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  • BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER I.

  • FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

  • Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark when

  • Gringoire issued forth from the Courts.

  • This gloom pleased him; he was in haste to reach some obscure and deserted alley, in

  • order there to meditate at his ease, and in order that the philosopher might place the

  • first dressing upon the wound of the poet.

  • Philosophy, moreover, was his sole refuge, for he did not know where he was to lodge

  • for the night.

  • After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to

  • the lodging which he occupied in the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, opposite to the Port-au-

  • Foin, having depended upon receiving from

  • monsieur the provost for his epithalamium, the wherewithal to pay Master Guillaume

  • Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven- footed animals in Paris, the rent which he

  • owed him, that is to say, twelve sols

  • parisian; twelve times the value of all that he possessed in the world, including

  • his trunk-hose, his shirt, and his cap.

  • After reflecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath the little wicket of the

  • prison of the treasurer of the Sainte- Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would

  • select for the night, having all the

  • pavements of Paris to choose from, he remembered to have noticed the week

  • previously in the Rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament,

  • a stepping stone for mounting a mule, and

  • to have said to himself that that stone would furnish, on occasion, a very

  • excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet.

  • He thanked Providence for having sent this happy idea to him; but, as he was preparing

  • to cross the Place, in order to reach the tortuous labyrinth of the city, where

  • meander all those old sister streets, the

  • Rues de la Barillerie, de la Vielle- Draperie, de la Savaterie, de la Juiverie,

  • etc., still extant to-day, with their nine- story houses, he saw the procession of the

  • Pope of the Fools, which was also emerging

  • from the court house, and rushing across the courtyard, with great cries, a great

  • flashing of torches, and the music which belonged to him, Gringoire.

  • This sight revived the pain of his self- love; he fled.

  • In the bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything which reminded him

  • of the festival of that day irritated his wound and made it bleed.

  • He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel; children were running about

  • here and there with fire lances and rockets.

  • "Pest on firework candles!" said Gringoire; and he fell back on the Pont au Change.

  • To the house at the head of the bridge there had been affixed three small banners,

  • representing the king, the dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and six little

  • pennons on which were portrayed the Duke of

  • Austria, the Cardinal de Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne de France, and

  • Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon, and I know not whom else; all being illuminated with

  • torches.

  • The rabble were admiring. "Happy painter, Jehan Fourbault!" said

  • Gringoire with a deep sigh; and he turned his back upon the bannerets and pennons.

  • A street opened before him; he thought it so dark and deserted that he hoped to there

  • escape from all the rumors as well as from all the gleams of the festival.

  • At the end of a few moments his foot came in contact with an obstacle; he stumbled

  • and fell.

  • It was the May truss, which the clerks of the clerks' law court had deposited that

  • morning at the door of a president of the parliament, in honor of the solemnity of

  • the day.

  • Gringoire bore this new disaster heroically; he picked himself up, and

  • reached the water's edge.

  • After leaving behind him the civic Tournelle and the criminal tower, and

  • skirted the great walls of the king's garden, on that unpaved strand where the

  • mud reached to his ankles, he reached the

  • western point of the city, and considered for some time the islet of the Passeur-aux-

  • Vaches, which has disappeared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf.

  • The islet appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the narrow strip

  • of whitish water which separated him from it.

  • One could divine by the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in the form of a beehive

  • where the ferryman of cows took refuge at night.

  • "Happy ferryman!" thought Gringoire; "you do not dream of glory, and you do not make

  • marriage songs! What matters it to you, if kings and

  • Duchesses of Burgundy marry?

  • You know no other daisies (marguerites) than those which your April greensward

  • gives your cows to browse upon; while I, a poet, am hooted, and shiver, and owe twelve

  • sous, and the soles of my shoes are so

  • transparent, that they might serve as glasses for your lantern!

  • Thanks, ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!"

  • He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big double Saint-Jean

  • cracker, which suddenly went off from the happy cabin.

  • It was the cow ferryman, who was taking his part in the rejoicings of the day, and

  • letting off fireworks. This cracker made Gringoire's skin bristle

  • up all over.

  • "Accursed festival!" he exclaimed, "wilt thou pursue me everywhere?

  • Oh! good God! even to the ferryman's!"

  • Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation took possession

  • of him: "Oh!" said he, "I would gladly drown

  • myself, were the water not so cold!"

  • Then a desperate resolution occurred to him.

  • It was, since he could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan Fourbault's

  • bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and crackers, to go to the Place de Greve.

  • "At least," he said to himself, "I shall there have a firebrand of joy wherewith to

  • warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of

  • royal sugar which have been erected on the public refreshment-stall of the city."

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER II.

  • THE PLACE DE GREVE.

  • There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of the Place de

  • Greve, such as it existed then; it consists in the charming little turret, which

  • occupies the angle north of the Place, and

  • which, already enshrouded in the ignoble plaster which fills with paste the delicate

  • lines of its sculpture, would soon have disappeared, perhaps submerged by that

  • flood of new houses which so rapidly devours all the ancient facades of Paris.

  • The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de Greve without casting a

  • glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret strangled between two hovels of the

  • time of Louis XV., can easily reconstruct

  • in their minds the aggregate of edifices to which it belonged, and find again entire in

  • it the ancient Gothic place of the fifteenth century.

  • It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on one side by the

  • quay, and on the other three by a series of lofty, narrow, and gloomy houses.

  • By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood,

  • and already presenting complete specimens of the different domestic architectures of

  • the Middle Ages, running back from the

  • fifteenth to the eleventh century, from the casement which had begun to dethrone the

  • arch, to the Roman semicircle, which had been supplanted by the ogive, and which

  • still occupies, below it, the first story

  • of that ancient house de la Tour Roland, at the corner of the Place upon the Seine, on

  • the side of the street with the Tannerie.

  • At night, one could distinguish nothing of all that mass of buildings, except the

  • black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the

  • place; for one of the radical differences

  • between the cities of that time, and the cities of the present day, lay in the

  • facades which looked upon the places and streets, and which were then gables.

  • For the last two centuries the houses have been turned round.

  • In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy and hybrid

  • construction, formed of three buildings placed in juxtaposition.

  • It was called by three names which explain its history, its destination, and its

  • architecture: "The House of the Dauphin," because Charles V., when Dauphin, had

  • inhabited it; "The Marchandise," because it

  • had served as town hall; and "The Pillared House" (domus ad piloria), because of a

  • series of large pillars which sustained the three stories.

  • The city found there all that is required for a city like Paris; a chapel in which to

  • pray to God; a plaidoyer, or pleading room, in which to hold hearings, and to repel, at

  • need, the King's people; and under the roof, an arsenac full of artillery.

  • For the bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every

  • conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always

  • in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses.

  • The Greve had then that sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the

  • execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador,

  • which has replaced the Pillared House.

  • It must be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as

  • they were called in that day, erected side by side in the centre of the pavement,

  • contributed not a little to cause eyes to

  • be turned away from that fatal place, where so many beings full of life and health have

  • agonized; where, fifty years later, that fever of Saint Vallier was destined to have

  • its birth, that terror of the scaffold, the

  • most monstrous of all maladies because it comes not from God, but from man.

  • It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think that the death penalty,

  • which three hundred years ago still encumbered with its iron wheels, its stone

  • gibbets, and all its paraphernalia of

  • torture, permanent and riveted to the pavement, the Greve, the Halles, the Place

  • Dauphine, the Cross du Trahoir, the Marche aux Pourceaux, that hideous Montfaucon, the

  • barrier des Sergents, the Place aux Chats,

  • the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques, without

  • reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop of the chapters, of

  • the abbots, of the priors, who had the

  • decree of life and death,--without reckoning the judicial drownings in the

  • river Seine; it is consoling to-day, after having lost successively all the pieces of

  • its armor, its luxury of torment, its

  • penalty of imagination and fancy, its torture for which it reconstructed every

  • five years a leather bed at the Grand Chatelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal

  • society almost expunged from our laws and

  • our cities, hunted from code to code, chased from place to place, has no longer,

  • in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored corner of the Greve,--than a

  • miserable guillotine, furtive, uneasy,

  • shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught in the act, so quickly does it

  • disappear after having dealt its blow.

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER III.

  • KISSES FOR BLOWS.

  • When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Greve, he was paralyzed.

  • He had directed his course across the Pont aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble

  • on the Pont au Change, and the pennons of Jehan Fourbault; but the wheels of all the

  • bishop's mills had splashed him as he

  • passed, and his doublet was drenched; it seemed to him besides, that the failure of

  • his piece had rendered him still more sensible to cold than usual.

  • Hence he made haste to draw near the bonfire, which was burning magnificently in

  • the middle of the Place. But a considerable crowd formed a circle

  • around it.

  • "Accursed Parisians!" he said to himself (for Gringoire, like a true dramatic poet,

  • was subject to monologues) "there they are obstructing my fire!

  • Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of a chimney corner; my shoes drink in the

  • water, and all those cursed mills wept upon me!

  • That devil of a Bishop of Paris, with his mills!

  • I'd just like to know what use a bishop can make of a mill!

  • Does he expect to become a miller instead of a bishop?

  • If only my malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon him! and his cathedral,

  • and his mills!

  • Just see if those boobies will put themselves out!

  • Move aside! I'd like to know what they are doing there!

  • They are warming themselves, much pleasure may it give them!

  • They are watching a hundred fagots burn; a fine spectacle!"

  • On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was much larger than was

  • required simply for the purpose of getting warm at the king's fire, and that this

  • concourse of people had not been attracted

  • solely by the beauty of the hundred fagots which were burning.

  • In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing.

  • Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire,

  • sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first

  • moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision.

  • She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about.

  • She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess

  • that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women.

  • Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its

  • graceful shoe.

  • She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread

  • negligently under her feet; and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as

  • she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.

  • All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she

  • danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded

  • arms raised above her head, slender, frail

  • and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown

  • puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat

  • revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.

  • "In truth," said Gringoire to himself, "she is a salamander, she is a nymph, she is a

  • goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean Mount!"

