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      NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS

      Also known as:

      _THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME_

      By Victor Hugo

      Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood




      PREFACE.


      A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about
      Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of
      one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the
      wall:—

       ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

      These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in
      the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic
      caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes,
      as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand
      of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially
      the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the
      author deeply.

      He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been
      that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this
      world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon
      the brow of the ancient church.

      Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not
      which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that
      people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous
      churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years.
      Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well
      as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon
      scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.

      Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author
      of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing
      whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower
      of Notre-Dame,—nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed
      up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from
      the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word,
      in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the
      church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the
      earth.

      It is upon this word that this book is founded.

      March, 1831.




        CONTENTS



         PREFACE.



         VOLUME I.

         BOOK FIRST.

         CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.

         CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

         CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

         CHAPTER IV. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

         CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.

         CHAPTER VI. ESMERALDA.



         BOOK SECOND.

         CHAPTER I. FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

         CHAPTER II. THE PLACE DE GRÈVE.

         CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

         CHAPTER IV. THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN
         THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING.

         CHAPTER V. RESULT OF THE DANGERS.

         CHAPTER VI. THE BROKEN JUG.

         CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.



         BOOK THIRD.

         CHAPTER I. NOTRE-DAME.

         CHAPTER II. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.



         BOOK FOURTH.

         CHAPTER I. GOOD SOULS.

         CHAPTER II. CLAUDE FROLLO.

         CHAPTER III. _IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE_.

         CHAPTER IV. THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.

         CHAPTER V. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

         CHAPTER VI. UNPOPULARITY.



         BOOK FIFTH.

         CHAPTER I. _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.

         CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.



         BOOK SIXTH.

         CHAPTER I. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

         CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.

         CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.

         CHAPTER IV. A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER.

         CHAPTER V. END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.



         VOLUME II.

         BOOK SEVENTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’S SECRET TO A GOAT.

         CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT
         THINGS.

         CHAPTER III. THE BELLS.

         CHAPTER IV. ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

         CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

         CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN
         PRODUCE.

         CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.

         CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.



         BOOK EIGHTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

         CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A
         DRY LEAF.

         CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY
         LEAF.

         CHAPTER IV. _LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA_—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE
         WHO ENTER HERE.

         CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.

         CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.



         BOOK NINTH.

         CHAPTER I. DELIRIUM.

         CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

         CHAPTER III. DEAF.

         CHAPTER IV. EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.

         CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

         CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.



         BOOK TENTH.

         CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE
         DES BERNARDINS.

         CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.

         CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.

         CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.

         CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS
         HIS PRAYERS.

         CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.

         CHAPTER VII. CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.



         BOOK ELEVENTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.

         CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)

         CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.

         CHAPTER IV. THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.



         NOTE.

         FOOTNOTES.





      VOLUME I.



      BOOK FIRST.



      CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.

      Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen
      days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the
      bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the
      town ringing a full peal.

      The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which
      history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in
      the event which thus set the bells and the _bourgeois_ of Paris
      in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault by the
      Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led along in procession,
      nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor an entry of
      “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty
      hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris.
      Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century,
      of some plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely two days
      since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish
      ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the
      dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into
      Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, who,
      for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an
      amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
      burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a
      very “pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce,” while a
      driving rain drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.

      What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan
      de Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double
      solemnity, united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the
      Feast of Fools.

      On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a
      maypole at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de
      Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the
      preceding evening at all the cross roads, by the provost’s men,
      clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with
      large white crosses upon their breasts.

      So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their
      houses and shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn,
      towards some one of the three spots designated.

      Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;
      another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the
      good sense of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of
      this crowd directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was
      quite in season, or towards the mystery play, which was to be
      presented in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice (the courts
      of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that the curious
      left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone
      beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of
      Braque.

      The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in
      particular, because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who
      had arrived two days previously, intended to be present at the
      representation of the mystery, and at the election of the Pope of
      the Fools, which was also to take place in the grand hall.

      It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that
      grand hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest
      covered enclosure in the world (it is true that Sauval had not
      yet measured the grand hall of the Château of Montargis). The
      palace place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious
      gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into which five or six
      streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every moment
      fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented
      incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which
      projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the
      irregular basin of the place. In the centre of the lofty
      Gothic[1] façade of the palace, the grand staircase, incessantly
      ascended and descended by a double current, which, after parting
      on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves along
      its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled
      incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The
      cries, the laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet,
      produced a great noise and a great clamor. From time to time,
      this noise and clamor redoubled; the current which drove the
      crowd towards the grand staircase flowed backwards, became
      troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the buffet of
      an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which
      kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the
      provostship has bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to
      the _maréchaussée_, the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of
      Paris.

      Thousands of good, calm, _bourgeois_ faces thronged the windows,
      the doors, the dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace,
      gazing at the populace, and asking nothing more; for many
      Parisians content themselves with the spectacle of the
      spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on becomes
      at once, for us, a very curious thing indeed.

      If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in
      thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to
      enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that
      immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of
      January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either
      interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that
      were so old that they would seem new.

      With the reader’s consent, we will endeavor to retrace in
      thought, the impression which he would have experienced in
      company with us on crossing the threshold of that grand hall, in
      the midst of that tumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless
      jackets, and doublets.

