The Hunchback of Notre Dame (39 page)

“Saint Martha’s room,” said he.

The old woman treated him like a lord, and put the coin away in a drawer. It was the money which the man in the black cloak had given Phoebus. While her back was turned, the ragged, disheveled little boy who was playing in the ashes went adroitly to the drawer, took out the crown-piece, and put in its place a dried leaf which he had pulled from a fagot.

The old woman beckoned to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and climbed the ladder before them. On reaching the upper floor, she placed her lamp upon a chest; and Phoebus, as one familiar with the house, opened a door leading to a dark hole. “Go in there, my dear boy,” said he to his comrade. The man in the cloak obeyed without a word; the door closed behind him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment after go downstairs again with the old woman. The light had disappeared.

CHAPTER VIII

The Advantage of Windows Overlooking the River

C
laude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more clever than Phœbus, has discovered that this spectral monk was no other than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for some time in the gloomy hole into which the captain had bolted him. It was one of those nooks such as architects sometimes leave at the junction of the roof and outer wall. The vertical section of this kennel—as Phoebus had so aptly called it—would have formed a triangle. Moreover, there was neither window nor loop-hole, and the pitch of the roof was so steep that it was impossible to stand upright. Claude therefore squatted in the dust and mortar which crumbled beneath him. His head was burning; as he felt about him with his hands, he found upon the ground a bit of broken glass, which he pressed to his forehead, its coolness somewhat refreshing him.

What went on at this moment in the archdeacon’s dark soul? God and himself alone knew.

According to what fatal order did he dispose in his thoughts Esmeralda, Phœbus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother, so greatly loved, deserted by him in the mud, his archdeacon’s gown, perhaps his reputation, dragged through the mire of La Falourdel’s abode,—all these images, all these adventures? I cannot say; but it is certain that the ideas formed a horrible group in his mind.

He waited a quarter of an hour; he felt as if a century had been added to his age. All at once he heard the boards of the wooden staircase creak; some one was coming up. The trap-door opened; a light appeared. There was a considerable crack in the worm-eaten door of his prison; to this he glued his face. Thus he could see everything that happened in the next room. The cat-faced old woman first rose from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then came Phœbus, twirling his moustache; then a third person,—that lovely, graceful creature, Esmeralda. The priest saw her rise from below like a dazzling apparition. He trembled; a cloud came before his eyes; his veins swelled to bursting; everything swam before him; he saw and heard nothing more.

When he recovered his senses, Phœbus and Esmeralda were alone, seated on the wooden chest beside the lamp, whose light revealed to the archdeacon’s eyes their two youthful figures, and a miserable pallet at the back of the garret.

Beside the pallet there was a window, through whose panes, shattered like a cobweb upon which rain has fallen, were seen a patch of sky, and the moon in the distance resting on a bed of soft clouds.

The young girl was blushing and trembling, and confused. Her long, drooping lashes shaded her flushed cheeks. The officer, to whose face she dared not raise her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with a charming awkwardness, she drew meaningless lines on the bench with her finger-tip, and then looked at her finger. Her feet were hidden, for the little goat was lying upon them.

The captain was very gallantly arrayed; at his wrists and neck he wore embroidery, then considered very elegant.

Dom Claude could scarcely hear what they said, for the throbbing of his temples.

Lovers’ talk is very commonplace. It is a perpetual “I love you.” A very bare and very insipid phrase to an indifferent ear, unless adorned with a few grace-notes; but Claude was not an indifferent listener.

“Oh,” said the girl, without raising her eyes, “do not despise me, my lord Phœbus! I feel that I am doing very wrong.”

“Despise you, pretty child!” replied the officer with an air of extreme gallantry,—“despise you! By God’s passion! and why?”

“For coming here with you.”

“On that point, my beauty, we are not agreed. I should not despise you, but hate you.”

The young girl gazed at him in affright. “Hate me! What have I done?”

“For requiring so much urging.”

“Alas!” said she, “that is because I am breaking a sacred vow. I shall never find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue; but what does that matter? Why should I need father or mother now?”

So saying, she fixed upon the captain her large dark eyes, moist with love and joy.

“The Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phoebus.

Esmeralda was silent for a moment, then a tear fell from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said, “Oh, my lord, I love you!”