  • At that moment, one of the salamander's braids of hair became unfastened, and a

  • piece of yellow copper which was attached to it, rolled to the ground.

  • "He, no!" said he, "she is a gypsy!"

  • All illusions had disappeared.

  • She began her dance once more; she took from the ground two swords, whose points

  • she rested against her brow, and which she made to turn in one direction, while she

  • turned in the other; it was a purely gypsy effect.

  • But, disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not

  • without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring

  • light, which trembled, all alive, over the

  • circle of faces in the crowd, on the brow of the young girl, and at the background of

  • the Place cast a pallid reflection, on one side upon the ancient, black, and wrinkled

  • facade of the House of Pillars, on the other, upon the old stone gibbet.

  • Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with scarlet, there was one

  • which seemed, even more than all the others, absorbed in contemplation of the

  • dancer.

  • It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and sombre.

  • This man, whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not

  • appear to be more than five and thirty years of age; nevertheless, he was bald; he

  • had merely a few tufts of thin, gray hair

  • on his temples; his broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but

  • his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life,

  • a profound passion.

  • He kept them fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl of

  • sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to

  • become more and more sombre.

  • From time to time, a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more

  • melancholy than the sigh.

  • The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people applauded her

  • lovingly. "Djali!" said the gypsy.

  • Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white goat, alert, wide-awake,

  • glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and gilded collar, which he had not

  • hitherto perceived, and which had remained

  • lying curled up on one corner of the carpet watching his mistress dance.

  • "Djali!" said the dancer, "it is your turn."

  • And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat.

  • "Djali," she continued, "what month is this?"

  • The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the tambourine.

  • It was the first month in the year, in fact.

  • "Djali," pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round, "what day of the

  • month is this?" Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and

  • struck six blows on the tambourine.

  • "Djali," pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the tambourine, "what

  • hour of the day is it?" Djali struck seven blows.

  • At that moment, the clock of the Pillar House rang out seven.

  • The people were amazed. "There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said

  • a sinister voice in the crowd.

  • It was that of the bald man, who never removed his eyes from the gypsy.

  • She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth and drowned the morose

  • exclamation.

  • It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she continued to question her

  • goat.

  • "Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand- Remy, captain of the pistoliers of the town

  • do, at the procession of Candlemas?"

  • Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat, marching along with so much

  • dainty gravity, that the entire circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this

  • parody of the interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.

  • "Djali," resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing success, "how preaches

  • Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the ecclesiastical court?"

  • The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began to bleat, waving his

  • fore feet in so strange a manner, that, with the exception of the bad French, and

  • worse Latin, Jacques Charmolue was there complete,--gesture, accent, and attitude.

  • And the crowd applauded louder than ever. "Sacrilege! profanation!" resumed the voice

  • of the bald man.

  • The gypsy turned round once more. "Ah!" said she, "'tis that villanous man!"

  • Then, thrusting her under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which

  • appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette on her heel, and set about

  • collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the multitude.

  • Big blanks, little blanks, targes and eagle liards showered into it.

  • All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire.

  • Gringoire put his hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted.

  • "The devil!" said the poet, finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality, that is,

  • to say, a void.

  • In the meantime, the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and

  • holding out her tambourine to him and waiting.

  • Gringoire broke into a violent perspiration.

  • If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancer; but

  • Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover, America had not yet been discovered.

  • Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.

  • "Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?" cried a sharp voice, which

  • proceeded from the darkest corner of the Place.

  • The young girl turned round in affright.

  • It was no longer the voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman, bigoted and

  • malicious.

  • However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of children who were

  • prowling about there.

  • "It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland," they exclaimed, with wild laughter, "it is

  • the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn't she supped?

  • Let's carry her the remains of the city refreshments!"

  • All rushed towards the Pillar House.

  • In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer's embarrassment, to

  • disappear.

  • The children's shouts had reminded him that he, also, had not supped, so he ran to the

  • public buffet.

  • But the little rascals had better legs than he; when he arrived, they had stripped the

  • table. There remained not so much as a miserable

  • camichon at five sous the pound.

  • Nothing remained upon the wall but slender fleurs-de-lis, mingled with rose bushes,

  • painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre supper.

  • It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant

  • thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.

  • That was Gringoire's condition.

  • No supper, no shelter; he saw himself pressed on all sides by necessity, and he

  • found necessity very crabbed.

  • He had long ago discovered the truth, that Jupiter created men during a fit of

  • misanthropy, and that during a wise man's whole life, his destiny holds his

  • philosophy in a state of siege.

  • As for himself, he had never seen the blockade so complete; he heard his stomach

  • sounding a parley, and he considered it very much out of place that evil destiny

  • should capture his philosophy by famine.

  • This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more, when a song, quaint but full

  • of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It was the young gypsy who was singing.

  • Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty.

  • It was indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to

  • speak.

  • There were continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases

  • strewn with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a

  • nightingale to rout, but in which harmony

  • was always present; then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the

  • bosom of the young singer.

  • Her beautiful face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices of her song,

  • from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity.

  • One would have pronounced her now a mad creature, now a queen.

  • The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire, and which seemed to

  • him to be unknown to herself, so little relation did the expression which she

  • imparted to her song bear to the sense of the words.

  • Thus, these four lines, in her mouth, were madly gay,--

  • Un cofre de gran riqueza Hallaron dentro un pilar,

  • Dentro del, nuevas banderas Con figuras de espantar.*

  • * A coffer of great richness In a pillar's heart they found,

  • Within it lay new banners, With figures to astound.

  • And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to this stanza,--

  • Alarabes de cavallo Sin poderse menear,

  • Con espadas, y los cuellos, Ballestas de buen echar,

  • Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her song breathed joy, most

  • of all, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from serenity and heedlessness.

  • The gypsy's song had disturbed Gringoire's revery as the swan disturbs the water.

  • He listened in a sort of rapture, and forgetfulness of everything.

  • It was the first moment in the course of many hours when he did not feel that he

  • suffered. The moment was brief.

  • The same woman's voice, which had interrupted the gypsy's dance, interrupted

  • her song.

  • "Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?" it cried, still from the same

  • obscure corner of the place. The poor "cricket" stopped short.

  • Gringoire covered up his ears.

  • "Oh!" he exclaimed, "accursed saw with missing teeth, which comes to break the

  • lyre!"

  • Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself; "To the devil with the sacked

  • nun!" said some of them.

  • And the old invisible kill-joy might have had occasion to repent of her aggressions

  • against the gypsy had their attention not been diverted at this moment by the

  • procession of the Pope of the Fools, which,

  • after having traversed many streets and squares, debouched on the Place de Greve,

  • with all its torches and all its uproar.

  • This procession, which our readers have seen set out from the Palais de Justice,

  • had organized on the way, and had been recruited by all the knaves, idle thieves,

  • and unemployed vagabonds in Paris; so that

  • it presented a very respectable aspect when it arrived at the Greve.

  • First came Egypt.

  • The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horseback, with his counts on foot holding his bridle

  • and stirrups for him; behind them, the male and female Egyptians, pell-mell, with their

  • little children crying on their shoulders;

  • all--duke, counts, and populace--in rags and tatters.

  • Then came the Kingdom of Argot; that is to say, all the thieves of France, arranged

  • according to the order of their dignity; the minor people walking first.

  • Thus defiled by fours, with the divers insignia of their grades, in that strange

  • faculty, most of them lame, some cripples, others one-armed, shop clerks, pilgrim,

  • hubins, bootblacks, thimble-riggers, street

  • arabs, beggars, the blear-eyed beggars, thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, merchants,

  • sham soldiers, goldsmiths, passed masters of pickpockets, isolated thieves.

  • A catalogue that would weary Homer.

  • In the centre of the conclave of the passed masters of pickpockets, one had some

  • difficulty in distinguishing the King of Argot, the grand coesre, so called,

  • crouching in a little cart drawn by two big dogs.

  • After the kingdom of the Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee.

  • Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically in his

  • robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons wrestling and executing

  • military dances; surrounded by his

  • macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of the chamber of accounts.

  • Last of all came the corporation of law clerks, with its maypoles crowned with

  • flowers, its black robes, its music worthy of the orgy, and its large candles of

  • yellow wax.

  • In the centre of this crowd, the grand officers of the Brotherhood of Fools bore

  • on their shoulders a litter more loaded down with candles than the reliquary of

  • Sainte-Genevieve in time of pest; and on

  • this litter shone resplendent, with crosier, cope, and mitre, the new Pope of

  • the Fools, the bellringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo the hunchback.

  • Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music.

  • The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound.

  • The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat's horn trumpet and

  • the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century.

  • The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one could hardly

  • distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned in the

  • re-la-mi.

  • But it was around the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch

  • were displayed in a magnificent discord.

  • It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter- tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to

  • reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will remember that this

  • was Gringoire's orchestra.

  • It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and blissful expansion to

  • which the sad and hideous visage of Quasimodo had attained during the transit

  • from the Palais de Justice, to the Place de Greve.

  • It was the first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced.

  • Down to that day, he had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition,

  • disgust for his person.

  • Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a veritable pope, the acclamations of that

  • throng, which he hated because he felt that he was hated by it.

  • What mattered it that his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples, thieves, and

  • beggars? it was still a people and he was its sovereign.

  • And he accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this derisive respect, with

  • which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a good deal of very real fear.

  • For the hunchback was robust; for the bandy-legged fellow was agile; for the deaf

  • man was malicious: three qualities which temper ridicule.

  • We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of the Fools understood both

  • the sentiments which he felt and the sentiments which he inspired.

  • The spirit which was lodged in this failure of a body had, necessarily, something

  • incomplete and deaf about it.

  • Thus, what he felt at the moment was to him, absolutely vague, indistinct, and

  • confused. Only joy made itself felt, only pride

  • dominated.

  • Around that sombre and unhappy face, there hung a radiance.

  • It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the very moment when

  • Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, in that semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen

  • to dart from the crowd, and to tear from

  • his hands, with a gesture of anger, his crosier of gilded wood, the emblem of his

  • mock popeship.

