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  • BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER I.

  • DELIRIUM.

  • Claude Frollo was no longer in Notre-Dame when his adopted son so abruptly cut the

  • fatal web in which the archdeacon and the gypsy were entangled.

  • On returning to the sacristy he had torn off his alb, cope, and stole, had flung all

  • into the hands of the stupefied beadle, had made his escape through the private door of

  • the cloister, had ordered a boatman of the

  • Terrain to transport him to the left bank of the Seine, and had plunged into the

  • hilly streets of the University, not knowing whither he was going, encountering

  • at every step groups of men and women who

  • were hurrying joyously towards the Pont Saint-Michel, in the hope of still arriving

  • in time to see the witch hung there,--pale, wild, more troubled, more blind and more

  • fierce than a night bird let loose and

  • pursued by a troop of children in broad daylight.

  • He no longer knew where he was, what he thought, or whether he were dreaming.

  • He went forward, walking, running, taking any street at haphazard, making no choice,

  • only urged ever onward away from the Greve, the horrible Greve, which he felt

  • confusedly, to be behind him.

  • In this manner he skirted Mount Sainte- Genevieve, and finally emerged from the

  • town by the Porte Saint-Victor.

  • He continued his flight as long as he could see, when he turned round, the turreted

  • enclosure of the University, and the rare houses of the suburb; but, when, at length,

  • a rise of ground had completely concealed

  • from him that odious Paris, when he could believe himself to be a hundred leagues

  • distant from it, in the fields, in the desert, he halted, and it seemed to him

  • that he breathed more freely.

  • Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see clearly into his

  • soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that unhappy girl who had

  • destroyed him, and whom he had destroyed.

  • He cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had caused their

  • two destinies to pursue up to their point of intersection, where it had dashed them

  • against each other without mercy.

  • He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity of chastity, of science, of

  • religion, of virtue, on the uselessness of God.

  • He plunged to his heart's content in evil thoughts, and in proportion as he sank

  • deeper, he felt a Satanic laugh burst forth within him.

  • And as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived how large a space

  • nature had prepared there for the passions, he sneered still more bitterly.

  • He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his malevolence; and,

  • with the cold glance of a physician who examines a patient, he recognized the fact

  • that this malevolence was nothing but

  • vitiated love; that love, that source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible

  • things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted like himself, in making

  • himself a priest, made himself a demon.

  • Then he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, when he considered the

  • most sinister side of his fatal passion, of that corrosive, venomous malignant,

  • implacable love, which had ended only in

  • the gibbet for one of them and in hell for the other; condemnation for her, damnation

  • for him.

  • And then his laughter came again, when he reflected that Phoebus was alive; that

  • after all, the captain lived, was gay and happy, had handsomer doublets than ever,

  • and a new mistress whom he was conducting to see the old one hanged.

  • His sneer redoubled its bitterness when he reflected that out of the living beings

  • whose death he had desired, the gypsy, the only creature whom he did not hate, was the

  • only one who had not escaped him.

  • Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, and there came to him a

  • jealousy of an unprecedented sort.

  • He reflected that the people also, the entire populace, had had before their eyes

  • the woman whom he loved exposed almost naked.

  • He writhed his arms with agony as he thought that the woman whose form, caught

  • by him alone in the darkness would have been supreme happiness, had been delivered

  • up in broad daylight at full noonday, to a

  • whole people, clad as for a night of voluptuousness.

  • He wept with rage over all these mysteries of love, profaned, soiled, laid bare,

  • withered forever.

  • He wept with rage as he pictured to himself how many impure looks had been gratified at

  • the sight of that badly fastened shift, and that this beautiful girl, this virgin lily,

  • this cup of modesty and delight, to which

  • he would have dared to place his lips only trembling, had just been transformed into a

  • sort of public bowl, whereat the vilest populace of Paris, thieves, beggars,

  • lackeys, had come to quaff in common an audacious, impure, and depraved pleasure.

  • And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness which he might have found

  • upon earth, if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest, if Phoebus

  • had not existed and if she had loved him;

  • when he pictured to himself that a life of serenity and love would have been possible

  • to him also, even to him; that there were at that very moment, here and there upon

  • the earth, happy couples spending the hours

  • in sweet converse beneath orange trees, on the banks of brooks, in the presence of a

  • setting sun, of a starry night; and that if God had so willed, he might have formed

  • with her one of those blessed couples,--his heart melted in tenderness and despair.

  • Oh! she! still she!

  • It was this fixed idea which returned incessantly, which tortured him, which ate

  • into his brain, and rent his vitals.

  • He did not regret, he did not repent; all that he had done he was ready to do again;

  • he preferred to behold her in the hands of the executioner rather than in the arms of

  • the captain.

  • But he suffered; he suffered so that at intervals he tore out handfuls of his hair

  • to see whether it were not turning white.

  • Among other moments there came one, when it occurred to him that it was perhaps the

  • very minute when the hideous chain which he had seen that morning, was pressing its

  • iron noose closer about that frail and graceful neck.

  • This thought caused the perspiration to start from every pore.

  • There was another moment when, while laughing diabolically at himself, he

  • represented to himself la Esmeralda as he had seen her on that first day, lively,

  • careless, joyous, gayly attired, dancing,

  • winged, harmonious, and la Esmeralda of the last day, in her scanty shift, with a rope

  • about her neck, mounting slowly with her bare feet, the angular ladder of the

  • gallows; he figured to himself this double

  • picture in such a manner that he gave vent to a terrible cry.

  • While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, bent, uprooted everything

  • in his soul, he gazed at nature around him.

  • At his feet, some chickens were searching the thickets and pecking, enamelled beetles

  • ran about in the sun; overhead, some groups of dappled gray clouds were floating across

  • the blue sky; on the horizon, the spire of

  • the Abbey Saint-Victor pierced the ridge of the hill with its slate obelisk; and the

  • miller of the Copeaue hillock was whistling as he watched the laborious wings of his

  • mill turning.

  • All this active, organized, tranquil life, recurring around him under a thousand

  • forms, hurt him. He resumed his flight.

  • He sped thus across the fields until evening.

  • This flight from nature, life, himself, man, God, everything, lasted all day long.

  • Sometimes he flung himself face downward on the earth, and tore up the young blades of

  • wheat with his nails.

  • Sometimes he halted in the deserted street of a village, and his thoughts were so

  • intolerable that he grasped his head in both hands and tried to tear it from his

  • shoulders in order to dash it upon the pavement.

  • Towards the hour of sunset, he examined himself again, and found himself nearly

  • mad.

  • The tempest which had raged within him ever since the instant when he had lost the hope

  • and the will to save the gypsy,--that tempest had not left in his conscience a

  • single healthy idea, a single thought which maintained its upright position.

  • His reason lay there almost entirely destroyed.

  • There remained but two distinct images in his mind, la Esmeralda and the gallows; all

  • the rest was blank.

  • Those two images united, presented to him a frightful group; and the more he

  • concentrated what attention and thought was left to him, the more he beheld them grow,

  • in accordance with a fantastic progression,

  • the one in grace, in charm, in beauty, in light, the other in deformity and horror;

  • so that at last la Esmeralda appeared to him like a star, the gibbet like an

  • enormous, fleshless arm.

  • One remarkable fact is, that during the whole of this torture, the idea of dying

  • did not seriously occur to him. The wretch was made so.

  • He clung to life.

  • Perhaps he really saw hell beyond it. Meanwhile, the day continued to decline.