There was such an odor of chastity, such a charm of virtue about the young girl, that Phoebus did not feel wholly at his ease with her. But this speech emboldened him. “You love me!” said he, with transport; and he threw his arm around the gipsy’s waist. He had only waited for such an opportunity.

The priest saw him, and tested with the tip of his finger the point of a dagger hidden in his bosom.

“Phoebus,” continued the gipsy girl, gently removing the captain’s stubborn hands from her girdle, “you are good, you are generous, you are kind; you saved me—me, who am but a poor gipsy foundling. I have long dreamed of an officer who should save my life. It was of you I dreamed before I ever knew you, my Phoebus; the image of my dreams had a gorgeous uniform like yours, a grand air, a sword. Your name is Phœbus; it is a beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your sword, Phoebus, and let me see it.”

“Child!” said the captain; and he unsheathed his rapier with a smile.

The gipsy girl studied the handle, the blade, examined the letters on the hilt with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, as she said,—

“You are a brave man’s sword. I love my captain.”

Phœbus again took advantage of the situation to imprint on her lovely bent neck a kiss which made the girl start up as red as a cherry. The priest ground his teeth in the darkness at the sight.

“Phoebus,” resumed the gipsy, “let me talk to you. Walk about a little, so that I may have a good look at you, and hear your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”

The captain rose to gratify her, while he scolded her with a smile of satisfaction:—

“What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, did you ever see me in my full dress uniform?”

“Alas, no!” she replied.

“Well, that is really fine!”

Phoebus came back and sat down beside her, but much nearer than before.

“Look here, my dear—”

“The gipsy gave him a few little taps on the lips with her pretty hand, with a childish playfulness full of gaiety and grace.

“No, no, I will not listen. Do you love me? I want you to tell me if you love me.”

“Do I love you, angel of my life!” cried the captain, half kneeling before her. “My body, my soul, my blood, are yours. I am all yours,—all yours. I love you, and never loved any one but you.”

The captain had so often repeated this phrase on many a similar occasion, that he uttered it in a breath, without making a single mistake. At this passionate declaration the gipsy turned towards the dirty ceiling, which took the place of heaven, a look of angelic happiness. “Oh,” she murmured, “at such a moment one might well wish to die!”

Phoebus thought “the moment” a good one to steal another kiss, which inflicted fresh torment on the wretched archdeacon in his lair.

“To die?” exclaimed the amorous captain. “What are you talking about, my lovely angel? It is just the time to live, or Jupiter is but a paltry knave! Die at the beginning of such a pleasant thing! By Saint Luke’s face, what a joke! that would never do! Listen, my dear Similar—Esmenarda—Forgive me! but you have such a vastly outlandish name that I can never get it straight. I’m forever getting entangled in it.”

“Good Heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought the name pretty just for its oddness! But if you don’t like it, I am quite ready to change it for anything you please.”

“Ah, do not cry for such a trifle, my dearest! It’s a name to which one has to get used, that’s all. Once I have learned it by heart, it will be all right. Now listen, my dear Similar; I adore you passionately. I love you to such a degree that it is really marvelous. I know a little girl who is bursting with rage about it—”

The jealous damsel cut him short: “Who is she?”

“What difference does that make to us?” said Phœbus; “do you love me?”

“Oh!” said she.

“Well, then, that is all that is necessary. You shall see how I love you, too. May the great devil Neptune bestride me if I do not make you the happiest creature in the world. We will have a pretty little room somewhere! I will review my archers under your windows. They are all mounted, and make nothing of Captain Mignon’s men. There are spear-men, cross-bowmen, and culverin men. I will take you to see the great Paris musters at the Grange de Rully. It’s a very fine sight,—eighty thousand helmeted heads; thirty thousand bright harnesses, coats of mail, or brigandines; sixty-seven banners of the various guilds; the standards of the Parliament, the Chamber of Accounts, the Treasury, the Assistants in the Mint; in fact, the devil’s own train! I will take you to see the lions at the king’s palace, which are wild beasts; all the women like that.”

For some moments the young girl, wrapped in her own delightful thoughts, had been dreaming to the sound of his voice, without heeding the meaning of his words.

“Oh, how happy you will be!” continued the captain; and at the same time he gently unclasped the gipsy’s belt.

“What are you doing?” said she, quickly. This act of violence startled her from her reverie.