  • This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald brow, who, a moment earlier,

  • standing with the gypsy's group had chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and

  • of hatred.

  • He was dressed in an ecclesiastical costume.

  • At the moment when he stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him

  • up to that time, recognized him: "Hold!" he said, with an exclamation of astonishment.

  • "Eh! 'tis my master in Hermes, Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon!

  • What the devil does he want of that old one-eyed fellow?

  • He'll get himself devoured!"

  • A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo had hurled himself

  • from the litter, and the women turned aside their eyes in order not to see him tear the

  • archdeacon asunder.

  • He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and fell upon his knees.

  • The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his tinsel cope.

  • Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands clasped.

  • Then there was established between them a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for

  • neither of them spoke.

  • The priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious; Quasimodo,

  • prostrate, humble, suppliant.

  • And, nevertheless, it is certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest

  • with his thumb.

  • At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo's powerful shoulder a rough

  • shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.

  • Quasimodo rose.

  • Then the Brotherhood of Fools, their first stupor having passed off, wished to defend

  • their pope, so abruptly dethroned.

  • The Egyptians, the men of slang, and all the fraternity of law clerks, gathered

  • howling round the priest.

  • Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play the muscles of his

  • athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants with the snarl of an angry

  • tiger.

  • The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasimodo, and retired in

  • silence. Quasimodo walked in front of him,

  • scattering the crowd as he passed.

  • When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the cloud of curious and idle

  • were minded to follow them.

  • Quasimodo then constituted himself the rearguard, and followed the archdeacon,

  • walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous, bristling, gathering up his limbs, licking

  • his boar's tusks, growling like a wild

  • beast, and imparting to the crowd immense vibrations, with a look or a gesture.

  • Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street, where no one dared to

  • venture after them; so thoroughly did the mere chimera of Quasimodo gnashing his

  • teeth bar the entrance.

  • "Here's a marvellous thing," said Gringoire; "but where the deuce shall I

  • find some supper?"

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER IV.

  • THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING.

  • Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at all hazards.

  • He had seen her, accompanied by her goat, take to the Rue de la Coutellerie; he took

  • the Rue de la Coutellerie.

  • "Why not?" he said to himself.

  • Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had noticed that nothing

  • is more propitious to revery than following a pretty woman without knowing whither she

  • is going.

  • There was in this voluntary abdication of his freewill, in this fancy submitting

  • itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence

  • and blind obedience, something

  • indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire,--a

  • spirit essentially compound, undecided, and complex, holding the extremities of all

  • extremes, incessantly suspended between all

  • human propensities, and neutralizing one by the other.

  • He was fond of comparing himself to Mahomet's coffin, attracted in two

  • different directions by two loadstones, and hesitating eternally between the heights

  • and the depths, between the vault and the

  • pavement, between fall and ascent, between zenith and nadir.

  • If Gringoire had lived in our day, what a fine middle course he would hold between

  • classicism and romanticism!

  • But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and 'tis a pity.

  • His absence is a void which is but too sensibly felt to-day.

  • Moreover, for the purpose of thus following passers-by (and especially female passers-

  • by) in the streets, which Gringoire was fond of doing, there is no better

  • disposition than ignorance of where one is going to sleep.

  • So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl, who hastened her

  • pace and made her goat trot as she saw the bourgeois returning home and the taverns--

  • the only shops which had been open that day--closing.

  • "After all," he half thought to himself, "she must lodge somewhere; gypsies have

  • kindly hearts.

  • Who knows?--" And in the points of suspense which he

  • placed after this reticence in his mind, there lay I know not what flattering ideas.

  • Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of bourgeois closing their

  • doors, he caught some scraps of their conversation, which broke the thread of his

  • pleasant hypotheses.

  • Now it was two old men accosting each other.

  • "Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibaut Fernicle?"

  • (Gringoire had been aware of this since the beginning of the winter.)

  • "Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome!

  • Are we going to have a winter such as we had three years ago, in '80, when wood cost

  • eight sous the measure?"

  • "Bah! that's nothing, Master Thibaut, compared with the winter of 1407, when it

  • froze from St. Martin's Day until Candlemas! and so cold that the pen of the

  • registrar of the parliament froze every

  • three words, in the Grand Chamber! which interrupted the registration of justice."

  • Further on there were two female neighbors at their windows, holding candles, which

  • the fog caused to sputter.

  • "Has your husband told you about the mishap, Mademoiselle la Boudraque?"

  • "No. What is it, Mademoiselle Turquant?"

  • "The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary at the Chatelet, took fright at the

  • Flemings and their procession, and overturned Master Philippe Avrillot, lay

  • monk of the Celestins."

  • "Really?" "Actually."

  • "A bourgeois horse! 'tis rather too much!

  • If it had been a cavalry horse, well and good!"

  • And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had lost the thread of his

  • ideas, nevertheless.

  • Fortunately, he speedily found it again, and he knotted it together without

  • difficulty, thanks to the gypsy, thanks to Djali, who still walked in front of him;

  • two fine, delicate, and charming creatures,

  • whose tiny feet, beautiful forms, and graceful manners he was engaged in

  • admiring, almost confusing them in his contemplation; believing them to be both

  • young girls, from their intelligence and

  • good friendship; regarding them both as goats,--so far as the lightness, agility,

  • and dexterity of their walk were concerned. But the streets were becoming blacker and

  • more deserted every moment.

  • The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare intervals now that they

  • encountered a passer-by in the street, or a light in the windows.

  • Gringoire had become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable

  • labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient sepulchre

  • of the Saints-Innocents, and which

  • resembles a ball of thread tangled by a cat.

  • "Here are streets which possess but little logic!" said Gringoire, lost in the

  • thousands of circuits which returned upon themselves incessantly, but where the young

  • girl pursued a road which seemed familiar

  • to her, without hesitation and with a step which became ever more rapid.

  • As for him, he would have been utterly ignorant of his situation had he not

  • espied, in passing, at the turn of a street, the octagonal mass of the pillory

  • of the fish markets, the open-work summit

  • of which threw its black, fretted outlines clearly upon a window which was still

  • lighted in the Rue Verdelet.

  • The young girl's attention had been attracted to him for the last few moments;

  • she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with uneasiness; she had even once come

  • to a standstill, and taking advantage of a

  • ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakery to survey him intently, from head to

  • foot, then, having cast this glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little

  • pout which he had already noticed, after which she passed on.

  • This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for thought.

  • There was certainly both disdain and mockery in that graceful grimace.

  • So he dropped his head, began to count the paving-stones, and to follow the young girl

  • at a little greater distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to

  • lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.

  • He hastened his steps. The street was full of shadows.

  • Nevertheless, a twist of tow soaked in oil, which burned in a cage at the feet of the

  • Holy Virgin at the street corner, permitted Gringoire to make out the gypsy struggling

  • in the arms of two men, who were endeavoring to stifle her cries.

  • The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered his horns and bleated.

  • "Help! gentlemen of the watch!" shouted Gringoire, and advanced bravely.

  • One of the men who held the young girl turned towards him.

  • It was the formidable visage of Quasimodo.

  • Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance another step.

  • Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the pavement with a backward

  • turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded

  • across one arm like a silken scarf.

  • His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran after them all, bleating

  • plaintively. "Murder! murder!" shrieked the unhappy

  • gypsy.

  • "Halt, rascals, and yield me that wench!" suddenly shouted in a voice of thunder, a

  • cavalier who appeared suddenly from a neighboring square.

  • It was a captain of the king's archers, armed from head to foot, with his sword in

  • his hand.

  • He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her across his

  • saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his surprise,

  • rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen

  • or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely, made their appearance,

  • with their two-edged swords in their fists.

  • It was a squad of the king's police, which was making the rounds, by order of Messire

  • Robert d'Estouteville, guard of the provostship of Paris.

  • Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit;

  • and had it been broad daylight, there is no doubt that his face alone, rendered more

  • hideous by wrath, would have put the entire squad to flight.

  • But by night he was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.

  • His companion had disappeared during the struggle.

  • The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer's saddle, placed both

  • hands upon the young man's shoulders, and gazed fixedly at him for several seconds,

  • as though enchanted with his good looks and

  • with the aid which he had just rendered her.

  • Then breaking silence first, she said to him, making her sweet voice still sweeter

  • than usual,-- "What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?"

  • "Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers, at your service, my beauty!" replied the officer,

  • drawing himself up. "Thanks," said she.

  • And while Captain Phoebus was turning up his moustache in Burgundian fashion, she

  • slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled.

  • A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.

  • "Nombrill of the Pope!" said the captain, causing Quasimodo's straps to be drawn

  • tighter, "I should have preferred to keep the wench."

  • "What would you have, captain?" said one gendarme.

  • "The warbler has fled, and the bat remains."

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER V.

  • RESULT OF THE DANGERS.

  • Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the pavement in front of the

  • Holy Virgin at the street corner.

  • Little by little, he regained his senses; at first, for several minutes, he was

  • floating in a sort of half-somnolent revery, which was not without its charm, in

  • which aeriel figures of the gypsy and her

  • goat were coupled with Quasimodo's heavy fist.

  • This state lasted but a short time.

  • A decidedly vivid sensation of cold in the part of his body which was in contact with

  • the pavement, suddenly aroused him and caused his spirit to return to the surface.

  • "Whence comes this chill?" he said abruptly, to himself.

  • He then perceived that he was lying half in the middle of the gutter.

  • "That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!" he muttered between his teeth; and he tried to

  • rise. But he was too much dazed and bruised; he

  • was forced to remain where he was.

  • Moreover, his hand was tolerably free; he stopped up his nose and resigned himself.

  • "The mud of Paris," he said to himself--for decidedly he thought that he was sure that

  • the gutter would prove his refuge for the night; and what can one do in a refuge,

  • except dream?--"the mud of Paris is

  • particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts.

  • That, moreover, is the opinion of Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists--"

  • The word "alchemists" suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of Archdeacon Claude

  • Frollo.

  • He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed in part; that the gypsy was

  • struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a companion; and the morose and haughty

  • face of the archdeacon passed confusedly through his memory.

