Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (71 page)

The owner of the house opened the window, appeared in his shirt with his lamp, looked out upon the quay with a drowsy face, pronounced a few words which she did not catch, and closed the shutter. Thus her last glimmer of hope faded.

The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her fast, and began to increase his speed. She resisted no longer, but followed him helplessly.

From time to time she mustered a little strength, and said in a voice broken by the unevenness of the pavement and the breathless haste with which she was borne along: “Who are you? Who are you?” He made no reply.

In this way they proceeded along the edge of the quay to an open square of considerable size. The moon shone faintly. They were in the Place de Grève. In the middle stood a sort of black cross; it was the gallows. She recognized all this, and knew where she was.

The man stopped, turning to her, and lifted his cowl.

“Oh!” stammered she, frozen with fear; “I was sure that it must be he.”

It was the priest. He looked like the ghost of himself. This was due to the moonlight. It seems as if by that light one could see only the specters of things.

“Listen!” said he; and she trembled at the sound of that fatal voice which she had not heard for so long a time. He went on, with the short, quick gasps which betray deep mental emotion: “Listen! We have reached our goal. I must speak with you. This is the Place de Grève. This is a decisive point in our lives. Fate has delivered us over to each other. Your life is in my hands; my soul rests in yours. Beyond this place and this night all is dark. Hear me, then. I am going to tell you—But first, speak not to me of your Phœbus.” (As he said this he came and went, like a man who cannot remain quietly in one place, dragging her after him.) “Speak not of him. If you but mention his name, I know not what I shall do, but it will be something terrible.”

This said, like a body which has found its center of gravity, he again stood still, but his words revealed no less emotion. His voice grew lower and lower.

“Do not turn away your head. Listen to me. It is a serious business. In the first place, I will tell you what has happened. It is no laughing matter, I assure you. What was I saying? Remind me! Ah! There is an order from Parliament which returns you to the scaffold. I have rescued you from the hangman’s hands; but even now they are in pursuit of you. See!”

He stretched his arm towards the City. The search did indeed seem to be continued. The noise drew nearer; the tower of the lieutenant’s house, directly facing the Place de Grève, was full of light and bustle, and soldiers were seen running along the opposite quay with torches, shouting: “The gipsy! Where is the gipsy? Death! Death!”

“You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I do not lie. I love you. Do not open your lips; rather, do not speak to me, if it be to tell me that you hate me. I am resolved never again to hear that. I have saved you.—Let me finish first.—I can save you wholly. Everything is ready. It is for you to choose. I can do as you would have me.”

He interrupted himself excitedly: “No, that is not what I meant to say.”

Then, running, and making her run after him,—for he did not loose his hold,—he went straight to the gibbet, and pointed to it.

“Choose between us,” said he, coldly.

She tore herself from his grasp, and fell at the foot of the gibbet, throwing her arms about that dismal support; then she half turned her lovely head, and looked at the priest over her shoulder. She seemed a Holy Virgin at the foot of the cross. The priest remained motionless, his finger still raised to the gallows, his gesture unchanged as if he were a statue.

At last the gipsy said,—

“It is less horrible to me than you are.”

Then he let his arm drop slowly, and gazed at the pavement in deep dejection.

“If these stones could speak,” he murmured, “yes, they would say, ‘There is a very miserable man.’”

He went on. The girl, kneeling before the gibbet, and veiled by her long hair, let him speak without interruption. He had now assumed a gentle, plaintive tone, in painful contrast with the proud severity of his features.

“I love you. Oh, it is indeed true! Is there then no visible spark of that fire which burns my soul? Alas! girl, night and day; yes, night and day,—does this deserve no pity? It is a love which consumes me night and day, I tell you; it is torture. Oh, my suffering is too great to be endured, my poor child! It is a thing worthy of compassion, I assure you. You see that I speak gently to you. I would fain have you cease to feel such horror of me. After all, if a man love a woman, it is not his fault! Oh, my God! What! will you never forgive me? Will you always hate me? Is this the end? It is this that makes me wicked, I tell you, and horrible in my own sight! You do not even look at me! You are thinking of other things, perhaps, while I stand and talk to you, and both of us are trembling on the verge of eternity! But do not talk to me of your soldier! What; I might throw myself at your knees; what! I might kiss, not your feet, for that you would not suffer, but the ground beneath your feet; what! I might sob like a child: I might tear from my bosom, not words, but my heart and my very life, to show you how I love you; all would be in vain,—all! And yet your soul is full of gentleness and tenderness; you are radiant with the most beauteous mildness; you are all sweetness, goodness, mercy, and charm. Alas! you are unkind to me alone! Oh, what a freak of fate!”