  • The living being which still existed in him reflected vaguely on retracing its steps.

  • He believed himself to be far away from Paris; on taking his bearings, he perceived

  • that he had only circled the enclosure of the University.

  • The spire of Saint-Sulpice, and the three lofty needles of Saint Germain-des-Pres,

  • rose above the horizon on his right. He turned his steps in that direction.

  • When he heard the brisk challenge of the men-at-arms of the abbey, around the

  • crenelated, circumscribing wall of Saint- Germain, he turned aside, took a path which

  • presented itself between the abbey and the

  • lazar-house of the bourg, and at the expiration of a few minutes found himself

  • on the verge of the Pre-aux-Clercs.

  • This meadow was celebrated by reason of the brawls which went on there night and day;

  • it was the hydra of the poor monks of Saint-Germain: quod mouachis Sancti-

  • Germaini pratensis hydra fuit, clericis

  • nova semper dissidiorum capita suscitantibus.

  • The archdeacon was afraid of meeting some one there; he feared every human

  • countenance; he had just avoided the University and the Bourg Saint-Germain; he

  • wished to re-enter the streets as late as possible.

  • He skirted the Pre-aux-Clercs, took the deserted path which separated it from the

  • Dieu-Neuf, and at last reached the water's edge.

  • There Dom Claude found a boatman, who, for a few farthings in Parisian coinage, rowed

  • him up the Seine as far as the point of the city, and landed him on that tongue of

  • abandoned land where the reader has already

  • beheld Gringoire dreaming, and which was prolonged beyond the king's gardens,

  • parallel to the Ile du Passeur-aux-Vaches.

  • The monotonous rocking of the boat and the ripple of the water had, in some sort,

  • quieted the unhappy Claude.

  • When the boatman had taken his departure, he remained standing stupidly on the

  • strand, staring straight before him and perceiving objects only through magnifying

  • oscillations which rendered everything a sort of phantasmagoria to him.

  • The fatigue of a great grief not infrequently produces this effect on the

  • mind.

  • The sun had set behind the lofty Tour-de- Nesle.

  • It was the twilight hour. The sky was white, the water of the river

  • was white.

  • Between these two white expanses, the left bank of the Seine, on which his eyes were

  • fixed, projected its gloomy mass and, rendered ever thinner and thinner by

  • perspective, it plunged into the gloom of the horizon like a black spire.

  • It was loaded with houses, of which only the obscure outline could be distinguished,

  • sharply brought out in shadows against the light background of the sky and the water.

  • Here and there windows began to gleam, like the holes in a brazier.

  • That immense black obelisk thus isolated between the two white expanses of the sky

  • and the river, which was very broad at this point, produced upon Dom Claude a singular

  • effect, comparable to that which would be

  • experienced by a man who, reclining on his back at the foot of the tower of Strasburg,

  • should gaze at the enormous spire plunging into the shadows of the twilight above his

  • head.

  • Only, in this case, it was Claude who was erect and the obelisk which was lying down;

  • but, as the river, reflecting the sky, prolonged the abyss below him, the immense

  • promontory seemed to be as boldly launched

  • into space as any cathedral spire; and the impression was the same.

  • This impression had even one stronger and more profound point about it, that it was

  • indeed the tower of Strasbourg, but the tower of Strasbourg two leagues in height;

  • something unheard of, gigantic,

  • immeasurable; an edifice such as no human eye has ever seen; a tower of Babel.

  • The chimneys of the houses, the battlements of the walls, the faceted gables of the

  • roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the tower of Nesle, all these projections which

  • broke the profile of the colossal obelisk

  • added to the illusion by displaying in eccentric fashion to the eye the

  • indentations of a luxuriant and fantastic sculpture.

  • Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he found himself, believed that he

  • saw, that he saw with his actual eyes, the bell tower of hell; the thousand lights

  • scattered over the whole height of the

  • terrible tower seemed to him so many porches of the immense interior furnace;

  • the voices and noises which escaped from it seemed so many shrieks, so many death

  • groans.

  • Then he became alarmed, he put his hands on his ears that he might no longer hear,

  • turned his back that he might no longer see, and fled from the frightful vision

  • with hasty strides.

  • But the vision was in himself.

  • When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each other by the light

  • of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the effect of a constant going and coming of

  • spectres about him.

  • There were strange noises in his ears; extraordinary fancies disturbed his brain.

  • He saw neither houses, nor pavements, nor chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of

  • indeterminate objects whose edges melted into each other.

  • At the corner of the Rue de la Barillerie, there was a grocer's shop whose porch was

  • garnished all about, according to immemorial custom, with hoops of tin from

  • which hung a circle of wooden candles,

  • which came in contact with each other in the wind, and rattled like castanets.

  • He thought he heard a cluster of skeletons at Montfaucon clashing together in the

  • gloom.

  • "Oh!" he muttered, "the night breeze dashes them against each other, and mingles the

  • noise of their chains with the rattle of their bones!

  • Perhaps she is there among them!"

  • In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going.

  • After a few strides he found himself on the Pont Saint-Michel.

  • There was a light in the window of a ground-floor room; he approached.

  • Through a cracked window he beheld a mean chamber which recalled some confused memory

  • to his mind.

  • In that room, badly lighted by a meagre lamp, there was a fresh, light-haired young

  • man, with a merry face, who amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very

  • audaciously attired young girl; and near

  • the lamp sat an old crone spinning and singing in a quavering voice.

  • As the young man did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman's ditty reached

  • the priest; it was something unintelligible yet frightful,--

  • "Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille! File, file, ma quenouille,

  • File sa corde au bourreau, Qui siffle dans le pre au,

  • Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille!

  • "La belle corde de chanvre! Semez d'Issy jusqu'a Vanvre

  • Du chanvre et non pas du bleu. Le voleur n'a pas vole

  • La belle corde de chanvre.

  • "Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie! Pour voir la fille de joie,

  • Prendre au gibet chassieux, Les fenetres sont des yeux.

  • Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie!"*

  • * Bark, Greve, grumble, Greve! Spin, spin, my distaff, spin her rope for

  • the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow.

  • What a beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre.

  • The thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope.

  • Grumble, Greve, bark, Greve! To see the dissolute wench hang on the

  • blear-eyed gibbet, windows are eyes.

  • Thereupon the young man laughed and caressed the wench.

  • The crone was la Falourdel; the girl was a courtesan; the young man was his brother

  • Jehan.

  • He continued to gaze. That spectacle was as good as any other.

  • He saw Jehan go to a window at the end of the room, open it, cast a glance on the

  • quay, where in the distance blazed a thousand lighted casements, and he heard

  • him say as he closed the sash,--

  • "'Pon my soul! How dark it is; the people are lighting

  • their candles, and the good God his stars." Then Jehan came back to the hag, smashed a

  • bottle standing on the table, exclaiming,--

  • "Already empty, cor-boeuf! and I have no more money!

  • Isabeau, my dear, I shall not be satisfied with Jupiter until he has changed your two

  • white nipples into two black bottles, where I may suck wine of Beaune day and night."

  • This fine pleasantry made the courtesan laugh, and Jehan left the room.

  • Dom Claude had barely time to fling himself on the ground in order that he might not be

  • met, stared in the face and recognized by his brother.

  • Luckily, the street was dark, and the scholar was tipsy.

  • Nevertheless, he caught sight of the archdeacon prone upon the earth in the mud.

