The Hunchback of Notre Dame (16 page)

“Many thanks,” replied the poet.

“Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping on his cask, which re-echoed like a vast drum.

“Make haste, and be done with it! I warn you, once for all, that if I hear but one tinkle you shall take the manikin’s place.”

The company applauded Clopin’s words, and ranged themselves in a ring around the gallows, with such pitiless laughter that Gringoire saw that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. His only hope lay in the slight chance of succeeding in the terrible task imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but not without first addressing a fervent prayer to the manikin whom he was to plunder, and who seemed more easily moved than the vagrants. The myriad little bells with their tiny brazen tongues seemed to him like so many vipers with gaping jaws, ready to hiss and sting.

“Oh,” he murmured, “is it possible that my life depends upon the slightest quiver of the least of these bells? Oh,” he added with clasped hands, “do not ring, ye bells! Tinkle not, ye tinklers! Jingle not, ye jinglers!”

He made one more attempt to melt Trouillefou.

“And if a breeze spring up?” he asked.

“You will be hanged,” answered the other, without hesitating.

Seeing that neither respite, delay, nor subterfuge was possible, he made a desperate effort; he twisted his right foot round his left leg, stood tiptoe on his left foot, and stretched out his arm, but just as he touched the manikin, his body, now resting on one foot, tottered upon the stool, which had but three; he strove mechanically to cling to the figure, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened and stunned by the fatal sound of the myriad bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the pressure of his hand, first revolved upon its own axis, then swung majestically to and fro between the posts.

“A curse upon it!” he cried as he fell; and he lay as if dead, face downwards.

Still he heard the fearful peal above his head, and the devilish laugh of the vagrants, and the voice of Trouillefou, as it said, “Lift up the knave, and hang him double-quick.”

He rose. The manikin had already been taken down to make room for him.

The Canters made him mount the stool. Clopin stepped up to him, passed the rope round his neck, and clapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed,—

“Farewell, mate. You can’t escape now, though you have the digestion of the Pope himself.”

The word “mercy” died on Gringoire’s lips. He gazed around him, but without hope; every man was laughing.

“Bellevigne de l‘Etoile,” said the King of Tunis to a huge vagrant who started from the ranks, “climb upon the crossbeam.”

Bellevigne de l‘Etoile nimbly climbed the crossbeam, and in an instant Gringoire, raising his eyes, with terror beheld him squatting upon it, above his head.

“Now,” continued Clopin Trouillefou, “when I clap my hands, do you, Andry le Rouge, knock away the footstool from under him; you, Françoise Chante-Prune, hang on to the knave’s feet; and you, Bellevigne, jump down upon his shoulders; and all three at once, do you hear?”

Gringoire shuddered.

“Are you ready?” said Clopin Trouillefou to the three Canters prepared to fall upon Gringoire. The poor sufferer endured a moment of horrible suspense, while Clopin calmly pushed into the fire with his foot a few vine-branches which the flame had not yet kindled. “Are you ready?” he repeated; and he opened his hands to clap. A second more, and all would have been over.

But he paused, as if struck by a sudden thought.

“One moment,” said he; “I forgot! It is our custom never to hang a man without asking if there be any woman who’ll have him. Comrade, it’s your last chance. You must marry a tramp or the rope.”

This gipsy law, strange as it may seem to the reader, is still written out in full in the ancient English codes. (See “Burington’s Observations.”)

Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had been restored to life within the half-hour; so he dared not feel too confident.

“Holà!” cried Clopin, remounting his cask; “holà there, women, females! is there among you, from the old witch to her cat, a wench who’ll take this scurvy knave? Holà, Colette la Charonne! Elisa beth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piedcbou! Thonne la Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-Oreille! Mathurine Girorou! Holà! Isabeau la Thierrye! Come and look! a man for nothing! who’ll take him?”

Gringoire, in his wretched plight, was doubtless far from tempting. The vagabond women seemed but little moved by the offer. The luckless fellow heard them answer: “No! no! hang him; that will make sport for us all.”

Three, however, stepped from the crowd to look him over. The first was a stout, square-faced girl. She examined the philosopher’s pitiable doublet most attentively. The stuff was worn, and more full of holes than a furnace for roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. “An old clout!” she grumbled, and, addressing Gringoire, “Let’s look at your cloak?”