He buried his face in his hands. The young girl heard his sobs. It was the first time she had seen him weep. Standing thus, shaken by sobs, he appeared more miserable and more suppliant than had he been on his knees. He wept thus for some time.

“Ah, well!” he added, his first tears over, “I can find no words to express my feelings; and yet I pondered well what I should say to you. Now, I tremble and shudder; I give way at the decisive moment; I feel that some superior power surrounds us, and I stammer. Oh, I shall fall to the ground if you do not take pity upon me, upon yourself! Do not condemn us both! If you knew how much I love you; what a heart mine is! Oh, what an abandonment of all virtue! what a desperate desertion of myself! A scholar, I scoff at science; a gentleman, I disgrace my name; a priest, I make my missal a pillow of foul desires, grossly insult my God! All this for your sake, enchantress! to be worthy of your hell! And you reject the damned soul! Oh, let me tell you all! more still, something yet more horrible, oh, far more horrible—”

As he pronounced these last words, his look became quite wild. He was silent an instant, then resumed as if talking to himself, and in a firm voice,—

“Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?”

There was another pause, and he added,—

“What have I done with him, Lord? I took him in my arms, I brought him up, I fed him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I killed him! Yes, Lord, for they have just now dashed his head, before my very eyes, against the stones of your temple, and it was because of me, because of this woman, because of her—”

His eye was haggard. His voice died away; he still repeated mechanically, over and over, at considerable intervals, like a bell prolonging its last vibration, “Because of her; because of her—”

Here his tongue ceased to articulate any distinct sound, although his lips still moved. All at once he gave way, and sank in a heap, lying motionless upon the ground, his head upon his knees.

A slight movement made by the girl to pull her foot from under him revived him. He slowly drew his hand over his hollow cheeks, and looked in amazement at his fingers, which were wet. “What!” he muttered, “have I wept?”

And turning quickly to the gipsy with indescribable anguish:—

“Alas! and you could coldly see me weep! Child, do you know that those tears are burning lava? Is it then really true,—in the man we hate, nothing moves us? You would see me die, and still laugh! One word,—only one word of pardon! Do not tell me that you love me, only tell me that you will try; that shall suffice, and I will save you. If not,—oh, time passes. I conjure you! by all that you hold sacred, do not wait until I am once more turned to stone, like that gibbet which also claims you! Think, that I hold the destinies of both in my hand; that I am mad,—it is terrible!—that I may let all fall; and that beneath us yawns a bottomless pit, wretched girl, wherein my fall shall follow yours through all eternity! One word of kindness,—but a single word!”

She opened her mouth to answer him. He threw himself upon his knees before her, to receive with adoration the words, perhaps relenting, which were about to fall from her lips. She said to him, “You are an assassin!”

The priest caught her fiercely in his arms, and began to laugh an abominable laugh.

“Well, yes, an assassin!” said he; “and you shall be mine. You will not have me for your slave, you shall have me for your master. You shall be mine! You shall be mine! I have a den whither I will drag you. You must follow me, you must needs follow me, or I will give you up to justice! You must die, my beauty, or be mine,—be the priest‘s, the apostate’s, the assassin‘s! and that this night; do you hear me? Come! rejoice; come, kiss me, foolish girl! The tomb, or my bed!”

His eyes flashed with rage and desire. His impure lips reddened the neck of the young girl. She struggled in his arms. He covered her with frantic kisses.

“Do not bite me, monster!” she shrieked. “Oh, the hateful, poisonous monk! Let me go! I will tear out your vile grey hair, and throw it by handfuls in your face!”