  • "Oh! oh!" said he; "here's a fellow who has been leading a jolly life, to-day."

  • He stirred up Dom Claude with his foot, and the latter held his breath.

  • "Dead drunk," resumed Jehan.

  • "Come, he's full. A regular leech detached from a hogshead.

  • He's bald," he added, bending down, "'tis an old man!

  • Fortunate senex!"

  • Then Dom Claude heard him retreat, saying,- -

  • "'Tis all the same, reason is a fine thing, and my brother the archdeacon is very happy

  • in that he is wise and has money."

  • Then the archdeacon rose to his feet, and ran without halting, towards Notre-Dame,

  • whose enormous towers he beheld rising above the houses through the gloom.

  • At the instant when he arrived, panting, on the Place du Parvis, he shrank back and

  • dared not raise his eyes to the fatal edifice.

  • "Oh!" he said, in a low voice, "is it really true that such a thing took place

  • here, to-day, this very morning?" Still, he ventured to glance at the church.

  • The front was sombre; the sky behind was glittering with stars.

  • The crescent of the moon, in her flight upward from the horizon, had paused at the

  • moment, on the summit of the light hand tower, and seemed to have perched itself,

  • like a luminous bird, on the edge of the balustrade, cut out in black trefoils.

  • The cloister door was shut; but the archdeacon always carried with him the key

  • of the tower in which his laboratory was situated.

  • He made use of it to enter the church.

  • In the church he found the gloom and silence of a cavern.

  • By the deep shadows which fell in broad sheets from all directions, he recognized

  • the fact that the hangings for the ceremony of the morning had not yet been removed.

  • The great silver cross shone from the depths of the gloom, powdered with some

  • sparkling points, like the milky way of that sepulchral night.

  • The long windows of the choir showed the upper extremities of their arches above the

  • black draperies, and their painted panes, traversed by a ray of moonlight had no

  • longer any hues but the doubtful colors of

  • night, a sort of violet, white and blue, whose tint is found only on the faces of

  • the dead.

  • The archdeacon, on perceiving these wan spots all around the choir, thought he

  • beheld the mitres of damned bishops.

  • He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he thought they were a circle of

  • pale visages gazing at him. He started to flee across the church.

  • Then it seemed to him that the church also was shaking, moving, becoming endued with

  • animation, that it was alive; that each of the great columns was turning into an

  • enormous paw, which was beating the earth

  • with its big stone spatula, and that the gigantic cathedral was no longer anything

  • but a sort of prodigious elephant, which was breathing and marching with its pillars

  • for feet, its two towers for trunks and the immense black cloth for its housings.

  • This fever or madness had reached such a degree of intensity that the external world

  • was no longer anything more for the unhappy man than a sort of Apocalypse,--visible,

  • palpable, terrible.

  • For one moment, he was relieved. As he plunged into the side aisles, he

  • perceived a reddish light behind a cluster of pillars.

  • He ran towards it as to a star.

  • It was the poor lamp which lighted the public breviary of Notre-Dame night and

  • day, beneath its iron grating.

  • He flung himself eagerly upon the holy book in the hope of finding some consolation, or

  • some encouragement there. The hook lay open at this passage of Job,

  • over which his staring eye glanced,--

  • "And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the hair of my

  • flesh stood up."

  • On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind man feels when he feels

  • himself pricked by the staff which he has picked up.

  • His knees gave way beneath him, and he sank upon the pavement, thinking of her who had

  • died that day.

  • He felt so many monstrous vapors pass and discharge themselves in his brain, that it

  • seemed to him that his head had become one of the chimneys of hell.

  • It would appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no longer thinking,

  • overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the demon.

  • At length some strength returned to him; it occurred to him to take refuge in his tower

  • beside his faithful Quasimodo. He rose; and, as he was afraid, he took the

  • lamp from the breviary to light his way.

  • It was a sacrilege; but he had got beyond heeding such a trifle now.

  • He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a secret fright which must have

  • been communicated to the rare passers-by in the Place du Parvis by the mysterious light

  • of his lamp, mounting so late from loophole to loophole of the bell tower.

  • All at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found himself at the door of the

  • highest gallery.

  • The air was cold; the sky was filled with hurrying clouds, whose large, white flakes

  • drifted one upon another like the breaking up of river ice after the winter.

  • The crescent of the moon, stranded in the midst of the clouds, seemed a celestial

  • vessel caught in the ice-cakes of the air.

  • He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, through the railing of slender

  • columns which unites the two towers, far away, through a gauze of mists and smoke,

  • the silent throng of the roofs of Paris,

  • pointed, innumerable, crowded and small like the waves of a tranquil sea on a sum-

  • mer night. The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted

  • to earth and heaven an ashy hue.

  • At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice.

  • Midnight rang out. The priest thought of midday; twelve

  • o'clock had come back again.

  • "Oh!" he said in a very low tone, "she must be cold now."

  • All at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at the same instant,

  • he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a form, a woman, appear from the opposite angle of

  • the tower.

  • He started. Beside this woman was a little goat, which

  • mingled its bleat with the last bleat of the clock.

  • He had strength enough to look.

  • It was she. She was pale, she was gloomy.

  • Her hair fell over her shoulders as in the morning; but there was no longer a rope on

  • her neck, her hands were no longer bound; she was free, she was dead.

  • She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her head.

  • She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the sky.

  • The supernatural goat followed her.

  • He felt as though made of stone and too heavy to flee.

  • At every step which she took in advance, he took one backwards, and that was all.

  • In this way he retreated once more beneath the gloomy arch of the stairway.

  • He was chilled by the thought that she might enter there also; had she done so, he

  • would have died of terror.

  • She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway, and paused there for

  • several minutes, stared intently into the darkness, but without appearing to see the

  • priest, and passed on.

  • She seemed taller to him than when she had been alive; he saw the moon through her

  • white robe; he heard her breath.

  • When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase again, with the slowness

  • which he had observed in the spectre, believing himself to be a spectre too,

  • haggard, with hair on end, his extinguished

  • lamp still in his hand; and as he descended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard in

  • his ear a voice laughing and repeating,--

  • "A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the hair of my

  • flesh stood up."

  • -BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER II.

  • HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

  • Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down to the time of

  • Louis XII. had its places of asylum.

  • These sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and barbarous jurisdictions

  • which inundated the city, were a species of islands which rose above the level of human

  • justice.

  • Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many

  • places of asylum as gallows.

  • It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things

  • which strove to correct each other.

  • The palaces of the king, the hotels of the princes, and especially churches, possessed

  • the right of asylum.

  • Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was temporarily created

  • a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge in 1467.

  • His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he must beware of

  • leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he fell back into the flood.

  • The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado, kept good guard around the place of refuge, and

  • lay in watch incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a vessel.

  • Hence, condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a cloister, on the

  • steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey, beneath the porch of a church; in

  • this manner the asylum was a prison as much as any other.

  • It sometimes happened that a solemn decree of parliament violated the asylum and

  • restored the condemned man to the executioner; but this was of rare

  • occurrence.

  • Parliaments were afraid of the bishops, and when there was friction between these two

  • robes, the gown had but a poor chance against the cassock.

  • Sometimes, however, as in the affair of the assassins of Petit-Jean, the headsman of

  • Paris, and in that of Emery Rousseau, the murderer of Jean Valleret, justice

  • overleaped the church and passed on to the

  • execution of its sentences; but unless by virtue of a decree of Parliament, woe to

  • him who violated a place of asylum with armed force!

