The Hunchback of Notre Dame (49 page)

Meantime Quasimodo caught up with him, and boldly seized the horse by the bridle:—

“Follow me, Captain; there is some one here who wishes to speak with you.”

“The devil!” muttered Phoebus, “here’s an ugly scarecrow whom I think I’ve seen elsewhere. Hollo, sirrah! Will you let my horse’s bridle go?”

“Captain,” replied the deaf man, “don’t you even ask who it is?”

“I tell you to let my horse go!” impatiently replied Phœbus. “What does the fellow mean by hanging to my charger’s rein thus? Do you take my horse for a gallows?”

Quasimodo, far from loosing his hold on the bridle, was preparing to turn the horse’s head in the opposite direction. Unable to understand the captain’s resistance, he made haste to say,—

“Come, Captain, it is a woman who awaits you.” He added with an effort: “A woman who loves you.”

“Arrant knave!” said the captain; “do you think I am obliged to go to all the women who love me, or say they do? And how if by chance she looks like you, you screech-owl? Tell her who sent you that I am about to marry, and that she may go to the devil!”

“Hear me!” cried Quasimodo, supposing that with one word he could conquer his hesitation; “come, my lord! it is the gipsy girl, whom you know!”

These words did indeed make a strong impression upon Phoebus, but not of the nature which the deaf man expected. It will be remembered that our gallant officer retired with Fleur-de-Lys some moments before Quasimodo rescued the prisoner from the hands of Charmolue. Since then, during his visits to the Gondelaurier house he had carefully avoided all mention of the woman, whose memory was painful to him; and on her side, Fleur-de-Lys had not thought it politic to tell him that the gipsy still lived. Phoebus therefore supposed poor “Similar” to have died some two or three months before. Let us add that for some moments past the captain had been pondering on the exceeding darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness and sepulchral tones of the strange messenger, the fact that it was long past midnight, that the street was as deserted as on the night when the goblin monk addressed him, and that his horse snorted at the sight of Quasimodo.

“The gipsy girl!” he exclaimed, almost terrified: “pray, do you come from the other world?”

And he placed his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

“Quick! quick!” said the deaf man, striving to urge on the horse; “this way!”

Phoebus dealt him a vigorous kick.

Quasimodo’s eye flashed. He made a movement to attack the captain. Then drawing himself up, he said,—

“Oh, how fortunate it is for you that there is some one who loves you!”

He emphasized the words
some one,
and releasing the horse’s bridle, added,—

“Begone!”

Phoebus clapped spurs to his horse, with an oath. Quasimodo saw him plunge down the street and disappear in the darkness.

“Oh,” murmured the poor deaf man, “to refuse that!”

He returned to Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp, and climbed the tower. As he had supposed, the gipsy was still in the same place.

As soon as she caught sight of him, she ran to meet him.

“Alone!” she cried mournfully, clasping her lovely hands.

“I could not find him,” said Quasimodo, coldly.

“You should have waited all night,” she replied indignantly.

He saw her angry gesture, and understood the reproach.

“I will watch better another time,” said he, hanging his head.

“Go!” said she.

He left her. She was offended with him. He would rather be maltreated by her than distress her. He kept all the pain for himself.

From that day forth the gipsy saw him no more. He ceased to visit her cell. At most, she sometimes caught a glimpse of the ringer on the top of a tower, gazing sadly at her. But as soon as she saw him, he disappeared.

We must own that she was but little troubled by this willful absence of the poor hunchback. In her secret heart she thanked him for it. However, Quasimodo did not lie under any delusion on this point.

She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius around her. Her provisions were renewed by an invisible hand while she slept. One morning she found a cage of birds on her window-sill. Over her cell there was a piece of carving which alarmed her. She had more than once shown this feeling before Quasimodo. One morning (for all these things occurred at night) she no longer saw it; it was broken off. Any one who had climbed up to it must have risked his life.

Sometimes in the evening she heard a voice, hidden behind the wind-screen of the belfry, sing, as if to lull her to sleep, a weird, sad song, verses without rhyme, such as a deaf person might make:—

“Heed not the face,
Maiden, heed the heart.
The heart of a fine young man is oft deformed.
There are hearts where Love finds no abiding
place.

“Maiden, the pine-tree is not fair,
Not fair as is the poplar-tree
But its leaves are green in winter bare.

“Alas! why do I tell you this?
Beauty alone has right to live;
Beauty can only beauty love,
April her back doth turn on January.

“Beauty is perfect,
Beauty wins all,
Beauty alone is lord of all.

“The raven only flies by day,
The owl by night alone doth fly,
The swan by day and night alike may fly.”