“Nothing,” answered Phoebus; “I was merely saying that you must give up this ridiculous mountebank dress when you come to live with me.”

“When I live with you, my Phœbus!” said the young girl, tenderly.

She again became pensive and silent.

The captain, made bold by her gentleness, took her by the waist without any resistance on her part, then began noiselessly to unlace the poor child’s bodice, and so disarranged her neckerchief that the panting priest saw the gipsy’s lovely shoulder issue from the gauze, plump and brown, like the moon rising through the mists on the horizon.

The young girl let Phoebus have his way. She did not seem conscious of what he was doing. The bold captain’s eyes sparkled.

All at once she turned towards him.

“Phœbus,” she said, with a look of infinite love, “instruct me in your religion.”

“My religion!” cried the captain, bursting into laughter. “I instruct you in my religion! Thunder and guns! What do you want with my religion?”

“To be married to you,” she answered.

The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise, scorn, recklessness, and evil passion.

“Nonsense!” said he. “Why should we marry?”

The gipsy turned pale, and let her head sink sadly on her breast.

“My pretty love,” tenderly added Phoebus, “what are all these foolish ideas? Marriage is nothing! Is any one less loving for not having spouted a little Latin in some priest’s shop?”

So saying in his sweetest voice, he approached extremely near the gipsy girl; his caressing hands had resumed their place around the lithe, slender waist, and his eye kindled more and more, and everything showed that Master Phoebus was about to enjoy one of those moments in which Jupiter himself commits so many follies that the good Homer is obliged to call in a cloud to help him.

But Dom Claude saw all. The door was made of decayed pun cheon staves, which left ample room between them for the passage of his hawk-like glance. The brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere rule of the convent, shuddered and burned at this scene of love, darkness, and passion.

The young and lovely girl, her garments in disorder abandoning herself to this ardent young man, made his veins run molten lead. An extraordinary agitation shook him; his eye sought, with lustful desire, to penetrate beneath all these unfastened pins. Any one who had at this moment seen the face of the unhappy man glued to the worm-eaten bars, might have thought he saw a tiger glaring from his cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His pupils glowed like a candle through the cracks of the door.

Suddenly, with a rapid motion, Phoebus removed the gipsy’s neckerchief. The poor child, who still sat pale and dreamy, sprang up with a start; she retreated hastily from the enterprising officer, and, glancing at her bare throat and shoulders, red, confused, and dumb with shame, she crossed her lovely arms over her bosom to cover it. But for the flame which mantled her cheeks, any one seeing her thus silent and motionless, might have thought her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were downcast.

Meantime the captain’s action had exposed the mysterious amulet which she wore about her neck.

“What’s this?” said he, seizing this pretext to draw nearer to the beautiful creature whom he had alarmed.

“Do not touch it!” replied she, quickly, “it is my protector. It will help me to find my family, if I am still worthy of it. Oh, leave me, Mr. Captain! My mother! my poor mother! Mother, where are you? Help me now! For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Phoebus, give me back my neckerchief!”

Phoebus drew back, and said in a cold tone,—

“Oh, young lady! I see very plainly that you do not love me!”

“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy creature, and at the same time she hung upon the captain, whom she drew to a seat by her side. “I not love you, my Phoebus? How can you say so, you wicked man, to break my heart? Oh, come! take me, take everything! Do with me what you will; I am yours. What do I care for the amulet! What is my mother to me now! You are my mother, for I love you! Phoebus, my adored Phoebus, do you see me? It is I, look at me; it is that little girl whom you cannot repulse, who comes,—who comes herself in search of you. My soul, my life, my person, are yours; I am all yours, my captain. No, then, we will not marry; it would trouble you; and what am I? A miserable child of the gutter; while you, my Phoebus, are a gentleman. A fine thing, truly,—a dancing-girl to marry an officer! I was mad. No, Phoebus, no; I will be your mistress, your amusement, your pleasure, when you will; always yours. I am only made for that,—to be soiled, despised, dishonored; but what matter? I shall be loved. I shall be the proudest and happiest of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am no longer fit to love you, my lord, you will still suffer me to serve you. Others may embroider your scarves; but I, your servant, will take care of them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your coat, dust your riding-boots. You will have this much pity for me, my Phoebus, will you not? Meantime, take me! There, Phoebus, all this belongs to you, only love me. We gipsy girls need nothing else,—nothing but air and love.”