“I have lost it,” said Gringoire.

“Your hat?”

“Some one took it from me.”

“Your shoes?”

“The soles are almost worn through.”

“Your purse?”

“Alas!” faltered Gringoire, “I have not a penny.”

“Be hanged to you then, and be thankful!” replied the tramp, turning her back on him.

The second, old, weather-beaten, wrinkled, and ugly, hideous enough to be conspicuous even in the Court of Miracles, walked round and round Gringoire. He almost trembled lest she should accept him. But she muttered, “He’s too thin,” and took her leave.

The third was a young girl, quite rosy and not very ugly. “Save me!” whispered the poor devil.

She looked at him a moment with a compassionate air, then looked down, began to plait up her skirt, and seemed uncertain. He watched her every motion; this was his last ray of hope. “No,” said the young woman at last; “no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me,” and she went back to the crowd.

“Comrade,” said Clopin Trouillefou, “you’re down on your luck.”

Then, standing erect upon his cask, he cried, “Will no one take this lot?” mimicking the tone of an auctioneer, to the great entertainment of all; “will no one take it? Going, going, going!” and turning to the gallows with a nod, “Gone!”

Bellevigne de l‘Etoile, Andry le Rouge, and François Chant-Prune approached Gringoire.

At this instant a shout rose from the thieves: “Esmeralda! Esmeralda!”

Gringoire trembled, and turned in the direction of the cry. The crowd opened and made way for a pure and radiant figure.

It was the gipsy girl.

“Esmeralda!” said Gringoire, astounded, amidst his contending emotions, at the suddenness with which that magic word connected all the various recollections of his day.

This rare creature seemed to exercise sovereign sway through her beauty and her charm even in the Court of Miracles. Thieves, beggars, and harlots stood meekly aside to let her pass, and their brutal faces brightened at her glance.

She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She gazed at him an instant in silence.

“Are you going to hang this man?” she gravely asked Clopin.

“Yes, sister,” replied the King of Tunis, “unless you’ll take him for your husband.”

She pouted her pretty lower lip.

“I’ll take him,” said she.

Gringoire here firmly believed that he had been dreaming ever since morning, and that this was the end of the dream.

In fact, the sudden change of fortune, though charming, was violent.

The slip-noose was unfastened, the poet was helped from his stool. He was obliged to seat himself, so great was his agitation.

The Duke of Egypt, without uttering a word, brought forward an earthen pitcher. The gipsy girl offered it to Gringoire. “Throw it down,” she said to him.

The pitcher was broken into four pieces.

“Brother,” then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands on their heads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband. For four years. Go!”

CHAPTER VII

A Wedding Night

few moments later our poet found himself in a small room with a vaulted roof, very snug, very warm, seated before a table which seemed to ask nothing better than to borrow a few stores from a hanging cupboard close by; with a good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure partook of the nature of magic. He began seriously to think himself the hero of some fairy-tale; now and then he gazed about him as if in search of the fairy chariot, drawn by two winged steeds, which could alone have transported him so swiftly from Tartarus to Paradise. Occasionally his eyes were riveted on the holes in his doublet, to bring himself back to actual things, and lest he should quite lose sight of land. His reason, floating in imaginary realms, had only this thread to cling to.

The young girl apparently took no notice of him: she came and went, moved a stool, chatted with her goat, smiled, and pouted. Finally she seated herself at the table, and Gringoire could study her at his leisure.

You were once a child, reader, and you may be lucky enough to be one still. You must more than once (and for my part I spent whole days at it,—the best days of my life) have pursued from bush to bush, on the brink of some brisk stream, in bright sunshine, some lovely green or azure dragon-fly, which checked its flight at sharp angles, and kissed the tip of every twig. You will remember the loving curiosity with which your mind and your eye followed that buzzing, whizzing little whirlwind, with blue and purple wings, between which floated an intangible form, veiled by the very swiftness of its motion. The airy creature, vaguely seen amid the quivering wings, seemed to you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when the dragon-fly at last rested on the tip of a reed, and you could examine, holding your breath meanwhile, its slender gauzy wings, its long enameled robes, its crystal globe-like eyes, what amazement you felt, and what fear lest it should again fade to a shadow and the creature turn to a chimera! Recall these sensations, and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire felt as he beheld in visible, palpable form that Esmeralda of whom he had hitherto had but a glimpse amidst the eddying dance and song, and a confused mass of people.