  • "That would be strange!" he said to himself.

  • And on that fact and that basis he began to construct a fantastic edifice of

  • hypothesis, that card-castle of philosophers; then, suddenly returning once

  • more to reality, "Come!

  • I'm freezing!" he ejaculated. The place was, in fact, becoming less and

  • less tenable.

  • Each molecule of the gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating from Gringoire's

  • loins, and the equilibrium between the temperature of his body and the temperature

  • of the brook, began to be established in rough fashion.

  • Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him.

  • A group of children, those little bare- footed savages who have always roamed the

  • pavements of Paris under the eternal name of gamins, and who, when we were also

  • children ourselves, threw stones at all of

  • us in the afternoon, when we came out of school, because our trousers were not torn-

  • -a swarm of these young scamps rushed towards the square where Gringoire lay,

  • with shouts and laughter which seemed to

  • pay but little heed to the sleep of the neighbors.

  • They were dragging after them some sort of hideous sack; and the noise of their wooden

  • shoes alone would have roused the dead.

  • Gringoire who was not quite dead yet, half raised himself.

  • "Ohe, Hennequin Dandeche!

  • Ohe, Jehan Pincebourde!" they shouted in deafening tones, "old Eustache Moubon, the

  • merchant at the corner, has just died. We've got his straw pallet, we're going to

  • have a bonfire out of it.

  • It's the turn of the Flemish to-day!" And behold, they flung the pallet directly

  • upon Gringoire, beside whom they had arrived, without espying him.

  • At the same time, one of them took a handful of straw and set off to light it at

  • the wick of the good Virgin. "S'death!" growled Gringoire, "am I going

  • to be too warm now?"

  • It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water; he

  • made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who is on the point

  • of being boiled, and who seeks to escape.

  • He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon the street urchins, and fled.

  • "Holy Virgin!" shrieked the children; "'tis the merchant's ghost!"

  • And they fled in their turn.

  • The straw mattress remained master of the field.

  • Belleforet, Father Le Juge, and Corrozet affirm that it was picked up on the morrow,

  • with great pomp, by the clergy of the quarter, and borne to the treasury of the

  • church of Saint Opportune, where the

  • sacristan, even as late as 1789, earned a tolerably handsome revenue out of the great

  • miracle of the Statue of the Virgin at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, which had, by

  • its mere presence, on the memorable night

  • between the sixth and seventh of January, 1482, exorcised the defunct Eustache

  • Moubon, who, in order to play a trick on the devil, had at his death maliciously

  • concealed his soul in his straw pallet.

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER VI.

  • THE BROKEN JUG.

  • After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without knowing whither,

  • knocking his head against many a street corner, leaping many a gutter, traversing

  • many an alley, many a court, many a square,

  • seeking flight and passage through all the meanderings of the ancient passages of the

  • Halles, exploring in his panic terror what the fine Latin of the maps calls tota via,

  • cheminum et viaria, our poet suddenly

  • halted for lack of breath in the first place, and in the second, because he had

  • been collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which had just occurred to his

  • mind.

  • "It strikes me, Master Pierre Gringoire," he said to himself, placing his finger to

  • his brow, "that you are running like a madman.

  • The little scamps are no less afraid of you than you are of them.

  • It strikes me, I say, that you heard the clatter of their wooden shoes fleeing

  • southward, while you were fleeing northward.

  • Now, one of two things, either they have taken flight, and the pallet, which they

  • must have forgotten in their terror, is precisely that hospitable bed in search of

  • which you have been running ever since

  • morning, and which madame the Virgin miraculously sends you, in order to

  • recompense you for having made a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and

  • mummeries; or the children have not taken

  • flight, and in that case they have put the brand to the pallet, and that is precisely

  • the good fire which you need to cheer, dry, and warm you.

  • In either case, good fire or good bed, that straw pallet is a gift from heaven.

  • The blessed Virgin Marie who stands at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, could only

  • have made Eustache Moubon die for that express purpose; and it is folly on your

  • part to flee thus zigzag, like a Picard

  • before a Frenchman, leaving behind you what you seek before you; and you are a fool!"

  • Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching, with his nose to the

  • wind and his ears on the alert, he tried to find the blessed pallet again, but in vain.

  • There was nothing to be found but intersections of houses, closed courts, and

  • crossings of streets, in the midst of which he hesitated and doubted incessantly, being

  • more perplexed and entangled in this medley

  • of streets than he would have been even in the labyrinth of the Hotel des Tournelles.

  • At length he lost patience, and exclaimed solemnly: "Cursed be cross roads!

  • 'tis the devil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!"

  • This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of reddish reflection

  • which he caught sight of at that moment, at the extremity of a long and narrow lane,

  • completed the elevation of his moral tone.

  • "God be praised!" said he, "There it is yonder!

  • There is my pallet burning."

  • And comparing himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, "Salve," he

  • added piously, "salve, maris stella!" Did he address this fragment of litany to

  • the Holy Virgin, or to the pallet?

  • We are utterly unable to say. He had taken but a few steps in the long

  • street, which sloped downwards, was unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep,

  • when he noticed a very singular thing.

  • It was not deserted; here and there along its extent crawled certain vague and

  • formless masses, all directing their course towards the light which flickered at the

  • end of the street, like those heavy insects

  • which drag along by night, from blade to blade of grass, towards the shepherd's

  • fire.

  • Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the place where one's

  • pocket is situated.

  • Gringoire continued to advance, and had soon joined that one of the forms which

  • dragged along most indolently, behind the others.

  • On drawing near, he perceived that it was nothing else than a wretched legless

  • cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on his two hands like a wounded field-spider

  • which has but two legs left.

  • At the moment when he passed close to this species of spider with a human countenance,

  • it raised towards him a lamentable voice: "La buona mancia, signor! la buona mancia!"

  • "Deuce take you," said Gringoire, "and me with you, if I know what you mean!"

  • And he passed on. He overtook another of these itinerant

  • masses, and examined it.

  • It was an impotent man, both halt and crippled, and halt and crippled to such a

  • degree that the complicated system of crutches and wooden legs which sustained

  • him, gave him the air of a mason's scaffolding on the march.

  • Gringoire, who liked noble and classical comparisons, compared him in thought to the

  • living tripod of Vulcan.

  • This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping his hat on a level

  • with Gringoire's chin, like a shaving dish, while he shouted in the latter's ears:

  • "Senor cabellero, para comprar un pedaso de pan!"

  • "It appears," said Gringoire, "that this one can also talk; but 'tis a rude

  • language, and he is more fortunate than I if he understands it."

  • Then, smiting his brow, in a sudden transition of ideas: "By the way, what the

  • deuce did they mean this morning with their Esmeralda?"

  • He was minded to augment his pace, but for the third time something barred his way.

  • This something or, rather, some one was a blind man, a little blind fellow with a

  • bearded, Jewish face, who, rowing away in the space about him with a stick, and towed

  • by a large dog, droned through his nose

  • with a Hungarian accent: "Facitote caritatem!"

  • "Well, now," said Gringoire, "here's one at last who speaks a Christian tongue.

  • I must have a very charitable aspect, since they ask alms of me in the present lean

  • condition of my purse.

  • My friend," and he turned towards the blind man, "I sold my last shirt last week; that

  • is to say, since you understand only the language of Cicero: Vendidi hebdomade nuper

  • transita meam ultimam chemisan."

  • That said, he turned his back upon the blind man, and pursued his way.

  • But the blind man began to increase his stride at the same time; and, behold! the

  • cripple and the legless man, in his bowl, came up on their side in great haste, and

  • with great clamor of bowl and crutches, upon the pavement.

  • Then all three, jostling each other at poor Gringoire's heels, began to sing their song

  • to him,--

  • "Caritatem!" chanted the blind man. "La buona mancia!" chanted the cripple in

  • the bowl. And the lame man took up the musical phrase

  • by repeating: "Un pedaso de pan!"

  • Gringoire stopped up his ears. "Oh, tower of Babel!" he exclaimed.

  • He set out to run. The blind man ran!

  • The lame man ran!

  • The cripple in the bowl ran!

  • And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the street, cripples in bowls,

  • blind men and lame men, swarmed about him, and men with one arm, and with one eye, and

  • the leprous with their sores, some emerging

  • from little streets adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars, howling, bellowing,

  • yelping, all limping and halting, all flinging themselves towards the light, and

  • humped up in the mire, like snails after a shower.

  • Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not knowing very well what

  • was to become of him, marched along in terror among them, turning out for the

  • lame, stepping over the cripples in bowls,

  • with his feet imbedded in that ant-hill of lame men, like the English captain who got

  • caught in the quicksand of a swarm of crabs.

  • The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his steps.

  • But it was too late. This whole legion had closed in behind him,

  • and his three beggars held him fast.

  • So he proceeded, impelled both by this irresistible flood, by fear, and by a

  • vertigo which converted all this into a sort of horrible dream.

  • At last he reached the end of the street.

  • It opened upon an immense place, where a thousand scattered lights flickered in the

  • confused mists of night.

  • Gringoire flew thither, hoping to escape, by the swiftness of his legs, from the

  • three infirm spectres who had clutched him. "Onde vas, hombre?"

  • (Where are you going, my man?) cried the cripple, flinging away his crutches, and

  • running after him with the best legs that ever traced a geometrical step upon the

  • pavements of Paris.

  • In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, crowned Gringoire with his heavy

  • iron bowl, and the blind man glared in his face with flaming eyes!

  • "Where am I?" said the terrified poet.

  • "In the Court of Miracles," replied a fourth spectre, who had accosted them.

  • "Upon my soul," resumed Gringoire, "I certainly do behold the blind who see, and

  • the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?"

  • They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.

  • The poor poet cast his eyes about him.

