Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (50 page)

“I think I did know once,” said she, passing her thin fingers over her brow as if to help her memory, “but I don’t know now.”

All at once she began to cry like a little child.

“I want to get out, sir. I am cold, I am frightened, and there are creatures which crawl all over me.”

“Well, follow me.”

So saying, the priest took her by the arm. The unfortunate creature was frozen to the marrow; but still that hand gave her a sensation of cold.

“Oh,” she murmured, “it is the icy hand of death. Who are you?”

The priest threw back his hood; she looked. It was that evil face which had so long haunted her; that demon head which had appeared to her at the house of La Falourdel above the adored head of her Phœbus; that eye which she had last seen sparkle beside a dagger.

This apparition, always so fatal to her, and which had thus urged her on from misfortune to misfortune and even to torture, roused her from her torpor. The veil which had clouded her memory seemed rent in twain. Every detail of her mournful adventure, from the night scene at the house of La Falourdel down to her condemnation at the Tournelle, rushed upon her mind at once, not vague and confused as heretofore, but clear, distinct, vivid, living, terrible. The somber figure before her recalled those half-effaced memories almost blotted out by excess of suffering, as the heat of the fire brings back in all their freshness invisible letters traced on white paper with sympathetic ink. She felt as if every wound in her heart were torn open and bled together.

“Ha!” she cried, pressing her hands to her eyes with a convulsive shudder, “it is the priest!”

Then her arms fell listlessly at her side, and she sat with downcast head and eyes, mute and trembling.

The priest gazed at her with the eye of a kite which has long hovered high in the heavens above a poor meadow-lark crouching in the wheat, gradually and silently descending in ever lessening circles, and, suddenly swooping upon his prey like a flash of lightning, grasps it panting in his clutch.

She murmured feebly,—

“Do your work! do your work! strike the last blow!” and her head sank between her shoulders in terror, like that of a lamb awaiting the butcher’s axe.

“You look upon me with horror, then?” he asked at length.

She made no answer.

“Do you look on me with horror?” he repeated.

Her lips moved as if she smiled.

“Yes,” said she, “the executioner jests with the prisoner. For months he has pursued me, threatened me, terrified me! But for him, my God, how happy I should have been! It is he who hurled me into this gulf of woe! Oh, heavens! it is he who killed,—it is he who killed him, my Phœbus!”

Here, bursting into sobs and raising her eyes to the priest, she cried,—

“Oh, wretch! who are you? What have I done to you? Do you hate me so much? Alas! what have you against me?”

“I love you!” exclaimed the priest.

Her tears ceased suddenly; she stared vacantly at him. He had fallen upon his knees, and devoured her face with eyes of flame.

“Do you hear? I love you!” he again exclaimed.

“What love!” said the miserable girl shuddering.

He replied,—

“The love of a damned man.”

Both were silent for some moments, oppressed by the intensity of their emotions,—he mad, she stunned.

“Listen,” said the priest at last, and a strange calm seemed to have taken possession of him. “You shall know all. I will tell you that which as yet I have hardly ventured to confess to myself, when I secretly questioned my own soul in those dead hours of the night when the darkness is so profound that it seems as if even God could no longer see us. Listen. Before I met you, girl, I was happy.”

“And I!” she faintly sighed.

“Do not interrupt me! Yes, I was happy,—at least I thought so. I was pure; my soul was filled with limpid light. No head was held higher or happier than mine. Priests consulted me on chastity, doctors on doctrines. Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister,—and a sister was all I asked. Not but that, as I grew older, other ideas came to me. More than once my flesh thrilled as a woman’s form passed by. That force of sex and passion which, although in the pride of youth, I had imagined I had stifled forever, more than once has rebelled against the chain of the iron vows which bind me,—wretch that I am!—to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting, prayer, study, and monastic mortifications again made my spirit ruler of my body. And then I shunned women. I had only to open a book, and all the impure vapors of my brain were banished by the glorious sunbeams of science. In a few moments I felt the gross things of earth fly far away, and I was once more calm and serene, bathed in the tranquil light of eternal truth. So long as the demon sent only vague shadows to attack me, passing singly before me, in church, in the streets, or in the fields, and scarcely recurring in my dreams, I conquered him easily. Alas! if the victory be not still mine, God is to blame, who failed to make man and the devil of equal strength. Listen! One day—”

Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard him utter agonizing sighs.