Becoming more and more absorbed in his reverie, he thought: “This, then, is ‘Esmeralda’! a celestial creature! a street dancer! So much and so little! It was she who put the finishing stroke to my play this morning; it was she who saved my life this evening. My evil genius! my good angel! A pretty woman, upon my word! And she must love me to distraction to take me in this fashion. By-the-by,” said he, rising suddenly with that sense of truth which formed the basis of his character and his philosophy, “I don’t quite know how it came about, but I am her husband!”

With this idea in mind and in his eyes, he approached the young girl in so military and lover-like a fashion that she shrank away from him.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?” replied Gringoire in such impassioned tones that he himself was astounded at his own accents.

The gipsy girl stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come now!” added Gringoire, becoming more and more excited, and thinking that after all he was only dealing with the ready-made virtue of the Court of Miracles; “am I not yours, sweet friend? Are you not mine?”

And, quite innocently, he clasped her by the waist.

The girl’s bodice slipped through his hands like a snake’s skin. She leaped from one end of the little cell to the other, stooped, and rose with a tiny dagger in her hand, before Gringoire had time to see whence this dagger came,—proud, angry, with swelling lips, dilated nostrils, cheeks red as crab-apples, and eyes flashing lightning. At the same time the white goat placed itself before her, and presented a battle-front to Gringoire, bristling with two pretty, gilded, and very sharp horns. All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.

The damsel had turned wasp, and asked nothing better than to sting.

Our philosopher stood abashed, glancing alternately at the girl and the goat in utter confusion. “Holy Virgin!” he exclaimed at last, when surprise allowed him to speak, “here’s a determined pair!”

The gipsy girl broke the silence in her turn. “You must be a very bold rascal!”

“Forgive me, mademoiselle,” said Gringoire with a smile. “But why did you marry me, then?”

“Was I to let them hang you?”

“So,” replied the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes, “you had no other idea in wedding me than to save me from the gibbet?”

“And what other idea should I have had?”

Gringoire bit his lips. “Well,” said he, “I am not quite such a conquering hero as I supposed. But then, what was the use of breaking that poor pitcher?”

But Esmeralda’s dagger and the goat’s horns still remained on the defensive.

“Mademoiselle Esmeralda,” said the poet, “let us come to terms. I am not clerk of the Châtelet, and I shall not pick a quarrel with you for carrying concealed weapons in Paris, in the face of the provost’s orders and prohibition. Yet you must know that Noel Le scrivain was sentenced to pay ten Paris pence only a week ago for wearing a broadsword. Now, that is none of my business, and I will come to the point. I swear to you, by all my hopes of paradise, that I will not come near you without your sovereign leave and permission; but give me some supper.”

To tell the truth, Gringoire, like Despréaux, was “very little of a Don Juan.” He was not one of the chivalric, musketeering kind who take girls by storm. In the matter of love, as in all other matters, he was always for temporizing and compromising; and a good supper, in friendly society, struck him, especially when he was hungry, as an excellent interlude between the prologue and the issue of an intrigue.

The gipsy made no answer. She gave her usual scornful little pout, cocked her head like a bird, then burst out laughing, and the dainty dagger disappeared as it came, Gringoire being still unable to discover where the bee hid her sting.

A moment later, a rye loaf, a slice of bacon, a few withered apples, and a jug of beer were on the table. Gringoire began to eat greedily. Judging by the fierce clatter of his iron fork against his earthen-plate, all his love had turned to hunger.

The young girl seated near him looked on in silence, evidently absorbed in other thoughts, at which she occasionally smiled, while her gentle hand caressed the intelligent head of the goat as it rested idly against her knee.

A yellow wax candle lit up this scene of voracity and reverie.

However, the first cravings of hunger appeased, Gringoire felt somewhat ashamed to find that there was but one apple left. “You don’t eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?”