  • It was, in truth, that redoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man had never

  • penetrated at such an hour; the magic circle where the officers of the Chatelet

  • and the sergeants of the provostship, who

  • ventured thither, disappeared in morsels; a city of thieves, a hideous wart on the face

  • of Paris; a sewer, from which escaped every morning, and whither returned every night

  • to crouch, that stream of vices, of

  • mendicancy and vagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capitals; a

  • monstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with their booty, all the drones

  • of the social order; a lying hospital where

  • the bohemian, the disfrocked monk, the ruined scholar, the ne'er-do-wells of all

  • nations, Spaniards, Italians, Germans,--of all religions, Jews, Christians,

  • Mahometans, idolaters, covered with painted

  • sores, beggars by day, were transformed by night into brigands; an immense dressing-

  • room, in a word, where, at that epoch, the actors of that eternal comedy, which theft,

  • prostitution, and murder play upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and undressed.

  • It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the squares of Paris at

  • that date.

  • Fires, around which swarmed strange groups, blazed here and there.

  • Every one was going, coming, and shouting. Shrill laughter was to be heard, the

  • wailing of children, the voices of women.

  • The hands and heads of this throng, black against the luminous background, outlined

  • against it a thousand eccentric gestures.

  • At times, upon the ground, where trembled the light of the fires, mingled with large,

  • indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog passing, which resembled a man, a man who

  • resembled a dog.

  • The limits of races and species seemed effaced in this city, as in a pandemonium.

  • Men, women, beasts, age, sex, health, maladies, all seemed to be in common among

  • these people; all went together, they mingled, confounded, superposed; each one

  • there participated in all.

  • The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire to distinguish, amid

  • his trouble, all around the immense place, a hideous frame of ancient houses, whose

  • wormeaten, shrivelled, stunted facades,

  • each pierced with one or two lighted attic windows, seemed to him, in the darkness,

  • like enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous and crabbed, winking as

  • they looked on at the Witches' Sabbath.

  • It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, creeping, swarming,

  • fantastic.

  • Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars as by three

  • pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces which frothed and yelped around him,

  • unhappy Gringoire endeavored to summon his

  • presence of mind, in order to recall whether it was a Saturday.

  • But his efforts were vain; the thread of his memory and of his thought was broken;

  • and, doubting everything, wavering between what he saw and what he felt, he put to

  • himself this unanswerable question,--

  • "If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?"

  • At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng which surrounded him, "Let's

  • take him to the king! let's take him to the king!"

  • "Holy Virgin!" murmured Gringoire, "the king here must be a ram."

  • "To the king! to the king!" repeated all voices.

  • They dragged him off.

  • Each vied with the other in laying his claws upon him.

  • But the three beggars did not loose their hold and tore him from the rest, howling,

  • "He belongs to us!"

  • The poet's already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in this struggle.

  • While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished.

  • After taking a few steps, the sentiment of reality returned to him.

  • He began to become accustomed to the atmosphere of the place.

  • At the first moment there had arisen from his poet's head, or, simply and

  • prosaically, from his empty stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which,

  • spreading between objects and himself,

  • permitted him to catch a glimpse of them only in the incoherent fog of nightmare,--

  • in those shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating objects into

  • unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras, and men into phantoms.

  • Little by little, this hallucination was succeeded by a less bewildered and

  • exaggerating view.

  • Reality made its way to the light around him, struck his eyes, struck his feet, and

  • demolished, bit by bit, all that frightful poetry with which he had, at first,

  • believed himself to be surrounded.

  • He was forced to perceive that he was not walking in the Styx, but in mud, that he

  • was elbowed not by demons, but by thieves; that it was not his soul which was in

  • question, but his life (since he lacked

  • that precious conciliator, which places itself so effectually between the bandit

  • and the honest man--a purse).

  • In short, on examining the orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell

  • from the witches' sabbath to the dram-shop.

  • The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand's dram-shop,

  • reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.

  • The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escort finally

  • deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even

  • to the poetry of hell.

  • It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of the tavern.

  • Were we not in the fifteenth century, we would say that Gringoire had descended from

  • Michael Angelo to Callot.

  • Around a great fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone, the flames of

  • which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod, which was empty for the moment,

  • some wormeaten tables were placed, here and

  • there, haphazard, no lackey of a geometrical turn having deigned to adjust

  • their parallelism, or to see to it that they did not make too unusual angles.

  • Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these pots

  • were grouped many bacchic visages, purple with the fire and the wine.

  • There was a man with a huge belly and a jovial face, noisily kissing a woman of the

  • town, thickset and brawny.

  • There was a sort of sham soldier, a "naquois," as the slang expression runs,

  • who was whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitious wound, and removing the

  • numbness from his sound and vigorous knee,

  • which had been swathed since morning in a thousand ligatures.

  • On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow, preparing with celandine and beef's

  • blood, his "leg of God," for the next day.

  • Two tables further on, a palmer, with his pilgrim's costume complete, was practising

  • the lament of the Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl.

  • Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy from an old pretender,

  • who was instructing him in the art of foaming at the mouth, by chewing a morsel

  • of soap.

  • Beside him, a man with the dropsy was getting rid of his swelling, and making

  • four or five female thieves, who were disputing at the same table, over a child

  • who had been stolen that evening, hold their noses.

  • All circumstances which, two centuries later, "seemed so ridiculous to the court,"

  • as Sauval says, "that they served as a pastime to the king, and as an introduction

  • to the royal ballet of Night, divided into

  • four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon."

  • "Never," adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses of the Court of

  • Miracles been more happily presented.

  • Benserade prepared us for it by some very gallant verses."

  • Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs.

  • Each one held his own course, carping and swearing, without listening to his

  • neighbor.

  • Pots clinked, and quarrels sprang up at the shock of the pots, and the broken pots made

  • rents in the rags. A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the

  • fire.

  • Some children were mingled in this orgy. The stolen child wept and cried.

  • Another, a big boy four years of age, seated with legs dangling, upon a bench

  • that was too high for him, before a table that reached to his chin, and uttering not

  • a word.

  • A third, gravely spreading out upon the table with his finger, the melted tallow

  • which dripped from a candle.

  • Last of all, a little fellow crouching in the mud, almost lost in a cauldron, which

  • he was scraping with a tile, and from which he was evoking a sound that would have made

  • Stradivarius swoon.

  • Near the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar.

  • This was the king on his throne.

  • The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in front of this hogshead,

  • and the entire bacchanal rout fell silent for a moment, with the exception of the

  • cauldron inhabited by the child.

  • Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes.

  • "Hombre, quita tu sombrero!" said one of the three knaves, in whose grasp he was,

  • and, before he had comprehended the meaning, the other had snatched his hat--a

  • wretched headgear, it is true, but still

  • good on a sunny day or when there was but little rain.

  • Gringoire sighed. Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the

  • summit of his cask,--

  • "Who is this rogue?" Gringoire shuddered.

  • That voice, although accentuated by menace, recalled to him another voice, which, that

  • very morning, had dealt the deathblow to his mystery, by drawling, nasally, in the

  • midst of the audience, "Charity, please!"

  • He raised his head. It was indeed Clopin Trouillefou.

  • Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore neither one rag more nor one

  • rag less.

  • The sore upon his arm had already disappeared.

  • He held in his hand one of those whips made of thongs of white leather, which police

  • sergeants then used to repress the crowd, and which were called boullayes.

  • On his head he wore a sort of headgear, bound round and closed at the top.

  • But it was difficult to make out whether it was a child's cap or a king's crown, the

  • two things bore so strong a resemblance to each other.

  • Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained some hope, on recognizing in

  • the King of the Cour des Miracles his accursed mendicant of the Grand Hall.

  • "Master," stammered he; "monseigneur--sire- -how ought I to address you?" he said at

  • length, having reached the culminating point of his crescendo, and knowing neither

  • how to mount higher, nor to descend again.

  • "Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you please.

  • But make haste. What have you to say in your own defence?"

  • "In your own defence?" thought Gringoire, "that displeases me."

  • He resumed, stuttering, "I am he, who this morning--"

  • "By the devil's claws!" interrupted Clopin, "your name, knave, and nothing more.

  • Listen.

  • You are in the presence of three powerful sovereigns: myself, Clopin Trouillefou,

  • King of Thunes, successor to the Grand Coesre, supreme suzerain of the Realm of

  • Argot; Mathias Hunyadi Spicali, Duke of

  • Egypt and of Bohemia, the old yellow fellow whom you see yonder, with a dish clout

  • round his head; Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow who is not

  • listening to us but caressing a wench.

  • We are your judges. You have entered the Kingdom of Argot,

  • without being an argotier; you have violated the privileges of our city.

  • You must be punished unless you are a capon, a franc-mitou or a rifode; that is

  • to say, in the slang of honest folks,--a thief, a beggar, or a vagabond.

  • Are you anything of that sort?

  • Justify yourself; announce your titles." "Alas!" said Gringoire, "I have not that

  • honor. I am the author--"

  • "That is sufficient," resumed Trouillefou, without permitting him to finish.

  • "You are going to be hanged.

  • 'Tis a very simple matter, gentlemen and honest bourgeois! as you treat our people

  • in your abode, so we treat you in ours! The law which you apply to vagabonds,

  • vagabonds apply to you.

  • 'Tis your fault if it is harsh. One really must behold the grimace of an

  • honest man above the hempen collar now and then; that renders the thing honorable.

  • Come, friend, divide your rags gayly among these damsels.

  • I am going to have you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you are to give them your

  • purse to drink your health.

  • If you have any mummery to go through with, there's a very good God the Father in that

  • mortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs.

  • You have four minutes in which to fling your soul at his head."

  • The harangue was formidable. "Well said, upon my soul!

  • Clopin Trouillefou preaches like the Holy Father the Pope!" exclaimed the Emperor of

  • Galilee, smashing his pot in order to prop up his table.

  • "Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings," said Gringoire coolly (for I know not how,

  • firmness had returned to him, and he spoke with resolution), "don't think of such a

  • thing; my name is Pierre Gringoire.

  • I am the poet whose morality was presented this morning in the grand hall of the

  • Courts." "Ah! so it was you, master!" said Clopin.

  • "I was there, xete Dieu!

  • Well! comrade, is that any reason, because you bored us to death this morning, that

  • you should not be hung this evening?" "I shall find difficulty in getting out of

  • it," said Gringoire to himself.

