Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (37 page)

Certainly he was at this moment more grotesque and repulsive than he was pitiable, with his livid and streaming face, his wild eye, his mouth foaming with rage and suffering, and his tongue protruding. It must also be acknowledged, that, even had there been in the throng any charitable soul tempted to give a cup of cold water to the miserable creature in his agony, so strong an idea of shame and ignominy was attached to the infamous steps of the pillory, that this alone would have sufficed to repel the Good Samaritan.

In a few minutes Quasimodo cast a despairing look upon the crowd, and repeated in a still more heartrending voice, “Water!”

Every one laughed.

“Drink that!” shouted Robin Poussepain, flinging in his face a sponge which had been dragged through the gutter. “There, you deaf monster! I owe you something.”

A woman aimed a stone at his head:—

“That will teach you to wake us at night with your cursed chimes!”

“Well, my boy!” howled a cripple, striving to reach him with his crutch, “will you cast spells on us again from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?”

“Here’s a porringer to drink out of!” added a man, letting fly a broken jug at his breast. “ ‘Twas you who made my wife give birth to a double-headed child, just by walking past her.”

“And my cat have a kitten with six feet!” shrieked an old woman, hurling a tile at him.

“Water!” repeated the gasping Quasimodo for the third time.

At this moment he saw the crowd separate. A young girl, oddly dressed, stepped from their midst. She was accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and held a tambourine in her hand.

Quasimodo’s eye gleamed. It was the gipsy girl whom he had tried to carry off the night before,—a feat for which he dimly felt that he was even now being punished; which was not in the least true, since he was only punished for the misfortune of being deaf, and having been tried by a deaf judge. He did not doubt that she too came to be avenged, and to take her turn at him with the rest.

He watched her nimbly climb the ladder. Rage and spite choked him. He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gipsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform.

Without a word she approached the sufferer, who vainly writhed and twisted to avoid her, and loosening a gourd from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable wretch.

Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long convulsed with despair. It was perhaps the first that the unfortunate man had ever shed.
¹⁰

But he forgot to drink. The gipsy girl made her customary little grimace of impatience, and, smilingly, pressed the neck of the gourd to Quasimodo’s jagged mouth.

He drank long draughts; his thirst was ardent.

When he had done, the poor wretch put out his black lips, doubtless to kiss the fair hand which had helped him. But the girl, perhaps not quite free from distrust, and mindful of the violent attempt of the previous night, withdrew her hand with the terrified gesture of a child who fears being bitten by a wild animal.

Then the poor deaf man fixed upon her a look of reproach and unutterable sorrow.

It would anywhere have been a touching sight, to see this lovely girl, fresh, pure, charming, and yet so weak, thus devoutly hastening to the help of so much misery, deformity, and malice. Upon a pillory, the sight was sublime.

The people themselves were affected by it, and began to clap their hands and shout,—

“Noël! Noël!”

It was at this instant that the recluse saw, from the window of her cell, the gipsy girl upon the pillory, and hurled her ominous curse at her head:—

 

“May you be accursed, daughter of Egypt! accursed! accursed!”

E
smeralda turned pale, and descended from the pillory with faltering steps. The voice of the recluse still pursued her:—“Come down! come down, you gipsy thief! You will go up again!”

“The
sachette
has one of her ill turns today,” muttered the people, and they said no more; for women of this sort were held in much awe, which made them sacred. No one liked to attack those who prayed night and day.

The hour had come to release Quasimodo. He was unbound, and the mob dispersed.

Near the Grand-Pont, Mahiette, who was returning home with her two companions, stopped suddenly:—

“By the way, Eustache, what have you done with the cake?”

“Mother,” said the child, “while you were talking to the woman in that hole, there came a big dog and bit a piece out of my cake; so then I took a bite too.”

“What, sir!” she continued, “did you eat it all?”

