent
thief. I have been rich, and I have devoured all my property. My
mother wanted to make an officer of me; my father, a sub-deacon;
my aunt, a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary
to the king; my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe,—and I
have made myself an outcast. I said this to my father, who spit
his curse in my face; to my mother, who set to weeping and
chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the and-irons.
Long live mirth! I am a real Bicêtre. Waitress, my dear, more
wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I want no more Surène
wine. It distresses my throat. I’d as lief, _corbœuf!_ gargle my
throat with a basket.”
Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter; and
seeing that the tumult was increasing around him, the scholar
cried,—.
“Oh! what a fine noise! _Populi debacchantis populosa
debacchatio!_” Then he began to sing, his eye swimming in
ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning vespers, _Quæ cantica!
quæ organa! quæ cantilenæ! quæ melodiæ hic sine fine decantantur!
Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angelorum melodia,
cantica canticorum mira!_ He broke off: “Tavern-keeper of the
devil, give me some supper!”
There was a moment of partial silence, during which the sharp
voice of the Duke of Egypt rose, as he gave instructions to his
Bohemians.
“The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of
the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old
Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and
causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is
baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck,
a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother
its hinder parts. ’Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to
make wenches dance stark naked.”
“By the mass!” interrupted Jehan, “I should like to be the demon
Sidragasum.”
Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and whisper
at the other end of the dram-shop.
“That poor Esmeralda!” said a Bohemian. “She is our sister. She
must be taken away from there.”
“Is she still at Notre-Dame?” went on a merchant with the
appearance of a Jew.
“Yes, pardieu!”
“Well! comrades!” exclaimed the merchant, “to Notre-Dame! So much
the better, since there are in the chapel of Saints Féréol and
Ferrution two statues, the one of John the Baptist, the other of
Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing together seven marks of
gold and fifteen estellins; and the pedestals are of silver-gilt,
of seventeen marks, five ounces. I know that; I am a goldsmith.”
Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw himself back
on the bosom of the wench beside him, he exclaimed,—
“By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint Goguelu, I am
perfectly happy. I have before me a fool who gazes at me with the
smooth face of an archduke. Here is one on my left whose teeth
are so long that they hide his chin. And then, I am like the
Marshal de Gié at the siege of Pontoise, I have my right resting
on a hillock. _Ventre-Mahom!_ Comrade! you have the air of a
merchant of tennis-balls; and you come and sit yourself beside
me! I am a nobleman, my friend! Trade is incompatible with
nobility. Get out of that! Holà hé! You others, don’t fight!
What, Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have such a fine nose are
going to risk it against the big fists of that lout! Fool! _Non
cuiquam datum est habere nasum_—not every one is favored with a
nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! ’tis a
pity that you have no hair! Holà! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my
brother is an archdeacon. May the devil fly off with him! All
that I tell you is the truth. In turning vagabond, I have gladly
renounced the half of a house situated in paradise, which my
brother had promised me. _Dimidiam domum in paradiso_. I quote
the text. I have a fief in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women
are in love with me, as true as Saint Éloy was an excellent
goldsmith, and that the five trades of the good city of Paris are
the tanners, the tawers, the makers of cross-belts, the
purse-makers, and the sweaters, and that Saint Laurent was burnt
with eggshells. I swear to you, comrades.
“Que je ne beuvrai de piment,
Devant un an, si je cy ment![57]
“’Tis moonlight, my charmer; see yonder through the window how
the wind is tearing the clouds to tatters! Even thus will I do to
your gorget.—Wenches, wipe the children’s noses and snuff the
candles.—Christ and Mahom! What am I eating here, Jupiter? Ohé!
innkeeper! the hair which is not on the heads of your hussies one
finds in your omelettes. Old woman! I like bald omelettes. May
the devil confound you!—A fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where the
hussies comb their heads with the forks!
“Et je n’ai moi,
Par la sang-Dieu!
Ni foi, ni loi,
Ni feu, ni lieu,
Ni roi,
Ni Dieu.”[58]
In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the distribution
of arms. He approached Gringoire, who appeared to be plunged in a
profound revery, with his feet on an andiron.
“Friend Pierre,” said the King of Thunes, “what the devil are you
thinking about?”
Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile.
“I love the fire, my dear lord. Not for the trivial reason that
fire warms the feet or cooks our soup, but because it has sparks.
Sometimes I pass whole hours in watching the sparks. I discover a
thousand things in those stars which are sprinkled over the black
background of the hearth. Those stars are also worlds.”
“Thunder, if I understand you!” said the outcast. “Do you know
what o’clock it is?”
“I do not know,” replied Gringoire.
Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt.
“Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good one. King
Louis XI. is said to be in Paris.”
“Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws,” replied
the old Bohemian.
“You speak like a man, Mathias,” said the King of Thunes.
“Moreover, we will act promptly. No resistance is to be feared in
the church. The canons are hares, and we are in force. The people
of the parliament will be well balked to-morrow when they come to
seek her! Guts of the pope I don’t want them to hang the pretty
girl!”
Clopin quitted the dram-shop.
Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice:
“I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre, the
Slaughterer, if you look at me like that again, I’ll fillip the
dust off your nose for you.”
Gringoire, torn from his meditations, began to watch the wild and
noisy scene which surrounded him, muttering between his teeth:
“_Luxuriosa res vinum et tumultuosa ebrietas_. Alas! what good
reason I have not to drink, and how excellently spoke
Saint-Benoît: ‘_Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!_’”
At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of
thunder: “Midnight!”
At this word, which produced the effect of the call to boot and
saddle on a regiment at a halt, all the outcasts, men, women,
children, rushed in a mass from the tavern, with great noise of
arms and old iron implements.
The moon was obscured.
The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a single
light. One could make out there a throng of men and women
conversing in low tones. They could be heard buzzing, and a gleam
of all sorts of weapons was visible in the darkness. Clopin
mounted a large stone.
“To your ranks, Argot!”[59] he cried. “Fall into line, Egypt!
Form ranks, Galilee!”
A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude appeared
to form in a column. After a few minutes, the King of Thunes
raised his voice once more,—
“Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is, ‘Little
sword in pocket!’ The torches will not be lighted till we reach
Notre-Dame! Forward, march!”
Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror
before a long procession of black and silent men which was
descending towards the Pont au Change, through the tortuous
streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the markets
in every direction.
CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.
That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made his last
round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when
he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him
and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring
with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large
leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude’s air was even more
preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure
in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did
he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed
the submission, patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful
bellringer. He endured everything on the part of the archdeacon,
insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the
most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended
the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained from
presenting himself again before the gypsy’s eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance
at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie,
and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and
there setting his dark lanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he
began to gaze at Paris. The night, as we have already said, was
very dark. Paris which, so to speak was not lighted at that
epoch, presented to the eye a confused collection of black
masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve of the Seine.
Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of one
window in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was
outlined well above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte
Sainte-Antoine. There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of
mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness.
For several days he had been upon his guard. He had perceived men
of sinister mien, who never took their eyes from the young girl’s
asylum, prowling constantly about the church. He fancied that
some plot might be in process of formation against the unhappy
refugee. He imagined that there existed a popular hatred against
her, as against himself, and that it was very possible that
something might happen soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on
the watch, “dreaming in his dream-place,” as Rabelais says, with
his eye directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping
faithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in
his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that
eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing
that it could almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo
lacked, it seemed to him that there was something singular about
the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there was a movement at
that point, that the line of the parapet, standing out blackly
against the whiteness of the water was not straight and tranquil,
like that of the other quays, but that it undulated to the eye,
like the waves of a river, or like the heads of a crowd in
motion.
This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention. The
movement seemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no
light. It lasted for some time on the quay; then it gradually
ceased, as though that which was passing were entering the
interior of the island; then it stopped altogether, and the line
of the quay became straight and motionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed
to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis,
which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the façade of
Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the
head of a column debouch from that street, and in an instant a
crowd—of which nothing could be distinguished in the gloom except
that it was a crowd—spread over the Place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that this
singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing
itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence no less
profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped it, were it
only a trampling. But this noise did not even reach our deaf man,
and this great multitude, of which he saw hardly anything, and of
which he heard nothing, though it was marching and moving so near
him, produced upon him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute,
impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld
advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows
moving in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against
the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. He was
conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was
approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel with
himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would have
expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awaken the
gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested,
the church backed on the river. No boat, no issue!—There was but
one thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the
threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived,
if it should arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda’s sleep.
This resolution once taken, he set to examining the enemy with
more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square.
Only, he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since
the windows on the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame
flashed up, and in an instant seven or eight lighted torches
passed over the heads of the crowd, shaking their tufts of flame
in the deep shade. Quasimodo then beheld distinctly surging in
the Parvis a frightful herd of men and women in rags, armed with
scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose thousand points
glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed horns to the
hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought
that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of
the Fools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one
hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to
be haranguing them. At the same time the strange army executed
several evolutions, as though it were taking up its post around
the church. Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the
platform between the towers, in order to get a nearer view, and
to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of
Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle.
Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent
general, to preserve an order which would permit him to face, at
need, a sudden attack of the watch or the police. He had
accordingly stationed his brigade in such a manner that, viewed
from above and from a distance, one would have pronounced it the
Roman triangle of the battle of Ecnomus, the boar’s head of
Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of
this triangle rested on the back of the Place in such a manner as
to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced
Hôtel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. Clopin
Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of
Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking
against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the
Middle Ages. What we now call the “police” did not exist then. In
populous cities, especially in capitals, there existed no single,
central, regulating power. Feudalism had constructed these great
communities in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a
thousand seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all
shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of
police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,
independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid claim
to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to a manor
and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who had
five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who
had four. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain
authority of the king only in name. All possessed the right of
control over the roads. All were at home. Louis XI., that
indefatigable worker, who so largely began the demolition of the
feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the
profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the benefit of
the people,—Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break this
network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violently
across them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in
1465, an order to the inhabitants to light candles in their
windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of
death; in the same year, an order to close the streets in the
evening with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or
weapons of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short
time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into
abeyance. The _bourgeois_ permitted the wind to blow out their
candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains
were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear
daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue
Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge[60] which is an
evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions
remained standing; an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and
seignories crossing each other all over the city, interfering
with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing each other,
trespassing on each other; a useless thicket of watches,
sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with armed force,
passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in this disorder,
deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against a
palace, a hôtel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters,
were not unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases,
the neighbors did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging
extended to themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket
shots, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the
matter to be concluded with or without the watch, and the next
day it was said in Paris, “Étienne Barbette was broken open last
night. The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc.”
Hence, not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace,
the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,
the Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’Angoulême,
etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over
their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, among
the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés was castellated like a baronial mansion,
and more brass expended about it in bombards than in bells. Its
fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day, barely its church
remains.
Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to
the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin’s orders were
executed in silence, and with admirable precision, the worthy
chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the church square,
and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning towards
Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, tossed by the
wind, and veiled every moment by its own smoke, made the reddish
façade of the church appear and disappear before the eye.
“To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in the
Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand
Coësre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister,
falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in your church,
you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court of Parliament wishes
to seize her once more there, and you consent to it; so that she
would be hanged to-morrow in the Grève, if God and the outcasts
were not here. If your church is sacred, so is our sister; if our
sister is not sacred, neither is your church. That is why we call
upon you to return the girl if you wish to save your church, or
we will take possession of the girl again and pillage the church,
which will be a good thing. In token of which I here plant my
banner, and may God preserve you, bishop of Paris.”
Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with
a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his
banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two
paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a
bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over
his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally
with their pikes. After a momentary pause,—“Forward, my Sons!” he
cried; “to work, locksmiths!”
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces,
stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron
on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the principal door
of the church, ascended the steps, and were soon to be seen
squatting under the arch, working at the door with pincers and
levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them to help or look on.
The eleven steps before the portal were covered with them.
But the door stood firm. “The devil! ’tis hard and obstinate!”
said one. “It is old, and its gristles have become bony,” said
another. “Courage, comrades!” resumed Clopin. “I wager my head
against a dipper that you will have opened the door, rescued the
girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single beadle is
awake. Stay! I think I hear the lock breaking up.”
Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-sounded
behind him at that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had
just fallen from above; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the
pavement with the sound of a cannon, breaking in addition, legs
here and there in the crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with
cries of terror. In a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the
church parvis were cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by
the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin
himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.
“I had a narrow escape!” cried Jehan. “I felt the wind, of it,
_tête-de-bœuf!_ but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!”
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright
which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air,
more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king’s twenty
thousand archers.
“Satan!” muttered the Duke of Egypt, “this smacks of magic!”
“’Tis the moon which threw this log at us,” said Andry the Red.
“Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!” went on
François Chanteprune.
“A thousand popes!” exclaimed Clopin, “you are all fools!” But he
did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.
Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to whose
summit the light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay
in the middle of the enclosure, and groans were heard from the
poor wretches who had received its first shock, and who had been
almost cut in twain, on the angle of the stone steps.
The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an
explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.
“Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack,
then! to the sack!”
“To the sack!” repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A
discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the
church followed.
At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding
houses woke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and
hands holding candles appeared at the casements.
“Fire at the windows,” shouted Clopin. The windows were
immediately closed, and the poor _bourgeois_, who had hardly had
time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of gleams and
tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their wives, asking
themselves whether the witches’ sabbath was now being held in the
parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there was an assault of
Burgundians, as in ’64. Then the husbands thought of theft; the
wives, of rape; and all trembled.
“To the sack!” repeated the thieves’ crew; but they dared not
approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the church. The
beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm and deserted
air; but something chilled the outcasts.
“To work, locksmiths!” shouted Trouillefou. “Let the door be
forced!”
No one took a step.
“Beard and belly!” said Clopin, “here be men afraid of a beam.”
An old locksmith addressed him—
“Captain, ’tis not the beam which bothers us, ’tis the door,
which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless
against it.”
“What more do you want to break it in?” demanded Clopin.
“Ah! we ought to have a battering ram.”
The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed
his foot upon it: “Here is one!” he exclaimed; “’tis the canons
who send it to you.” And, making a mocking salute in the
direction of the church, “Thanks, canons!”
This piece of bravado produced its effects,—the spell of the beam
was broken. The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy
joist, raised like a feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was
flung with fury against the great door which they had tried to
batter down. At the sight of that long beam, in the half-light
which the infrequent torches of the brigands spread over the
Place, thus borne by that crowd of men who dashed it at a run
against the church, one would have thought that he beheld a
monstrous beast with a thousand feet attacking with lowered head
the giant of stone.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an
immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral
trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice were heard to
echo.
At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from
the top of the façade on the assailants.
“The devil!” cried Jehan, “are the towers shaking their
balustrades down on our heads?”
But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the
example. Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they
only battered the door with the more rage, in spite of the stones
which cracked skulls right and left.
It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but they
followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two at a
time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There were few
which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of dead and
wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet of the
assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other without
intermission. The long beam continued to belabor the door, at
regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the stones to rain
down, the door to groan.
The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance
which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his
ideas were all in confusion. He had run up and down along the
gallery for several minutes like a madman, surveying from above,
the compact mass of vagabonds ready to hurl itself on the church,
demanding the safety of the gypsy from the devil or from God. The
thought had occurred to him of ascending to the southern belfry
and sounding the alarm, but before he could have set the bell in
motion, before Marie’s voice could have uttered a single clamor,
was there not time to burst in the door of the church ten times
over? It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were
advancing upon it with their tools. What was to be done?
All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at work all
day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof of the
south tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was of stone,
the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That prodigious
timber-work, so dense that it was called “the forest.”)
Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers were, in
fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough blocks of
stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy beams
already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.
Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work below. With
a strength which the sense of danger increased tenfold, he seized
one of the beams—the longest and heaviest; he pushed it out
through a loophole, then, grasping it again outside of the tower,
he made it slide along the angle of the balustrade which
surrounds the platform, and let it fly into the abyss. The
enormous timber, during that fall of a hundred and sixty feet,
scraping the wall, breaking the carvings, turned many times on
its centre, like the arm of a windmill flying off alone through
space. At last it reached the ground, the horrible cry arose, and
the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement, resembled a
serpent leaping.
Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam,
like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage of their
fright, and while they were fixing a superstitious glance on the
club which had fallen from heaven, and while they were putting
out the eyes of the stone saints on the front with a discharge of
arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster,
stones, and rough blocks of stone, even the sacks of tools
belonging to the masons, on the edge of the balustrade from which
the beam had already been hurled.
Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower
of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them
that the church itself was being demolished over their heads.
Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have
been frightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had
piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on
the platform itself. As fast as the blocks on the exterior edge
were exhausted, he drew on the heap. Then he stooped and rose,
stooped and rose again with incredible activity. His huge gnome’s
head bent over the balustrade, then an enormous stone fell, then
another, then another. From time to time, he followed a fine
stone with his eye, and when it did good execution, he said,
“Hum!”
Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door
on which they were venting their fury had already trembled more
than twenty times beneath the weight of their oaken
battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a hundred men. The
panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters, the hinges,
at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks yawned, the
wood crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing.
Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.
Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although
he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated
simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it. From
above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and rage,
shaking their fists at the gloomy façade; and both on the gypsy’s
account and his own he envied the wings of the owls which flitted
away above his head in flocks.
His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the
assailants.
At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than
the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone
gutters which discharged immediately over the great door; the
internal orifice of these gutters terminated on the pavement of
the platform. An idea occurred to him; he ran in search of a
fagot in his bellringer’s den, placed on this fagot a great many
bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, munitions which he had
not employed so far, and having arranged this pile in front of
the hole to the two gutters, he set it on fire with his lantern.
During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts
ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of
hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously
round the great door, all disfigured by the battering ram, but
still standing. They were waiting with a quiver for the great
blow which should split it open. They vied with each other in
pressing as close as possible, in order to dash among the first,
when it should open, into that opulent cathedral, a vast
reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up.
They reminded each other with roars of exultation and greedy
lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade,
the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of
the choir, the dazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling
with torches, the Easters sparkling with sunshine,—all those
splendid solemneties wherein chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles,
and reliquaries, studded the altars with a crust of gold and
diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment, thieves and pseudo
sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, were thinking much
less of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We
could even easily believe that for a goodly number among them la
Esmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.
All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves
round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and
stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all his force to
the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than that which
had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose among them.
Those who did not cry out, those who were still alive, looked.
Two streams of melted lead were falling from the summit of the
edifice into the thickest of the rabble. That sea of men had just
sunk down beneath the boiling metal, which had made, at the two
points where it fell, two black and smoking holes in the crowd,
such as hot water would make in snow. Dying men, half consumed
and groaning with anguish, could be seen writhing there. Around
these two principal streams there were drops of that horrible
rain, which scattered over the assailants and entered their
skulls like gimlets of fire. It was a heavy fire which
overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand hailstones.
The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling the
beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most timid, and
the parvis was cleared a second time.
All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They beheld there
an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the highest gallery,
higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame
rising between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast,
disordered, and furious flame, a tongue of which was borne into
the smoke by the wind, from time to time. Below that fire, below
the gloomy balustrade with its trefoils showing darkly against
its glare, two spouts with monster throats were vomiting forth
unceasingly that burning rain, whose silvery stream stood out
against the shadows of the lower façade. As they approached the
earth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like
water springing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above
the flame, the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were
visible in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly
red, seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow
which they cast even to the sky.
Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a
lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move
to the eye. There were griffins which had the air of laughing,
gargoyles which one fancied one heard yelping, salamanders which
puffed at the fire, tarasques[61] which sneezed in the smoke. And
among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was
seen, from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the
pile, like a bat in front of a candle.
Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away,
the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, terrified to behold the
gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame quivering over his
heaths.
A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which
nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut up
in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning
stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily opened and still
more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses and
of the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle
of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead
upon the pavement.