He continued:—

“One day I was leaning from the window of my cell. What book was I reading? Oh, all that is confused and vague to me now. I had been reading. The window looked upon a public square. I heard the sound of tambourine and music. Vexed at being thus disturbed in my reverie, I looked out. What I saw was seen by many others as well, and yet it was not a spectacle for mere mortal eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was noon, the sun shone brightly,—a creature was dancing,—a creature so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin, and chosen her to be his mother, and would have wished to be born of her, had she existed when he was made man! Her eyes were black and lustrous; amidst her black hair certain locks shone in the sun like threads of gold. Her feet moved so swiftly that they faded from sight like the spokes of a wheel revolving rapidly. About her head, in her black braids, there were metallic plates which glittered in the sun and made a crown of stars above her brow. Her gown, sprinkled with spangles, scintillated, blue, and sown with a thousand sparks like a summer night. Her pliant brown arms waved and twined about her waist like two scarves. Her figure was of surpassing beauty. Oh, how resplendent was that form which stood out like something luminous even in the very light of the sun itself! Alas! girl, it was you. Surprised, intoxicated, charmed, I suffered myself to gaze. I gazed so long that, all at once, I shuddered with terror. I felt that Fate had overtaken me.”

The priest, oppressed, again paused a moment. Then he resumed: —

“Already half fascinated I tried to lay hold of something and to stay myself from falling. I recalled the traps which Satan had already laid for me. The creature before me possessed that superhuman beauty which could only proceed from heaven or from hell. That was no mere girl made of common clay, and dimly illumined within by the flickering rays of a woman’s soul. It was an angel,—but of darkness, of flame, and not of light!

“Just as I was thinking thus, I saw close beside you a goat, a devilish beast, which looked at me and laughed. The midday sun made its horns seemed tipped with fire. Then I recognized the snare of the demon, and no longer doubted that you came from hell, and that you came for my perdition. I believed it.”

Here the priest looked in the prisoner’s face, and added coldly:—

“I believe so still. However, the charm worked little by little. Your dance went round and round in my brain; I felt the mysterious spell acting within me. All which should have waked slumbered in my soul, and, like men perishing in the snow, I found pleasure in the approach of this slumber. All at once you began to sing. What could I do, miserable man? Your singing was even more enchanting than your dancing. I strove to escape. Impossible. I was nailed, I was rooted to the spot. It seemed as if the marble of the floor had risen to my knees. I was forced to stay to the end. My feet were ice, my head burned. At last,—perhaps you pitied me,—you ceased to sing; you disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the echo of the enchanting music gradually faded from my eyes and ears. Then I sank into the corner of the window, stiffer and more helpless than a fallen statue. The vesper bell aroused me. I rose to my feet; I fled; but, alas! something within me had fallen which could never be raised up; something had overtaken me which I could not escape.”

He paused once more, and then went on:—

“Yes, from that day forth there was another man within me, whom I did not know. I strove to apply all my remedies,—the cloister, the altar, work, books. Follies, all! Oh, how empty science seems when we beat against it in despair a head filled with frantic passion! Girl, do you know what I always saw between my book and me? You, your shadow, the image of the bright vision which had once passed before me. But that image was no longer of the same color; it was gloomy, funereal, somber as the black circle which long haunts the sight of the imprudent man who looks steadily at the sun.