  • The reader knows the manner of death of Robert de Clermont, Marshal of France, and

  • of Jean de Chalons, Marshal of Champagne; and yet the question was only of a certain

  • Perrin Marc, the clerk of a money-changer,

  • a miserable assassin; but the two marshals had broken the doors of St. Mery.

  • Therein lay the enormity.

  • Such respect was cherished for places of refuge that, according to tradition,

  • animals even felt it at times.

  • Aymoire relates that a stag, being chased by Dagobert, having taken refuge near the

  • tomb of Saint-Denis, the pack of hounds stopped short and barked.

  • Churches generally had a small apartment prepared for the reception of supplicants.

  • In 1407, Nicolas Flamel caused to be built on the vaults of Saint-Jacques de la

  • Boucherie, a chamber which cost him four livres six sous, sixteen farthings,

  • parisis.

  • At Notre-Dame it was a tiny cell situated on the roof of the side aisle, beneath the

  • flying buttresses, precisely at the spot where the wife of the present janitor of

  • the towers has made for herself a garden,

  • which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon what a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a

  • porter's wife is to a Semiramis.

  • It was here that Quasimodo had deposited la Esmeralda, after his wild and triumphant

  • course.

  • As long as that course lasted, the young girl had been unable to recover her senses,

  • half unconscious, half awake, no longer feeling anything, except that she was

  • mounting through the air, floating in it,

  • flying in it, that something was raising her above the earth.

  • From time to time she heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice of Quasimodo in

  • her ear; she half opened her eyes; then below her she confusedly beheld Paris

  • checkered with its thousand roofs of slate

  • and tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, above her head the frightful and joyous

  • face of Quasimodo.

  • Then her eyelids drooped again; she thought that all was over, that they had executed

  • her during her swoon, and that the misshapen spirit which had presided over

  • her destiny, had laid hold of her and was bearing her away.

  • She dared not look at him, and she surrendered herself to her fate.

  • But when the bellringer, dishevelled and panting, had deposited her in the cell of

  • refuge, when she felt his huge hands gently detaching the cord which bruised her arms,

  • she felt that sort of shock which awakens

  • with a start the passengers of a vessel which runs aground in the middle of a dark

  • night. Her thoughts awoke also, and returned to

  • her one by one.

  • She saw that she was in Notre-Dame; she remembered having been torn from the hands

  • of the executioner; that Phoebus was alive, that Phoebus loved her no longer; and as

  • these two ideas, one of which shed so much

  • bitterness over the other, presented themselves simultaneously to the poor

  • condemned girl; she turned to Quasimodo, who was standing in front of her, and who

  • terrified her; she said to him,--"Why have you saved me?"

  • He gazed at her with anxiety, as though seeking to divine what she was saying to

  • him.

  • She repeated her question. Then he gave her a profoundly sorrowful

  • glance and fled. She was astonished.

  • A few moments later he returned, bearing a package which he cast at her feet.

  • It was clothing which some charitable women had left on the threshold of the church for

  • her.

  • Then she dropped her eyes upon herself and saw that she was almost naked, and blushed.

  • Life had returned. Quasimodo appeared to experience something

  • of this modesty.

  • He covered his eyes with his large hand and retired once more, but slowly.

  • She made haste to dress herself.

  • The robe was a white one with a white veil,--the garb of a novice of the Hotel-

  • Dien. She had barely finished when she beheld

  • Quasimodo returning.

  • He carried a basket under one arm and a mattress under the other.

  • In the basket there was a bottle, bread, and some provisions.

  • He set the basket on the floor and said, "Eat!"

  • He spread the mattress on the flagging and said, "Sleep."

  • It was his own repast, it was his own bed, which the bellringer had gone in search of.

  • The gypsy raised her eyes to thank him, but she could not articulate a word.

  • She dropped her head with a quiver of terror.

  • Then he said to her.-- "I frighten you.

  • I am very ugly, am I not?

  • Do not look at me; only listen to me. During the day you will remain here; at

  • night you can walk all over the church. But do not leave the church either by day

  • or by night.

  • You would be lost. They would kill you, and I should die."

  • She was touched and raised her head to answer him.

  • He had disappeared.

  • She found herself alone once more, meditating upon the singular words of this

  • almost monstrous being, and struck by the sound of his voice, which was so hoarse yet

  • so gentle.

  • Then she examined her cell. It was a chamber about six feet square,

  • with a small window and a door on the slightly sloping plane of the roof formed

  • of flat stones.

  • Many gutters with the figures of animals seemed to be bending down around her, and

  • stretching their necks in order to stare at her through the window.

  • Over the edge of her roof she perceived the tops of thousands of chimneys which caused

  • the smoke of all the fires in Paris to rise beneath her eyes.

  • A sad sight for the poor gypsy, a foundling, condemned to death, an unhappy

  • creature, without country, without family, without a hearthstone.

  • At the moment when the thought of her isolation thus appeared to her more

  • poignant than ever, she felt a bearded and hairy head glide between her hands, upon

  • her knees.

  • She started (everything alarmed her now) and looked.

  • It was the poor goat, the agile Djali, which had made its escape after her, at the

  • moment when Quasimodo had put to flight Charmolue's brigade, and which had been

  • lavishing caresses on her feet for nearly

  • an hour past, without being able to win a glance.

  • The gypsy covered him with kisses. "Oh! Djali!" she said, "how I have

  • forgotten thee!

  • And so thou still thinkest of me! Oh! thou art not an ingrate!"

  • At the same time, as though an invisible hand had lifted the weight which had

  • repressed her tears in her heart for so long, she began to weep, and, in proportion

  • as her tears flowed, she felt all that was

  • most acrid and bitter in her grief depart with them.

  • Evening came, she thought the night so beautiful that she made the circuit of the

  • elevated gallery which surrounds the church.

  • It afforded her some relief, so calm did the earth appear when viewed from that

  • height.

  • -BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER III.

  • DEAF.

  • On the following morning, she perceived on awaking, that she had been asleep.

  • This singular thing astonished her. She had been so long unaccustomed to sleep!

  • A joyous ray of the rising sun entered through her window and touched her face.

  • At the same time with the sun, she beheld at that window an object which frightened

  • her, the unfortunate face of Quasimodo.

  • She involuntarily closed her eyes again, but in vain; she fancied that she still saw

  • through the rosy lids that gnome's mask, one-eyed and gap-toothed.

  • Then, while she still kept her eyes closed, she heard a rough voice saying, very

  • gently,-- "Be not afraid.

  • I am your friend.

  • I came to watch you sleep. It does not hurt you if I come to see you

  • sleep, does it? What difference does it make to you if I am

  • here when your eyes are closed!

  • Now I am going. Stay, I have placed myself behind the wall.

  • You can open your eyes again."

  • There was something more plaintive than these words, and that was the accent in

  • which they were uttered. The gypsy, much touched, opened her eyes.

  • He was, in fact, no longer at the window.

  • She approached the opening, and beheld the poor hunchback crouching in an angle of the

  • wall, in a sad and resigned attitude. She made an effort to surmount the

  • repugnance with which he inspired her.

  • "Come," she said to him gently.

  • From the movement of the gypsy's lips, Quasimodo thought that she was driving him

  • away; then he rose and retired limping, slowly, with drooping head, without even

  • daring to raise to the young girl his gaze full of despair.

  • "Do come," she cried, but he continued to retreat.

  • Then she darted from her cell, ran to him, and grasped his arm.