In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the
porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of
war.
The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated the
phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet
in the air, with religious terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his
huge fists with rage.
“Impossible to get in!” he muttered between his teeth.
“An old, enchanted church!” grumbled the aged Bohemian, Mathias
Hungadi Spicali.
“By the Pope’s whiskers!” went on a sham soldier, who had once
been in service, “here are church gutters spitting melted lead at
you better than the machicolations of Lectoure.”
“Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of the
fire?” exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.
“Pardieu, ’tis that damned bellringer, ’tis Quasimodo,” said
Clopin.
The Bohemian tossed his head. “I tell you, that ’tis the spirit
Sabnac, the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications. He has
the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion. Sometimes he
rides a hideous horse. He changes men into stones, of which he
builds towers. He commands fifty legions ’Tis he indeed; I
recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a handsome golden robe,
figured after the Turkish fashion.”
“Where is Bellevigne de l’Étoile?” demanded Clopin.
“He is dead.”
Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: “Notre-Dame is making
work for the hospital,” said he.
“Is there, then, no way of forcing this door,” exclaimed the King
of Thunes, stamping his foot.
The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling
lead which did not cease to streak the black façade, like two
long distaffs of phosphorus.
“Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all by
themselves,” he remarked with a sigh. “Saint-Sophia at
Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three times
in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her domes, which
are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this one was a
magician.”
“Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?” said
Clopin. “Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves
will hang to-morrow.”
“And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!” added a
vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.
“Beard of Mahom!” cried Trouillefou.
“Let us make another trial,” resumed the vagabond.
Mathias Hungadi shook his head.
“We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in
the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint
or other.”
“Who will go with me?” said Clopin. “I shall go at it again. By
the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in
iron?”
“He is dead, no doubt,” some one replied; “we no longer hear his
laugh.”
The King of Thunes frowned: “So much the worse. There was a brave
heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, “he slipped away before we
reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs.”
Clopin stamped his foot. “_Gueule-Dieu!_ ’twas he who pushed us
on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle of the job!
Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du
Parvis, “yonder is the little scholar.”
“Praised be Pluto!” said Clopin. “But what the devil is he
dragging after him?”
It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy
outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the
pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed to
a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.
“Victory! _Te Deum!_” cried the scholar. “Here is the ladder of
the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry.”
Clopin approached him.
“Child, what do you mean to do, _corne-dieu!_ with this ladder?”
“I have it,” replied Jehan, panting. “I knew where it was under
the shed of the lieutenant’s house. There’s a wench there whom I
know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to
get the ladder, and I have the ladder, _Pasque-Mahom!_ The poor
girl came to open the door to me in her shift.”
“Yes,” said Clopin, “but what are you going to do with that
ladder?”
Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked
his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his
head he wore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth
century, which frightened the enemy with their fanciful crests.
His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan could have
disputed with Nestor’s Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of
δεκέμβολος.
“What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see
that row of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder,
above the three portals?”
“Yes. Well?”
“’Tis the gallery of the kings of France.”
“What is that to me?” said Clopin.
“Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is never
fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this ladder I
ascend, and I am in the church.”
“Child let me be the first to ascend.”
“No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the second.”
“May Beelzebub strangle you!” said surly Clopin, “I won’t be
second to anybody.”
“Then find a ladder, Clopin!”
Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder and
shouting: “Follow me, lads!”
In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against the
balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the lateral doors.
The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations, crowded to
its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his right, and was the
first to set foot on the rungs. The passage was tolerably long.
The gallery of the kings of France is to-day about sixty feet
above the pavement. The eleven steps of the flight before the
door, made it still higher. Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal
incommoded by his heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand,
and clinging to a rung with the other. When he reached the middle
of the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead
outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. “Alas!” said he,
“here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!”
Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds followed him. There
was one on every rung. At the sight of this line of cuirassed
backs, undulating as they rose through the gloom, one would have
pronounced it a serpent with steel scales, which was raising
itself erect in front of the church. Jehan who formed the head,
and who was whistling, completed the illusion.
The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and
climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond
tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and
suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of Quasimodo
concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind one of the
statues of the kings.
Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery,
the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder,
without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with
his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall,
balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from
top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish,
then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men
backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the most
resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect
and standing for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then
wavered, then suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle
eighty feet in radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of
ruffians, more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break.
There arose an immense imprecation, then all was still, and a few
mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the heap of dead.
A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of triumph
among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both elbows
propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had the air of an old,
bushy-headed king at his window.
As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He found
himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer, alone,
separated from his companions by a vertical wall eighty feet
high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the ladder, the scholar
had run to the postern which he believed to be open. It was not.
The deaf man had closed it behind him when he entered the
gallery. Jehan had then concealed himself behind a stone king,
not daring to breathe, and fixing upon the monstrous hunchback a
frightened gaze, like the man, who, when courting the wife of the
guardian of a menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous,
mistook the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found
himself face to face with a white bear.
For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to him; but
at last he turned his head, and suddenly straightened up. He had
just caught sight of the scholar.
Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf man
remained motionless; only he had turned towards the scholar and
was looking at him.
“Ho ho!” said Jehan, “what do you mean by staring at me with that
solitary and melancholy eye?”
As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his
crossbow.
“Quasimodo!” he cried, “I am going to change your surname: you
shall be called the blind man.”
The shot sped. The feathered vireton[62] whizzed and entered the
hunchback’s left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more moved by it than
by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his hand on the arrow,
tore it from his arm, and tranquilly broke it across his big
knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor, rather than
threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity to fire a second
time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing heavily, bounded like
a grasshopper, and he fell upon the scholar, whose armor was
flattened against the wall by the blow.
Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a
terrible thing was seen.
Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of Jehan,
who did not offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he feel that
he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf man detached one by
one, in silence, with sinister slowness, all the pieces of his
armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the cuirass, the leg
pieces. One would have said that it was a monkey taking the shell
from a nut. Quasimodo flung the scholar’s iron shell at his feet,
piece by piece. When the scholar beheld himself disarmed,
stripped, weak, and naked in those terrible hands, he made no
attempt to speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously
in his face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a
child of sixteen, the then popular ditty:—
“Elle est bien habillée,
La ville de Cambrai;
Marafin l’a pillée....”[63]
He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of the
gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand and
whirling him over the abyss like a sling; then a sound like that
of a bony structure in contact with a wall was heard, and
something was seen to fall which halted a third of the way down
in its fall, on a projection in the architecture. It was a dead
body which remained hanging there, bent double, its loins broken,
its skull empty.
A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.
“Vengeance!” shouted Clopin. “To the sack!” replied the
multitude. “Assault! assault!”
There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled all tongues,
all dialects, all accents. The death of the poor scholar imparted
a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized with shame, and the
wrath of having been held so long in check before a church by a
hunchback. Rage found ladders, multiplied the torches, and, at
the expiration of a few minutes, Quasimodo, in despair, beheld
that terrible ant heap mount on all sides to the assault of
Notre-Dame. Those who had no ladders had knotted ropes; those who
had no ropes climbed by the projections of the carvings. They
hung from each other’s rags. There were no means of resisting
that rising tide of frightful faces; rage made these fierce
countenances ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat;
their eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these
horrors laid siege to Quasimodo. One would have said that some
other church had despatched to the assault of Notre-Dame its
gorgons, its dogs, its drées, its demons, its most fantastic
sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the stone
monsters of the façade.
Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. This
scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was suddenly
flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and cast a
radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on the lofty platform
was still burning, and illuminated the city far away. The
enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on the
roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this light.
The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in the
distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed; and
Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering for the
gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching ever nearer and
nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven for a miracle, and wrung
his arms in despair.
CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS
PRAYERS.
The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment before
catching sight of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, Quasimodo, as
he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell tower, perceived
only one light burning, which gleamed like a star from a window
on the topmost story of a lofty edifice beside the Porte
Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille. That star was the
candle of Louis XI. King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in
Paris. He was to take his departure on the next day but one for
his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but seldom and brief
appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not feel
about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.
He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great
chamber five toises[64] square, which he had at the Louvre, with
its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and
thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by
twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid all
this grandeur. This good _bourgeois_ king preferred the Bastille
with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was
stronger than the Louvre.
This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the
famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the
topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep. It was
circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining straw, ceiled
with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal with
interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods sown with
rosettes of white metal, and with others painted a fine, bright
green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.
There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with
brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored
panes with the arms of the king and of the queen, each pane being
worth two and twenty sols.
There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a flat arch,
garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the
outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices of
cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which were still to be
seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they
disfigure and embarrass the places,” says Sauvel in despair, “our
old people are still unwilling to get rid of them, and keep them
in spite of everybody.”
In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes
ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms,
nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools
sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece.
Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen; the
wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of ruby
Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, and
studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of this
chair made it apparent that only one person had a right to sit
down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite close to the
window, there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of
birds. On this table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some
parchments, several pens, and a large goblet of chased silver. A
little further on was a brazier, a praying stool in crimson
velvet, relieved with small bosses of gold. Finally, at the
extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and yellow
damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary
fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the
sleeplessness of Louis XI., was still to be seen two hundred
years ago, at the house of a councillor of state, where it was
seen by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name
_Arricidie_ and of _la Morale Vivante_.
Such was the chamber which was called “the retreat where Monsieur
Louis de France says his prayers.”
At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this
retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour
before; night was come, and there was only one flickering wax
candle set on the table to light five persons variously grouped
in the chamber.
The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in
breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose
coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures. This
splendid costume, on which the light played, seemed glazed with
flame on every fold. The man who wore it had his armorial
bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid colors; a chevron
accompanied by a deer passant. The shield was flanked, on the
right by an olive branch, on the left by a deer’s antlers. This
man wore in his girdle a rich dagger whose hilt, of silver gilt,
was chased in the form of a helmet, and surmounted by a count’s
coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien, and a head held
high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at
the second, craft.
He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand,
behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully
doubled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a very
badly accoutred personage. Let the reader imagine in fact, on the
rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked knees, two thin thighs,
poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a body enveloped in a cloak
of fustian, with fur trimming of which more leather than hair was
visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort
of black cloth, bordered with a circular string of leaden
figures. This, in company with a dirty skull-cap, which hardly
allowed a hair to escape, was all that distinguished the seated
personage. He held his head so bent upon his breast, that nothing
was to be seen of his face thus thrown into shadow, except the
tip of his nose, upon which fell a ray of light, and which must
have been long. From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one
divined that he was an old man. It was Louis XI. At some distance
behind them, two men dressed in garments of Flemish style were
conversing, who were not sufficiently lost in the shadow to
prevent any one who had been present at the performance of
Gringoire’s mystery from recognizing in them two of the principal
Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the sagacious pensioner of Ghent,
and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. The reader will
remember that these men were mixed up in the secret politics of
Louis XI. Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door,
in the dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with
thickset limbs, a military harness, with a surcoat of armorial
bearings, whose square face pierced with staring eyes, slit with
an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large screens of flat
hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.
All were uncovered except the king.
The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a sort of
long memorial to which his majesty seemed to be listening
attentively. The two Flemings were whispering together.
“Cross of God!” grumbled Coppenole, “I am tired of standing; is
there no chair here?”
Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet
smile.
“Croix-Dieu!” resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at being
obliged to lower his voice thus, “I should like to sit down on
the floor, with my legs crossed, like a hosier, as I do in my
shop.”
“Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques.”
“Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?”
“Or on his knees,” said Rym.
At that moment the king’s voice was uplifted. They held their
peace.
“Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for
the mantles of the clerks of our crown! That’s it! Pour out gold
by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?”
As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden shells
of the collar of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on his
neck. The candle fully illuminated his gaunt and morose profile.
He tore the papers from the other’s hand.
“You are ruining us!” he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the
scroll. “What is all this? What need have we of so prodigious a
household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month each, and, a
chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-chambre at ninety
livres a year. Four head cooks at six score livres a year each! A
spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a butler, two
sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month each! Two scullions
at eight livres! A groom of the stables and his two aids at four
and twenty livres a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two
carters, each sixty livres a year! And the farrier six score
livres! And the master of the chamber of our funds, twelve
hundred livres! And the comptroller five hundred. And how do I
know what else? ’Tis ruinous. The wages of our servants are
putting France to the pillage! All the ingots of the Louvre will
melt before such a fire of expenses! We shall have to sell our
plate! And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his
hat) lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!”
So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which gleamed
upon the table. He coughed and continued,—
“Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, like
kings and emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in their
houses; for the fire spreads thence through the province. Hence,
Master Olivier, consider this said once for all. Our expenditure
increases every year. The thing displease us. How, _pasque-Dieu!_
when in ’79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres, did
it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen
livres? I have the figures in my head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand
six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, by the faith of my
body, it will reach eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four
years! Monstrous!”
He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,—
“I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you
suck crowns from me at every pore.”
All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath which
are allowed to take their course. He continued,—
“’Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of France,
that we should re-establish what they call the grand charges of
the Crown! Charges in very deed! Charges which crush! Ah!
gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to reign _dapifero
nullo, buticulario nullo!_ We will let you see, _pasque-Dieu!_
whether we are not a king!”
Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this softened
his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,—
“Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the keys, the
grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the grand seneschal are not
worth the smallest valet. Remember this, Gossip Coppenole. They
serve no purpose, as they stand thus useless round the king; they
produce upon me the effect of the four Evangelists who surround
the face of the big clock of the palace, and which Philippe
Brille has just set in order afresh. They are gilt, but they do
not indicate the hour; and the hands can get on without them.”
He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking his aged
head,—
“Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I shall not
gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier.”
The person whom he designated by this name, took the papers into
his hands again, and began to read aloud,—
“To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the
provostship of Paris; for the silver, making, and engraving of
said seals, which have been made new because the others
preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn condition,
could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis.
“To Guillaume Frère, the sum of four livres, four sols parisis,
for his trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed the
doves in the two dove-cots of the Hôtel des Tournelles, during
the months of January, February, and March of this year; and for
this he hath given seven sextiers of barley.
“To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols parisis.”
The king listened in silence. From time to time he coughed; then
he raised the goblet to his lips and drank a draught with a
grimace.
“During this year there have been made by the ordinance of
justice, to the sound of the trumpet, through the squares of
Paris, fifty-six proclamations. Account to be regulated.
“For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in Paris as
well as elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed; but
nothing hath been found: forty-five livres parisis.”
“Bury a crown to unearth a sou!” said the king.
“For having set in the Hôtel des Tournelles six panes of white
glass in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen sols; for
having made and delivered by command of the king, on the day of
the musters, four shields with the escutcheons of the said
seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses all about, six livres;
for two new sleeves to the king’s old doublet, twenty sols; for a
box of grease to grease the boots of the king, fifteen deniers; a
stable newly made to lodge the king’s black pigs, thirty livres
parisis; many partitions, planks, and trap-doors, for the
safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul, twenty-two livres.”
“These be dear beasts,” said Louis XI. “It matters not; it is a
fine magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion whom I
love for his pleasant ways. Have you seen him, Master Guillaume?
Princes must have these terrific animals; for we kings must have
lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats. The great befits a
crown. In the days of the pagans of Jupiter, when the people
offered the temples a hundred oxen and a hundred sheep, the
emperors gave a hundred lions and a hundred eagles. This was wild
and very fine. The kings of France have always had roarings round
their throne. Nevertheless, people must do me this justice, that
I spend still less money on it than they did, and that I possess
a greater modesty of lions, bears, elephants, and leopards.—Go
on, Master Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish
friends.”
Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly mien,
had the air of one of the bears of which his majesty was
speaking. The king paid no heed. He had just dipped his lips into
the goblet, and he spat out the beverage, saying: “Foh! what a
disagreeable potion!” The man who was reading continued:—
“For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months in
the little cell of the flayer, until it should be determined what
to do with him, six livres, four sols.”
“What’s that?” interrupted the king; “feed what ought to be
hanged! _Pasque-Dieu!_ I will give not a sou more for that
nourishment. Olivier, come to an understanding about the matter
with Monsieur d’Estouteville, and prepare me this very evening
the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. Resume.”
Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of the
“rascally foot soldier,” and passed on.
“To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of justice
in Paris, the sum of sixty sols parisis, to him assessed and
ordained by monseigneur the provost of Paris, for having bought,
by order of the said sieur the provost, a great broad sword,
serving to execute and decapitate persons who are by justice
condemned for their demerits, and he hath caused the same to be
garnished with a sheath and with all things thereto appertaining;
and hath likewise caused to be repointed and set in order the old
sword, which had become broken and notched in executing justice
on Messire Louis de Luxembourg, as will more fully appear....”
The king interrupted: “That suffices. I allow the sum with great
good will. Those are expenses which I do not begrudge. I have
never regretted that money. Continue.”
“For having made over a great cage....”
“Ah!” said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in both
hands, “I knew well that I came hither to this Bastille for some
purpose. Hold, Master Olivier; I desire to see that cage myself.
You shall read me the cost while I am examining it. Messieurs
Flemings, come and see this; ’tis curious.”
Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a sign
to the sort of mute who stood before the door to precede him, to
the two Flemings to follow him, and quitted the room.
The royal company was recruited, at the door of the retreat, by
men of arms, all loaded down with iron, and by slender pages
bearing flambeaux. It marched for some time through the interior
of the gloomy donjon, pierced with staircases and corridors even
in the very thickness of the walls. The captain of the Bastille
marched at their head, and caused the wickets to be opened before
the bent and aged king, who coughed as he walked.
At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that of
the old man bent double with age. “Hum,” said he between his
gums, for he had no longer any teeth, “we are already quite
prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a low door, a bent
passer.”
At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded with
locks that a quarter of an hour was required to open it, they
entered a vast and lofty vaulted hall, in the centre of which
they could distinguish by the light of the torches, a huge cubic
mass of masonry, iron, and wood. The interior was hollow. It was
one of those famous cages of prisoners of state, which were
called “the little daughters of the king.” In its walls there
were two or three little windows so closely trellised with stout
iron bars; that the glass was not visible. The door was a large
flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the sort of door which serves
for entrance only. Only here, the occupant was alive.
The king began to walk slowly round the little edifice, examining
it carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed him, read aloud
the note.
“For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams, timbers and
wall-plates, measuring nine feet in length by eight in breadth,
and of the height of seven feet between the partitions, smoothed
and clamped with great bolts of iron, which has been placed in a
chamber situated in one of the towers of the Bastille
Saint-Antoine, in which cage is placed and detained, by command
of the king our lord, a prisoner who formerly inhabited an old,
decrepit, and ruined cage. There have been employed in making the
said new cage, ninety-six horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright
joists, ten wall plates three toises long; there have been
occupied nineteen carpenters to hew, work, and fit all the said
wood in the courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days.”
“Very fine heart of oak,” said the king, striking the woodwork
with his fist.
“There have been used in this cage,” continued the other, “two
hundred and twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet, and of
eight, the rest of medium length, with the rowels, caps and
counterbands appertaining to the said bolts; weighing, the said
iron in all, three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-five
pounds; beside eight great squares of iron, serving to attach the
said cage in place with clamps and nails weighing in all two
hundred and eighteen pounds, not reckoning the iron of the
trellises for the windows of the chamber wherein the cage hath
been placed, the bars of iron for the door of the cage and other
things.”
“’Tis a great deal of iron,” said the king, “to contain the light
of a spirit.”
“The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five
sols, seven deniers.”
“_Pasque-Dieu!_” exclaimed the king.
At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one
seemed to awaken in the interior of the cage; the sound of chains
was heard, grating on the floor, and a feeble voice, which seemed
to issue from the tomb was uplifted. “Sire! sire! mercy!” The one
who spoke thus could not be seen.
“Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers,”
repeated Louis XI. The lamentable voice which had proceeded from
the cage had frozen all present, even Master Olivier himself. The
king alone wore the air of not having heard. At his order, Master
Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly continued his
inspection of the cage.