“Unable to rid myself of it, forever hearing your song ring in my ears, forever seeing your feet dance over my breviary, forever feeling at night, in dreams, your form against mine, I longed to see you once more, to touch you, to know who you were, to see if you were indeed like the ideal image which I had formed of you,—to destroy perhaps my dream by confronting it with the reality. In any case, I hoped that a fresh impression might dispel the first, and the first had become unendurable. I sought you out; I saw you again. Misery! Having seen you twice, I longed to see you a thousand times,—I longed to see you forever. Then,—how may a man stop short upon that steep descent to hell?—then I ceased to be my own master. The other end of the cord which the demon had fastened to my wings was tied to his own foot. I became a wanderer and a vagrant like you. I waited for you beneath porches, I lurked at street corners, I watched you from the top of my tower. Every night I found myself more charmed, more desperate, more bewitched, nearer perdition!

“I had learned who you were,—a gipsy. How could I doubt your magic powers? I hoped that a criminal suit would set me free from your spell. A sorceress once enchanted Bruno d‘Ast; he had her burned alive, and was cured. I knew it. I decided to try this remedy. I at first attempted to have you forbidden all access to the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping that I might forget you if you no longer came thither. You paid no heed to the prohibition; you returned. Then I thought of carrying you off. One night, I tried to do so. There were two of us. We already had you in our grasp, when that miserable officer appeared. He rescued you. He thus began your misfortune, mine, and his own. Finally, not knowing what to do or what would become of me, I denounced you to the judges.

“I thought that I should be cured, like Bruno d‘Ast. I also vaguely thought that a criminal trial would make you mine; that in a prison I should have you, should be able to hold you mine; that there you could not escape me; that you had possessed me so long that I might well possess you in my turn. When a man does wrong, he should do all the wrong he can; it is madness to stop half-way in crime! The extremity of guilt has its raptures of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight upon the scanty straw of a cell!

“Accordingly I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you when we met. The plot which I was contriving against you, the storm which I was about to bring upon your head, burst from me in threats and in lightning flashes. And yet I still hesitated. My scheme had terrible sides which made me shrink.

“Perhaps I might have given it up; perhaps my odious thought might have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought that it would always be in my power to continue or to stay the prosecution ; but every evil thought is inexorable, and insists upon becoming a deed. Where I supposed myself all-powerful, Fate was mightier than I. Alas, alas! it is she which captured you and delivered you over to the terrible wheels of the machine which I secretly constructed! Listen. I am near the end.

“One day—again the sun shone bright and warm—1 saw a man pass who pronounced your name and laughed, and whose eyes were full of passion. Damnation! I followed him. You know the rest.”

He ceased.

The young girl could only utter the words,—

“Oh, my Phoebus!”

“Not that name!” said the priest, seizing her angrily by the arm. “Do not utter that name! Oh, unhappy wretches that we are! it was that name which ruined us! or rather we have ruined each other by the inexplicable caprice of Fate! You suffer, do you not? You are cold, the darkness blinds you, the dungeon wraps you round; but perhaps you have still some ray of light in your innermost soul, were it but your childish love for that empty man who played with your heart, while I have a dungeon within me; within me all is winter, ice, despair; my soul is full of darkness.

“Do you know all that I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I sat upon the bench with the judges. Yes, beneath one of those priests’ cowls were the contortions of the damned. When you were brought in, I was there; when you were cross-questioned, I was there. The den of wolves! It was my crime, it was my gibbet which I saw slowly rise above your head. At each witness, each proof, each plea, I was there; I counted your every step on the road of agony; I was there again when that savage beast—Oh, I did not foresee the torture! Listen. I followed you to the torture-chamber. I saw you stripped, and handled half naked by the infamous hands of the executioner. I saw your foot,—that foot upon which I would have given an empire to press a single kiss and die; that foot by which I would with rapture have been crushed,—I saw it enclosed in the horrid buskin which converts the limbs of a living creature into bleeding pulp. Oh, wretched me! As I saw these things, I grasped beneath my sackcloth a dagger, with which I slashed my breast. At the shriek which you uttered, I plunged it deep into my flesh; had you shrieked again, it would have pierced my heart. Look. I think it still bleeds.”