  • Nevertheless, he made one more effort: "I don't see why poets are not classed with

  • vagabonds," said he. "Vagabond, Aesopus certainly was; Homerus

  • was a beggar; Mercurius was a thief--"

  • Clopin interrupted him: "I believe that you are trying to blarney us with your jargon.

  • Zounds! let yourself be hung, and don't kick up such a row over it!"

  • "Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes," replied Gringoire, disputing the

  • ground foot by foot.

  • "It is worth trouble--One moment!--Listen to me--You are not going to condemn me

  • without having heard me"-- His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in

  • the uproar which rose around him.

  • The little boy scraped away at his cauldron with more spirit than ever; and, to crown

  • all, an old woman had just placed on the tripod a frying-pan of grease, which hissed

  • away on the fire with a noise similar to

  • the cry of a troop of children in pursuit of a masker.

  • In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a momentary conference

  • with the Duke of Egypt, and the Emperor of Galilee, who was completely drunk.

  • Then he shouted shrilly: "Silence!" and, as the cauldron and the frying-pan did not

  • heed him, and continued their duet, he jumped down from his hogshead, gave a kick

  • to the boiler, which rolled ten paces away

  • bearing the child with it, a kick to the frying-pan, which upset in the fire with

  • all its grease, and gravely remounted his throne, without troubling himself about the

  • stifled tears of the child, or the

  • grumbling of the old woman, whose supper was wasting away in a fine white flame.

  • Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and the passed masters of

  • pickpockets, and the isolated robbers, came and ranged themselves around him in a

  • horseshoe, of which Gringoire, still

  • roughly held by the body, formed the centre.

  • It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, axes, legs staggering

  • with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces sordid, dull, and stupid.

  • In the midst of this Round Table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,--as the doge

  • of this senate, as the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,--

  • dominated; first by virtue of the height of

  • his hogshead, and next by virtue of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and

  • formidable air, which caused his eyes to flash, and corrected in his savage profile

  • the bestial type of the race of vagabonds.

  • One would have pronounced him a boar amid a herd of swine.

  • "Listen," said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny hand; "I

  • don't see why you should not be hung.

  • It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you

  • bourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the

  • thing.

  • After all, we don't wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating yourself

  • from your predicament for the moment. Will you become one of us?"

  • The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition produced upon Gringoire,

  • who beheld life slipping away from him, and who was beginning to lose his hold upon it.

  • He clutched at it again with energy.

  • "Certainly I will, and right heartily," said he.

  • "Do you consent," resumed Clopin, "to enroll yourself among the people of the

  • knife?"

  • "Of the knife, precisely," responded Gringoire.

  • "You recognize yourself as a member of the free bourgeoisie?" added the King of

  • Thunes.

  • "Of the free bourgeoisie." "Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?"

  • "Of the Kingdom of Argot." "A vagabond?"

  • "A vagabond."

  • "In your soul?" "In my soul."

  • "I must call your attention to the fact," continued the king, "that you will be hung

  • all the same."

  • "The devil!" said the poet.

  • "Only," continued Clopin imperturbably, "you will be hung later on, with more

  • ceremony, at the expense of the good city of Paris, on a handsome stone gibbet, and

  • by honest men.

  • That is a consolation." "Just so," responded Gringoire.

  • "There are other advantages.

  • In your quality of a high-toned sharper, you will not have to pay the taxes on mud,

  • or the poor, or lanterns, to which the bourgeois of Paris are subject."

  • "So be it," said the poet.

  • "I agree.

  • I am a vagabond, a thief, a sharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and I am

  • all that already, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a philosopher; et omnia in

  • philosophia, omnes in philosopho

  • continentur,--all things are contained in philosophy, all men in the philosopher, as

  • you know." The King of Thunes scowled.

  • "What do you take me for, my friend?

  • What Hungarian Jew patter are you jabbering at us?

  • I don't know Hebrew. One isn't a Jew because one is a bandit.

  • I don't even steal any longer.

  • I'm above that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes; cutpurse, no."

  • Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt words, which wrath

  • rendered more and more jerky.

  • "I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; 'tis Latin."

  • "I tell you," resumed Clopin angrily, "that I'm not a Jew, and that I'll have you hung,

  • belly of the synagogue, like that little shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side,

  • and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeing

  • nailed to a counter one of these days, like the counterfeit coin that he is!"

  • So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian Jew who had

  • accosted Gringoire with his facitote caritatem, and who, understanding no other

  • language beheld with surprise the King of Thunes's ill-humor overflow upon him.

  • At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down. "So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he

  • said to our poet.

  • "Of course," replied the poet.

  • "Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will doesn't put one onion

  • the more into the soup, and 'tis good for nothing except to go to Paradise with; now,

  • Paradise and the thieves' band are two different things.

  • In order to be received among the thieves, you must prove that you are good for

  • something, and for that purpose, you must search the manikin."

  • "I'll search anything you like," said Gringoire.

  • Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from

  • the circle, and returned a moment later.

  • They brought two thick posts, terminated at their lower extremities in spreading timber

  • supports, which made them stand readily upon the ground; to the upper extremity of

  • the two posts they fitted a cross-beam, and

  • the whole constituted a very pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the

  • satisfaction of beholding rise before him, in a twinkling.

  • Nothing was lacking, not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.

  • "What are they going to do?" Gringoire asked himself with some

  • uneasiness.

  • A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it was a

  • stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck from the rope, a

  • sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so

  • hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian

  • mules with them.

  • These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then

  • gradually died away, and finally became silent when the manikin had been brought

  • into a state of immobility by that law of

  • the pendulum which has dethroned the water clock and the hour-glass.

  • Then Clopin, pointing out to Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the

  • manikin,--"Climb up there."

  • "Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck.

  • Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one

  • pentameter leg."

  • "Climb!" repeated Clopin. Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded,

  • not without some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.

  • "Now," went on the King of Thunes, "twist your right foot round your left leg, and

  • rise on the tip of your left foot."

  • "Monseigneur," said Gringoire, "so you absolutely insist on my breaking some one

  • of my limbs?" Clopin tossed his head.

  • "Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much.

  • Here's the gist of the matter in two words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I tell you;

  • in that way you will be able to reach the pocket of the manikin, you will rummage it,

  • you will pull out the purse that is there,-

  • -and if you do all this without our hearing the sound of a bell, all is well: you shall

  • be a vagabond.

  • All we shall then have to do, will be to thrash you soundly for the space of a

  • week." "Ventre-Dieu!

  • I will be careful," said Gringoire.

  • "And suppose I do make the bells sound?" "Then you will be hanged.

  • Do you understand?" "I don't understand at all," replied

  • Gringoire.

  • "Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and take

  • away its purse; if a single bell stirs during the operation, you will be hung.

  • Do you understand that?"

  • "Good," said Gringoire; "I understand that. And then?"

  • "If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the bells, you are a

  • vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight consecutive days.

  • You understand now, no doubt?"

  • "No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage to me? hanged in one

  • case, cudgelled in the other?" "And a vagabond," resumed Clopin, "and a

  • vagabond; is that nothing?

  • It is for your interest that we should beat you, in order to harden you to blows."

  • "Many thanks," replied the poet.

  • "Come, make haste," said the king, stamping upon his cask, which resounded like a huge

  • drum! "Search the manikin, and let there be an

  • end to this!

  • I warn you for the last time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place

  • of the manikin."

  • The band of thieves applauded Clopin's words, and arranged themselves in a circle

  • round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless that Gringoire perceived that he amused

  • them too much not to have everything to fear from them.

  • No hope was left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance of

  • succeeding in the formidable operation which was imposed upon him; he decided to

  • risk it, but it was not without first

  • having addressed a fervent prayer to the manikin he was about to plunder, and who

  • would have been easier to move to pity than the vagabonds.

  • These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him like the

  • mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss.

  • "Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my life depends on the

  • slightest vibration of the least of these bells?

  • Oh!" he added, with clasped hands, "bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-

  • bells do not quiver!" He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou.

  • "And if there should come a gust of wind?"

  • "You will be hanged," replied the other, without hesitation.

  • Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was possible, he bravely

  • decided upon his course of action; he wound his right foot round his left leg, raised

  • himself on his left foot, and stretched out

  • his arm: but at the moment when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was

  • now supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made an

  • involuntary effort to support himself by

  • the manikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the

  • fatal vibration of the thousand bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse

  • imparted by his hand, described first a

  • rotary motion, and then swayed majestically between the two posts.

  • "Malediction!" he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead, with his face to

  • the earth.

  • Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the diabolical laughter of the

  • vagabonds, and the voice of Trouillefou saying,--

  • "Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony."

  • He rose. They had already detached the manikin to

  • make room for him.

  • The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, passed the rope about

  • his neck, and, tapping him on the shoulder,--

  • "Adieu, my friend.

  • You can't escape now, even if you digested with the pope's guts."

  • The word "Mercy!" died away upon Gringoire's lips.

  • He cast his eyes about him; but there was no hope: all were laughing.

  • "Bellevigne de l'Etoile," said the King of Thunes to an enormous vagabond, who stepped

  • out from the ranks, "climb upon the cross beam."

  • Bellevigne de l'Etoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam, and in another minute,

  • Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld him, with terror, seated upon the beam above his

  • head.

  • "Now," resumed Clopin Trouillefou, "as soon as I clap my hands, you, Andry the Red,

  • will fling the stool to the ground with a blow of your knee; you, Francois Chante-

  • Prune, will cling to the feet of the

  • rascal; and you, Bellevigne, will fling yourself on his shoulders; and all three at

  • once, do you hear?" Gringoire shuddered.

  • "Are you ready?" said Clopin Trouillefou to the three thieves, who held themselves in

  • readiness to fall upon Gringoire.

  • A moment of horrible suspense ensued for the poor victim, during which Clopin

  • tranquilly thrust into the fire with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shoots

  • which the flame had not caught.

  • "Are you ready?" he repeated, and opened his hands to clap.

  • One second more and all would have been over.

  • But he paused, as though struck by a sudden thought.

  • "One moment!" said he; "I forgot!

  • It is our custom not to hang a man without inquiring whether there is any woman who

  • wants him. Comrade, this is your last resource.

  • You must wed either a female vagabond or the noose."