“In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who hath
made the holes wherein to place the gratings of the windows, and
the floor of the chamber where the cage is, because that floor
could not support this cage by reason of its weight, twenty-seven
livres fourteen sols parisis.”
The voice began to moan again.
“Mercy, sire! I swear to you that ’twas Monsieur the Cardinal
d’Angers and not I, who was guilty of treason.”
“The mason is bold!” said the king. “Continue, Olivier.”
Olivier continued,—
“To a joiner for window frames, bedstead, hollow stool, and other
things, twenty livres, two sols parisis.”
The voice also continued.
“Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you that
’twas not I who wrote the matter to Monseigneur de Guyenne, but
Monsieur le Cardinal Balue.”
“The joiner is dear,” quoth the king. “Is that all?”
“No, sire. To a glazier, for the windows of the said chamber,
forty-six sols, eight deniers parisis.”
“Have mercy, sire! Is it not enough to have given all my goods to
my judges, my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my library to Master
Pierre Doriolle, my tapestry to the governor of the Roussillon? I
am innocent. I have been shivering in an iron cage for fourteen
years. Have mercy, sire! You will find your reward in heaven.”
“Master Olivier,” said the king, “the total?”
“Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers
parisis.
“Notre-Dame!” cried the king. “This is an outrageous cage!”
He tore the book from Master Olivier’s hands, and set to
reckoning it himself upon his fingers, examining the paper and
the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the prisoner could be heard
sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and their faces
turned pale as they looked at each other.
“Fourteen years, sire! Fourteen years now! since the month of
April, 1469. In the name of the Holy Mother of God, sire, listen
to me! During all this time you have enjoyed the heat of the sun.
Shall I, frail creature, never more behold the day? Mercy, sire!
Be pitiful! Clemency is a fine, royal virtue, which turns aside
the currents of wrath. Does your majesty believe that in the hour
of death it will be a great cause of content for a king never to
have left any offence unpunished? Besides, sire, I did not betray
your majesty, ’twas Monsieur d’Angers; and I have on my foot a
very heavy chain, and a great ball of iron at the end, much
heavier than it should be in reason. Eh! sire! Have pity on me!”
“Olivier,” cried the king, throwing back his head, “I observe
that they charge me twenty sols a hogshead for plaster, while it
is worth but twelve. You will refer back this account.”
He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the room.
The miserable prisoner divined from the removal of the torches
and the noise, that the king was taking his departure.
“Sire! sire!” he cried in despair.
The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and heard only
the hoarse voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears this ditty,—
“Maître Jean Balue,
A perdu la vue
De ses évêchés.
Monsieur de Verdun.
N’en a plus pas un;
Tous sont dépêchés.”[65]
The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite
followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned man.
All at once his majesty turned to the Governor of the Bastille,—
“By the way,” said he, “was there not some one in that cage?”
“Pardieu, yes sire!” replied the governor, astounded by the
question.
“And who was it?”
“Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun.”
The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a mania
of his.
“Ah!” said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for the
first time, “Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Monsieur the
Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop!”
At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat had
opened again, then closed upon the five personages whom the
reader has seen at the beginning of this chapter, and who resumed
their places, their whispered conversations, and their attitudes.
During the king’s absence, several despatches had been placed on
his table, and he broke the seals himself. Then he began to read
them promptly, one after the other, made a sign to Master Olivier
who appeared to exercise the office of minister, to take a pen,
and without communicating to him the contents of the despatches,
he began to dictate in a low voice, the replies which the latter
wrote, on his knees, in an inconvenient attitude before the
table.
Guillaume Rym was on the watch.
The king spoke so low that the Flemings heard nothing of his
dictation, except some isolated and rather unintelligible scraps,
such as,—
“To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the sterile by
manufactures....—To show the English lords our four bombards,
London, Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-Omer....—Artillery is the
cause of war being made more judiciously now....—To Monsieur de
Bressuire, our friend....—Armies cannot be maintained without
tribute, etc.”
Once he raised his voice,—
“_Pasque Dieu!_ Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his letters
with yellow wax, like a king of France. Perhaps we are in the
wrong to permit him so to do. My fair cousin of Burgundy granted
no armorial bearings with a field of gules. The grandeur of
houses is assured by the integrity of prerogatives. Note this,
friend Olivier.”
Again,—
“Oh! oh!” said he, “What a long message! What doth our brother
the emperor claim?” And running his eye over the missive and
breaking his reading with interjection: “Surely! the Germans are
so great and powerful, that it is hardly credible—But let us not
forget the old proverb: ‘The finest county is Flanders; the
finest duchy, Milan; the finest kingdom, France.’ Is it not so,
Messieurs Flemings?”
This time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume Rym. The
hosier’s patriotism was tickled.
The last despatch made Louis XI. frown.
“What is this?” he said, “Complaints and fault finding against
our garrisons in Picardy! Olivier, write with diligence to M. the
Marshal de Rouault:—That discipline is relaxed. That the
gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal nobles, the free
archers, and the Swiss inflict infinite evils on the
rustics.—That the military, not content with what they find in
the houses of the rustics, constrain them with violent blows of
cudgel or of lash to go and get wine, spices, and other
unreasonable things in the town.—That monsieur the king knows
this. That we undertake to guard our people against
inconveniences, larcenies and pillage.—That such is our will, by
our Lady!—That in addition, it suits us not that any fiddler,
barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad like a prince, in
velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold.—That these vanities are
hateful to God.—That we, who are gentlemen, content ourselves
with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the ell, of Paris.—That
messieurs the camp-followers can very well come down to that,
also.—Command and ordain.—To Monsieur de Rouault, our
friend.—Good.”
He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. At
the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave passage
to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the chamber,
crying in affright,—
“Sire! sire! there is a sedition of the populace in Paris!” Louis
XI.’s grave face contracted; but all that was visible of his
emotion passed away like a flash of lightning. He controlled
himself and said with tranquil severity,—
“Gossip Jacques, you enter very abruptly!”
“Sire! sire! there is a revolt!” repeated Gossip Jacques
breathlessly.
The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm, and said
in his ear, in such a manner as to be heard by him alone, with
concentrated rage and a sidelong glance at the Flemings,—
“Hold your tongue! or speak low!”
The new comer understood, and began in a low tone to give a very
terrified account, to which the king listened calmly, while
Guillaume Rym called Coppenole’s attention to the face and dress
of the new arrival, to his furred cowl, (_caputia fourrata_), his
short cape, (_epitogia curta_), his robe of black velvet, which
bespoke a president of the court of accounts.
Hardly had this personage given the king some explanations, when
Louis XI. exclaimed, bursting into a laugh,—
“In truth? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier! What call is there for
you to talk so low? Our Lady knoweth that we conceal nothing from
our good friends the Flemings.”
“But sire...”
“Speak loud!”
Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise.
“So,” resumed the king,—“speak sir,—there is a commotion among
the louts in our good city of Paris?”
“Yes, sire.”
“And which is moving you say, against monsieur the bailiff of the
Palais-de-Justice?”
“So it appears,” said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly
astounded by the abrupt and inexplicable change which had just
taken place in the king’s thoughts.
Louis XI. continued: “Where did the watch meet the rabble?”
“Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the
Pont-aux-Changeurs. I met it myself as I was on my way hither to
obey your majesty’s commands. I heard some of them shouting:
‘Down with the bailiff of the palace!’”
“And what complaints have they against the bailiff?”
“Ah!” said Gossip Jacques, “because he is their lord.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles. They have
been complaining this long while, of the bailiff, whose vassals
they are. They do not wish to recognize him either as judge or as
voyer?”[66]
“Yes, certainly!” retorted the king with a smile of satisfaction
which he strove in vain to disguise.
“In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have but
two masters. Your majesty and their God, who is the devil, I
believe.”
“Eh! eh!” said the king.
He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth which
makes the countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate his joy,
although he endeavored at moments to compose himself. No one
understood it in the least, not even Master Olivier. He remained
silent for a moment, with a thoughtful but contented air.
“Are they in force?” he suddenly inquired.
“Yes, assuredly, sire,” replied Gossip Jacques.
“How many?”
“Six thousand at the least.”
The king could not refrain from saying: “Good!” he went on,—
“Are they armed?”
“With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very
violent weapons.”
The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list.
Jacques considered it his duty to add,—
“If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, he
is lost.”
“We will send,” said the king with an air of false seriousness.
“It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff is our
friend. Six thousand! They are desperate scamps! Their audacity
is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it. But we have only
a few people about us to-night. To-morrow morning will be time
enough.”
Gossip Jacques exclaimed, “Instantly, sire! there will be time to
sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the seignory, to
hang the bailiff. For God’s sake, sire! send before to-morrow
morning.”
The king looked him full in the face. “I have told you to-morrow
morning.”
It was one of those looks to which one does not reply. After a
silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more,—
“You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was—”
He corrected himself. “What is the bailiff’s feudal
jurisdiction?”
“Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far as
the Rue de l’Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the localities
vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the church of
Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised the brim of his
hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the Cour des Miracles,
plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, plus the whole highway
which begins at that Maladerie and ends at the Porte
Sainte-Jacques. Of these divers places he is voyer, high, middle,
and low, justiciary, full seigneur.”
“Bless me!” said the king, scratching his left ear with his right
hand, “that makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur the
bailiff was king of all that.”
This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily, and
as though speaking to himself,—
“Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between your
teeth a pretty slice of our Paris.”
All at once he broke out explosively, “_Pasque-Dieu!_ What people
are those who claim to be voyers, justiciaries, lords and masters
in our domains? who have their tollgates at the end of every
field? their gallows and their hangman at every cross-road among
our people? So that as the Greek believed that he had as many
gods as there were fountains, and the Persian as many as he
beheld stars, the Frenchman counts as many kings as he sees
gibbets! Pardieu! ’tis an evil thing, and the confusion of it
displeases me. I should greatly like to know whether it be the
mercy of God that there should be in Paris any other lord than
the king, any other judge than our parliament, any other emperor
than ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day
must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one
king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise
but one God!”
He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with the
air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of hounds:
“Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your
duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack
them!... Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs? On, my people
on!”
Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though to
take back his thought which had already half escaped, bent his
piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons who surrounded
him, and suddenly grasping his hat with both hands and staring
full at it, he said to it: “Oh! I would burn you if you knew what
there was in my head.”
Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy glance
of the fox re-entering his hole,—
“No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff. Unfortunately,
we have but few troops here at the present moment, against so
great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow. The order will be
transmitted to the City and every one who is caught will be
immediately hung.”
“By the way, sire,” said Gossip Coictier, “I had forgotten that
in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards of the
band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they are here.”
“If I desire to see them!” cried the king. “What! _Pasque-Dieu!_
You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier! Go, seek
them!”
Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment later with
the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first
had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was
clothed in rags, and walked with one knee bent and dragging his
leg. The second had a pallid and smiling countenance, with which
the reader is already acquainted.
The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then
addressing the first one abruptly,—
“What’s your name?”
“Gieffroy Pincebourde.”
“Your trade.”
“Outcast.”
“What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?”
The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid
air.
He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is
about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.
“I know not,” said he. “They went, I went.”
“Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord,
the bailiff of the palace?”
“I know that they were going to take something from some one.
That is all.”
A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized
on the person of the vagabond.
“Do you recognize this weapon?” demanded the king.
“Yes; ’tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser.”
“And do you recognize this man as your companion?” added Louis
XI., pointing to the other prisoner.
“No, I do not know him.”
“That will do,” said the king, making a sign with his finger to
the silent personage who stood motionless beside the door, to
whom we have already called the reader’s attention.
“Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice to two
archers, who led away the poor vagabond.
In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner, who
was perspiring in great drops: “Your name?”
“Sire, Pierre Gringoire.”
“Your trade?”
“Philosopher, sire.”
“How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our friend,
monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you to say
concerning this popular agitation?”
“Sire, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended by the
watch in that bad company?”
“No, sire, there is a mistake. ’Tis a fatality. I make tragedies.
Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I am a poet. ’Tis
the melancholy way of men of my profession to roam the streets by
night. I was passing there. It was mere chance. I was unjustly
arrested; I am innocent of this civil tempest. Your majesty sees
that the vagabond did not recognize me. I conjure your majesty—”
“Hold your tongue!” said the king, between two swallows of his
ptisan. “You split our head!”
Tristan l’Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire,—
“Sire, can this one be hanged also?”
This was the first word that he had uttered.
“Phew!” replied the king, “I see no objection.”
“I see a great many!” said Gringoire.
At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive. He
perceived from the king’s cold and indifferent mien that there
was no other resource than something very pathetic, and he flung
himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming, with gestures of
despair:—
“Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break not in
thunder over so small a thing as myself. God’s great lightning
doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an august and, very
puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man who is honest, and who
would find it more difficult to stir up a revolt than a cake of
ice would to give out a spark! Very gracious sire, kindness is
the virtue of a lion and a king. Alas! rigor only frightens
minds; the impetuous gusts of the north wind do not make the
traveller lay aside his cloak; the sun, bestowing his rays little
by little, warms him in such ways that it will make him strip to
his shirt. Sire, you are the sun. I protest to you, my sovereign
lord and master, that I am not an outcast, thief, and disorderly
fellow. Revolt and brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo.
I am not the man to fling myself into those clouds which break
out into seditious clamor. I am your majesty’s faithful vassal.
That same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of
his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of his
father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king; he
should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the
aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which should
transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my maxims of
state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and thieving rascal
because my garment is worn at the elbows. If you will grant me
mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees in praying to God
for you night and morning! Alas! I am not extremely rich, ’tis
true. I am even rather poor. But not vicious on that account. It
is not my fault. Every one knoweth that great wealth is not to be
drawn from literature, and that those who are best posted in good
books do not always have a great fire in winter. The advocate’s
trade taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other
scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs
anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire!
clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of so
great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other
virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after God in
the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as clemency,
causeth the love of subjects, which is the most powerful
bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your majesty, who
dazzles all faces, if there is one poor man more on earth, a poor
innocent philosopher spluttering amid the shadows of calamity,
with an empty pocket which resounds against his hollow belly?
Moreover, sire, I am a man of letters. Great kings make a pearl
for their crowns by protecting letters. Hercules did not disdain
the title of Musagetes. Mathias Corvin favored Jean de Monroyal,
the ornament of mathematics. Now, ’tis an ill way to protect
letters to hang men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he
had hung Aristoteles! This act would not be a little patch on the
face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant
ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium
for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august
Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees
that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied
excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have
mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed
to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at
the idea of being hanged!”
So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, and
Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: “He doth well to
drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the Jupiter of Crete,
they have ears only in their feet.” And without troubling himself
about the Jupiter of Crete, the hosier replied with a heavy
smile, and his eyes fixed on Gringoire: “Oh! that’s it exactly! I
seem to hear Chancellor Hugonet craving mercy of me.”
When Gringoire paused at last, quite out of breath, he raised his
head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged in scratching
a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger-nail; then his
majesty began to drink from the goblet of ptisan. But he uttered
not a word, and this silence tortured Gringoire. At last the king
looked at him. “Here is a terrible bawler!” said, he. Then,
turning to Tristan l’Hermite, “Bah! let him go!”
Gringoire fell backwards, quite thunderstruck with joy.
“At liberty!” growled Tristan “Doth not your majesty wish to have
him detained a little while in a cage?”
“Gossip,” retorted Louis XI., “think you that ’tis for birds of
this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hundred and
sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece? Release him
at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this word which
formed, with _Pasque-Dieu_, the foundation of his joviality), and
put him out with a buffet.”
“Ugh!” cried Gringoire, “what a great king is here!”
And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door,
which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grace. The soldiers
left the room with him, pushing him before them with stout
thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical philosopher.
The king’s good humor since the revolt against the bailiff had
been announced to him, made itself apparent in every way. This
unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tristan l’Hermite in
his corner wore the surly look of a dog who has had a bone
snatched away from him.
Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the arm of
his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dissembling
prince, but one who understood far better how to hide his
troubles than his joys. These external manifestations of joy at
any good news sometimes proceeded to very great lengths thus, on
the death, of Charles the Bold, to the point of vowing silver
balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours; on his advent to the
throne, so far as forgetting to order his father’s obsequies.
“Hé! sire!” suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, “what has become
of the acute attack of illness for which your majesty had me
summoned?”
“Oh!” said the king, “I really suffer greatly, my gossip. There
is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest.”
Coictier took the king’s hand, and begun to feel of his pulse
with a knowing air.
“Look, Coppenole,” said Rym, in a low voice. “Behold him between
Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court. A physician for
himself, a headsman for others.”
As he felt the king’s pulse, Coictier assumed an air of greater
and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some anxiety.
Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man had no other
farm than the king’s bad health. He speculated on it to the best
of his ability.
“Oh! oh!” he murmured at length, “this is serious indeed.”
“Is it not?” said the king, uneasily.
“_Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis_,” continued
the leech.
“_Pasque-Dieu!_”
“This may carry off its man in less than three days.”
“Our Lady!” exclaimed the king. “And the remedy, gossip?”
“I am meditating upon that, sire.”
He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head, made a
grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations,—
“Pardieu, sire,” he suddenly said, “I must tell you that there is
a receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and that I have
a nephew.”
“I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques,” replied
the king; “but draw this fire from my breast.”
“Since your majesty is so clement,” replied the leech, “you will
not refuse to aid me a little in building my house, Rue
Saint-André-des-Arcs.”
“Heugh!” said the king.
“I am at the end of my finances,” pursued the doctor; “and it
would really be a pity that the house should not have a roof; not
on account of the house, which is simple and thoroughly
_bourgeois_, but because of the paintings of Jehan Fourbault,
which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying in the air,
but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so ingenuous an
action, her hair so well coiffed and adorned with a crescent, her
flesh so white, that she leads into temptation those who regard
her too curiously. There is also a Ceres. She is another very
fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves of wheat and crowned with
a gallant garland of wheat ears interlaced with salsify and other
flowers. Never were seen more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a
nobler air, or a more gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the
most innocent and most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever
produced.”
“Executioner!” grumbled Louis XI., “what are you driving at?”
“I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although ’tis
but a small matter, I have no more money.”
“How much doth your roof cost?”
“Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand livres
at the most.”
“Ah, assassin!” cried the king, “He never draws out one of my
teeth which is not a diamond.”
“Am I to have my roof?” said Coictier.
“Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me.”
Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,—
“Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to
your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole,
white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and
we will answer for your majesty.”
A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master Olivier,
perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the
moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.
“Sire—”
“What is it now?” said Louis XI. “Sire, your majesty knoweth that
Simon Radin is dead?”
“Well?”
“He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts of the
treasury.”
“Well?”
“Sire, his place is vacant.”
As he spoke thus, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its
arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change which
ever takes place in a courtier’s visage. The king looked him well
in the face and said in a dry tone,—“I understand.”
He resumed,—
“Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say,
‘There’s no master save the king, there are no fishes save in the
sea.’ I see that you agree with Monsieur de Boucicaut. Now listen
to this; we have a good memory. In ’68 we made you valet of our
chamber: in ’69, guardian of the fortress of the bridge of
Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of Tournay in wages (you wanted
them of Paris). In November, ’73, by letters given to Gergeole,
we instituted you keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place
of Gilbert Acle, equerry; in ’75, gruyer[67] of the forest of
Rouvray-lez-Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in
’78, we graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed
doubly with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you
and your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the
School Saint-Germain; in ’79, we made you gruyer of the forest of
Senart, in place of that poor Jehan Daiz; then captain of the
Château of Loches; then governor of Saint-Quentin; then captain
of the bridge of Meulan, of which you cause yourself to be called
comte. Out of the five sols fine paid by every barber who shaves
on a festival day, there are three sols for you and we have the
rest. We have been good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais
(The Evil), which resembled your face too closely. In ’76, we
granted you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial
bearings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of a
peacock. _Pasque-Dieu!_ Are not you surfeited? Is not the draught
of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you not afraid
that one salmon more will make your boat sink? Pride will be your
ruin, gossip. Ruin and disgrace always press hard on the heels of
pride. Consider this and hold your tongue.”