  • On feeling her touch him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb.

  • He raised his suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading him back to her

  • quarters, his whole face beamed with joy and tenderness.

  • She tried to make him enter the cell; but he persisted in remaining on the threshold.

  • "No, no," said he; "the owl enters not the nest of the lark."

  • Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her goat asleep at her feet.

  • Both remained motionless for several moments, considering in silence, she so

  • much grace, he so much ugliness.

  • Every moment she discovered some fresh deformity in Quasimodo.

  • Her glance travelled from his knock knees to his humped back, from his humped back to

  • his only eye.

  • She could not comprehend the existence of a being so awkwardly fashioned.

  • Yet there was so much sadness and so much gentleness spread over all this, that she

  • began to become reconciled to it.

  • He was the first to break the silence. "So you were telling me to return?"

  • She made an affirmative sign of the head, and said, "Yes."

  • He understood the motion of the head.

  • "Alas!" he said, as though hesitating whether to finish, "I am--I am deaf."

  • "Poor man!" exclaimed the Bohemian, with an expression of kindly pity.

  • He began to smile sadly.

  • "You think that that was all that I lacked, do you not?

  • Yes, I am deaf, that is the way I am made. 'Tis horrible, is it not?

  • You are so beautiful!"

  • There lay in the accents of the wretched man so profound a consciousness of his

  • misery, that she had not the strength to say a word.

  • Besides, he would not have heard her.

  • He went on,-- "Never have I seen my ugliness as at the

  • present moment.

  • When I compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor unhappy monster

  • that I am! Tell me, I must look to you like a beast.

  • You, you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of a bird!

  • I am something frightful, neither man nor animal, I know not what, harder, more

  • trampled under foot, and more unshapely than a pebble stone!"

  • Then he began to laugh, and that laugh was the most heartbreaking thing in the world.

  • He continued,-- "Yes, I am deaf; but you shall talk to me

  • by gestures, by signs.

  • I have a master who talks with me in that way.

  • And then, I shall very soon know your wish from the movement of your lips, from your

  • look."

  • "Well!" she interposed with a smile, "tell me why you saved me."

  • He watched her attentively while she was speaking.

  • "I understand," he replied.

  • "You ask me why I saved you. You have forgotten a wretch who tried to

  • abduct you one night, a wretch to whom you rendered succor on the following day on

  • their infamous pillory.

  • A drop of water and a little pity,--that is more than I can repay with my life.

  • You have forgotten that wretch; but he remembers it."

  • She listened to him with profound tenderness.

  • A tear swam in the eye of the bellringer, but did not fall.

  • He seemed to make it a sort of point of honor to retain it.

  • "Listen," he resumed, when he was no longer afraid that the tear would escape; "our

  • towers here are very high, a man who should fall from them would be dead before

  • touching the pavement; when it shall please

  • you to have me fall, you will not have to utter even a word, a glance will suffice."

  • Then he rose. Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccentric

  • being still aroused some compassion in her.

  • She made him a sign to remain. "No, no," said he; "I must not remain too

  • long. I am not at my ease.

  • It is out of pity that you do not turn away your eyes.

  • I shall go to some place where I can see you without your seeing me: it will be

  • better so."

  • He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.

  • "Here," said he, "when you have need of me, when you wish me to come, when you will not

  • feel too ranch horror at the sight of me, use this whistle.

  • I can hear this sound."

  • He laid the whistle on the floor and fled.

  • -BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER IV.

  • EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.

  • Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la

  • Esmeralda. Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a

  • violent thing which lasts but a short time.

  • The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.

  • The gypsy had suffered so much, that nothing was left her but astonishment.

  • With security, hope had returned to her.

  • She was outside the pale of society, outside the pale of life, but she had a

  • vague feeling that it might not be impossible to return to it.

  • She was like a dead person, who should hold in reserve the key to her tomb.

  • She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted her, gradually departing.

  • All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, were effaced from her

  • mind, all, even the priest. And then, Phoebus was alive; she was sure

  • of it, she had seen him.

  • To her the fact of Phoebus being alive was everything.

  • After the series of fatal shocks which had overturned everything within her, she had

  • found but one thing intact in her soul, one sentiment,--her love for the captain.

  • Love is like a tree; it sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through

  • our whole being, and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart in ruins.

  • And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is this passion, the more

  • tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it has no

  • reason in it.

  • La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no doubt.

  • No doubt it was terrible that he also should have been deceived; that he should

  • have believed that impossible thing, that he could have conceived of a stab dealt by

  • her who would have given a thousand lives for him.

  • But, after all, she must not be too angry with him for it; had she not confessed her

  • crime? had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to torture?

  • The fault was entirely hers.

  • She should have allowed her finger nails to be torn out rather than such a word to be

  • wrenched from her.

  • In short, if she could but see Phoebus once more, for a single minute, only one word

  • would be required, one look, in order to undeceive him, to bring him back.

  • She did not doubt it.

  • She was astonished also at many singular things, at the accident of Phoebus's

  • presence on the day of the penance, at the young girl with whom he had been.

  • She was his sister, no doubt.

  • An unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it, because she

  • needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her, and loved her alone.

  • Had he not sworn it to her?

  • What more was needed, simple and credulous as she was?

  • And then, in this matter, were not appearances much more against her than

  • against him?

  • Accordingly, she waited. She hoped.

  • Let us add that the church, that vast church, which surrounded her on every side,

  • which guarded her, which saved her, was itself a sovereign tranquillizer.

  • The solemn lines of that architecture, the religious attitude of all the objects which

  • surrounded the young girl, the serene and pious thoughts which emanated, so to speak,

  • from all the pores of that stone, acted upon her without her being aware of it.

  • The edifice had also sounds fraught with such benediction and such majesty, that

  • they soothed this ailing soul.

  • The monotonous chanting of the celebrants, the responses of the people to the priest,

  • sometimes inarticulate, sometimes thunderous, the harmonious trembling of the

  • painted windows, the organ, bursting forth

  • like a hundred trumpets, the three belfries, humming like hives of huge bees,

  • that whole orchestra on which bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending

  • incessantly from the voice of a throng to

  • that of one bell, dulled her memory, her imagination, her grief.

  • The bells, in particular, lulled her.

  • It was something like a powerful magnetism which those vast instruments shed over her

  • in great waves. Thus every sunrise found her more calm,

  • breathing better, less pale.

  • In proportion as her inward wounds closed, her grace and beauty blossomed once more on

  • her countenance, but more thoughtful, more reposeful.

  • Her former character also returned to her, somewhat even of her gayety, her pretty

  • pout, her love for her goat, her love for singing, her modesty.

  • She took care to dress herself in the morning in the corner of her cell for fear

  • some inhabitants of the neighboring attics might see her through the window.

  • When the thought of Phoebus left her time, the gypsy sometimes thought of Quasimodo.

  • He was the sole bond, the sole connection, the sole communication which remained to

  • her with men, with the living.

  • Unfortunate girl! she was more outside the world than Quasimodo.

  • She understood not in the least the strange friend whom chance had given her.

  • She often reproached herself for not feeling a gratitude which should close her

  • eyes, but decidedly, she could not accustom herself to the poor bellringer.

  • He was too ugly.

  • She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the ground.

  • This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance from time to time during the

  • first few days.

  • She did her best not to turn aside with too much repugnance when he came to bring her

  • her basket of provisions or her jug of water, but he always perceived the

  • slightest movement of this sort, and then he withdrew sadly.

  • Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali.

  • He stood pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and

  • the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head,--

  • "My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much.

  • I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat."

  • She gazed at him in amazement.

  • He replied to the glance,-- "Oh! I well know why," and he went away.

  • On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell (which he never

  • entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was singing an old Spanish ballad, the

  • words of which she did not understand, but

  • which had lingered in her ear because the gypsy women had lulled her to sleep with it

  • when she was a little child.

  • At the sight of that villanous form which made its appearance so abruptly in the

  • middle of her song, the young girl paused with an involuntary gesture of alarm.

  • The unhappy bellringer fell upon his knees on the threshold, and clasped his large,

  • misshapen hands with a suppliant air. "Oh!" he said, sorrowfully, "continue, I

  • implore you, and do not drive me away."

  • She did not wish to pain him, and resumed her lay, trembling all over.

  • By degrees, however, her terror disappeared, and she yielded herself wholly

  • to the slow and melancholy air which she was singing.

  • He remained on his knees with hands clasped, as in prayer, attentive, hardly

  • breathing, his gaze riveted upon the gypsy's brilliant eyes.

  • On another occasion, he came to her with an awkward and timid air.

  • "Listen," he said, with an effort; "I have something to say to you."

  • She made him a sign that she was listening.

  • Then he began to sigh, half opened his lips, appeared for a moment to be on the

  • point of speaking, then he looked at her again, shook his head, and withdrew slowly,

  • with his brow in his hand, leaving the gypsy stupefied.

  • Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the wall, there was one to whom he was

  • particularly attached, and with which he often seemed to exchange fraternal glances.

  • Once the gypsy heard him saying to it,--

  • "Oh! why am not I of stone, like you!" At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had

  • advanced to the edge of the roof, and was looking into the Place over the pointed

  • roof of Saint-Jean le Rond.

  • Quasimodo was standing behind her. He had placed himself in that position in

  • order to spare the young girl, as far as possible, the displeasure of seeing him.

  • All at once the gypsy started, a tear and a flash of joy gleamed simultaneously in her

  • eyes, she knelt on the brink of the roof and extended her arms towards the Place

  • with anguish, exclaiming: "Phoebus! come!

  • come! a word, a single word in the name of heaven!

  • Phoebus! Phoebus!"

  • Her voice, her face, her gesture, her whole person bore the heartrending expression of

  • a shipwrecked man who is making a signal of distress to the joyous vessel which is

  • passing afar off in a ray of sunlight on the horizon.

  • Quasimodo leaned over the Place, and saw that the object of this tender and

  • agonizing prayer was a young man, a captain, a handsome cavalier all glittering

  • with arms and decorations, prancing across

  • the end of the Place, and saluting with his plume a beautiful lady who was smiling at

  • him from her balcony.

  • However, the officer did not hear the unhappy girl calling him; he was too far

  • away. But the poor deaf man heard.

  • A profound sigh heaved his breast; he turned round; his heart was swollen with

  • all the tears which he was swallowing; his convulsively-clenched fists struck against

  • his head, and when he withdrew them there was a bunch of red hair in each hand.

  • The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as he gnashed his

  • teeth,--

  • "Damnation! That is what one should be like!

  • 'Tis only necessary to be handsome on the outside!"

  • Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraor-dinary agitation,--"Oh! there

  • he is alighting from his horse! He is about to enter that house!--Phoebus!-

  • -He does not hear me!

  • Phoebus!--How wicked that woman is to speak to him at the same time with me!

  • Phoebus! Phoebus!"

  • The deaf man gazed at her.

  • He understood this pantomime. The poor bellringer's eye filled with

  • tears, but he let none fall. All at once he pulled her gently by the

  • border of her sleeve.

  • She turned round. He had assumed a tranquil air; he said to

  • her,-- "Would you like to have me bring him to

  • you?"

  • She uttered a cry of joy. "Oh! go! hasten! run! quick! that captain!

  • that captain! bring him to me! I will love you for it!"

  • She clasped his knees.

  • He could not refrain from shaking his head sadly.

  • "I will bring him to you," he said, in a weak voice.

  • Then he turned his head and plunged down the staircase with great strides, stifling

  • with sobs.

  • When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything except the handsome horse hitched

  • at the door of the Gondelaurier house; the captain had just entered there.

  • He raised his eyes to the roof of the church.

  • La Esmeralda was there in the same spot, in the same attitude.

  • He made her a sad sign with his head; then he planted his back against one of the

  • stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch, determined to wait until the captain should

  • come forth.

  • In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days which precede a wedding.

  • Quasimodo beheld many people enter, but no one come out.

  • He cast a glance towards the roof from time to time; the gypsy did not stir any more

  • than himself. A groom came and unhitched the horse and

  • led it to the stable of the house.

  • The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la Esmeralda on the roof,

  • Phoebus, no doubt, at the feet of Fleur-de- Lys.

  • At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night.

  • Quasimodo fixed his gaze in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon she was no more than a

  • whiteness amid the twilight; then nothing.

  • All was effaced, all was black.

  • Quasimodo beheld the front windows from top to bottom of the Gondelaurier mansion

  • illuminated; he saw the other casements in the Place lighted one by one, he also saw

  • them extinguished to the very last, for he remained the whole evening at his post.

  • The officer did not come forth.

  • When the last passers-by had returned home, when the windows of all the other houses

  • were extinguished, Quasimodo was left entirely alone, entirely in the dark.

  • There were at that time no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame.

  • Meanwhile, the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion remained lighted, even after

  • midnight.

  • Quasimodo, motionless and attentive, beheld a throng of lively, dancing shadows pass

  • athwart the many-colored painted panes.

  • Had he not been deaf, he would have heard more and more distinctly, in proportion as

  • the noise of sleeping Paris died away, a sound of feasting, laughter, and music in

  • the Gondelaurier mansion.

  • Towards one o'clock in the morning, the guests began to take their leave.

  • Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched them all pass out through the porch

  • illuminated with torches.

  • None of them was the captain. He was filled with sad thoughts; at times

  • he looked upwards into the air, like a person who is weary of waiting.

  • Great black clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry

  • dome of night. One would have pronounced them spiders'

  • webs of the vault of heaven.

  • In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long window on the balcony, whose stone

  • balustrade projected above his head, open mysteriously.

  • The frail glass door gave passage to two persons, and closed noiselessly behind

  • them; it was a man and a woman.

  • It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in recognizing in the

  • man the handsome captain, in the woman the young lady whom he had seen welcome the

  • officer in the morning from that very balcony.

  • The place was perfectly dark, and a double crimson curtain which had fallen across the

  • door the very moment it closed again, allowed no light to reach the balcony from

  • the apartment.

  • The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man could judge, without hearing a

  • single one of their words, appeared to abandon themselves to a very tender tete-a-

  • tete.

  • The young girl seemed to have allowed the officer to make a girdle for her of his

  • arm, and gently repulsed a kiss.

  • Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was all the more pleasing to

  • witness because it was not meant to be seen.

  • He contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that happiness.

  • After all, nature was not dumb in the poor fellow, and his human sensibility, all

  • maliciously contorted as it was, quivered no less than any other.

  • He thought of the miserable portion which Providence had allotted to him; that woman

  • and the pleasure of love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that he should

  • never do anything but behold the felicity of others.

  • But that which rent his heart most in this sight, that which mingled indignation with

  • his anger, was the thought of what the gypsy would suffer could she behold it.