She answered by a shake of the head, and her pensive gaze was fixed on the arched roof of the cell.

“What the devil is she thinking about?” thought Gringoire; and, looking to see what she was looking at: “It can’t be the wry face of that stone dwarf carved upon yonder keystone which so absorbs her attention. What the devil! I’m sure I can stand the comparison!”

He raised his voice: “Mademoiselle!”

She did not seem to hear him.

He spoke still louder: “Mademoiselle Esmeralda!”

Labor lost. The girl’s mind was elsewhere, and Gringoire’s voice had no power to call it back. Luckily the goat interfered, by softly pulling her mistress by the sleeve.

“What do you want, Djali?” said the gipsy, hastily, as if roused suddenly.

“The creature is hungry,” said Gringoire, delighted to open the conversation.

Esmeralda began to crumple some bread, which Djali nibbled daintily from the hollow of her hand.

However, Gringoire gave her no time to resume her reverie. He risked a delicate question:—

“Then you don’t want me for your husband?”

The young girl looked steadily at him, and replied, “No.”

“For your lover?” continued Gringoire.

She pouted, and answered, “No.”

“For your friend?” went on Gringoire.

She looked at him fixedly once more, and after an instant’s reflection, said, “Perhaps.”

This “perhaps,” so dear to philosophers, emboldened Gringoire.

“Do you know what friendship is?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered the gipsy; “it is to be brother and sister; two souls which meet without mingling, two fingers of one hand.”

“And love?” continued Gringoire.

“Oh, love!” said she, and her voice trembled and her eye brightened. “That is to be two and yet but one. A man and a woman blended into an angel. It is heaven itself.”
⁷

The street dancer assumed a beauty, as she spoke, which struck Gringoire strangely, and seemed to him in perfect harmony with the almost Oriental exaltation of her words. Her pure rosy lips half smiled; her serene and innocent brow was clouded for the moment by her thought, as when a mirror is dimmed by a breath; and from her long, dark, drooping lashes flashed an ineffable light, which lent her profile that ideal sweetness which Raphael has since found at the mystic meeting-point of the virgin, the mother, and the saint.

Nevertheless, Gringoire kept on,—

“What must one be to please you, then?”

“He must be a man.”

“And I,” said he,—“what am I?”

“A man with a helmet on his head, a sword in his hand, and golden spurs on his heels.”

“Good!” said Gringoire; “dress makes the man. Do you love any one?”

“As a lover?”

“As a lover.”

She looked pensive for a moment; then she said with a peculiar expression, “I shall know soon.”

“Why not tonight?” said the poet, tenderly; “why not me?”

She cast a serious glance at him.

“I can only love a man who can protect me.”

Gringoire flushed, and was silent. It was evident that the young girl alluded to the slight assistance which he had afforded her in the critical situation in which she had found herself a couple of hours previous. This memory, blotted out by the other adventures of the evening, returned to him. He struck his brow.

“By-the-bye, mademoiselle, I ought to have begun there. Forgive me my foolish distractions. How did you manage to escape from Quasimodo’s claws?”

This question made the gipsy shudder.

“Oh, the horrid hunchback!” she cried, hiding her face in her hands.

And she shivered as if icy cold.

“Horrid, indeed,” said Gringoire, not dropping the subject; “but how did you contrive to escape him?”

Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and was silent.

“Do you know why he pursued you?” continued Gringoire, trying to get an answer by a roundabout way.

“I don’t know,” said the girl. And she added quickly, “But you followed me too; why did you follow me?”

“In good faith,” replied Gringoire, “I have forgotten.”

There was a pause. Gringoire was scratching the table with his knife. The girl smiled, and seemed to be gazing at something through the wall. All at once she began to sing in a voice which was scarcely articulate, She broke off abruptly, and began to fondle Djali.

“Quando las pintadas aves
Mudas estan, y la tierra—”
^aq

“That’s a pretty creature of yours,” said Gringoire.

“It is my sister,” she replied.

“Why do they call you ‘Esmeralda?’ ” the poet ventured to ask.

“I’ve no idea.”

“But why do they?”