These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier’s face
revert to its insolence.
“Good!” he muttered, almost aloud, “’tis easy to see that the
king is ill to-day; he giveth all to the leech.”
Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult,
resumed with some gentleness, “Stay, I was forgetting that I made
you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen,”
added the king turning to the Flemings, “this man hath been an
ambassador. There, my gossip,” he pursued, addressing Master
Olivier, “let us not get angry; we are old friends. ’Tis very
late. We have terminated our labors. Shave me.”
Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the present
moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible Figaro whom
Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled so artistically in
the long and bloody comedy of the reign of Louis XI. We will not
here undertake to develop that singular figure. This barber of
the king had three names. At court he was politely called Olivier
le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real
name was Olivier le Mauvais.
Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking at
the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.
“Yes, yes, the physician!” he said between his teeth.
“Ah, yes, the physician!” retorted Louis XI., with singular good
humor; “the physician has more credit than you. ’Tis very simple;
he has taken hold upon us by the whole body, and you hold us only
by the chin. Come, my poor barber, all will come right. What
would you say and what would become of your office if I were a
king like Chilperic, whose gesture consisted in holding his beard
in one hand? Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go
get what you need therefor.”
Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to laugh,
and that there was no way of even annoying him, went off
grumbling to execute his orders.
The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it
with extraordinary agitation,—
“Oh! yes!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands, “yonder is a redness
in the sky over the City. ’Tis the bailiff burning. It can be
nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here you are aiding me
at last in tearing down the rights of lordship!”
Then turning towards the Flemings: “Come, look at this,
gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?”
The two men of Ghent drew near.
“A great fire,” said Guillaume Rym.
“Oh!” exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, “that
reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur
d’Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder.”
“You think so, Master Coppenole?” And Louis XI.’s glance was
almost as joyous as that of the hosier. “Will it not be difficult
to resist?”
“Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of
men of war thereon.”
“Ah! I! ’tis different,” returned the king. “If I willed.”
The hosier replied hardily,—
“If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain.”
“Gossip,” said Louis XI., “with the two companies of my
unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work
is made of a populace of louts.”
The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym,
appeared determined to hold his own against the king.
“Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy
was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble
rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried: ‘Men of the
cannon! Fire on the villains!’ and he swore by Saint-George. But
Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome duke with his
battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian
army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew
in pieces like a pane of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many
lords were then slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de
Château-Guyon, the greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead,
with his gray horse, in a little marsh meadow.”
“Friend,” returned the king, “you are speaking of a battle. The
question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper hand of
it as soon as it shall please me to frown.”
The other replied indifferently,—
“That may be, sire; in that case, ’tis because the people’s hour
hath not yet come.”
Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,—
“Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.”
“I know it,” replied the hosier, gravely.
“Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend,” said the king; “I love
this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was
accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead,
and that she had found no confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth
me.”
Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole’s shoulder,—
“You were saying, Master Jacques?”
“I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the
hour of the people may not yet have come with you.”
Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,—
“And when will that hour come, master?”
“You will hear it strike.”
“On what clock, if you please?”
Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the
king approach the window.
“Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons,
_bourgeois_, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the
cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins amid
great noise, when _bourgeois_ and soldiers shall howl and slay
each other, the hour will strike.”
Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a
moment, then he gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the
donjon, as one strokes the haunches of a steed.
“Oh! no!” said he. “You will not crumble so easily, will you, my
good Bastille?”
And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,—
“Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I have made them,” said the hosier.
“How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a
hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the
city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the
inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They
always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. Well! One
morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me:
‘Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the
Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save her ministers, the grand
bailiff is doubling the impost on shagreen, or something
else,’—what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I come out of
my hosier’s stall, and I shout: ‘To the sack?’ There is always
some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the
first words that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when
one is of the people, sire, one always has something on the
heart. Then people troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm
bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the soldiers,
the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always
be thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories,
_bourgeois_ in the bourgs, and peasants in the country.”
“And against whom do you thus rebel?” inquired the king; “against
your bailiffs? against your lords?”
“Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes.”
Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,—
“Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs.”
At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two
pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles; but what struck Louis
XI. was that he was also accompanied by the provost of Paris and
the chevalier of the watch, who appeared to be in consternation.
The spiteful barber also wore an air of consternation, which was
one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who spoke first.
“Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news which
I bring.”
The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the
feet of his chair,—
“What does this mean?”
“Sire,” resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man
who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, “’tis not
against the bailiff of the courts that this popular sedition is
directed.”
“Against whom, then?”
“Against you, sire?’
The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,—
“Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for
I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if you lie to us at
this hour, the sword which severed the head of Monsieur de
Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot yet sever yours!”
The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the
course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.
Olivier opened his mouth to reply.
“Sire—”
“On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tristan, have
an eye to this man.”
Olivier knelt down and said coldly,—
“Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of
parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying
to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the provost and
monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have just come from the
riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the truth. The
populace is besieging Notre-Dame.”
“Yes, indeed!” said the king in a low voice, all pale and
trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my
good mistress in her cathedral!—Rise, Olivier. You are right. I
give you Simon Radin’s charge. You are right. ’Tis I whom they
are attacking. The witch is under the protection of this church,
the church is under my protection. And I thought that they were
acting against the bailiff! ’Tis against myself!”
Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with
long strides. He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and
came; the fox was changed into a hyæna. He seemed suffocated to
such a degree that he could not speak; his lips moved, and his
fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised his head,
his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth
like a clarion: “Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these
rascals! Go, Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!”
This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said
with cold and concentrated wrath,—
“Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty
lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse:
you will take them. There is also the company of our unattached
archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers: you will take it. You are
provost of the marshals; you have the men of your provostship:
you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty
archers of monsieur the dauphin’s new guard: you will take them.
And, with all these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah!
messieurs, louts of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against
the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of
this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not
a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.”
Tristan bowed. “’Tis well, sire.”
He added, after a silence, “And what shall I do with the
sorceress?”
This question caused the king to meditate.
“Ah!” said he, “the sorceress! Monsieur d’Estouteville, what did
the people wish to do with her?”
“Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I imagine that since the
populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-Dame, ’tis
because that impunity wounds them, and they desire to hang her.”
The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan
l’Hermite, “Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the
sorceress.”
“That’s it,” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, “punish the
people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish.”
“Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. “If the sorceress is still in
Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?”
“_Pasque-Dieu!_ the sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his
ear. “But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.”
Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on
his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the
seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which
loaded it down, “Oh!” said he, with clasped hands, “our Lady of
Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it this
once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the
virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not
worthy of your amiable protection. You know, madame, that many
very pious princes have overstepped the privileges of the
churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the State.
Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a
witch in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master,
transgressed, with the same object, the church of Monsieur
Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem,
the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this
once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will
give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last
year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.”
He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more,
and said to Tristan,—
“Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with you. You
will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace.
You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. And I mean the business of
the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of
it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this night. Shave me.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing
Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,—
“God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take
a little repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the
morning than the evening.”
Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of
the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,—
“Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen
Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis
XI. when ailing.”
“Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “’tis because wine renders kings
less cruel than does barley water.”
CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.
On emerging from the Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue
Saint-Antoine with the swiftness of a runaway horse. On arriving
at the Baudoyer gate, he walked straight to the stone cross which
rose in the middle of that place, as though he were able to
distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and cloaked
in black, who was seated on the steps of the cross.
“Is it you, master?” said Gringoire.
The personage in black rose.
“Death and passion! You make me boil, Gringoire. The man on the
tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one o’clock in
the morning.”
“Oh,” retorted Gringoire, “’tis no fault of mine, but of the
watch and the king. I have just had a narrow escape. I always
just miss being hung. ’Tis my predestination.”
“You lack everything,” said the other. “But come quickly. Have
you the password?”
“Fancy, master, I have seen the king. I come from him. He wears
fustian breeches. ’Tis an adventure.”
“Oh! distaff of words! what is your adventure to me! Have you the
password of the outcasts?”
“I have it. Be at ease. ‘Little sword in pocket.’”
“Good. Otherwise, we could not make our way as far as the church.
The outcasts bar the streets. Fortunately, it appears that they
have encountered resistance. We may still arrive in time.”
“Yes, master, but how are we to get into Notre-Dame?”
“I have the key to the tower.”
“And how are we to get out again?”
“Behind the cloister there is a little door which opens on the
Terrain and the water. I have taken the key to it, and I moored a
boat there this morning.”
“I have had a beautiful escape from being hung!” Gringoire
repeated.
“Eh, quick! come!” said the other.
Both descended towards the city with long strides.
CHAPTER VII. CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.
The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in which
we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on all sides, had
lost, if not all courage, at least all hope of saving, not
himself (he was not thinking of himself), but the gypsy. He ran
distractedly along the gallery. Notre-Dame was on the point of
being taken by storm by the outcasts. All at once, a great
galloping of horses filled the neighboring streets, and, with a
long file of torches and a thick column of cavaliers, with free
reins and lances in rest, these furious sounds debouched on the
Place like a hurricane,—
“France! France! cut down the louts! Châteaupers to the rescue!
Provostship! Provostship!”
The frightened vagabonds wheeled round.
Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the torches,
the irons of the pikes, all that cavalry, at the head of which he
recognized Captain Phœbus; he beheld the confusion of the
outcasts, the terror of some, the disturbance among the bravest
of them, and from this unexpected succor he recovered so much
strength, that he hurled from the church the first assailants who
were already climbing into the gallery.
It was, in fact, the king’s troops who had arrived. The vagabonds
behaved bravely. They defended themselves like desperate men.
Caught on the flank, by the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, and in
the rear through the Rue du Parvis, driven to bay against
Notre-Dame, which they still assailed and Quasimodo defended, at
the same time besiegers and besieged, they were in the singular
situation in which Comte Henri Harcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem
et obsessus_, as his epitaph says, found himself later on, at the
famous siege of Turin, in 1640, between Prince Thomas of Savoy,
whom he was besieging, and the Marquis de Leganez, who was
blockading him.
The battle was frightful. There was a dog’s tooth for wolf’s
flesh, as P. Mathieu says. The king’s cavaliers, in whose midst
Phœbus de Châteaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no quarter,
and the slash of the sword disposed of those who escaped the
thrust of the lance. The outcasts, badly armed foamed and bit
with rage. Men, women, children, hurled themselves on the
cruppers and the breasts of the horses, and hung there like cats,
with teeth, finger nails and toe nails. Others struck the
archers’ in the face with their torches. Others thrust iron hooks
into the necks of the cavaliers and dragged them down. They
slashed in pieces those who fell.
One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for
a long time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He
was singing a ditty, with a nasal intonation, he swung and drew
back his scythe incessantly. At every blow he traced around him a
great circle of severed limbs. He advanced thus into the very
thickest of the cavalry, with the tranquil slowness, the lolling
of the head and the regular breathing of a harvester attacking a
field of wheat. It was Clopin Trouillefou. A shot from an
arquebus laid him low.
In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The neighbors
hearing the war cries of the king’s troops, had mingled in the
affray, and bullets rained upon the outcasts from every story.
The Parvis was filled with a thick smoke, which the musketry
streaked with flame. Through it one could confusedly distinguish
the front of Notre-Dame, and the decrepit Hôtel-Dieu with some
wan invalids gazing down from the heights of its roof all
checkered with dormer windows.
At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of good
weapons, the fright of this surprise, the musketry from the
windows, the valiant attack of the king’s troops, all overwhelmed
them. They forced the line of assailants, and fled in every
direction, leaving the Parvis encumbered with dead.
When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a moment, beheld
this rout, he fell on his knees and raised his hands to heaven;
then, intoxicated with joy, he ran, he ascended with the
swiftness of a bird to that cell, the approaches to which he had
so intrepidly defended. He had but one thought now; it was to
kneel before her whom he had just saved for the second time.
When he entered the cell, he found it empty.
BOOK ELEVENTH.
CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.
La Esmeralda was sleeping at the moment when the outcasts
assailed the church.
Soon the ever-increasing uproar around the edifice, and the
uneasy bleating of her goat which had been awakened, had roused
her from her slumbers. She had sat up, she had listened, she had
looked; then, terrified by the light and noise, she had rushed
from her cell to see. The aspect of the Place, the vision which
was moving in it, the disorder of that nocturnal assault, that
hideous crowd, leaping like a cloud of frogs, half seen in the
gloom, the croaking of that hoarse multitude, those few red
torches running and crossing each other in the darkness like the
meteors which streak the misty surfaces of marshes, this whole
scene produced upon her the effect of a mysterious battle between
the phantoms of the witches’ sabbath and the stone monsters of
the church. Imbued from her very infancy with the superstitions
of the Bohemian tribe, her first thought was that she had caught
the strange beings peculiar to the night, in their deeds of
witchcraft. Then she ran in terror to cower in her cell, asking
of her pallet some less terrible nightmare.
But little by little the first vapors of terror had been
dissipated; from the constantly increasing noise, and from many
other signs of reality, she felt herself besieged not by
spectres, but by human beings. Then her fear, though it did not
increase, changed its character. She had dreamed of the
possibility of a popular mutiny to tear her from her asylum. The
idea of once more recovering life, hope, Phœbus, who was ever
present in her future, the extreme helplessness of her condition,
flight cut off, no support, her abandonment, her isolation,—these
thoughts and a thousand others overwhelmed her. She fell upon her
knees, with her head on her bed, her hands clasped over her head,
full of anxiety and tremors, and, although a gypsy, an idolater,
and a pagan, she began to entreat with sobs, mercy from the good
Christian God, and to pray to our Lady, her hostess. For even if
one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one is
always of the religion of the temple which is nearest at hand.
She remained thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling in
truth, more than praying, chilled by the ever-closer breath of
that furious multitude, understanding nothing of this outburst,
ignorant of what was being plotted, what was being done, what
they wanted, but foreseeing a terrible issue.
In the midst of this anguish, she heard some one walking near
her. She turned round. Two men, one of whom carried a lantern,
had just entered her cell. She uttered a feeble cry.
“Fear nothing,” said a voice which was not unknown to her, “it is
I.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Pierre Gringoire.”
This name reassured her. She raised her eyes once more, and
recognized the poet in very fact. But there stood beside him a
black figure veiled from head to foot, which struck her by its
silence.
“Oh!” continued Gringoire in a tone of reproach, “Djali
recognized me before you!”
The little goat had not, in fact, waited for Gringoire to
announce his name. No sooner had he entered than it rubbed itself
gently against his knees, covering the poet with caresses and
with white hairs, for it was shedding its hair. Gringoire
returned the caresses.
“Who is this with you?” said the gypsy, in a low voice.
“Be at ease,” replied Gringoire. “’Tis one of my friends.” Then
the philosopher setting his lantern on the ground, crouched upon
the stones, and exclaimed enthusiastically, as he pressed Djali
in his arms,—
“Oh! ’tis a graceful beast, more considerable no doubt, for it’s
neatness than for its size, but ingenious, subtle, and lettered
as a grammarian! Let us see, my Djali, hast thou forgotten any of
thy pretty tricks? How does Master Jacques Charmolue?...”
The man in black did not allow him to finish. He approached
Gringoire and shook him roughly by the shoulder.
Gringoire rose.
“’Tis true,” said he: “I forgot that we are in haste. But that is
no reason master, for getting furious with people in this manner.
My dear and lovely child, your life is in danger, and Djali’s
also. They want to hang you again. We are your friends, and we
have come to save you. Follow us.”
“Is it true?” she exclaimed in dismay.
“Yes, perfectly true. Come quickly!”
“I am willing,” she stammered. “But why does not your friend
speak?”
“Ah!” said Gringoire, “’tis because his father and mother were
fantastic people who made him of a taciturn temperament.”
She was obliged to content herself with this explanation.
Gringoire took her by the hand; his companion picked up the
lantern and walked on in front. Fear stunned the young girl. She
allowed herself to be led away. The goat followed them, frisking,
so joyous at seeing Gringoire again that it made him stumble
every moment by thrusting its horns between his legs.
“Such is life,” said the philosopher, every time that he came
near falling down; “’tis often our best friends who cause us to
be overthrown.”
They rapidly descended the staircase of the towers, crossed the
church, full of shadows and solitude, and all reverberating with
uproar, which formed a frightful contrast, and emerged into the
courtyard of the cloister by the red door. The cloister was
deserted; the canons had fled to the bishop’s palace in order to
pray together; the courtyard was empty, a few frightened lackeys
were crouching in dark corners. They directed their steps towards
the door which opened from this court upon the Terrain. The man
in black opened it with a key which he had about him. Our readers
are aware that the Terrain was a tongue of land enclosed by walls
on the side of the City and belonging to the chapter of
Notre-Dame, which terminated the island on the east, behind the
church. They found this enclosure perfectly deserted. There was
here less tumult in the air. The roar of the outcasts’ assault
reached them more confusedly and less clamorously. The fresh
breeze which follows the current of a stream, rustled the leaves
of the only tree planted on the point of the Terrain, with a
noise that was already perceptible. But they were still very
close to danger. The nearest edifices to them were the bishop’s
palace and the church. It was plainly evident that there was
great internal commotion in the bishop’s palace. Its shadowy mass
was all furrowed with lights which flitted from window to window;
as, when one has just burned paper, there remains a sombre
edifice of ashes in which bright sparks run a thousand eccentric
courses. Beside them, the enormous towers of Notre-Dame, thus
viewed from behind, with the long nave above which they rise cut
out in black against the red and vast light which filled the
Parvis, resembled two gigantic andirons of some cyclopean
fire-grate.
What was to be seen of Paris on all sides wavered before the eye
in a gloom mingled with light. Rembrandt has such backgrounds to
his pictures.
The man with the lantern walked straight to the point of the
Terrain. There, at the very brink of the water, stood the
wormeaten remains of a fence of posts latticed with laths,
whereon a low vine spread out a few thin branches like the
fingers of an outspread hand. Behind, in the shadow cast by this
trellis, a little boat lay concealed. The man made a sign to
Gringoire and his companion to enter. The goat followed them. The
man was the last to step in. Then he cut the boat’s moorings,
pushed it from the shore with a long boat-hook, and, seizing two
oars, seated himself in the bow, rowing with all his might
towards midstream. The Seine is very rapid at this point, and he
had a good deal of trouble in leaving the point of the island.
Gringoire’s first care on entering the boat was to place the goat
on his knees. He took a position in the stern; and the young
girl, whom the stranger inspired with an indefinable uneasiness,
seated herself close to the poet.
When our philosopher felt the boat sway, he clapped his hands and
kissed Djali between the horns.
“Oh!” said he, “now we are safe, all four of us.”
He added with the air of a profound thinker, “One is indebted
sometimes to fortune, sometimes to ruse, for the happy issue of
great enterprises.”
The boat made its way slowly towards the right shore. The young
girl watched the unknown man with secret terror. He had carefully
turned off the light of his dark lantern. A glimpse could be
caught of him in the obscurity, in the bow of the boat, like a
spectre. His cowl, which was still lowered, formed a sort of
mask; and every time that he spread his arms, upon which hung
large black sleeves, as he rowed, one would have said they were
two huge bat’s wings. Moreover, he had not yet uttered a word or
breathed a syllable. No other noise was heard in the boat than
the splashing of the oars, mingled with the rippling of the water
along her sides.