“Mother, it was the dog. I told him not to eat it, but he wouldn’t mind me. So then I took a bite too; that’s all!”

“What a bad boy you are!” said his mother, smiling and scolding at once. “Only think, Oudarde! he ate every cherry on the tree in our orchard at Charlerange; so his grandfather says that he is sure to be a soldier. Let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache! Get along, you greedy boy!”

S
everal weeks had passed.
¹¹

It was early in March. The sun, which Dubartas,
^cg
that classic father of periphrase, had not yet dubbed “the grand duke of candles,” was none the less bright and gay. It was one of those spring days which are so full of sweetness and beauty that all Paris, flocking into the squares and parks, keeps holiday as if it were a Sunday. On such clear, warm, peaceful days, there is one particular hour when the porch of Notre-Dame is especially worthy of admiration. It is the moment when the sun, already sinking towards the west, almost exactly faces the cathedral. Its rays, becoming more and more level, withdraw slowly from the pavement of the square, and climb the perpendicular face of the church, the shadows setting off the countless figures in high relief, while the great central rose-window flames like the eye of a Cyclop lighted up by reflections from his forge.

It was just that hour.

Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, upon the stone balcony built over the porch of a handsome Gothic house at the corner of the square and the Rue du Parvis, a group of lovely young girls were laughing and chatting gracefully and playfully. By the length of the veil which hung from the peak of their pointed coif, twined with pearls, down to their heels, by the fineness of the embroidered tucker which covered their shoulders, but still revealed, in the pleasing fashion of the day, the swell of their fair virgin bosoms, by the richness of their under petticoats, even costlier than their upper garments (wonderful refinement!), by the gauze, the silk, the velvet in which they were arrayed, and especially by the whiteness of their hands, which proved that they led a life of idle ease, it was easy to guess that these were rich heiresses. They were in fact Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little De Champchevrier, all daughters of noble houses, just now visiting the widowed Madame de Gondelaurier, on account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and his wife, who were coming to Paris in April to choose maids of honor to meet the Dauphiness Marguerite in Picardy and receive her from the hands of the Flemings. Now, all the country squires for thirty miles around aspired to win this favor for their daughters, and many of them had already been brought or sent to Paris. The damsels in question were intrusted by their parents to the discreet and reverend care of Madame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, the widow of a former officer of the king’s cross-bowmen, living in retirement, with her only daughter, in her house on the square in front of Notre-Dame.

The balcony upon which the young girls sat opened from a room richly hung with fawn-colored Flemish leather stamped with golden foliage. The transverse beams on the ceiling diverted the eye by countless grotesque carvings, painted and gilded. Splendid enamels glittered here and there upon sculptured presses. A boar’s head made of earthenware crowned a superb sideboard, the two steps of which showed that the mistress of the house was the wife or widow of a knight banneret. At the end of the room, beside a tall chimney-piece covered with armorial bearings and escutcheons, sat, in a rich red velvet arm-chair, Madame de Gondelaurier, whose fifty-five years were as plainly written in her garments as on her face. Near her stood a young man of aristocratic though somewhat arrogant and swaggering mien,—one of those fine fellows about whom all women agree, although serious men and physiog nomists shrug their shoulders at them. This youthful cavalier wore the brilliant uniform of a captain of the archers of the household troops, which is too much like the dress of Jupiter, described in the first part of’ this story, for us to inflict a second description of it upon the reader.

The damsels were seated, some in the room, some upon the balcony, the former upon squares of Utrecht velvet with golden corner-pieces, the latter on oaken stools carved with flowers and figures. Each held upon her knees a portion of a large piece of tapestry, at which they were all working together, and a long end of which trailed over the matting that covered the floor.

They talked together in the undertone and with the suppressed laughter common to a group of young girls when there is a young man among them. The young man whose presence sufficed to call forth all these feminine wiles seemed, for his part, to pay but little heed to them; and while these lovely girls vied with one another in trying to attract his attention, he seemed chiefly occupied in polishing his belt-buckle with his buckskin glove.