He flushed, then paled, then released her, and looked at her gloomily. She thought herself victorious, and went on:—

“I tell you that I belong to my Phœbus, that ‘tis Phoebus I love, that Phœbus alone is handsome! You priest, are old! you are ugly! Begone!”

He uttered a violent cry, like the wretch to whom a red-hot iron is applied. “Then die!” he said, gnashing his teeth. She saw his frightful look, and strove to fly. He overtook her, shook her, threw her down, and walked rapidly towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after him over the pavement by her fair hands.

Reaching it, he turned to her:—

“For the last time, will you be mine?”

She answered emphatically,—

“No!”

Then he called in a loud voice,—

“Gudule! Gudule! here is the gipsy girl! Avenge yourself!”

The young girl felt herself suddenly seized by the elbow. She looked. A fleshless arm was thrust from a loop-hole in the wall, and held her with an iron grip.

“Hold her fast!” said the priest; “it’s the runaway gipsy. Do not let her go. I will fetch the officers. You shall see her hanged.”

A guttural laugh from the other side of the wall replied to these bloody words: “Ha! ha! ha!” The gipsy saw the priest depart in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. The tramp of horses was heard coming from that quarter.

The girl recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with terror, she tried to release herself. She writhed, she twisted herself in agony and despair; but the woman held her with unnatural strength. The thin bony fingers which bruised her flesh fastened about her arm like a vise. That hand seemed riveted to her wrist. It was stronger than any chain, stronger than any pillory or iron ring; it was a pair of intelligent and living pincers issuing from a wall.

Exhausted, she sank back, and the fear of death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life, of youth, of the sight of the sky, of the various aspects of Nature, of the love of Phœbus, of all that was behind her and of all that was rapidly coming upon her, of the priest who would denounce her, of the hangman who would soon arrive, of the gallows which was already there. Then terror rose to the very roots of her hair, and she heard the melancholy laugh of the recluse, as she whispered in her ear,—

“Ha! ha! ha! You shall be hanged!”

She turned, almost fainting, to the window, and saw the savage face of the sachette through the bars.

“What have I done to you?” she asked feebly.

The recluse made no answer; she began to mumble in angry, mocking sing-song, “Gipsy girl! gipsy girl! gipsy girl!”

The luckless Esmeralda veiled her face with her hair, seeing that it was no human being with whom she had to deal.

All at once the recluse exclaimed, as if the gipsy’s question had taken all this time to penetrate her troubled brain:—

“What have you done to me, do you say? Ah! What have you done to me, indeed, you gipsy! Well, listen, and I will tell you. I had a child, even I! Do you hear? I had a child,—a child, I say! A pretty little girl! My Agnès,” she repeated, her wits wandering for a moment, and kissing something in the gloom. “Well, are you listening, gipsy? They stole my child; they took my child from me; they ate my child! That is what you have done to me.”

The young girl answered, as innocently as the lamb in the fable,—

“Alas! I probably was not even born then!”

“Oh, yes!” rejoined the recluse, “you must have been born. You had a hand in it. She would have been about your age! There! For fifteen years I have been in this hole; for fifteen years I have suffered; for fifteen years I have prayed; for fifteen years I have dashed my head against these four walls. I tell you, ‘twas the gipsies who stole her from me,—do you hear?—and who gnawed her bones. Have you a heart? Fancy what it is to have a child who plays at your knee; a child who sucks your breast; a child who sleeps in your arms. It is such a helpless, innocent thing! Well, that,—that’s what they took from me, what they killed for me! The good God knows it well! Now it is my turn; I will slaughter the Egyptians. Oh, how I would bite you, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too big to pass through them! Poor little thing! they took her while she slept! And if they waked her when they snatched her up, all her shrieks were vain; I was not there! Ah, gipsy mothers, you ate my child! Come, look at yours!”

Then she began to laugh, or gnash her teeth, for the two things were much the same in that frenzied face. Dawn was at hand. An ashen light faintly illumined the scene, and the gallows became more and more distinctly visible in the center of the square. From the other side, towards the Pont Notre-Dame the poor prisoner imagined she heard the tramp of approaching horsemen.