“On my soul!” exclaimed Gringoire suddenly, “we are as cheerful
and joyous as young owls! We preserve the silence of Pythagoreans
or fishes! _Pasque-Dieu!_ my friends, I should greatly like to
have some one speak to me. The human voice is music to the human
ear. ’Tis not I who say that, but Didymus of Alexandria, and they
are illustrious words. Assuredly, Didymus of Alexandria is no
mediocre philosopher.—One word, my lovely child! say but one word
to me, I entreat you. By the way, you had a droll and peculiar
little pout; do you still make it? Do you know, my dear, that
parliament hath full jurisdiction over all places of asylum, and
that you were running a great risk in your little chamber at
Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochylus maketh its nest in
the jaws of the crocodile.—Master, here is the moon re-appearing.
If only they do not perceive us. We are doing a laudable thing in
saving mademoiselle, and yet we should be hung by order of the
king if we were caught. Alas! human actions are taken by two
handles. That is branded with disgrace in one which is crowned in
another. He admires Cicero who blames Catiline. Is it not so,
master? What say you to this philosophy? I possess philosophy by
instinct, by nature, _ut apes geometriam_.—Come! no one answers
me. What unpleasant moods you two are in! I must do all the
talking alone. That is what we call a monologue in
tragedy.—_Pasque-Dieu!_ I must inform you that I have just seen
the king, Louis XI., and that I have caught this oath from
him,—_Pasque-Dieu!_ They are still making a hearty howl in the
city.—’Tis a villanous, malicious old king. He is all swathed in
furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came
within a nick of hanging me this evening, which would have been
very inconvenient to me.—He is niggardly towards men of merit. He
ought to read the four books of Salvien of Cologne, _Adversus
Avaritiam_. In truth! ’Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of
letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. He is a
sponge, to soak money raised from the people. His saving is like
the spleen which swelleth with the leanness of all the other
members. Hence complaints against the hardness of the times
become murmurs against the prince. Under this gentle and pious
sire, the gallows crack with the hung, the blocks rot with blood,
the prisons burst like over full bellies. This king hath one hand
which grasps, and one which hangs. He is the procurator of Dame
Tax and Monsieur Gibbet. The great are despoiled of their
dignities, and the little incessantly overwhelmed with fresh
oppressions. He is an exorbitant prince. I love not this monarch.
And you, master?”
The man in black let the garrulous poet chatter on. He continued
to struggle against the violent and narrow current, which
separates the prow of the City and the stem of the island of
Notre-Dame, which we call to-day the Isle St. Louis.
“By the way, master!” continued Gringoire suddenly. “At the
moment when we arrived on the Parvis, through the enraged
outcasts, did your reverence observe that poor little devil whose
skull your deaf man was just cracking on the railing of the
gallery of the kings? I am near sighted and I could not recognize
him. Do you know who he could be?”
The stranger answered not a word. But he suddenly ceased rowing,
his arms fell as though broken, his head sank on his breast, and
la Esmeralda heard him sigh convulsively. She shuddered. She had
heard such sighs before.
The boat, abandoned to itself, floated for several minutes with
the stream. But the man in black finally recovered himself,
seized the oars once more and began to row against the current.
He doubled the point of the Isle of Notre Dame, and made for the
landing-place of the Port au Foin.
“Ah!” said Gringoire, “yonder is the Barbeau mansion.—Stay,
master, look: that group of black roofs which make such singular
angles yonder, above that heap of black, fibrous grimy, dirty
clouds, where the moon is completely crushed and spread out like
the yolk of an egg whose shell is broken.—’Tis a fine mansion.
There is a chapel crowned with a small vault full of very well
carved enrichments. Above, you can see the bell tower, very
delicately pierced. There is also a pleasant garden, which
consists of a pond, an aviary, an echo, a mall, a labyrinth, a
house for wild beasts, and a quantity of leafy alleys very
agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascal of a tree which is
called ‘the lewd,’ because it favored the pleasures of a famous
princess and a constable of France, who was a gallant and a
wit.—Alas! we poor philosophers are to a constable as a plot of
cabbages or a radish bed to the garden of the Louvre. What
matters it, after all? human life, for the great as well as for
us, is a mixture of good and evil. Pain is always by the side of
joy, the spondee by the dactyl.—Master, I must relate to you the
history of the Barbeau mansion. It ends in tragic fashion. It was
in 1319, in the reign of Philippe V., the longest reign of the
kings of France. The moral of the story is that the temptations
of the flesh are pernicious and malignant. Let us not rest our
glance too long on our neighbor’s wife, however gratified our
senses may be by her beauty. Fornication is a very libertine
thought. Adultery is a prying into the pleasures of others—Ohé!
the noise yonder is redoubling!”
The tumult around Notre-Dame was, in fact, increasing. They
listened. Cries of victory were heard with tolerable
distinctness. All at once, a hundred torches, the light of which
glittered upon the helmets of men at arms, spread over the church
at all heights, on the towers, on the galleries, on the flying
buttresses. These torches seemed to be in search of something;
and soon distant clamors reached the fugitives distinctly:—“The
gypsy! the sorceress! death to the gypsy!”
The unhappy girl dropped her head upon her hands, and the unknown
began to row furiously towards the shore. Meanwhile our
philosopher reflected. He clasped the goat in his arms, and
gently drew away from the gypsy, who pressed closer and closer to
him, as though to the only asylum which remained to her.
It is certain that Gringoire was enduring cruel perplexity. He
was thinking that the goat also, “according to existing law,”
would be hung if recaptured; which would be a great pity, poor
Djali! that he had thus two condemned creatures attached to him;
that his companion asked no better than to take charge of the
gypsy. A violent combat began between his thoughts, in which,
like the Jupiter of the Iliad, he weighed in turn the gypsy and
the goat; and he looked at them alternately with eyes moist with
tears, saying between his teeth:
“But I cannot save you both!”
A shock informed them that the boat had reached the land at last.
The uproar still filled the city. The unknown rose, approached
the gypsy, and endeavored to take her arm to assist her to
alight. She repulsed him and clung to the sleeve of Gringoire,
who, in his turn, absorbed in the goat, almost repulsed her. Then
she sprang alone from the boat. She was so troubled that she did
not know what she did or whither she was going. Thus she remained
for a moment, stunned, watching the water flow past; when she
gradually returned to her senses, she found herself alone on the
wharf with the unknown. It appears that Gringoire had taken
advantage of the moment of debarcation to slip away with the goat
into the block of houses of the Rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau.
The poor gypsy shivered when she beheld herself alone with this
man. She tried to speak, to cry out, to call Gringoire; her
tongue was dumb in her mouth, and no sound left her lips. All at
once she felt the stranger’s hand on hers. It was a strong, cold
hand. Her teeth chattered, she turned paler than the ray of
moonlight which illuminated her. The man spoke not a word. He
began to ascend towards the Place de Grève, holding her by the
hand.
At that moment, she had a vague feeling that destiny is an
irresistible force. She had no more resistance left in her, she
allowed herself to be dragged along, running while he walked. At
this spot the quay ascended. But it seemed to her as though she
were descending a slope.
She gazed about her on all sides. Not a single passer-by. The
quay was absolutely deserted. She heard no sound, she felt no
people moving save in the tumultuous and glowing city, from which
she was separated only by an arm of the Seine, and whence her
name reached her, mingled with cries of “Death!” The rest of
Paris was spread around her in great blocks of shadows.
Meanwhile, the stranger continued to drag her along with the same
silence and the same rapidity. She had no recollection of any of
the places where she was walking. As she passed before a lighted
window, she made an effort, drew up suddenly, and cried out,
“Help!”
The _bourgeois_ who was standing at the window opened it,
appeared there in his shirt with his lamp, stared at the quay
with a stupid air, uttered some words which she did not
understand, and closed his shutter again. It was her last gleam
of hope extinguished.
The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her firmly,
and set out again at a quicker pace. She no longer resisted, but
followed him, completely broken.
From time to time she called together a little strength, and
said, in a voice broken by the unevenness of the pavement and the
breathlessness of their flight, “Who are you? Who are you?” He
made no reply.
They arrived thus, still keeping along the quay, at a tolerably
spacious square. It was the Grève. In the middle, a sort of
black, erect cross was visible; it was the gallows. She
recognized all this, and saw where she was.
The man halted, turned towards her and raised his cowl.
“Oh!” she stammered, almost petrified, “I knew well that it was
he again!”
It was the priest. He looked like the ghost of himself; that is
an effect of the moonlight, it seems as though one beheld only
the spectres of things in that light.
“Listen!” he said to her; and she shuddered at the sound of that
fatal voice which she had not heard for a long time. He continued
speaking with those brief and panting jerks, which betoken deep
internal convulsions. “Listen! we are here. I am going to speak
to you. This is the Grève. This is an extreme point. Destiny
gives us to one another. I am going to decide as to your life;
you will decide as to my soul. Here is a place, here is a night
beyond which one sees nothing. Then listen to me. I am going to
tell you.... In the first place, speak not to me of your Phœbus.
(As he spoke thus he paced to and fro, like a man who cannot
remain in one place, and dragged her after him.) Do not speak to
me of him. Do you see? If you utter that name, I know not what I
shall do, but it will be terrible.”
Then, like a body which recovers its centre of gravity, he became
motionless once more, but his words betrayed no less agitation.
His voice grew lower and lower.
“Do not turn your head aside thus. Listen to me. It is a serious
matter. In the first place, here is what has happened.—All this
will not be laughed at. I swear it to you.—What was I saying?
Remind me! Oh!—There is a decree of Parliament which gives you
back to the scaffold. I have just rescued you from their hands.
But they are pursuing you. Look!”
He extended his arm toward the City. The search seemed, in fact,
to be still in progress there. The uproar drew nearer; the tower
of the lieutenant’s house, situated opposite the Grève, was full
of clamors and light, and soldiers could be seen running on the
opposite quay with torches and these cries, “The gypsy! Where is
the gypsy! Death! Death!”
“You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I am not lying
to you. I love you.—Do not open your mouth; refrain from speaking
to me rather, if it be only to tell me that you hate me. I have
made up my mind not to hear that again.—I have just saved
you.—Let me finish first. I can save you wholly. I have prepared
everything. It is yours at will. If you wish, I can do it.”
He broke off violently. “No, that is not what I should say!”
As he went with hurried step and made her hurry also, for he did
not release her, he walked straight to the gallows, and pointed
to it with his finger,—
“Choose between us two,” he said, coldly.
She tore herself from his hands and fell at the foot of the
gibbet, embracing that funereal support, then she half turned her
beautiful head, and looked at the priest over her shoulder. One
would have said that she was a Holy Virgin at the foot of the
cross. The priest remained motionless, his finger still raised
toward the gibbet, preserving his attitude like a statue. At
length the gypsy said to him,—
“It causes me less horror than you do.”
Then he allowed his arm to sink slowly, and gazed at the pavement
in profound dejection.
“If these stones could speak,” he murmured, “yes, they would say
that a very unhappy man stands here.”
He went on. The young girl, kneeling before the gallows,
enveloped in her long flowing hair, let him speak on without
interruption. He now had a gentle and plaintive accent which
contrasted sadly with the haughty harshness of his features.
“I love you. Oh! how true that is! So nothing comes of that fire
which burns my heart! Alas! young girl, night and day—yes, night
and day I tell you,—it is torture. Oh! I suffer too much, my poor
child. ’Tis a thing deserving of compassion, I assure you. You
see that I speak gently to you. I really wish that you should no
longer cherish this horror of me.—After all, if a man loves a
woman, ’tis not his fault!—Oh, my God!—What! So you will never
pardon me? You will always hate me? All is over then. It is that
which renders me evil, do you see? and horrible to myself.—You
will not even look at me! You are thinking of something else,
perchance, while I stand here and talk to you, shuddering on the
brink of eternity for both of us! Above all things, do not speak
to me of the officer!—I would cast myself at your knees, I would
kiss not your feet, but the earth which is under your feet; I
would sob like a child, I would tear from my breast not words,
but my very heart and vitals, to tell you that I love you;—all
would be useless, all!—And yet you have nothing in your heart but
what is tender and merciful. You are radiant with the most
beautiful mildness; you are wholly sweet, good, pitiful, and
charming. Alas! You cherish no ill will for any one but me alone!
Oh! what a fatality!”
He hid his face in his hands. The young girl heard him weeping.
It was for the first time. Thus erect and shaken by sobs, he was
more miserable and more suppliant than when on his knees. He wept
thus for a considerable time.
“Come!” he said, these first tears passed, “I have no more words.
I had, however, thought well as to what you would say. Now I
tremble and shiver and break down at the decisive moment, I feel
conscious of something supreme enveloping us, and I stammer. Oh!
I shall fall upon the pavement if you do not take pity on me,
pity on yourself. Do not condemn us both. If you only knew how
much I love you! What a heart is mine! Oh! what desertion of all
virtue! What desperate abandonment of myself! A doctor, I mock at
science; a gentleman, I tarnish my own name; a priest, I make of
the missal a pillow of sensuality, I spit in the face of my God!
all this for thee, enchantress! to be more worthy of thy hell!
And you will not have the apostate! Oh! let me tell you all! more
still, something more horrible, oh! Yet more horrible!...”
As he uttered these last words, his air became utterly
distracted. He was silent for a moment, and resumed, as though
speaking to himself, and in a strong voice,—
“Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?”
There was another silence, and he went on—
“What have I done with him, Lord? I received him, I reared him, I
nourished him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I have slain him!
Yes, Lord, they have just dashed his head before my eyes on the
stone of thine house, and it is because of me, because of this
woman, because of her.”
His eye was wild. His voice grew ever weaker; he repeated many
times, yet, mechanically, at tolerably long intervals, like a
bell prolonging its last vibration: “Because of her.—Because of
her.”
Then his tongue no longer articulated any perceptible sound; but
his lips still moved. All at once he sank together, like
something crumbling, and lay motionless on the earth, with his
head on his knees.
A touch from the young girl, as she drew her foot from under him,
brought him to himself. He passed his hand slowly over his hollow
cheeks, and gazed for several moments at his fingers, which were
wet, “What!” he murmured, “I have wept!”
And turning suddenly to the gypsy with unspeakable anguish,—
“Alas! you have looked coldly on at my tears! Child, do you know
that those tears are of lava? Is it indeed true? Nothing touches
when it comes from the man whom one does not love. If you were to
see me die, you would laugh. Oh! I do not wish to see you die!
One word! A single word of pardon! Say not that you love me, say
only that you will do it; that will suffice; I will save you. If
not—oh! the hour is passing. I entreat you by all that is sacred,
do not wait until I shall have turned to stone again, like that
gibbet which also claims you! Reflect that I hold the destinies
of both of us in my hand, that I am mad,—it is terrible,—that I
may let all go to destruction, and that there is beneath us a
bottomless abyss, unhappy girl, whither my fall will follow yours
to all eternity! One word of kindness! Say one word! only one
word!”
She opened her mouth to answer him. He flung himself on his knees
to receive with adoration the word, possibly a tender one, which
was on the point of issuing from her lips. She said to him, “You
are an assassin!”
The priest clasped her in his arms with fury, and began to laugh
with an abominable laugh.
“Well, yes, an assassin!” he said, “and I will have you. You will
not have me for your slave, you shall have me for your master. I
will have you! I have a den, whither I will drag you. You will
follow me, you will be obliged to follow me, or I will deliver
you up! You must die, my beauty, or be mine! belong to the
priest! belong to the apostate! belong to the assassin! this very
night, do you hear? Come! joy; kiss me, mad girl! The tomb or my
bed!”
His eyes sparkled with impurity and rage. His lewd lips reddened
the young girl’s neck. She struggled in his arms. He covered her
with furious kisses.
“Do not bite me, monster!” she cried. “Oh! the foul, odious monk!
leave me! I will tear out thy ugly gray hair and fling it in thy
face by the handful!”
He reddened, turned pale, then released her and gazed at her with
a gloomy air. She thought herself victorious, and continued,—
“I tell you that I belong to my Phœbus, that ’tis Phœbus whom I
love, that ’tis Phœbus who is handsome! you are old, priest! you
are ugly! Begone!”
He gave vent to a horrible cry, like the wretch to whom a hot
iron is applied. “Die, then!” he said, gnashing his teeth. She
saw his terrible look and tried to fly. He caught her once more,
he shook her, he flung her on the ground, and walked with rapid
strides towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after
him along the pavement by her beautiful hands.
On arriving there, he turned to her,—
“For the last time, will you be mine?”
She replied with emphasis,—
“No!”
Then he cried in a loud voice,—
“Gudule! Gudule! here is the gypsy! take your vengeance!”
The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. She
looked. A fleshless arm was stretched from an opening in the
wall, and held her like a hand of iron.
“Hold her well,” said the priest; “’tis the gypsy escaped.
Release her not. I will go in search of the sergeants. You shall
see her hanged.”
A guttural laugh replied from the interior of the wall to these
bloody words—“Hah! hah! hah!”—The gypsy watched the priest retire
in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. A cavalcade was heard in
that direction.
The young girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with
terror, she tried to disengage herself. She writhed, she made
many starts of agony and despair, but the other held her with
incredible strength. The lean and bony fingers which bruised her,
clenched on her flesh and met around it. One would have said that
this hand was riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more
than a fetter, more than a ring of iron, it was a living pair of
pincers endowed with intelligence, which emerged from the wall.
She fell back against the wall exhausted, and then the fear of
death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life,
of youth, of the view of heaven, the aspects of nature, of her
love for Phœbus, of all that was vanishing and all that was
approaching, of the priest who was denouncing her, of the
headsman who was to come, of the gallows which was there. Then
she felt terror mount to the very roots of her hair and she heard
the mocking laugh of the recluse, saying to her in a very low
tone: “Hah! hah! hah! you are going to be hanged!”
She turned a dying look towards the window, and she beheld the
fierce face of the sacked nun through the bars.
“What have I done to you?” she said, almost lifeless.
The recluse did not reply, but began to mumble with a singsong
irritated, mocking intonation: “Daughter of Egypt! daughter of
Egypt! daughter of Egypt!”
The unhappy Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her flowing hair,
comprehending that it was no human being she had to deal with.
All at once the recluse exclaimed, as though the gypsy’s question
had taken all this time to reach her brain,—“‘What have you done
to me?’ you say! Ah! what have you done to me, gypsy! Well!
listen.—I had a child! you see! I had a child! a child, I tell
you!—a pretty little girl!—my Agnès!” she went on wildly, kissing
something in the dark.—“Well! do you see, daughter of Egypt? they
took my child from me; they stole my child; they ate my child.
That is what you have done to me.”
The young girl replied like a lamb,—
“Alas! perchance I was not born then!”
“Oh! yes!” returned the recluse, “you must have been born. You
were among them. She would be the same age as you! so!—I have
been here fifteen years; fifteen years have I suffered; fifteen
years have I prayed; fifteen years have I beat my head against
these four walls—I tell you that ’twas the gypsies who stole her
from me, do you hear that? and who ate her with their teeth.—Have
you a heart? imagine a child playing, a child sucking; a child
sleeping. It is so innocent a thing!—Well! that, that is what
they took from me, what they killed. The good God knows it well!
To-day, it is my turn; I am going to eat the gypsy.—Oh! I would
bite you well, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too
large!—Poor little one! while she was asleep! And if they woke
her up when they took her, in vain she might cry; I was not
there!—Ah! gypsy mothers, you devoured my child! come see your
own.”
Then she began to laugh or to gnash her teeth, for the two things
resembled each other in that furious face. The day was beginning
to dawn. An ashy gleam dimly lighted this scene, and the gallows
grew more and more distinct in the square. On the other side, in
the direction of the bridge of Notre-Dame, the poor condemned
girl fancied that she heard the sound of cavalry approaching.
“Madam,” she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees,
dishevelled, distracted, mad with fright; “madam! have pity! They
are coming. I have done nothing to you. Would you wish to see me
die in this horrible fashion before your very eyes? You are
pitiful, I am sure. It is too frightful. Let me make my escape.
Release me! Mercy. I do not wish to die like that!”
“Give me back my child!” said the recluse.
“Mercy! Mercy!”
“Give me back my child!”
“Release me, in the name of heaven!”