From time to time the elderly lady addressed some remark to him in a very low voice, and he replied as best he could, with awkward and forced courtesy. By Madame Aloïse’s smiles and little significant signs, as well as by the glances which she cast at her daughter Fleur-de-Lys while she whispered to the captain, it was easy to see that she was talking of the recent betrothal, and of the marriage, doubtless to come off soon, between the young man and Fleur-de-Lys; and by the officer’s coldness and embarrassment, it was plain that on his side at least there was no question of love. His whole manner expressed a weariness and constraint such as the young officers of our day would aptly translate by saying that he was “horribly bored!”

The good lady, utterly infatuated with her daughter, like the silly mother that she was, did not perceive the officer’s lack of enthusiasm, and did her best to point out to him in a whisper the infinite perfection with which Fleur-de-Lys plied her needle or wound her skeins of silk.

“There, cousin,” she said, plucking him by the sleeve that she might speak in his ear, “just look at her now! See how gracefully she stoops!”

“To be sure,” replied the young man; and he relapsed into his cold and careless silence.

A moment after, he was forced to bend anew, and Dame Aloïse said,—

“Did you ever see a merrier or more attractive face than that of your betrothed? Could any one have a fairer, whiter skin? Aren’t those clever hands; and isn’t her neck a perfect match in grace for a swan’s? How I envy you at times! and how lucky it is for you that you are a man, wicked scamp that you are! Isn’t my Fleur-de-Lys adorably lovely, and aren’t you dead in love with her?”

“Of course,” he replied, with his mind upon other things.

“But why don’t you talk to her?” suddenly observed Madame Aloïse, giving him a push. “Say something to her; you are wonderfully shy all of a sudden.”

We can assure our readers that shyness was neither one of the captain’s failings nor good points; but he tried to do what was required of him.

“Fair cousin,” said he, approaching Fleur-de-Lys, “what is the subject of your tapestry-work?”

“Fair cousin,” answered Fleur-de-Lys in an injured tone, “I have told you three times already: it is Neptune’s grotto.”

It was plain that Fleur-de-Lys was far more clear-sighted than her mother in regard to the captain’s cold and careless manners. He felt the necessity of making conversation.

“And what is all this Neptune-work for?” he asked.

“For the Abbey of Saint-Antoine des Champs,” said Fleur-de-Lys, without raising her eyes.

The captain picked up a corner of the tapestry.

“And who, my fair cousin, is this fat fellow with puffy cheeks, blowing his trumpet so vigorously?”

“That is Triton,” she answered.

There was still a somewhat offended tone about Fleur-de-Lys’ brief words. The captain saw that he must absolutely whisper something in her ear,—a compliment, a bit of nonsense, never mind what. He bent towards her accordingly, but his imagination suggested nothing tenderer or more familiar than this: “Why does your mother always wear a petticoat wrought with coats-of-arms, such as our grandmothers wore in the time of Charles VII? Do tell her, fair cousin, that it is no longer the fashion, and that her laurel-tree and her hinges emblazoned all over her gown make her look like a walking mantelpiece. Really, nobody sits upon their banner in that way now, I swear they don‘t!”

Fleur-de-Lys raised her lovely eyes full of reproach.

“Is that all you have to swear to me?” she said in a low voice.

Meantime good Dame Aloïse, enchanted to see them chatting thus confidently, said, as she played with the clasps of her prayer-book, —

“What a touching picture of love!”

The captain, more and more embarrassed, fell back on the tapestry. “That really is a beautiful piece of work!” he exclaimed.

Upon this remark, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another charming, fair-haired, white-skinned girl, in a high-necked blue damask gown, timidly ventured to address Fleur-de-Lys, in the hope that the handsome captain would reply: “My dear Gondelaurier, have you seen the tapestries at the Roche-Guyon house?”