  • It is true that the night was very dark, that la Esmeralda, if she had remained at

  • her post (and he had no doubt of this), was very far away, and that it was all that he

  • himself could do to distinguish the lovers on the balcony.

  • This consoled him. Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and

  • more animated.

  • The young lady appeared to be entreating the officer to ask nothing more of her.

  • Of all this Quasimodo could distinguish only the beautiful clasped hands, the

  • smiles mingled with tears, the young girl's glances directed to the stars, the eyes of

  • the captain lowered ardently upon her.

  • Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but feebly, the door of

  • the balcony suddenly opened once more and an old dame appeared; the beauty seemed

  • confused, the officer assumed an air of displeasure, and all three withdrew.

  • A moment later, a horse was champing his bit under the porch, and the brilliant

  • officer, enveloped in his night cloak, passed rapidly before Quasimodo.

  • The bellringer allowed him to turn the corner of the street, then he ran after him

  • with his ape-like agility, shouting: "Hey there! captain!"

  • The captain halted.

  • "What wants this knave with me?" he said, catching sight through the gloom of that

  • hipshot form which ran limping after him.

  • Meanwhile, Quasimodo had caught up with him, and had boldly grasped his horse's

  • bridle: "Follow me, captain; there is one here who desires to speak with you!

  • "Cornemahom!" grumbled Phoebus, "here's a villanous; ruffled bird which I fancy I

  • have seen somewhere. Hola master, will you let my horse's bridle

  • alone?"

  • "Captain," replied the deaf man, "do you not ask me who it is?"

  • "I tell you to release my horse," retorted Phoebus, impatiently.

  • "What means the knave by clinging to the bridle of my steed?

  • Do you take my horse for a gallows?" Quasimodo, far from releasing the bridle,

  • prepared to force him to retrace his steps.

  • Unable to comprehend the captain's resistance, he hastened to say to him,--

  • "Come, captain, 'tis a woman who is waiting for you."

  • He added with an effort: "A woman who loves you."

  • "A rare rascal!" said the captain, "who thinks me obliged to go to all the women

  • who love me! or who say they do.

  • And what if, by chance, she should resemble you, you face of a screech-owl?

  • Tell the woman who has sent you that I am about to marry, and that she may go to the

  • devil!"

  • "Listen," exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking to overcome his hesitation with a word, "come,

  • monseigneur! 'tis the gypsy whom you know!"

  • This word did, indeed, produce a great effect on Phoebus, but not of the kind

  • which the deaf man expected.

  • It will be remembered that our gallant officer had retired with Fleur-de-Lys

  • several moments before Quasimodo had rescued the condemned girl from the hands

  • of Charmolue.

  • Afterwards, in all his visits to the Gondelaurier mansion he had taken care not

  • to mention that woman, the memory of whom was, after all, painful to him; and on her

  • side, Fleur-de-Lys had not deemed it

  • politic to tell him that the gypsy was alive.

  • Hence Phoebus believed poor "Similar" to be dead, and that a month or two had elapsed

  • since her death.

  • Let us add that for the last few moments the captain had been reflecting on the

  • profound darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness, the sepulchral voice

  • of the strange messenger; that it was past

  • midnight; that the street was deserted, as on the evening when the surly monk had

  • accosted him; and that his horse snorted as it looked at Quasimodo.

  • "The gypsy!" he exclaimed, almost frightened.

  • "Look here, do you come from the other world?"

  • And he laid his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

  • "Quick, quick," said the deaf man, endeavoring to drag the horse along; "this

  • way!"

  • Phoebus dealt him a vigorous kick in the breast.

  • Quasimodo's eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himself on the

  • captain.

  • Then he drew himself up stiffly and said,-- "Oh! how happy you are to have some one who

  • loves you!" He emphasized the words "some one," and

  • loosing the horse's bridle,--

  • "Begone!" Phoebus spurred on in all haste, swearing.

  • Quasimodo watched him disappear in the shades of the street.

  • "Oh!" said the poor deaf man, in a very low voice; "to refuse that!"

  • He re-entered Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp and climbed to the tower again.

  • The gypsy was still in the same place, as he had supposed.

  • She flew to meet him as far off as she could see him.

  • "Alone!" she cried, clasping her beautiful hands sorrowfully.

  • "I could not find him," said Quasimodo coldly.

  • "You should have waited all night," she said angrily.

  • He saw her gesture of wrath, and understood the reproach.

  • "I will lie in wait for him better another time," he said, dropping his head.

  • "Begone!" she said to him. He left her.

  • She was displeased with him.

  • He preferred to have her abuse him rather than to have afflicted her.

  • He had kept all the pain to himself. From that day forth, the gypsy no longer

  • saw him.

  • He ceased to come to her cell. At the most she occasionally caught a

  • glimpse at the summit of the towers, of the bellringer's face turned sadly to her.

  • But as soon as she perceived him, he disappeared.

  • We must admit that she was not much grieved by this voluntary absence on the part of

  • the poor hunchback.

  • At the bottom of her heart she was grateful to him for it.

  • Moreover, Quasimodo did not deceive himself on this point.

  • She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius about her.

  • Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand during her slumbers.

  • One morning she found a cage of birds on her window.

  • There was a piece of sculpture above her window which frightened her.

  • She had shown this more than once in Quasimodo's presence.

  • One morning, for all these things happened at night, she no longer saw it, it had been

  • broken.

  • The person who had climbed up to that carving must have risked his life.

  • Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath the wind screen of

  • the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song, as though to lull her to sleep.

  • The lines were unrhymed, such as a deaf person can make.

  • Ne regarde pas la figure, Jeune fille, regarde le coeur.

  • Le coeur d'un beau jeune homme est souvent difforme.

  • Il y a des coeurs ou l'amour ne se conserve pas.

  • Jeune fille, le sapin n'est pas beau, N'est pas beau comme le peuplier,

  • Mais il garde son feuillage l'hiver.

  • Helas! a quoi bon dire cela? Ce qui n'est pas beau a tort d'etre;

  • La beaute n'aime que la beaute, Avril tourne le dos a Janvier.

  • La beaute est parfaite, La beaute peut tout,

  • La beaute est la seule chose qui n'existe pas a demi.

  • Le corbeau ne vole que le jour, Le hibou ne vole que la nuit,

  • Le cygne vole la nuit et le jour.*

  • * Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart.

  • The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed.

  • There are hearts in which love does not keep.

  • Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it

  • keeps its foliage in winter.

  • Alas! What is the use of saying that?

  • That which is not beautiful has no right to exist; beauty loves only beauty; April

  • turns her back on January.

  • Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the only thing which does

  • not exist by halves.

  • The raven flies only by day, the owl flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by

  • night. One morning, on awaking, she saw on her

  • window two vases filled with flowers.

  • One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of glass.

  • It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers

  • which it contained were withered.

  • The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its

  • water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson.

  • I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda took the

  • faded nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.

  • That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower.

  • She troubled herself very little about it.

  • She passed her days in caressing Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier

  • house, in talking to herself about Phoebus, and in crumbling up her bread for the

  • swallows.

  • She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo.

  • The poor bellringer seemed to have disappeared from the church.

  • One night, nevertheless, when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her handsome

  • captain, she heard something breathing near her cell.

  • She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon, a shapeless mass lying across her

  • door on the outside. It was Quasimodo asleep there upon the

  • stones.

  • -BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER V.

  • THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

  • In the meantime, public minor had informed the archdeacon of the miraculous manner in

  • which the gypsy had been saved. When he learned it, he knew not what his

  • sensations were.

  • He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda's death.

  • In that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering.

  • The human heart (Dora Claude had meditated upon these matters) can contain only a

  • certain quantity of despair.

  • When the sponge is saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop

  • more to enter it.

  • Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an end on this earth for

  • Dom Claude.

  • But to feel that she was alive, and Phoebus also, meant that tortures, shocks,

  • alternatives, life, were beginning again. And Claude was weary of all this.

  • When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the cloister.

  • He appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor at the services.

  • He closed his door against all, even against the bishop.

  • He remained thus immured for several weeks. He was believed to be ill.

  • And so he was, in fact.

  • What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the unfortunate man

  • contending? Was he giving final battle to his

  • formidable passion?

  • Was he concocting a final plan of death for her and of perdition for himself?

  • His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to his door,

  • knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score of times.

  • Claude did not open.

  • He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his window.

  • From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see la Esmeralda's chamber.

  • He often saw herself with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo.

  • He remarked the little attentions of the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate

  • and submissive ways with the gypsy.

  • He recalled, for he had a good memory, and memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he

  • recalled the singular look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a

  • certain evening.

  • He asked himself what motive could have impelled Quasimodo to save her.

  • He was the witness of a thousand little scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man,

  • the pantomime of which, viewed from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared

  • very tender to him.

  • He distrusted the capriciousness of women.

  • Then he felt a jealousy which he could never have believed possible awakening

  • within him, a jealousy which made him redden with shame and indignation: "One

  • might condone the captain, but this one!"

  • This thought upset him. His nights were frightful.

  • As soon as he learned that the gypsy was alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb

  • which had persecuted him for a whole day vanished, and the flesh returned to goad

  • him.

  • He turned and twisted on his couch at the thought that the dark-skinned maiden was so

  • near him.

  • Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to him in all the

  • attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most.

  • He beheld her outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes closed, her

  • beautiful bare throat covered with Phoebus's blood, at that moment of bliss

  • when the archdeacon had imprinted on her

  • pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy girl, though half dead, had felt.

  • He beheld her, again, stripped by the savage hands of the torturers, allowing

  • them to bare and to enclose in the boot with its iron screw, her tiny foot, her

  • delicate rounded leg, her white and supple knee.

  • Again he beheld that ivory knee which alone remained outside of Torterue's horrible

  • apparatus.

  • Lastly, he pictured the young girl in her shift, with the rope about her neck,

  • shoulders bare, feet bare, almost nude, as he had seen her on that last day.

  • These images of voluptuousness made him clench his fists, and a shiver run along

  • his spine.

  • One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin and priestly blood, that

  • he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed, flung on a surplice over his shirt, and

  • left his cell, lamp in hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.

  • He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected the cloister with the

  • church, and he always had about him, as the reader knows, the key of the staircase

  • leading to the towers.

  • -BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER VI.

  • CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

  • That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell, full of oblivion, of hope, and

  • of sweet thoughts.

  • She had already been asleep for some time, dreaming as always, of Phoebus, when it

  • seemed to her that she heard a noise near her.

  • She slept lightly and uneasily, the sleep of a bird; a mere nothing waked her.

  • She opened her eyes. The night was very dark.

  • Nevertheless, she saw a figure gazing at her through the window; a lamp lighted up

  • this apparition.

  • The moment that the figure saw that la Esmeralda had perceived it, it blew out the

  • lamp.

  • But the young girl had had time to catch a glimpse of it; her eyes closed again with

  • terror. "Oh!" she said in a faint voice, "the

  • priest!"

  • All her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of lightning.

  • She fell back on her bed, chilled.

  • A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her shudder so that she

  • straightened herself up in a sitting posture, wide awake and furious.

  • The priest had just slipped in beside her.

  • He encircled her with both arms. She tried to scream and could not.

  • "Begone, monster! begone assassin!" she said, in a voice which was low and

  • trembling with wrath and terror.

  • "Mercy! mercy!" murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her shoulder.

  • She seized his bald head by its remnant of hair and tried to thrust aside his kisses

  • as though they had been bites.

  • "Mercy!" repeated the unfortunate man. "If you but knew what my love for you is!

  • 'Tis fire, melted lead, a thousand daggers in my heart."

  • She stopped his two arms with superhuman force.

  • "Let me go," she said, "or I will spit in your face!"

  • He released her.

  • "Vilify me, strike me, be malicious! Do what you will!

  • But have mercy! love me!" Then she struck him with the fury of a

  • child.

  • She made her beautiful hands stiff to bruise his face.

  • "Begone, demon!" "Love me! love mepity!" cried the poor

  • priest returning her blows with caresses.

  • All at once she felt him stronger than herself.

  • "There must be an end to this!" he said, gnashing his teeth.

  • She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his power.

  • She felt a wanton hand straying over her. She made a last effort, and began to cry:

  • "Help!

  • Help! A vampire! a vampire!"

  • Nothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with

  • anguish.

  • "Hush!" said the panting priest. All at once, as she struggled and crawled

  • on the floor, the gypsy's hand came in contact with something cold and metal-lic-

  • it was Quasimodo's whistle.

  • She seized it with a convulsive hope, raised it to her lips and blew with all the

  • strength that she had left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.

  • "What is that?" said the priest.

  • Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous arm.

  • The cell was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it was that held him thus; but

  • he heard teeth chattering with rage, and there was just sufficient light scattered

  • among the gloom to allow him to see above his head the blade of a large knife.

  • The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo.

  • He assumed that it could be no one but he.

  • He remembered to have stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle which was stretched

  • across the door on the outside. But, as the newcomer did not utter a word,

  • he knew not what to think.

  • He flung himself on the arm which held the knife, crying: "Quasimodo!"

  • He forgot, at that moment of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.

  • In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee rested on his breast.

  • From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo; but what was to be

  • done? how could he make the other recognize him? the darkness rendered the deaf man

  • blind.

  • He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged

  • tigress, did not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching his head; the

  • moment was critical.

  • All at once, his adversary seemed stricken with hesitation.

  • "No blood on her!" he said in a dull voice. It was, in fact, Quasimodo's voice.

  • Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of the cell; it was

  • there that he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had risen a

  • few moments before.

  • When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays fell upon the

  • priest's countenance.

  • Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the

  • priest and shrank back.

  • The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld with surprise

  • their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who menaced,

  • Quasimodo who was the suppliant.

  • The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and reproach,

  • made the latter a violent sign to retire.

  • The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy's door,--

  • "Monseigneur," he said, in a grave and resigned voice, "you shall do all that you

  • please afterwards, but kill me first."

  • So saying, he presented his knife to the priest.

  • The priest, beside himself, was about to seize it.

  • But the young girl was quicker than be; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo's hands

  • and burst into a frantic laugh,-- "Approach," she said to the priest.

  • She held the blade high.

  • The priest remained undecided. She would certainly have struck him.

  • Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to pierce the

  • priest's heart with thousands of red-hot irons,--

  • "Ah! I know that Phoebus is not dead!"

  • The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering with

  • rage, darted back under the vault of the staircase.

  • When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gypsy.

  • "It was getting rusty," he said, as he handed it back to her; then he left her

  • alone.

  • The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back exhausted on her

  • bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was becoming gloomy once more.

  • The priest had groped his way back to his cell.

  • It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!

  • He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: "No one shall have her."

BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER I.

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