“Give me back my child!”
Again the young girl fell; exhausted, broken, and having already
the glassy eye of a person in the grave.
“Alas!” she faltered, “you seek your child, I seek my parents.”
“Give me back my little Agnès!” pursued Gudule. “You do not know
where she is? Then die!—I will tell you. I was a woman of the
town, I had a child, they took my child. It was the gypsies. You
see plainly that you must die. When your mother, the gypsy, comes
to reclaim you, I shall say to her: ‘Mother, look at that
gibbet!—Or, give me back my child. Do you know where she is, my
little daughter? Stay! I will show you. Here is her shoe, all
that is left me of her. Do you know where its mate is? If you
know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I
will crawl to it on my knees.”
As she spoke thus, with her other arm extended through the
window, she showed the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. It was
already light enough to distinguish its shape and its colors.
“Let me see that shoe,” said the gypsy, quivering. “God! God!”
And at the same time, with her hand which was at liberty, she
quickly opened the little bag ornamented with green glass, which
she wore about her neck.
“Go on, go on!” grumbled Gudule, “search your demon’s amulet!”
All at once, she stopped short, trembled in every limb, and cried
in a voice which proceeded from the very depths of her being: “My
daughter!”
The gypsy had just drawn from the bag a little shoe absolutely
similar to the other. To this little shoe was attached a
parchment on which was inscribed this charm,—
Quand le pareil retrouveras
Ta mère te tendras les bras.[68]
Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the two
shoes together, had read the parchment and had put close to the
bars of the window her face beaming with celestial joy as she
cried,—
“My daughter! my daughter!”
“My mother!” said the gypsy.
Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene. The wall
and the iron bars were between them. “Oh! the wall!” cried the
recluse. “Oh! to see her and not to embrace her! Your hand! your
hand!”
The young girl passed her arm through the opening; the recluse
threw herself on that hand, pressed her lips to it and there
remained, buried in that kiss, giving no other sign of life than
a sob which heaved her breast from time to time. In the
meanwhile, she wept in torrents, in silence, in the dark, like a
rain at night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that
adored hand the dark and deep well of tears, which lay within
her, and into which her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for
fifteen years.
All at once she rose, flung aside her long gray hair from her
brow, and without uttering a word, began to shake the bars of her
cage cell, with both hands, more furiously than a lioness. The
bars held firm. Then she went to seek in the corner of her cell a
huge paving stone, which served her as a pillow, and launched it
against them with such violence that one of the bars broke,
emitting thousands of sparks. A second blow completely shattered
the old iron cross which barricaded the window. Then with her two
hands, she finished breaking and removing the rusted stumps of
the bars. There are moments when woman’s hands possess superhuman
strength.
A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her to
seize her daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her into
her cell. “Come let me draw you out of the abyss,” she murmured.
When her daughter was inside the cell, she laid her gently on the
ground, then raised her up again, and bearing her in her arms as
though she were still only her little Agnès, she walked to and
fro in her little room, intoxicated, frantic, joyous, crying out,
singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into
laughter, melting into tears, all at once and with vehemence.
“My daughter! my daughter!” she said. “I have my daughter! here
she is! The good God has given her back to me! Ha you! come all
of you! Is there any one there to see that I have my daughter?
Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You have made me wait fifteen
years, my good God, but it was in order to give her back to me
beautiful.—Then the gypsies did not eat her! Who said so? My
little daughter! my little daughter! Kiss me. Those good gypsies!
I love the gypsies!—It is really you! That was what made my heart
leap every time that you passed by. And I took that for hatred!
Forgive me, my Agnès, forgive me. You thought me very malicious,
did you not? I love you. Have you still the little mark on your
neck? Let us see. She still has it. Oh! you are beautiful! It was
I who gave you those big eyes, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you.
It is nothing to me that other mothers have children; I scorn
them now. They have only to come and see. Here is mine. See her
neck, her eyes, her hair, her hands. Find me anything as
beautiful as that! Oh! I promise you she will have lovers, that
she will! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has
departed and has fallen to her. Kiss me.”
She addressed to her a thousand other extravagant remarks, whose
accent constituted their sole beauty, disarranged the poor girl’s
garments even to the point of making her blush, smoothed her
silky hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her brow,
her eyes, was in raptures over everything. The young girl let her
have her way, repeating at intervals and very low and with
infinite tenderness, “My mother!”
“Do you see, my little girl,” resumed the recluse, interspersing
her words with kisses, “I shall love you dearly? We will go away
from here. We are going to be very happy. I have inherited
something in Reims, in our country. You know Reims? Ah! no, you
do not know it; you were too small! If you only knew how pretty
you were at the age of four months! Tiny feet that people came
even from Epernay, which is seven leagues away, to see! We shall
have a field, a house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God!
my God! who would believe this? I have my daughter!”
“Oh, my mother!” said the young girl, at length finding strength
to speak in her emotion, “the gypsy woman told me so. There was a
good gypsy of our band who died last year, and who always cared
for me like a nurse. It was she who placed this little bag about
my neck. She always said to me: ‘Little one, guard this jewel
well! ’Tis a treasure. It will cause thee to find thy mother once
again. Thou wearest thy mother about thy neck.’—The gypsy
predicted it!”
The sacked nun again pressed her daughter in her arms.
“Come, let me kiss you! You say that prettily. When we are in the
country, we will place these little shoes on an infant Jesus in
the church. We certainly owe that to the good, holy Virgin. What
a pretty voice you have! When you spoke to me just now, it was
music! Ah! my Lord God! I have found my child again! But is this
story credible? Nothing will kill one—or I should have died of
joy.”
And then she began to clap her hands again and to laugh and to
cry out: “We are going to be so happy!”
At that moment, the cell resounded with the clang of arms and a
galloping of horses which seemed to be coming from the Pont
Notre-Dame, amid advancing farther and farther along the quay.
The gypsy threw herself with anguish into the arms of the sacked
nun.
“Save me! save me! mother! they are coming!”
“Oh, heaven! what are you saying? I had forgotten! They are in
pursuit of you! What have you done?”
“I know not,” replied the unhappy child; “but I am condemned to
die.”
“To die!” said Gudule, staggering as though struck by lightning;
“to die!” she repeated slowly, gazing at her daughter with
staring eyes.
“Yes, mother,” replied the frightened young girl, “they want to
kill me. They are coming to seize me. That gallows is for me!
Save me! save me! They are coming! Save me!”
The recluse remained for several moments motionless and
petrified, then she moved her head in sign of doubt, and suddenly
giving vent to a burst of laughter, but with that terrible laugh
which had come back to her,—
“Ho! ho! no! ’tis a dream of which you are telling me. Ah, yes! I
lost her, that lasted fifteen years, and then I found her again,
and that lasted a minute! And they would take her from me again!
And now, when she is beautiful, when she is grown up, when she
speaks to me, when she loves me; it is now that they would come
to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother! Oh! no!
these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such
things as that.”
Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say
in the distance,—
“This way, Messire Tristan! The priest says that we shall find
her at the Rat-Hole.” The noise of the horses began again.
The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. “Fly!
fly! my child! All comes back to me. You are right. It is your
death! Horror! Maledictions! Fly!”
She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again
hastily.
“Remain,” she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she
pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive.
“Remain! Do not breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You
cannot get out. It is too light.”
Her eyes were dry and burning. She remained silent for a moment;
but she paced the cell hurriedly, and halted now and then to
pluck out handfuls of her gray hairs, which she afterwards tore
with her teeth.
Suddenly she said: “They draw near. I will speak with them. Hide
yourself in this corner. They will not see you. I will tell them
that you have made your escape. That I released you, i’ faith!”
She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in
one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She
made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that neither foot
nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her black hair which
she spread over her white robe to conceal it, placed in front of
her her jug and her paving stone, the only articles of furniture
which she possessed, imagining that this jug and stone would hide
her. And when this was finished she became more tranquil, and
knelt down to pray. The day, which was only dawning, still left
many shadows in the Rat-Hole.
At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice,
passed very close to the cell, crying,—
“This way, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers.”
At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her
corner, made a movement.
“Do not stir!” said Gudule.
She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and horses
halted around the cell. The mother rose quickly and went to post
herself before her window, in order to stop it up. She beheld a
large troop of armed men, both horse and foot, drawn up on the
Grève.
The commander dismounted, and came toward her.
“Old woman!” said this man, who had an atrocious face, “we are in
search of a witch to hang her; we were told that you had her.”
The poor mother assumed as indifferent an air as she could, and
replied,—
“I know not what you mean.”
The other resumed, “_Tête Dieu!_ What was it that frightened
archdeacon said? Where is he?”
“Monseigneur,” said a soldier, “he has disappeared.”
“Come, now, old madwoman,” began the commander again, “do not
lie. A sorceress was given in charge to you. What have you done
with her?”
The recluse did not wish to deny all, for fear of awakening
suspicion, and replied in a sincere and surly tone,—
“If you are speaking of a big young girl who was put into my
hands a while ago, I will tell you that she bit me, and that I
released her. There! Leave me in peace.”
The commander made a grimace of disappointment. “Don’t lie to me,
old spectre!” said he. “My name is Tristan l’Hermite, and I am
the king’s gossip. Tristan the Hermit, do you hear?” He added, as
he glanced at the Place de Grève around him, “’Tis a name which
has an echo here.”
“You might be Satan the Hermit,” replied Gudule, who was
regaining hope, “but I should have nothing else to say to you,
and I should never be afraid of you.”
“_Tête-Dieu_,” said Tristan, “here is a crone! Ah! So the witch
girl hath fled! And in which direction did she go?” Gudule
replied in a careless tone,—
“Through the Rue du Mouton, I believe.”
Tristan turned his head and made a sign to his troop to prepare
to set out on the march again. The recluse breathed freely once
more.
“Monseigneur,” suddenly said an archer, “ask the old elf why the
bars of her window are broken in this manner.”
This question brought anguish again to the heart of the miserable
mother. Nevertheless, she did not lose all presence of mind.
“They have always been thus,” she stammered.
“Bah!” retorted the archer, “only yesterday they still formed a
fine black cross, which inspired devotion.”
Tristan cast a sidelong glance at the recluse.
“I think the old dame is getting confused!”
The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her
self-possession, and, although with death in her soul, she began
to grin. Mothers possess such strength.
“Bah!” said she, “the man is drunk. ’Tis more than a year since
the tail of a stone cart dashed against my window and broke in
the grating. And how I cursed the carter, too.”
“’Tis true,” said another archer, “I was there.”
Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen
everything. This unexpected testimony from the archer
re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forcing to
cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she was condemned to a
perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.
“If it was a cart which did it,” retorted the first soldier, “the
stumps of the bars should be thrust inwards, while they actually
are pushed outwards.”
“Hé! hé!” said Tristan to the soldier, “you have the nose of an
inquisitor of the Châtelet. Reply to what he says, old woman.”
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, driven to bay, and in a voice that
was full of tears in despite of her efforts, “I swear to you,
monseigneur, that ’twas a cart which broke those bars. You hear
the man who saw it. And then, what has that to do with your
gypsy?”
“Hum!” growled Tristan.
“The devil!” went on the soldier, flattered by the provost’s
praise, “these fractures of the iron are perfectly fresh.”
Tristan tossed his head. She turned pale.
“How long ago, say you, did the cart do it?”
“A month, a fortnight, perhaps, monseigneur, I know not.”
“She first said more than a year,” observed the soldier.
“That is suspicious,” said the provost.
“Monseigneur!” she cried, still pressed against the opening, and
trembling lest suspicion should lead them to thrust their heads
through and look into her cell; “monseigneur, I swear to you that
’twas a cart which broke this grating. I swear it to you by the
angels of paradise. If it was not a cart, may I be eternally
damned, and I reject God!”
“You put a great deal of heat into that oath;” said Tristan, with
his inquisitorial glance.
The poor woman felt her assurance vanishing more and more. She
had reached the point of blundering, and she comprehended with
terror that she was saying what she ought not to have said.
Here another soldier came up, crying,—
“Monsieur, the old hag lies. The sorceress did not flee through
the Rue de Mouton. The street chain has remained stretched all
night, and the chain guard has seen no one pass.”
Tristan, whose face became more sinister with every moment,
addressed the recluse,—
“What have you to say to that?”
She tried to make head against this new incident,
“That I do not know, monseigneur; that I may have been mistaken.
I believe, in fact, that she crossed the water.”
“That is in the opposite direction,” said the provost, “and it is
not very likely that she would wish to re-enter the city, where
she was being pursued. You are lying, old woman.”
“And then,” added the first soldier, “there is no boat either on
this side of the stream or on the other.”
“She swam across,” replied the recluse, defending her ground foot
by foot.
“Do women swim?” said the soldier.
“_Tête Dieu!_ old woman! You are lying!” repeated Tristan
angrily. “I have a good mind to abandon that sorceress and take
you. A quarter of an hour of torture will, perchance, draw the
truth from your throat. Come! You are to follow us.”
She seized on these words with avidity.
“As you please, monseigneur. Do it. Do it. Torture. I am willing.
Take me away. Quick, quick! let us set out at once!—During that
time,” she said to herself, “my daughter will make her escape.”
“’S death!” said the provost, “what an appetite for the rack! I
understand not this madwoman at all.”
An old, gray-haired sergeant of the guard stepped out of the
ranks, and addressing the provost,—
“Mad in sooth, monseigneur. If she released the gypsy, it was not
her fault, for she loves not the gypsies. I have been of the
watch these fifteen years, and I hear her every evening cursing
the Bohemian women with endless imprecations. If the one of whom
we are in pursuit is, as I suppose, the little dancer with the
goat, she detests that one above all the rest.”
Gudule made an effort and said,—
“That one above all.”
The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch confirmed the old
sergeant’s words to the provost. Tristan l’Hermite, in despair at
extracting anything from the recluse, turned his back on her, and
with unspeakable anxiety she beheld him direct his course slowly
towards his horse.
“Come!” he said, between his teeth, “March on! let us set out
again on the quest. I shall not sleep until that gypsy is
hanged.”
But he still hesitated for some time before mounting his horse.
Gudule palpitated between life and death, as she beheld him cast
about the Place that uneasy look of a hunting dog which
instinctively feels that the lair of the beast is close to him,
and is loath to go away. At length he shook his head and leaped
into his saddle. Gudule’s horribly compressed heart now dilated,
and she said in a low voice, as she cast a glance at her
daughter, whom she had not ventured to look at while they were
there, “Saved!”
The poor child had remained all this time in her corner, without
breathing, without moving, with the idea of death before her. She
had lost nothing of the scene between Gudule and Tristan, and the
anguish of her mother had found its echo in her heart. She had
heard all the successive snappings of the thread by which she
hung suspended over the gulf; twenty times she had fancied that
she saw it break, and at last she began to breathe again and to
feel her foot on firm ground. At that moment she heard a voice
saying to the provost: “_Corbœuf!_ Monsieur le Prevôt, ’tis no
affair of mine, a man of arms, to hang witches. The rabble of the
populace is suppressed. I leave you to attend to the matter
alone. You will allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting
for their captain.”
The voice was that of Phœbus de Châteaupers; that which took
place within her was ineffable. He was there, her friend, her
protector, her support, her refuge, her Phœbus. She rose, and
before her mother could prevent her, she had rushed to the
window, crying,—
“Phœbus! aid me, my Phœbus!”
Phœbus was no longer there. He had just turned the corner of the
Rue de la Coutellerie at a gallop. But Tristan had not yet taken
his departure.
The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She
dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck. A
tigress mother does not stand on trifles. But it was too late.
Tristan had seen.
“Hé! hé!” he exclaimed with a laugh which laid bare all his teeth
and made his face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, “two mice in the
trap!”
“I suspected as much,” said the soldier.
Tristan clapped him on the shoulder,—
“You are a good cat! Come!” he added, “where is Henriet Cousin?”
A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a soldier,
stepped from the ranks. He wore a costume half gray, half brown,
flat hair, leather sleeves, and carried a bundle of ropes in his
huge hand. This man always attended Tristan, who always attended
Louis XI. “Friend,” said Tristan l’Hermite, “I presume that this
is the sorceress of whom we are in search. You will hang me this
one. Have you your ladder?”
“There is one yonder, under the shed of the Pillar-House,”
replied the man. “Is it on this justice that the thing is to be
done?” he added, pointing to the stone gibbet.
“Yes.”
“Ho, hé!” continued the man with a huge laugh, which was still
more brutal than that of the provost, “we shall not have far to
go.”
“Make haste!” said Tristan, “you shall laugh afterwards.”
In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word since
Tristan had seen her daughter and all hope was lost. She had
flung the poor gypsy, half dead, into the corner of the cellar,
and had placed herself once more at the window with both hands
resting on the angle of the sill like two claws. In this attitude
she was seen to cast upon all those soldiers her glance which had
become wild and frantic once more. At the moment when Rennet
Cousin approached her cell, she showed him so savage a face that
he shrank back.
“Monseigneur,” he said, returning to the provost, “which am I to
take?”
“The young one.”
“So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult.”
“Poor little dancer with the goat!” said the old sergeant of the
watch.
Rennet Cousin approached the window again. The mother’s eyes made
his own droop. He said with a good deal of timidity,—
“Madam”—
She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice,—
“What do you ask?”
“It is not you,” he said, “it is the other.”
“What other?”
“The young one.”
She began to shake her head, crying,—
“There is no one! there is no one! there is no one!”
“Yes, there is!” retorted the hangman, “and you know it well. Let
me take the young one. I have no wish to harm you.”
She said, with a strange sneer,—
“Ah! so you have no wish to harm me!”
“Let me have the other, madam; ’tis monsieur the provost who
wills it.”
She repeated with a look of madness,—
“There is no one here.”
“I tell you that there is!” replied the executioner. “We have all
seen that there are two of you.”
“Look then!” said the recluse, with a sneer. “Thrust your head
through the window.”
The executioner observed the mother’s finger-nails and dared not.
“Make haste!” shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his troops in
a circle round the Rat-Hole, and who sat on his horse beside the
gallows.
Rennet returned once more to the provost in great embarrassment.
He had flung his rope on the ground, and was twisting his hat
between his hands with an awkward air.
“Monseigneur,” he asked, “where am I to enter?”
“By the door.”
“There is none.”
“By the window.”
“’Tis too small.”
“Make it larger,” said Tristan angrily. “Have you not pickaxes?”
The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of her
cavern. She no longer hoped for anything, she no longer knew what
she wished, except that she did not wish them to take her
daughter.
Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night
man, under the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew from it also the
double ladder, which he immediately set up against the gallows.
Five or six of the provost’s men armed themselves with picks and
crowbars, and Tristan betook himself, in company with them,
towards the window.
“Old woman,” said the provost, in a severe tone, “deliver up to
us that girl quietly.”
She looked at him like one who does not understand.
“_Tête Dieu!_” continued Tristan, “why do you try to prevent this
sorceress being hung as it pleases the king?”
The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way.
“Why? She is my daughter.”
The tone in which she pronounced these words made even Henriet
Cousin shudder.
“I am sorry for that,” said the provost, “but it is the king’s
good pleasure.”
She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh,—
“What is your king to me? I tell you that she is my daughter!”
“Pierce the wall,” said Tristan.
In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to
dislodge one course of stone below the window. When the mother
heard the picks and crowbars mining her fortress, she uttered a
terrible cry; then she began to stride about her cell with
frightful swiftness, a wild beasts’ habit which her cage had
imparted to her. She no longer said anything, but her eyes
flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the very soul.
All at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it
with both fists upon the workmen. The stone, badly flung (for her
hands trembled), touched no one, and fell short under the feet of
Tristan’s horse. She gnashed her teeth.
In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad
daylight; a beautiful rose color enlivened the ancient, decayed
chimneys of the Pillar-House. It was the hour when the earliest
windows of the great city open joyously on the roofs. Some
workmen, a few fruit-sellers on their way to the markets on their
asses, began to traverse the Grève; they halted for a moment
before this group of soldiers clustered round the Rat-Hole,
stared at it with an air of astonishment and passed on.