She drew from her bosom a small oblong bag fastened to her neck by a string of red seeds. This bag gave forth a strong smell of camphor; it was made of green silk, and had in the center a large bit of green glass, in imitation of an emerald.

“Perhaps it is on account of that,” said she.

Gringoire tried to take the bag. She drew back.

“Don’t touch it! It’s an amulet. You will injure the charm, or the charm you.”

The poet’s curiosity was more and more eagerly aroused.

“Who gave it to you?”

She put her finger to her lip and hid the amulet in her bosom. He tried her with other questions, but she scarcely answered him.

“What does the word Esmeralda’ mean?”

“I don’t know,” said she.

“To what language does it belong?”

“I think it is a gipsy word.”

“So I suspected,” said Gringoire; “you are not a native of France?”

“I know nothing about it.”

“Are your parents living?”

She began to sing, to an ancient air:—

“A bird is my mother,
My father another.
Nor boat nor bark need I
As over the sea I fly;
A bird is my mother,
My father another.”

“Very good,” said Gringoire. “At what age did you come to France?”

“When I was very small.”

“To Paris?”

“Last year. Just as we entered the Papal Gate, I saw the reed warbler skim through the air; it was the last of August. I said: It will be a hard winter.”

“So it has been,” said Gringoire, charmed at this beginning of conversation; “I have spent it in blowing on my fingers to keep them warm. So you have the gift of prophecy?”

She fell back into her laconicism.

“No.”

“Is that man whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the head of your tribe?”

“Yes.”

“But it was he who married us,” timidly remarked the poet.

She made her usual pretty grimace.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“My name? You shall have it, if you wish: Pierre Gringoire.”

“I know a nicer one,” said she.

“Cruel girl!” replied the poet. “Never mind, you shall not vex me. Stay; perhaps you will love me when you know me better; and then you told me your history so confidingly that I owe you somewhat of mine. You must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am the son of the notary of Gonesse. My father was hanged by the Burgundians and my mother ripped up by the Picards, at the time of the siege of Paris, now twenty years ago. At the age of six years, therefore, I was left an orphan, with no sole to my foot but the pavement of Paris. I don’t know how I managed to exist from six to sixteen. A fruit-seller would give me a plum, a baker would throw me a crust; at nightfall I would contrive to be caught by the watch, who put me in prison, and there I found a bundle of straw. All this did not hinder me from growing tall and thin, as you see. In winter time I warmed myself in the sun, under the portico of the Hotel de Sens, and I thought it very absurd that the bale-fires of St. John should be deferred until the dog-days. At the age of sixteen I wished to learn a trade. I tried everything in turn. I became a soldier, but I was not brave enough. I turned monk, but I was not pious enough; and then, I’m no drinker. In despair, I became a carpenter’s apprentice, but I was not strong enough. I had more liking for the schoolmaster’s trade; true, I did not know how to read, but that was no hindrance. After a time, I discovered that I lacked some necessary quality for everything; and seeing that I was good for nothing, I became a poet and composer of rhymes, of my own free will. That is a trade that one can always take up when one is a vagabond; and it is better than stealing, as certain thievish young friends of mine advised. By good luck, I one fine day encountered Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an interest in me, and it is to him I owe it that I am now a genuine man of letters, knowing Latin, from Cicero’s Offices to the necrology of the Celestine Fathers, and being ignorant of neither scholastics, poetry, nor rhythm, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the miracle-play performed today with great triumph, and before a great concourse of people, in the hall of the Palace. I have also written a book which will make six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet of 1465, which drove one man mad. I have also had other successes. Being somewhat of an engineer, I worked on Jean Maugue’s great bomb, which you know burst on Charenton Bridge the day that it was to be tested, and killed twenty-four of the curious spectators. You see that I am by no means a bad match. I know a great many sorts of delightful tricks which I will teach your goat; for instance, how to take off the Bishop of Paris, that accursed Parisian whose mills bespatter all those who pass over the Pont-aux-Meuniers. And then, my miracle-play will bring me in plenty of ready money if they pay me. Finally, I am at your service, I and my wit and my science and my learning, —ready to live with you, lady, as it may please you: soberly or merrily; as husband and wife if you see fit; as brother and sister if you prefer.”