One morning, on waking, she saw at her window two vases full of flowers. One was a very beautiful and brilliant but cracked crystal vase. It had let the water with which it was filled escape, and the flowers which it held were withered. The other was an earthen jug, coarse and common; but it had retained all its water, and the flowers were fresh and rosy.

I do not know whether it was done purposely, but Esmeralda took the withered nosegay, and wore it all day in her bosom.

That day she did not hear the voice from the tower singing.

She cared but little. She passed her days in fondling Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house, in talking to herself about Phœbus, and in scattering crumbs of bread to the swallows.

She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo; the poor ringer seemed to have vanished from the church. But one night, when she could not sleep, and was thinking of her handsome captain, she heard a sigh close by her cell. Terrified, she rose, and saw by the light of the moon a shapeless mass lying outside across her door. It was Quasimodo sleeping there upon the stones.

CHAPTER V

The Key to the Porte-Rouge

M
eantime, public rumor had informed the archdeacon of the miraculous manner in which the gipsy had been saved. When he learned of it, he knew not what he felt. He had accepted the fact of Esmeralda’s death. In this way, he made himself perfectly easy; he had sounded the utmost depths of grief. The human heart (Dom Claude had mused upon these matters) can hold but a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is thoroughly soaked, the sea may pass over it without adding another drop to it.

Now, Esmeralda being dead, the sponge was soaked. Everything was over for Dom Claude in this world. But to know that she was alive, and Phoebus too, was to endure afresh the torments, shocks, and vicissitudes of life; and Claude was weary of them all.

When he heard this piece of news, he shut himself up in his cloister cell. He did not appear at the chapter meetings or the sacred offices. He barred his door against every one, even the bishop, and remained thus immured for several weeks. He was supposed to be ill, and indeed was so.

What did he do in his seclusion? With what thoughts was the unfortunate man battling? Was he waging a final conflict with his terrible passion? Was he plotting a final plan to kill her and destroy himself?

His Jehan, his adored brother, his spoiled child, came once to his door, knocked, swore, entreated, repeated his name half a score of times. Claude would not open.

He passed whole days with his face glued to his window-panes. From this window, in the cloisters as it was, he could see Esmeralda’s cell. He often saw her, with her goat,—sometimes with Quasimodo. He noticed the attentions of the ugly deaf man,—his obedience, his refined and submissive manners to the gipsy. He recalled, —for he had a good memory, and memory is the plague of the jealous,—he recalled the bell-ringer’s strange look at the dancer on a certain evening. He asked himself what motive could have led Quasimodo to save her. He witnessed countless little scenes between the girl and the deaf man, when their gestures, seen from a distance and commented on by his passion, struck him as very tender. He distrusted women’s whims. Then he vaguely felt awakening within him a jealousy such as he had never imagined possible,—a jealousy which made him blush with rage and shame. “‘Twas bad enough when it was the captain; but this fellow!” The idea overwhelmed him.

His nights were frightful. Since he knew the gipsy girl to be alive, the chill fancies of specters and tombs which had for an entire day beset him, had vanished, and the flesh again rose in revolt against the spirit. He writhed upon his bed at the idea that the dark-skinned damsel was so near a neighbor.

Every night his fevered imagination pictured Esmeralda in all those attitudes which had stirred his blood most quickly. He saw her stretched across the body of the wounded captain, her eyes closed, her beautiful bare throat covered with Phoebus’s blood, at that moment of rapture when he himself had pressed upon her pale lips that kiss which had burned the unhappy girl, half dead though she was, like a living coal. He again saw her disrobed by the savage hands of the executioners, exposing and enclosing in the buskin with its iron screws her tiny foot, her plump and shapely leg, and her white and supple knee.

He again saw that ivory knee alone left uncovered by Torterue’s horrid machine. Finally, he figured to himself the young girl in her shift, the rope about her neck, her shoulders bare, her feet bare, almost naked, as he saw her on what was to have been her last day on earth. These voluptuous pictures made him clinch his hands, and caused a shudder to run from head to foot.

One night, especially, they so cruelly heated his virgin and priestly blood that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed, threw a surplice over his shirt, and left his cell, lamp in hand, but half-dressed, wild and haggard, with flaming eyes.

He knew where to find the key to the Porte-Rouge, which led from the cloisters to the church, and he always carried about him, as the reader knows, a key to the tower stairs.