The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, covering
her with her body, in front of her, with staring eyes, listening
to the poor child, who did not stir, but who kept murmuring in a
low voice, these words only, “Phœbus! Phœbus!” In proportion as
the work of the demolishers seemed to advance, the mother
mechanically retreated, and pressed the young girl closer and
closer to the wall. All at once, the recluse beheld the stone
(for she was standing guard and never took her eyes from it),
move, and she heard Tristan’s voice encouraging the workers. Then
she aroused from the depression into which she had fallen during
the last few moments, cried out, and as she spoke, her voice now
rent the ear like a saw, then stammered as though all kind of
maledictions were pressing to her lips to burst forth at once.
“Ho! ho! ho! Why this is terrible! You are ruffians! Are you
really going to take my daughter? Oh! the cowards! Oh! the
hangman lackeys! the wretched, blackguard assassins! Help! help!
fire! Will they take my child from me like this? Who is it then
who is called the good God?”
Then, addressing Tristan, foaming at the mouth, with wild eyes,
all bristling and on all fours like a female panther,—
“Draw near and take my daughter! Do not you understand that this
woman tells you that she is my daughter? Do you know what it is
to have a child? Eh! lynx, have you never lain with your female?
have you never had a cub? and if you have little ones, when they
howl have you nothing in your vitals that moves?”
“Throw down the stone,” said Tristan; “it no longer holds.”
The crowbars raised the heavy course. It was, as we have said,
the mother’s last bulwark.
She threw herself upon it, she tried to hold it back; she
scratched the stone with her nails, but the massive block, set in
movement by six men, escaped her and glided gently to the ground
along the iron levers.
The mother, perceiving an entrance effected, fell down in front
of the opening, barricading the breach with her body, beating the
pavement with her head, and shrieking with a voice rendered so
hoarse by fatigue that it was hardly audible,—
“Help! fire! fire!”
“Now take the wench,” said Tristan, still impassive.
The mother gazed at the soldiers in such formidable fashion that
they were more inclined to retreat than to advance.
“Come, now,” repeated the provost. “Here you, Rennet Cousin!”
No one took a step.
The provost swore,—
“_Tête de Christ!_ my men of war! afraid of a woman!”
“Monseigneur,” said Rennet, “do you call that a woman?”
“She has the mane of a lion,” said another.
“Come!” repeated the provost, “the gap is wide enough. Enter
three abreast, as at the breach of Pontoise. Let us make an end
of it, death of Mahom! I will make two pieces of the first man
who draws back!”
Placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the
soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and
advanced towards the Rat-Hole.
When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung
aside her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall
by her side. Then great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes;
they flowed down her cheeks through a furrow, like a torrent
through a bed which it has hollowed for itself.
At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so
supplicating, so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that
more than one old convict-warder around Tristan who must have
devoured human flesh wiped his eyes.
“Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There is one
thing which I must say to you. She is my daughter, do you see? my
dear little daughter whom I had lost! Listen. It is quite a
history. Consider that I knew the sergeants very well. They were
always good to me in the days when the little boys threw stones
at me, because I led a life of pleasure. Do you see? You will
leave me my child when you know! I was a poor woman of the town.
It was the Bohemians who stole her from me. And I kept her shoe
for fifteen years. Stay, here it is. That was the kind of foot
which she had. At Reims! La Chantefleurie! Rue Folle-Peine!
Perchance, you knew about that. It was I. In your youth, then,
there was a merry time, when one passed good hours. You will take
pity on me, will you not, gentlemen? The gypsies stole her from
me; they hid her from me for fifteen years. I thought her dead.
Fancy, my good friends, believed her to be dead. I have passed
fifteen years here in this cellar, without a fire in winter. It
is hard. The poor, dear little shoe! I have cried so much that
the good God has heard me. This night he has given my daughter
back to me. It is a miracle of the good God. She was not dead.
You will not take her from me, I am sure. If it were myself, I
would say nothing; but she, a child of sixteen! Leave her time to
see the sun! What has she done to you? nothing at all. Nor have
I. If you did but know that she is all I have, that I am old,
that she is a blessing which the Holy Virgin has sent to me! And
then, you are all so good! You did not know that she was my
daughter; but now you do know it. Oh! I love her! Monsieur, the
grand provost. I would prefer a stab in my own vitals to a
scratch on her finger! You have the air of such a good lord! What
I have told you explains the matter, does it not? Oh! if you have
had a mother, monseigneur! you are the captain, leave me my
child! Consider that I pray you on my knees, as one prays to
Jesus Christ! I ask nothing of any one; I am from Reims,
gentlemen; I own a little field inherited from my uncle, Mahiet
Pradon. I am no beggar. I wish nothing, but I do want my child!
oh! I want to keep my child! The good God, who is the master, has
not given her back to me for nothing! The king! you say the king!
It would not cause him much pleasure to have my little daughter
killed! And then, the king is good! she is my daughter! she is my
own daughter! She belongs not to the king! she is not yours! I
want to go away! we want to go away! and when two women pass, one
a mother and the other a daughter, one lets them go! Let us pass!
we belong in Reims. Oh! you are very good, messieurs the
sergeants, I love you all. You will not take my dear little one,
it is impossible! It is utterly impossible, is it not? My child,
my child!”
We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, of the
tears which she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands which she
clasped and then wrung, of the heart-breaking smiles, of the
swimming glances, of the groans, the sighs, the miserable and
affecting cries which she mingled with her disordered, wild, and
incoherent words. When she became silent Tristan l’Hermite
frowned, but it was to conceal a tear which welled up in his
tiger’s eye. He conquered this weakness, however, and said in a
curt tone,—
“The king wills it.”
Then he bent down to the ear of Rennet Cousin, and said to him in
a very low tone,—
“Make an end of it quickly!” Possibly, the redoubtable provost
felt his heart also failing him.
The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell. The mother
offered no resistance, only she dragged herself towards her
daughter and threw herself bodily upon her. The gypsy beheld the
soldiers approach. The horror of death reanimated her,—
“Mother!” she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress,
“Mother! they are coming! defend me!”
“Yes, my love, I am defending you!” replied the mother, in a
dying voice; and clasping her closely in her arms, she covered
her with kisses. The two lying thus on the earth, the mother upon
the daughter, presented a spectacle worthy of pity.
Rennet Cousin grasped the young girl by the middle of her body,
beneath her beautiful shoulders. When she felt that hand, she
cried, “Heuh!” and fainted. The executioner who was shedding
large tears upon her, drop by drop, was about to bear her away in
his arms. He tried to detach the mother, who had, so to speak,
knotted her hands around her daughter’s waist; but she clung so
strongly to her child, that it was impossible to separate them.
Then Rennet Cousin dragged the young girl outside the cell, and
the mother after her. The mother’s eyes were also closed.
At that moment, the sun rose, and there was already on the Place
a fairly numerous assembly of people who looked on from a
distance at what was being thus dragged along the pavement to the
gibbet. For that was Provost Tristan’s way at executions. He had
a passion for preventing the approach of the curious.
There was no one at the windows. Only at a distance, at the
summit of that one of the towers of Notre-Dame which commands the
Grève, two men outlined in black against the light morning sky,
and who seemed to be looking on, were visible.
Rennet Cousin paused at the foot of the fatal ladder, with that
which he was dragging, and, barely breathing, with so much pity
did the thing inspire him, he passed the rope around the lovely
neck of the young girl. The unfortunate child felt the horrible
touch of the hemp. She raised her eyelids, and saw the fleshless
arm of the stone gallows extended above her head. Then she shook
herself and shrieked in a loud and heartrending voice: “No! no! I
will not!” Her mother, whose head was buried and concealed in her
daughter’s garments, said not a word; only her whole body could
be seen to quiver, and she was heard to redouble her kisses on
her child. The executioner took advantage of this moment to
hastily loose the arms with which she clasped the condemned girl.
Either through exhaustion or despair, she let him have his way.
Then he took the young girl on his shoulder, from which the
charming creature hung, gracefully bent over his large head. Then
he set his foot on the ladder in order to ascend.
At that moment, the mother who was crouching on the pavement,
opened her eyes wide. Without uttering a cry, she raised herself
erect with a terrible expression; then she flung herself upon the
hand of the executioner, like a beast on its prey, and bit it. It
was done like a flash of lightning. The headsman howled with
pain. Those near by rushed up. With difficulty they withdrew his
bleeding hand from the mother’s teeth. She preserved a profound
silence. They thrust her back with much brutality, and noticed
that her head fell heavily on the pavement. They raised her, she
fell back again. She was dead.
The executioner, who had not loosed his hold on the young girl,
began to ascend the ladder once more.
CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)
When Quasimodo saw that the cell was empty, that the gypsy was no
longer there, that while he had been defending her she had been
abducted, he grasped his hair with both hands and stamped with
surprise and pain; then he set out to run through the entire
church seeking his Bohemian, howling strange cries to all the
corners of the walls, strewing his red hair on the pavement. It
was just at the moment when the king’s archers were making their
victorious entrance into Notre-Dame, also in search of the gypsy.
Quasimodo, poor, deaf fellow, aided them in their fatal
intentions, without suspecting it; he thought that the outcasts
were the gypsy’s enemies. He himself conducted Tristan l’Hermite
to all possible hiding-places, opened to him the secret doors,
the double bottoms of the altars, the rear sacristries. If the
unfortunate girl had still been there, it would have been he
himself who would have delivered her up.
When the fatigue of finding nothing had disheartened Tristan, who
was not easily discouraged, Quasimodo continued the search alone.
He made the tour of the church twenty times, length and breadth,
up and down, ascending and descending, running, calling,
shouting, peeping, rummaging, ransacking, thrusting his head into
every hole, pushing a torch under every vault, despairing, mad. A
male who has lost his female is no more roaring nor more haggard.
At last when he was sure, perfectly sure that she was no longer
there, that all was at an end, that she had been snatched from
him, he slowly mounted the staircase to the towers, that
staircase which he had ascended with so much eagerness and
triumph on the day when he had saved her. He passed those same
places once more with drooping head, voiceless, tearless, almost
breathless. The church was again deserted, and had fallen back
into its silence. The archers had quitted it to track the
sorceress in the city. Quasimodo, left alone in that vast
Notre-Dame, so besieged and tumultuous but a short time before,
once more betook himself to the cell where the gypsy had slept
for so many weeks under his guardianship.
As he approached it, he fancied that he might, perhaps, find her
there. When, at the turn of the gallery which opens on the roof
of the side aisles, he perceived the tiny cell with its little
window and its little door crouching beneath a great flying
buttress like a bird’s nest under a branch, the poor man’s heart
failed him, and he leaned against a pillar to keep from falling.
He imagined that she might have returned thither, that some good
genius had, no doubt, brought her back, that this chamber was too
tranquil, too safe, too charming for her not to be there, and he
dared not take another step for fear of destroying his illusion.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “perchance she is sleeping, or
praying. I must not disturb her.”
At length he summoned up courage, advanced on tiptoe, looked,
entered. Empty. The cell was still empty. The unhappy deaf man
walked slowly round it, lifted the bed and looked beneath it, as
though she might be concealed between the pavement and the
mattress, then he shook his head and remained stupefied. All at
once, he crushed his torch under his foot, and, without uttering
a word, without giving vent to a sigh, he flung himself at full
speed, head foremost against the wall, and fell fainting on the
floor.
When he recovered his senses, he threw himself on the bed and
rolling about, he kissed frantically the place where the young
girl had slept and which was still warm; he remained there for
several moments as motionless as though he were about to expire;
then he rose, dripping with perspiration, panting, mad, and began
to beat his head against the wall with the frightful regularity
of the clapper of his bells, and the resolution of a man
determined to kill himself. At length he fell a second time,
exhausted; he dragged himself on his knees outside the cell, and
crouched down facing the door, in an attitude of astonishment.
He remained thus for more than an hour without making a movement,
with his eye fixed on the deserted cell, more gloomy, and more
pensive than a mother seated between an empty cradle and a full
coffin. He uttered not a word; only at long intervals, a sob
heaved his body violently, but it was a tearless sob, like summer
lightning which makes no noise.
It appears to have been then, that, seeking at the bottom of his
lonely thoughts for the unexpected abductor of the gypsy, he
thought of the archdeacon. He remembered that Dom Claude alone
possessed a key to the staircase leading to the cell; he recalled
his nocturnal attempts on the young girl, in the first of which
he, Quasimodo, had assisted, the second of which he had
prevented. He recalled a thousand details, and soon he no longer
doubted that the archdeacon had taken the gypsy. Nevertheless,
such was his respect for the priest, such his gratitude, his
devotion, his love for this man had taken such deep root in his
heart, that they resisted, even at this moment, the talons of
jealousy and despair.
He reflected that the archdeacon had done this thing, and the
wrath of blood and death which it would have evoked in him
against any other person, turned in the poor deaf man, from the
moment when Claude Frollo was in question, into an increase of
grief and sorrow.
At the moment when his thought was thus fixed upon the priest,
while the daybreak was whitening the flying buttresses, he
perceived on the highest story of Notre-Dame, at the angle formed
by the external balustrade as it makes the turn of the chancel, a
figure walking. This figure was coming towards him. He recognized
it. It was the archdeacon.
Claude was walking with a slow, grave step. He did not look
before him as he walked, he was directing his course towards the
northern tower, but his face was turned aside towards the right
bank of the Seine, and he held his head high, as though trying to
see something over the roofs. The owl often assumes this oblique
attitude. It flies towards one point and looks towards another.
In this manner the priest passed above Quasimodo without seeing
him.
The deaf man, who had been petrified by this sudden apparition,
beheld him disappear through the door of the staircase to the
north tower. The reader is aware that this is the tower from
which the Hôtel-de-Ville is visible. Quasimodo rose and followed
the archdeacon.
Quasimodo ascended the tower staircase for the sake of ascending
it, for the sake of seeing why the priest was ascending it.
Moreover, the poor bellringer did not know what he (Quasimodo)
should do, what he should say, what he wished. He was full of
fury and full of fear. The archdeacon and the gypsy had come into
conflict in his heart.
When he reached the summit of the tower, before emerging from the
shadow of the staircase and stepping upon the platform, he
cautiously examined the position of the priest. The priest’s back
was turned to him. There is an openwork balustrade which
surrounds the platform of the bell tower. The priest, whose eyes
looked down upon the town, was resting his breast on that one of
the four sides of the balustrades which looks upon the Pont
Notre-Dame.
Quasimodo, advancing with the tread of a wolf behind him, went to
see what he was gazing at thus.
The priest’s attention was so absorbed elsewhere that he did not
hear the deaf man walking behind him.
Paris is a magnificent and charming spectacle, and especially at
that day, viewed from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, in the
fresh light of a summer dawn. The day might have been in July.
The sky was perfectly serene. Some tardy stars were fading away
at various points, and there was a very brilliant one in the
east, in the brightest part of the heavens. The sun was about to
appear; Paris was beginning to move. A very white and very pure
light brought out vividly to the eye all the outlines that its
thousands of houses present to the east. The giant shadow of the
towers leaped from roof to roof, from one end of the great city
to the other. There were several quarters from which were already
heard voices and noisy sounds. Here the stroke of a bell, there
the stroke of a hammer, beyond, the complicated clatter of a cart
in motion.
Already several columns of smoke were being belched forth from
the chimneys scattered over the whole surface of roofs, as
through the fissures of an immense sulphurous crater. The river,
which ruffles its waters against the arches of so many bridges,
against the points of so many islands, was wavering with silvery
folds. Around the city, outside the ramparts, sight was lost in a
great circle of fleecy vapors through which one confusedly
distinguished the indefinite line of the plains, and the graceful
swell of the heights. All sorts of floating sounds were dispersed
over this half-awakened city. Towards the east, the morning
breeze chased a few soft white bits of wool torn from the misty
fleece of the hills.
In the Parvis, some good women, who had their milk jugs in their
hands, were pointing out to each other, with astonishment, the
singular dilapidation of the great door of Notre-Dame, and the
two solidified streams of lead in the crevices of the stone. This
was all that remained of the tempest of the night. The bonfire
lighted between the towers by Quasimodo had died out. Tristan had
already cleared up the Place, and had the dead thrown into the
Seine. Kings like Louis XI. are careful to clean the pavement
quickly after a massacre.
Outside the balustrade of the tower, directly under the point
where the priest had paused, there was one of those fantastically
carved stone gutters with which Gothic edifices bristle, and, in
a crevice of that gutter, two pretty wallflowers in blossom,
shaken out and vivified, as it were, by the breath of air, made
frolicsome salutations to each other. Above the towers, on high,
far away in the depths of the sky, the cries of little birds were
heard.
But the priest was not listening to, was not looking at, anything
of all this. He was one of the men for whom there are no
mornings, no birds, no flowers. In that immense horizon, which
assumed so many aspects about him, his contemplation was
concentrated on a single point.
Quasimodo was burning to ask him what he had done with the gypsy;
but the archdeacon seemed to be out of the world at that moment.
He was evidently in one of those violent moments of life when one
would not feel the earth crumble. He remained motionless and
silent, with his eyes steadily fixed on a certain point; and
there was something so terrible about this silence and immobility
that the savage bellringer shuddered before it and dared not come
in contact with it. Only, and this was also one way of
interrogating the archdeacon, he followed the direction of his
vision, and in this way the glance of the unhappy deaf man fell
upon the Place de Grève.
Thus he saw what the priest was looking at. The ladder was
erected near the permanent gallows. There were some people and
many soldiers in the Place. A man was dragging a white thing,
from which hung something black, along the pavement. This man
halted at the foot of the gallows.
Here something took place which Quasimodo could not see very
clearly. It was not because his only eye had not preserved its
long range, but there was a group of soldiers which prevented his
seeing everything. Moreover, at that moment the sun appeared, and
such a flood of light overflowed the horizon that one would have
said that all the points in Paris, spires, chimneys, gables, had
simultaneously taken fire.
Meanwhile, the man began to mount the ladder. Then Quasimodo saw
him again distinctly. He was carrying a woman on his shoulder, a
young girl dressed in white; that young girl had a noose about
her neck. Quasimodo recognized her.
It was she.
The man reached the top of the ladder. There he arranged the
noose. Here the priest, in order to see the better, knelt upon
the balustrade.
All at once the man kicked away the ladder abruptly, and
Quasimodo, who had not breathed for several moments, beheld the
unhappy child dangling at the end of the rope two fathoms above
the pavement, with the man squatting on her shoulders. The rope
made several gyrations on itself, and Quasimodo beheld horrible
convulsions run along the gypsy’s body. The priest, on his side,
with outstretched neck and eyes starting from his head,
contemplated this horrible group of the man and the young
girl,—the spider and the fly.
At the moment when it was most horrible, the laugh of a demon, a
laugh which one can only give vent to when one is no longer
human, burst forth on the priest’s livid face.
Quasimodo did not hear that laugh, but he saw it.
The bellringer retreated several paces behind the archdeacon, and
suddenly hurling himself upon him with fury, with his huge hands
he pushed him by the back over into the abyss over which Dom
Claude was leaning.
The priest shrieked: “Damnation!” and fell.
The spout, above which he had stood, arrested him in his fall. He
clung to it with desperate hands, and, at the moment when he
opened his mouth to utter a second cry, he beheld the formidable
and avenging face of Quasimodo thrust over the edge of the
balustrade above his head.
Then he was silent.
The abyss was there below him. A fall of more than two hundred
feet and the pavement.
In this terrible situation, the archdeacon said not a word,
uttered not a groan. He merely writhed upon the spout, with
incredible efforts to climb up again; but his hands had no hold
on the granite, his feet slid along the blackened wall without
catching fast. People who have ascended the towers of Notre-Dame
know that there is a swell of the stone immediately beneath the
balustrade. It was on this retreating angle that miserable
archdeacon exhausted himself. He had not to deal with a
perpendicular wall, but with one which sloped away beneath him.