  • This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the reader, remains to-day

  • written out at length, in ancient English legislation.

  • (See Burington's Observations.)

  • Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had

  • returned to life within an hour. So he did not dare to trust to it too

  • implicitly.

  • "Hola!" cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, "hola! women, females, is

  • there among you, from the sorceress to her cat, a wench who wants this rascal?

  • Hola, Colette la Charonne!

  • Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne!

  • Marie Piedebou! Thonne la Longue!

  • Berarde Fanouel!

  • Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille!

  • Mathurine Girorou!--Hola! Isabeau-la-Thierrye!

  • Come and see!

  • A man for nothing! Who wants him?"

  • Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserable condition.

  • The female vagabonds did not seem to be much affected by the proposition.

  • The unhappy wretch heard them answer: "No! no! hang him; there'll be the more fun for

  • us all!"

  • Nevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to smell of him.

  • The first was a big wench, with a square face.

  • She examined the philosopher's deplorable doublet attentively.

  • His garment was worn, and more full of holes than a stove for roasting chestnuts.

  • The girl made a wry face.

  • "Old rag!" she muttered, and addressing Gringoire, "Let's see your cloak!"

  • "I have lost it," replied Gringoire. "Your hat?"

  • "They took it away from me."

  • "Your shoes?" "They have hardly any soles left."

  • "Your purse?" "Alas!" stammered Gringoire, "I have not

  • even a sou."

  • "Let them hang you, then, and say 'Thank you!'" retorted the vagabond wench, turning

  • her back on him.

  • The second,--old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness conspicuous even in the

  • Cour des Miracles, trotted round Gringoire. He almost trembled lest she should want

  • him.

  • But she mumbled between her teeth, "He's too thin," and went off.

  • The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly.

  • "Save me!" said the poor fellow to her, in a low tone.

  • She gazed at him for a moment with an air of pity, then dropped her eyes, made a

  • plait in her petticoat, and remained in indecision.

  • He followed all these movements with his eyes; it was the last gleam of hope.

  • "No," said the young girl, at length, "no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me."

  • She retreated into the crowd.

  • "You are unlucky, comrade," said Clopin. Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead.

  • "No one wants him," he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great

  • delight of all; "no one wants him? once, twice, three times!" and, turning towards

  • the gibbet with a sign of his hand, "Gone!"

  • Bellevigne de l'Etoile, Andry the Red, Francois Chante-Prune, stepped up to

  • Gringoire. At that moment a cry arose among the

  • thieves: "La Esmeralda!

  • La Esmeralda!" Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the

  • side whence the clamor proceeded. The crowd opened, and gave passage to a

  • pure and dazzling form.

  • It was the gypsy. "La Esmeralda!" said Gringoire, stupefied

  • in the midst of his emotions, by the abrupt manner in which that magic word knotted

  • together all his reminiscences of the day.

  • This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, to exercise her sway of charm

  • and beauty.

  • The vagabonds, male and female, ranged themselves gently along her path, and their

  • brutal faces beamed beneath her glance. She approached the victim with her light

  • step.

  • Her pretty Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive.

  • She examined him for a moment in silence. "You are going to hang this man?" she said

  • gravely, to Clopin.

  • "Yes, sister," replied the King of Thunes, "unless you will take him for your

  • husband." She made her pretty little pout with her

  • under lip.

  • "I'll take him," said she. Gringoire firmly believed that he had been

  • in a dream ever since morning, and that this was the continuation of it.

  • The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one.

  • They undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the stool.

  • His emotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down.

  • The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering a word.

  • The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: "Fling it on the ground," said she.

  • The crock broke into four pieces.

  • "Brother," then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon their foreheads, "she

  • is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years.

  • Go."

  • -BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER VII.

  • A BRIDAL NIGHT.

  • A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber, very cosy, very

  • warm, seated at a table which appeared to ask nothing better than to make some loans

  • from a larder hanging near by, having a

  • good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl.

  • The adventure smacked of enchantment.

  • He began seriously to take himself for a personage in a fairy tale; he cast his eyes

  • about him from time to time to time, as though to see if the chariot of fire,

  • harnessed to two-winged chimeras, which

  • alone could have so rapidly transported him from Tartarus to Paradise, were still

  • there.

  • At times, also, he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet,

  • in order to cling to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely.

  • His reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this thread.

  • The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him; she went and came,

  • displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and indulged in a pout now and then.

  • At last she came and seated herself near the table, and Gringoire was able to

  • scrutinize her at his ease.

  • You have been a child, reader, and you would, perhaps, be very happy to be one

  • still.

  • It is quite certain that you have not, more than once (and for my part, I have passed

  • whole days, the best employed of my life, at it) followed from thicket to thicket, by

  • the side of running water, on a sunny day,

  • a beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in abrupt angles, and

  • kissing the tips of all the branches.

  • You recollect with what amorous curiosity your thought and your gaze were riveted

  • upon this little whirlwind, hissing and humming with wings of purple and azure, in

  • the midst of which floated an imperceptible

  • body, veiled by the very rapidity of its movement.

  • The aerial being which was dimly outlined amid this quivering of wings, appeared to

  • you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see.

  • But when, at length, the dragon-fly alighted on the tip of a reed, and, holding

  • your breath the while, you were able to examine the long, gauze wings, the long

  • enamel robe, the two globes of crystal,

  • what astonishment you felt, and what fear lest you should again behold the form

  • disappear into a shade, and the creature into a chimera!

  • Recall these impressions, and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire felt on

  • contemplating, beneath her visible and palpable form, that Esmeralda of whom, up

  • to that time, he had only caught a glimpse,

  • amidst a whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult.

  • Sinking deeper and deeper into his revery: "So this," he said to himself, following

  • her vaguely with his eyes, "is la Esmeralda! a celestial creature! a street

  • dancer! so much, and so little!

  • 'Twas she who dealt the death-blow to my mystery this morning, 'tis she who saves my

  • life this evening! My evil genius!

  • My good angel!

  • A pretty woman, on my word! and who must needs love me madly to have taken me in

  • that fashion.

  • By the way," said he, rising suddenly, with that sentiment of the true which formed the

  • foundation of his character and his philosophy, "I don't know very well how it

  • happens, but I am her husband!"

  • With this idea in his head and in his eyes, he stepped up to the young girl in a manner

  • so military and so gallant that she drew back.

  • "What do you want of me?" said she.

  • "Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?" replied Gringoire, with so passionate an

  • accent that he was himself astonished at it on hearing himself speak.

  • The gypsy opened her great eyes.

  • "I don't know what you mean."

  • "What!" resumed Gringoire, growing warmer and warmer, and supposing that, after all,

  • he had to deal merely with a virtue of the Cour des Miracles; "am I not thine, sweet

  • friend, art thou not mine?"

  • And, quite ingenuously, he clasped her waist.

  • The gypsy's corsage slipped through his hands like the skin of an eel.

  • She bounded from one end of the tiny room to the other, stooped down, and raised

  • herself again, with a little poniard in her hand, before Gringoire had even had time to

  • see whence the poniard came; proud and

  • angry, with swelling lips and inflated nostrils, her cheeks as red as an api

  • apple, and her eyes darting lightnings.

  • At the same time, the white goat placed itself in front of her, and presented to

  • Gringoire a hostile front, bristling with two pretty horns, gilded and very sharp.

  • All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.

  • The dragon-fly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing better than to sting.

  • Our philosopher was speechless, and turned his astonished eyes from the goat to the

  • young girl.

  • "Holy Virgin!" he said at last, when surprise permitted him to speak, "here are

  • two hearty dames!" The gypsy broke the silence on her side.

  • "You must be a very bold knave!"

  • "Pardon, mademoiselle," said Gringoire, with a smile.

  • "But why did you take me for your husband?" "Should I have allowed you to be hanged?"

  • "So," said the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes.

  • "You had no other idea in marrying me than to save me from the gibbet?"

  • "And what other idea did you suppose that I had?"

  • Gringoire bit his lips. "Come," said he, "I am not yet so

  • triumphant in Cupido, as I thought.

  • But then, what was the good of breaking that poor jug?"

  • Meanwhile Esmeralda's dagger and the goat's horns were still upon the defensive.

  • "Mademoiselle Esmeralda," said the poet, "let us come to terms.

  • I am not a clerk of the court, and I shall not go to law with you for thus carrying a

  • dagger in Paris, in the teeth of the ordinances and prohibitions of M. the

  • Provost.

  • Nevertheless, you are not ignorant of the fact that Noel Lescrivain was condemned, a

  • week ago, to pay ten Parisian sous, for having carried a cutlass.

  • But this is no affair of mine, and I will come to the point.

  • I swear to you, upon my share of Paradise, not to approach you without your leave and

  • permission, but do give me some supper."

  • The truth is, Gringoire was, like M. Despreaux, "not very voluptuous."

  • He did not belong to that chevalier and musketeer species, who take young girls by

  • assault.

  • In the matter of love, as in all other affairs, he willingly assented to

  • temporizing and adjusting terms; and a good supper, and an amiable tete-a-tete appeared

  • to him, especially when he was hungry, an

  • excellent interlude between the prologue and the catastrophe of a love adventure.

  • The gypsy did not reply.

  • She made her disdainful little grimace, drew up her head like a bird, then burst

  • out laughing, and the tiny poniard disappeared as it had come, without

  • Gringoire being able to see where the wasp concealed its sting.

  • A moment later, there stood upon the table a loaf of rye bread, a slice of bacon, some

  • wrinkled apples and a jug of beer.

  • Gringoire began to eat eagerly. One would have said, to hear the furious

  • clashing of his iron fork and his earthenware plate, that all his love had

  • turned to appetite.

  • The young girl seated opposite him, watched him in silence, visibly preoccupied with

  • another thought, at which she smiled from time to time, while her soft hand caressed

  • the intelligent head of the goat, gently pressed between her knees.

  • A candle of yellow wax illuminated this scene of voracity and revery.

  • Meanwhile, the first cravings of his stomach having been stilled, Gringoire felt

  • some false shame at perceiving that nothing remained but one apple.

  • "You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?"