CHAPTER VI

The Key to the Porte-Rouge (continued)

T
hat night Esmeralda fell asleep in her cell, full of peace, hope, and pleasant thoughts. She had been asleep for some time, dreaming, as she always did, of Phoebus, when she fancied she heard a noise. Her sleep was light and restless,—a bird’s sleep. A mere trifle roused her. She opened her eyes. The night was very dark. Still, she saw a face peering in at the window; the vision was lighted up by a lamp. When this face saw that Esmeralda was looking at it, it blew out the lamp. Still, the girl had had time to catch a glimpse of it; her eyes closed in terror.

“Oh,” said she, in a feeble voice, “the priest!”

All her past misery flashed upon her with lightning speed. She sank back upon her bed, frozen with fear.

A moment after, she felt a touch which made her shudder so that she started up wide awake and furious.

The priest had glided to her side. He clasped her in his arms.

She tried to scream, but could not.

“Begone, monster! Begone, assassin!” she said at last, in a low voice trembling with wrath and horror.

“Mercy! mercy!” murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her shoulders.

She seized his bald head in both hands by the hairs which remained, and strove to prevent his kisses as if they had been bites.

“Mercy!”repeated the unfortunate man. “If you knew what my love for you is! It is fire, molten lead, a thousand knives driven into my heart!”

And he held her arms with superhuman strength. She cried desperately: “Release me, or I shall spit in your face!”

He released her. “Degrade me, strike me, do your worst! do what you will! but have mercy! love me!”

Then she struck him with the impotent fury of a child. She clinched her lovely hands to bruise his face. “Demon, begone!”

“Love me! love me! have pity!” cried the poor priest, clasping her, and returning her blows with caresses.

All at once she felt him stronger than she.

“No more of this!” he exclaimed, gnashing his teeth.

She lay conquered, crushed, and quivering in his arms, at his mercy. She felt a wanton hand wandering over her. She made one last effort, and shrieked: “Help! help! a vampire! a vampire!”

No one came. Djali alone was awakened, and bleated piteously.

“Silence!” said the panting priest.

Suddenly, in her struggle, as she fought upon the floor, the gipsy’s hand encountered something cold and metallic. It was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsion of hope, raised it to her lips, and blew with all her remaining strength. The whistle gave forth a sharp, shrill, piercing sound.

“What is that?” said the priest.

Almost as he spoke he felt himself grasped by a vigorous arm. The cell was dark; he could not distinguish exactly who held him; but he heard teeth chattering with rage, and there was just enough light mingled with the darkness for him to see the broad blade of a knife gleam above his head.

He thought he recognized the figure of Quasimodo. He supposed that it could be no other. He remembered having stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle lying across the outside of the door. But as the new-comer did not utter a word, he knew not what to think. He flung himself upon the arm which held the knife, crying. “Quasimodo!” He forgot, in this moment of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.

In the twinkling of an eye the priest was stretched on the floor, and felt a heavy knee pressed against his breast. By the angular imprint of that knee, he knew Quasimodo; but what was he to do? How was he also to be recognized by the hunchback? Night made the deaf man blind.

He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did not interpose to save him. The knife came nearer his head; it was a critical moment. All at once his adversary appeared to hesitate.

“No blood upon her!” said he, in a dull voice.

It was indeed the voice of Quasimodo.

Then the priest felt a huge hand drag him from the cell by the heels; he was not to die within those walls. Luckily for him, the moon had risen some moments before.

When they crossed the threshold, its pale rays fell upon the priest. Quasimodo looked him in the face, trembled, relaxed his hold, and shrank back.

The gipsy, who had advanced to the door of her cell, saw with surprise that the actors had suddenly changed parts. It was now the priest who threatened, and Quasimodo who implored.

The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and reproach, violently signed him to withdraw.

The deaf man bowed his head, then knelt before the gipsy’s door. “My lord,” said he, in grave, submissive tones, “do what you will afterwards; but kill me first!”

So saying, he offered his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself with rage, rushed upon him. But the young girl was quicker than he. She tore the knife from Quasimodo’s hands, and uttered a frenzied laugh.

“Approach now!” she cried.

She held the blade high above her head. The priest stood irresolute. She would certainly have struck.

“You dare not touch me now, coward!” she exclaimed.

Then she added with a pitiless look, and knowing that her words would pierce the priest’s heart like a thousand red-hot irons,—

“Ah, I know that Phœbus is not dead!”

The priest threw Quasimodo to the ground with a kick, and rushed down the stairs quivering with rage.

When he had gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gipsy.

“It was getting rusty,” said he, returning it to her; then he left her alone.

The young girl, overcome by this violent scene, fell exhausted on her bed and burst into a flood of tears. Her horizon was again becoming overcast.

The priest, on his side, groped his way back to his cell.

That was sufficient. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo.

He repeated musingly the fatal words: “No one else shall have her!”