Quasimodo had but to stretch out his hand in order to draw him
from the gulf; but he did not even look at him. He was looking at
the Grève. He was looking at the gallows. He was looking at the
gypsy.
The deaf man was leaning, with his elbows on the balustrade, at
the spot where the archdeacon had been a moment before, and
there, never detaching his gaze from the only object which
existed for him in the world at that moment, he remained
motionless and mute, like a man struck by lightning, and a long
stream of tears flowed in silence from that eye which, up to that
time, had never shed but one tear.
Meanwhile, the archdeacon was panting. His bald brow was dripping
with perspiration, his nails were bleeding against the stones,
his knees were flayed by the wall.
He heard his cassock, which was caught on the spout, crack and
rip at every jerk that he gave it. To complete his misfortune,
this spout ended in a leaden pipe which bent under the weight of
his body. The archdeacon felt this pipe slowly giving way. The
miserable man said to himself that, when his hands should be worn
out with fatigue, when his cassock should tear asunder, when the
lead should give way, he would be obliged to fall, and terror
seized upon his very vitals. Now and then he glanced wildly at a
sort of narrow shelf formed, ten feet lower down, by projections
of the sculpture, and he prayed heaven, from the depths of his
distressed soul, that he might be allowed to finish his life,
were it to last two centuries, on that space two feet square.
Once, he glanced below him into the Place, into the abyss; the
head which he raised again had its eyes closed and its hair
standing erect.
There was something frightful in the silence of these two men.
While the archdeacon agonized in this terrible fashion a few feet
below him, Quasimodo wept and gazed at the Grève.
The archdeacon, seeing that all his exertions served only to
weaken the fragile support which remained to him, decided to
remain quiet. There he hung, embracing the gutter, hardly
breathing, no longer stirring, making no longer any other
movements than that mechanical convulsion of the stomach, which
one experiences in dreams when one fancies himself falling. His
fixed eyes were wide open with a stare. He lost ground little by
little, nevertheless, his fingers slipped along the spout; he
became more and more conscious of the feebleness of his arms and
the weight of his body. The curve of the lead which sustained him
inclined more and more each instant towards the abyss.
He beheld below him, a frightful thing, the roof of Saint-Jean le
Rond, as small as a card folded in two. He gazed at the
impressive carvings, one by one, of the tower, suspended like
himself over the precipice, but without terror for themselves or
pity for him. All was stone around him; before his eyes, gaping
monsters; below, quite at the bottom, in the Place, the pavement;
above his head, Quasimodo weeping.
In the Parvis there were several groups of curious good people,
who were tranquilly seeking to divine who the madman could be who
was amusing himself in so strange a manner. The priest heard them
saying, for their voices reached him, clear and shrill: “Why, he
will break his neck!”
Quasimodo wept.
At last the archdeacon, foaming with rage and despair, understood
that all was in vain. Nevertheless, he collected all the strength
which remained to him for a final effort. He stiffened himself
upon the spout, pushed against the wall with both his knees,
clung to a crevice in the stones with his hands, and succeeded in
climbing back with one foot, perhaps; but this effort made the
leaden beak on which he rested bend abruptly. His cassock burst
open at the same time. Then, feeling everything give way beneath
him, with nothing but his stiffened and failing hands to support
him, the unfortunate man closed his eyes and let go of the spout.
He fell.
Quasimodo watched him fall.
A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The
archdeacon, launched into space, fell at first head foremost,
with outspread hands; then he whirled over and over many times;
the wind blew him upon the roof of a house, where the unfortunate
man began to break up. Nevertheless, he was not dead when he
reached there. The bellringer saw him still endeavor to cling to
a gable with his nails; but the surface sloped too much, and he
had no more strength. He slid rapidly along the roof like a
loosened tile, and dashed upon the pavement. There he no longer
moved.
Then Quasimodo raised his eyes to the gypsy, whose body he beheld
hanging from the gibbet, quivering far away beneath her white
robe with the last shudderings of anguish, then he dropped them
on the archdeacon, stretched out at the base of the tower, and no
longer retaining the human form, and he said, with a sob which
heaved his deep chest,—“Oh! all that I have ever loved!”
CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.
Towards evening on that day, when the judiciary officers of the
bishop came to pick up from the pavement of the Parvis the
dislocated corpse of the archdeacon, Quasimodo had disappeared.
A great many rumors were in circulation with regard to this
adventure. No one doubted but that the day had come when, in
accordance with their compact, Quasimodo, that is to say, the
devil, was to carry off Claude Frollo, that is to say, the
sorcerer. It was presumed that he had broken the body when taking
the soul, like monkeys who break the shell to get at the nut.
This is why the archdeacon was not interred in consecrated earth.
Louis XI. died a year later, in the month of August, 1483.
As for Pierre Gringoire, he succeeded in saving the goat, and he
won success in tragedy. It appears that, after having tasted
astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics,—all vanities, he
returned to tragedy, vainest pursuit of all. This is what he
called “coming to a tragic end.” This is what is to be read, on
the subject of his dramatic triumphs, in 1483, in the accounts of
the “Ordinary:” “To Jehan Marchand and Pierre Gringoire,
carpenter and composer, who have made and composed the mystery
made at the Châtelet of Paris, at the entry of Monsieur the
Legate, and have ordered the personages, clothed and dressed the
same, as in the said mystery was required; and likewise, for
having made the scaffoldings thereto necessary; and for this
deed,—one hundred livres.”
Phœbus de Châteaupers also came to a tragic end. He married.
CHAPTER IV. THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.
We have just said that Quasimodo disappeared from Notre-Dame on
the day of the gypsy’s and of the archdeacon’s death. He was not
seen again, in fact; no one knew what had become of him.
During the night which followed the execution of la Esmeralda,
the night men had detached her body from the gibbet, and had
carried it, according to custom, to the cellar of Montfaucon.
Montfaucon was, as Sauval says, “the most ancient and the most
superb gibbet in the kingdom.” Between the faubourgs of the
Temple and Saint Martin, about a hundred and sixty toises from
the walls of Paris, a few bow shots from La Courtille, there was
to be seen on the crest of a gentle, almost imperceptible
eminence, but sufficiently elevated to be seen for several
leagues round about, an edifice of strange form, bearing
considerable resemblance to a Celtic cromlech, and where also
human sacrifices were offered.
Let the reader picture to himself, crowning a limestone hillock,
an oblong mass of masonry fifteen feet in height, thirty wide,
forty long, with a gate, an external railing and a platform; on
this platform sixteen enormous pillars of rough hewn stone,
thirty feet in height, arranged in a colonnade round three of the
four sides of the mass which support them, bound together at
their summits by heavy beams, whence hung chains at intervals; on
all these chains, skeletons; in the vicinity, on the plain, a
stone cross and two gibbets of secondary importance, which seemed
to have sprung up as shoots around the central gallows; above all
this, in the sky, a perpetual flock of crows; that was
Montfaucon.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the formidable gibbet which
dated from 1328, was already very much dilapidated; the beams
were wormeaten, the chains rusted, the pillars green with mould;
the layers of hewn stone were all cracked at their joints, and
grass was growing on that platform which no feet touched. The
monument made a horrible profile against the sky; especially at
night when there was a little moonlight on those white skulls, or
when the breeze of evening brushed the chains and the skeletons,
and swayed all these in the darkness. The presence of this gibbet
sufficed to render gloomy all the surrounding places.
The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the odious
edifice was hollow. A huge cellar had been constructed there,
closed by an old iron grating, which was out of order, into which
were cast not only the human remains, which were taken from the
chains of Montfaucon, but also the bodies of all the unfortunates
executed on the other permanent gibbets of Paris. To that deep
charnel-house, where so many human remains and so many crimes
have rotted in company, many great ones of this world, many
innocent people, have contributed their bones, from Enguerrand de
Marigni, the first victim, and a just man, to Admiral de Coligni,
who was its last, and who was also a just man.
As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all
that we have been able to discover.
About eighteen months or two years after the events which
terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the
body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously,
and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried
in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those
hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in
its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman,
still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white,
and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads
with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was
open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the
executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which
held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It
was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated
on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the
other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the
nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged.
Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had
died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held
in his embrace, he fell to dust.
NOTE
ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.
It is by mistake that this edition was announced as augmented by
many _new_ chapters. The word should have been _unpublished_. In
fact, if by new, _newly made_ is to be understood, the chapters
added to this edition are not new. They were written at the same
time as the rest of the work; they date from the same epoch, and
sprang from the same thought, they have always formed a part of
the manuscript of “Notre-Dame-de-Paris.” Moreover, the author
cannot comprehend how fresh developments could be added to a work
of this character after its completion. This is not to be done at
will. According to his idea, a romance is born in a manner that
is, in some sort, necessary, with all its chapters; a drama is
born with all its scenes. Think not that there is anything
arbitrary in the numbers of parts of which that whole, that
mysterious microcosm which you call a drama or a romance, is
composed. Grafting and soldering take badly on works of this
nature, which should gush forth in a single stream and so remain.
The thing once done, do not change your mind, do not touch it up.
The book once published, the sex of the work, whether virile or
not, has been recognized and proclaimed; when the child has once
uttered his first cry he is born, there he is, he is made so,
neither father nor mother can do anything, he belongs to the air
and to the sun, let him live or die, such as he is. Has your book
been a failure? So much the worse. Add no chapters to an
unsuccessful book. Is it incomplete? You should have completed it
when you conceived it. Is your tree crooked? You cannot
straighten it up. Is your romance consumptive? Is your romance
not capable of living? You cannot supply it with the breath which
it lacks. Has your drama been born lame? Take my advice, and do
not provide it with a wooden leg.
Hence the author attaches particular importance to the public
knowing for a certainty that the chapters here added have not
been made expressly for this reprint. They were not published in
the preceding editions of the book for a very simple reason. At
the time when “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was printed the first time,
the manuscript of these three chapters had been mislaid. It was
necessary to rewrite them or to dispense with them. The author
considered that the only two of these chapters which were in the
least important, owing to their extent, were chapters on art and
history which in no way interfered with the groundwork of the
drama and the romance, that the public would not notice their
loss, and that he, the author, would alone be in possession of
the secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole truth
must be confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task of
rewriting the three lost chapters. He would have found it a
shorter matter to make a new romance.
Now the chapters have been found, and he avails himself of the
first opportunity to restore them to their place.
This now, is his entire work, such as he dreamed it, such as he
made it, good or bad, durable or fragile, but such as he wishes
it.
These recovered chapters will possess no doubt, but little value
in the eyes of persons, otherwise very judicious, who have sought
in “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” only the drama, the romance. But there
are perchance, other readers, who have not found it useless to
study the æsthetic and philosophic thought concealed in this
book, and who have taken pleasure, while reading
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” in unravelling beneath the romance
something else than the romance, and in following (may we be
pardoned these rather ambitious expressions), the system of the
historian and the aim of the artist through the creation of the
poet.
For such people especially, the chapters added to this edition
will complete “Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” if we admit that
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was worth the trouble of completing.
In one of these chapters on the present decadence of
architecture, and on the death (in his mind almost inevitable) of
that king of arts, the author expresses and develops an opinion
unfortunately well rooted in him, and well thought out. But he
feels it necessary to say here that he earnestly desires that the
future may, some day, put him in the wrong. He knows that art in
all its forms has everything to hope from the new generations
whose genius, still in the germ, can be heard gushing forth in
our studios. The grain is in the furrow, the harvest will
certainly be fine. He merely fears, and the reason may be seen in
the second volume of this edition, that the sap may have been
withdrawn from that ancient soil of architecture which has been
for so many centuries the best field for art.
Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much
life, power, and, so to speak, predestination, that in our
schools of architecture in particular, at the present time, the
professors, who are detestable, produce, not only unconsciously
but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils; quite the
reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphoræ
and produced pots. _Currit rota, urcens exit_.
But, in any case, whatever may be the future of architecture, in
whatever manner our young architects may one day solve the
question of their art, let us, while waiting for new monument,
preserve the ancient monuments. Let us, if possible, inspire the
nation with a love for national architecture. That, the author
declares, is one of the principal aims of this book; it is one of
the principal aims of his life.
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris” has, perhaps opened some true perspectives
on the art of the Middle Ages, on that marvellous art which up to
the present time has been unknown to some, and, what is worse,
misknown by others. But the author is far from regarding as
accomplished, the task which he has voluntarily imposed on
himself. He has already pleaded on more than one occasion, the
cause of our ancient architecture, he has already loudly
denounced many profanations, many demolitions, many impieties. He
will not grow weary. He has promised himself to recur frequently
to this subject. He will return to it. He will be as
indefatigable in defending our historical edifices as our
iconoclasts of the schools and academies are eager in attacking
them; for it is a grievous thing to see into what hands the
architecture of the Middle Ages has fallen, and in what a manner
the botchers of plaster of the present day treat the ruin of this
grand art, it is even a shame for us intelligent men who see them
at work and content ourselves with hooting them. And we are not
speaking here merely of what goes on in the provinces, but of
what is done in Paris at our very doors, beneath our windows, in
the great city, in the lettered city, in the city of the press,
of word, of thought. We cannot resist the impulse to point out,
in concluding this note, some of the acts of vandalism which are
every day planned, debated, begun, continued, and successfully
completed under the eyes of the artistic public of Paris, face to
face with criticism, which is disconcerted by so much audacity.
An archbishop’s palace has just been demolished, an edifice in
poor taste, no great harm is done; but in a block with the
archiepiscopal palace a bishop’s palace has been demolished, a
rare fragment of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing
architect could not distinguish from the rest. He has torn up the
wheat with the tares; ’tis all the same. They are talking of
razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, in order to make, with
its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not need,
however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is
being repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial
storms are allowed to destroy the magnificent painted windows of
the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last few days there has been a
scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie; and
one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has
been found to build a little white house between the venerable
towers of the Palais de-Justice. Another has been found willing
to prune away Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the feudal abbey with three
bell towers. Another will be found, no doubt, capable of pulling
down Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. All these masons claim to be
architects, are paid by the prefecture or from the petty budget,
and wear green coats. All the harm which false taste can inflict
on good taste, they accomplish. While we write, deplorable
spectacle! one of them holds possession of the Tuileries, one of
them is giving Philibert Delorme a scar across the middle of his
face; and it is not, assuredly, one of the least of the scandals
of our time to see with what effrontery the heavy architecture of
this gentleman is being flattened over one of the most delicate
façades of the Renaissance!
PARIS, October 20, 1832.
FOOTNOTES:
1 (return) The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi-circle is the father.
2 (return) Faire le diable à quatre.
3 (return) Thibaut au des,—Thibaut of the dice.
4 (return) An old French coin, equal to the two hundred and fortieth part of a pound.
5 (return) Got the first idea of a thing.
6 (return) The ancient French hurrah.
7 (return) A chamber of the ancient parliament of Paris.
8 (return) A blank: an old French coin; six blanks were worth two sous and a half; targe, an ancient coin of Burgundy, a farthing.
9 (return) A coffer of great richness In a pillar’s heart they found, Within it lay new banners, With figures to astound.
10 (return) Alms.
11 (return) Give me the means to buy a bit of bread, sir.
12 (return) A high-toned sharper.
13 (return) Thieves.
14 (return) L’argot.
15 (return) A small dessert apple, bright red on one side and greenish-white on the other.
16 (return) When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth—
17 (return) My father is a bird, my mother is a bird. I cross the water without a barque, I cross the water without a boat. My mother is a bird, my father is a bird.
18 (return) Time is a devourer; man, more so.
19 (return) Histoire Gallicane, liv. II. Periode III. fo. 130, p. 1.
20 (return) This is the same which is called, according to locality, climate, and races, Lombard, Saxon, or Byzantine. There are four sister and parallel architectures, each having its special character, but derived from the same origin, the round arch.
Facies non omnibus una, Non diversa tamen, qualem, etc.
Their faces not all alike, nor yet different, but such as the faces of sisters ought to be.
21 (return) This portion of the spire, which was of woodwork, is precisely that which was consumed by lightning, in 1823.
22 (return) The wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur.
23 (return) We have seen with sorrow mingled with indignation, that it is the intention to increase, to recast, to make over, that is to say, to destroy this admirable palace. The architects of our day have too heavy a hand to touch these delicate works of the Renaissance. We still cherish a hope that they will not dare. Moreover, this demolition of the Tuileries now, would be not only a brutal deed of violence, which would make a drunken vandal blush—it would be an act of treason. The Tuileries is not simply a masterpiece of the art of the sixteenth century, it is a page of the history of the nineteenth. This palace no longer belongs to the king, but to the people. Let us leave it as it is. Our revolution has twice set its seal upon its front. On one of its two façades, there are the cannon-balls of the 10th of August; on the other, the balls of the 29th of July. It is sacred. Paris, April 7, 1831. (Note to the fifth edition.)
24 (return) The tenth month of the French republican calendar, from the 19th of June to the 18th of July.
25 (return) An official of Notre-Dame, lower than a beneficed clergyman, higher than simple paid chanters.
26 (return) Hugo II. de Bisuncio, 1326-1332.
27 (return) This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia, ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.
28 (return) Comptes du domaine, 1383.
29 (return) A Queue was a cask which held a hogshead and a half.
30 (return) A captain of fifty men.
31 (return) Ox-eye daisy.
32 (return) Easter daisy.
33 (return) A rope for the gallows bird! A fagot for the ape.
34 (return) An ancient Burgundian coin.
35 (return) An ancient French coin.
36 (return) Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing!
37 (return) Peter the Slaughterer; and Baptist Crack-Gosling.
38 (return) An ancient copper coin, the forty-fourth part of a sou or the twelfth part of a farthing.
39 (return) Une vielle qui scie une anse
40 (return) Cut-Weazand Street.
41 (return) Cut-Throat Street.
42 (return) The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves be hung like calves.
43 (return) When the rats eat the cats, the king will be lord of Arras; when the sea which is great and wide, is frozen over at St. John’s tide, men will see across the ice, those who dwell in Arras quit their place.
44 (return) Varieties of the crossbow.
45 (return) The substance of this exordium is contained in the president’s sentence.
46 (return) “He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and hath not come into condemnation; but is passed from death to life.”
47 (return) “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about.”
48 (return) “Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy upon thee.”
49 (return) “Lord have mercy upon us.”
50 (return) “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.”
51 (return) Bark, Grève, grumble, Grève! Spin, spin, my distaff, spin her rope for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre. The thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Grève, bark, Grève! To see the dissolute wench hang on the blear-eyed gibbet, windows are eyes.
52 (return) Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter. Alas! What is the use of saying that? That which is not beautiful has no right to exist; beauty loves only beauty; April turns her back on January. Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the only thing which does not exist by halves. The raven flies only by day, the owl flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by night.
53 (return) Sols neufs: poulets tués.
54 (return) An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings, by which a rotatory motion was communicated.
55 (return) A game played on a checker-board containing three concentric sets of squares, with small stones. The game consisted in getting three stones in a row.
56 (return) Good night, father and mother, the last cover up the fire.
57 (return) That I will drink no spiced and honeyed wine for a year, if I am lying now.
58 (return) And by the blood of God, I have neither faith nor law, nor fire nor dwelling-place, nor king nor God.
59 (return) Men of the brotherhood of slang: thieves.
60 (return) Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.
61 (return) The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn about in Tarascon and other French towns.
62 (return) An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings by which a rotatory motion was communicated.
63 (return) The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.
64 (return) An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet and nearly five inches English measure.
65 (return) Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics. Monsieur of Verdun has no longer one; all have been killed off.
66 (return) One in charge of the highways.
67 (return) A lord having a right on the woods of his vassals.
68 (return) When thou shalt find its mate, thy mother will stretch out her arms to thee.