  • She replied by a negative sign of the head, and her pensive glance fixed itself upon

  • the vault of the ceiling.

  • "What the deuce is she thinking of?" thought Gringoire, staring at what she was

  • gazing at; "'tis impossible that it can be that stone dwarf carved in the keystone of

  • that arch, which thus absorbs her attention.

  • What the deuce! I can bear the comparison!"

  • He raised his voice, "Mademoiselle!"

  • She seemed not to hear him. He repeated, still more loudly,

  • "Mademoiselle Esmeralda!" Trouble wasted.

  • The young girl's mind was elsewhere, and Gringoire's voice had not the power to

  • recall it. Fortunately, the goat interfered.

  • She began to pull her mistress gently by the sleeve.

  • "What dost thou want, Djali?" said the gypsy, hastily, as though suddenly

  • awakened.

  • "She is hungry," said Gringoire, charmed to enter into conversation.

  • Esmeralda began to crumble some bread, which Djali ate gracefully from the hollow

  • of her hand.

  • Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to resume her revery.

  • He hazarded a delicate question. "So you don't want me for your husband?"

  • The young girl looked at him intently, and said, "No."

  • "For your lover?" went on Gringoire. She pouted, and replied, "No."

  • "For your friend?" pursued Gringoire.

  • She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary reflection, "Perhaps."

  • This "perhaps," so dear to philosophers, emboldened Gringoire.

  • "Do you know what friendship is?" he asked.

  • "Yes," replied the gypsy; "it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch

  • without mingling, two fingers on one hand." "And love?" pursued Gringoire.

  • "Oh! love!" said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed.

  • "That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel.

  • It is heaven."

  • The street dancer had a beauty as she spoke thus, that struck Gringoire singularly, and

  • seemed to him in perfect keeping with the almost oriental exaltation of her words.

  • Her pure, red lips half smiled; her serene and candid brow became troubled, at

  • intervals, under her thoughts, like a mirror under the breath; and from beneath

  • her long, drooping, black eyelashes, there

  • escaped a sort of ineffable light, which gave to her profile that ideal serenity

  • which Raphael found at the mystic point of intersection of virginity, maternity, and

  • divinity.

  • Nevertheless, Gringoire continued,-- "What must one be then, in order to please

  • you?" "A man."

  • "And I--" said he, "what, then, am I?"

  • "A man has a hemlet on his head, a sword in his hand, and golden spurs on his heels."

  • "Good," said Gringoire, "without a horse, no man.

  • Do you love any one?"

  • "As a lover?--" "Yes."

  • She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar expression: "That I

  • shall know soon."

  • "Why not this evening?" resumed the poet tenderly.

  • "Why not me?" She cast a grave glance upon him and said,-

  • -

  • "I can never love a man who cannot protect me."

  • Gringoire colored, and took the hint.

  • It was evident that the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he

  • had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found herself two hours

  • previously.

  • This memory, effaced by his own adventures of the evening, now recurred to him.

  • He smote his brow. "By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to have

  • begun there.

  • Pardon my foolish absence of mind. How did you contrive to escape from the

  • claws of Quasimodo?" This question made the gypsy shudder.

  • "Oh! the horrible hunchback," said she, hiding her face in her hands.

  • And she shuddered as though with violent cold.

  • "Horrible, in truth," said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; "but how did you manage

  • to escape him?" La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained

  • silent.

  • "Do you know why he followed you?" began Gringoire again, seeking to return to his

  • question by a circuitous route.

  • "I don't know," said the young girl, and she added hastily, "but you were following

  • me also, why were you following me?" "In good faith," responded Gringoire, "I

  • don't know either."

  • Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed the table with his knife.

  • The young girl smiled and seemed to be gazing through the wall at something.

  • All at once she began to sing in a barely articulate voice,--

  • Quando las pintadas aves, Mudas estan, y la tierra--*

  • * When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth--

  • She broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali.

  • "That's a pretty animal of yours," said Gringoire.

  • "She is my sister," she answered.

  • "Why are you called 'la Esmeralda?'" asked the poet.

  • "I do not know." "But why?"

  • She drew from her bosom a sort of little oblong bag, suspended from her neck by a

  • string of adrezarach beads. This bag exhaled a strong odor of camphor.

  • It was covered with green silk, and bore in its centre a large piece of green glass, in

  • imitation of an emerald. "Perhaps it is because of this," said she.

  • Gringoire was on the point of taking the bag in his hand.

  • She drew back. "Don't touch it!

  • It is an amulet.

  • You would injure the charm or the charm would injure you."

  • The poet's curiosity was more and more aroused.

  • "Who gave it to you?"

  • She laid one finger on her mouth and concealed the amulet in her bosom.

  • He tried a few more questions, but she hardly replied.

  • "What is the meaning of the words, 'la Esmeralda?'"

  • "I don't know," said she. "To what language do they belong?"

  • "They are Egyptian, I think."

  • "I suspected as much," said Gringoire, "you are not a native of France?"

  • "I don't know." "Are your parents alive?"

  • She began to sing, to an ancient air,--

  • Mon pere est oiseau, Ma mere est oiselle.

  • Je passe l'eau sans nacelle, Je passe l'eau sans bateau,

  • Ma mere est oiselle, Mon pere est oiseau.*

  • * 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.

  • "Good," said Gringoire. "At what age did you come to France?"

  • "When I was very young." "And when to Paris?"

  • "Last year.

  • At the moment when we were entering the papal gate I saw a reed warbler flit

  • through the air, that was at the end of August; I said, it will be a hard winter."

  • "So it was," said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of a conversation.

  • "I passed it in blowing my fingers. So you have the gift of prophecy?"

  • She retired into her laconics again.

  • "Is that man whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the chief of your tribe?"

  • "Yes." "But it was he who married us," remarked

  • the poet timidly.

  • She made her customary pretty grimace. "I don't even know your name."

  • "My name? If you want it, here it is,--Pierre

  • Gringoire."

  • "I know a prettier one," said she. "Naughty girl!" retorted the poet.

  • "Never mind, you shall not provoke me.

  • Wait, perhaps you will love me more when you know me better; and then, you have told

  • me your story with so much confidence, that I owe you a little of mine.

  • You must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am a son of the

  • farmer of the notary's office of Gonesse.

  • My father was hung by the Burgundians, and my mother disembowelled by the Picards, at

  • the siege of Paris, twenty years ago.

  • At six years of age, therefore, I was an orphan, without a sole to my foot except

  • the pavements of Paris. I do not know how I passed the interval

  • from six to sixteen.

  • A fruit dealer gave me a plum here, a baker flung me a crust there; in the evening I

  • got myself taken up by the watch, who threw me into prison, and there I found a bundle

  • of straw.

  • All this did not prevent my growing up and growing thin, as you see.

  • In the winter I warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of the Hotel de Sens, and I

  • thought it very ridiculous that the fire on Saint John's Day was reserved for the dog

  • days.

  • At sixteen, I wished to choose a calling. I tried all in succession.

  • I became a soldier; but I was not brave enough.

  • I became a monk; but I was not sufficiently devout; and then I'm a bad hand at

  • drinking.

  • In despair, I became an apprentice of the woodcutters, but I was not strong enough;

  • I had more of an inclination to become a schoolmaster; 'tis true that I did not know

  • how to read, but that's no reason.

  • I perceived at the end of a certain time, that I lacked something in every direction;

  • and seeing that I was good for nothing, of my own free will I became a poet and

  • rhymester.

  • That is a trade which one can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it's better

  • than stealing, as some young brigands of my acquaintance advised me to do.

  • One day I met by luck, Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame.

  • He took an interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a veritable

  • man of letters, who knows Latin from the de Officiis of Cicero to the mortuology of the

  • Celestine Fathers, and a barbarian neither

  • in scholastics, nor in politics, nor in rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms.

  • I am the author of the Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a

  • great concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice.

  • I have also made a book which will contain six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet

  • of 1465, which sent one man mad. I have enjoyed still other successes.

  • Being somewhat of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue's great bombard,

  • which burst, as you know, on the day when it was tested, on the Pont de Charenton,

  • and killed four and twenty curious spectators.

  • You see that I am not a bad match in marriage.

  • I know a great many sorts of very engaging tricks, which I will teach your goat; for

  • example, to mimic the Bishop of Paris, that cursed Pharisee whose mill wheels splash

  • passers-by the whole length of the Pont aux Meuniers.

  • And then my mystery will bring me in a great deal of coined money, if they will

  • only pay me.

  • And finally, I am at your orders, I and my wits, and my science and my letters, ready

  • to live with you, damsel, as it shall please you, chastely or joyously; husband

  • and wife, if you see fit; brother and sister, if you think that better."

  • Gringoire ceased, awaiting the effect of his harangue on the young girl.

  • Her eyes were fixed on the ground.

  • "'Phoebus,'" she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards the poet,

  • "'Phoebus',--what does that mean?"

  • Gringoire, without exactly understanding what the connection could be between his

  • address and this question, was not sorry to display his erudition.

  • Assuming an air of importance, he replied,- -

  • "It is a Latin word which means 'sun.'" "Sun!" she repeated.

  • "It is the name of a handsome archer, who was a god," added Gringoire.

  • "A god!" repeated the gypsy, and there was something pensive and passionate in her

  • tone.

  • At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened and fell.

  • Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up; when he straightened up, the young girl and

  • the goat had disappeared.

  • He heard the sound of a bolt. It was a little door, communicating, no

  • doubt, with a neighboring cell, which was being fastened on the outside.

  • "Has she left me a bed, at least?" said our philosopher.

  • He made the tour of his cell.

  • There was no piece of furniture adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long

  • wooden coffer; and its cover was carved, to boot; which afforded Gringoire, when he

  • stretched himself out upon it, a sensation

  • somewhat similar to that which Micromegas would feel if he were to lie down on the

  • Alps. "Come!" said he, adjusting himself as well

  • as possible, "I must resign myself.

  • But here's a strange nuptial night. 'Tis a pity.

  • There was something innocent and antediluvian about that broken crock, which

  • quite pleased me."

BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER I.

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