      And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement
      in the eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled
      with wood carving, painted azure, and sown with golden
      fleurs-de-lis; beneath our feet a pavement of black and white
      marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar,
      then another, then another; seven pillars in all, down the length
      of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the double
      vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of the pillars,
      stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel; around
      the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk
      hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the
      hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the
      windows, between the pillars, the interminable row of all the
      kings of France, from Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with
      pendent arms and downcast eyes; the valiant and combative kings,
      with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then in the long,
      pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances
      to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults,
      pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from
      top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination, which,
      a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost
      entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of
      grace, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.

      Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall,
      illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a
      motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies
      round the seven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the
      whole effect of the picture, whose curious details we shall make
      an effort to indicate with more precision.

      It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV.,
      there would have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac
      deposited in the clerk’s office of the Palais de Justice, no
      accomplices interested in causing the said documents to
      disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for lack of better
      means, to burn the clerk’s office in order to burn the documents,
      and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the clerk’s
      office; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. The old
      Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall; I
      should be able to say to the reader, “Go and look at it,” and we
      should thus both escape the necessity,—I of making, and he of
      reading, a description of it, such as it is. Which demonstrates a
      new truth: that great events have incalculable results.

      It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place,
      that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he
      had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two
      other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming
      star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as
      every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the
      seventh of March; second, Théophile’s quatrain,—

    “Sure, ’twas but a sorry game
    When at Paris, Dame Justice,
    Through having eaten too much spice,
    Set the palace all aflame.”

      Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political,
      physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618,
      the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain. Very little to-day
      remains, thanks to this catastrophe,—thanks, above all, to the
      successive restorations which have completed what it spared,—very
      little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France,—of
      that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of
      Philip the Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the
      magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by
      Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of
      the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his
      marriage? the garden where he administered justice, “clad in a
      coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves,
      and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with
      Joinville?” Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and
      that of Charles IV.? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the
      staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated his edict of
      pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de
      Clermont and the Marshal of Champagne, in the presence of the
      dauphin? the wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn,
      and whence those who had brought them departed decked out, in
      derision, in copes and mitres, and making an apology through all
      Paris? and the grand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its
      statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its immense vault, all
      fretted with carvings? and the gilded chamber? and the stone
      lion, which stood at the door, with lowered head and tail between
      his legs, like the lions on the throne of Solomon, in the
      humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of
      justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass? and the
      chased ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and the
      delicate woodwork of Hancy? What has time, what have men done
      with these marvels? What have they given us in return for all
      this Gallic history, for all this Gothic art? The heavy flattened
      arches of M. de Brosse, that awkward architect of the
      Saint-Gervais portal. So much for art; and, as for history, we
      have the gossiping reminiscences of the great pillar, still
      ringing with the tattle of the Patru.

      It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of the
      veritable old palace. The two extremities of this gigantic
      parallelogram were occupied, the one by the famous marble table,
      so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the ancient land
      rolls—in a style that would have given Gargantua an appetite—say,
      “such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world”; the
      other by the chapel where Louis XI. had himself sculptured on his
      knees before the Virgin, and whither he caused to be brought,
      without heeding the two gaps thus made in the row of royal
      statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, two
      saints whom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings
      of France. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six
      years, was entirely in that charming taste of delicate
      architecture, of marvellous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing,
      which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and which is
      perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the
      fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose
      window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a
      masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced it
      a star of lace.

      In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of
      gold brocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to
      which had been effected through a window in the corridor of the
      gold chamber, had been erected for the Flemish emissaries and the
      other great personages invited to the presentation of the mystery
      play.

      It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted,
      as usual. It had been arranged for the purpose, early in the
      morning; its rich slabs of marble, all scratched by the heels of
      law clerks, supported a cage of carpenter’s work of considerable
      height, the upper surface of which, within view of the whole
      hall, was to serve as the theatre, and whose interior, masked by
      tapestries, was to take the place of dressing-rooms for the
      personages of the piece. A ladder, naively placed on the outside,
      was to serve as means of communication between the dressing-room
      and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to entrances as well as to
      exits. There was no personage, however unexpected, no sudden
      change, no theatrical effect, which was not obliged to mount that
      ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and contrivances!

      Four of the bailiff of the palace’s sergeants, perfunctory
      guardians of all the pleasures of the people, on days of festival
      as well as on days of execution, stood at the four corners of the
      marble table.

      The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great
      palace clock sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a
      theatrical representation, but they had been obliged to fix the
      hour to suit the convenience of the ambassadors.

      Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A
      goodly number of curious, good people had been shivering since
      daybreak before the grand staircase of the palace; some even
      affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of
      the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the
      first to pass in. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and,
      like water, which rises above its normal level, began to mount
      along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to spread out on
      the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, on all
      the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of the
      sculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty
      of a day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth
      for all sorts of causes—a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the
      fatigue of long waiting—had already, long before the hour
      appointed for the arrival of the ambassadors, imparted a harsh
      and bitter accent to the clamor of these people who were shut in,
      fitted into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled. Nothing
      was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish, the provost of
      the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the
      courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their
      rods, the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop of Paris,
      the Pope of the Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed
      door, that open window; all to the vast amusement of a band of
      scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, who mingled with
      all this discontent their teasing remarks, and their malicious
      suggestions, and pricked the general bad temper with a pin, so to
      speak.

      Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, after
      smashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily on
      the entablature, and from that point despatched their gaze and
      their railleries both within and without, upon the throng in the
      hall, and the throng upon the Place. It was easy to see, from
      their parodied gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering
      appeals which they exchanged with their comrades, from one end of
      the hall to the other, that these young clerks did not share the
      weariness and fatigue of the rest of the spectators, and that
      they understood very well the art of extracting, for their own
      private diversion from that which they had under their eyes, a
      spectacle which made them await the other with patience.

      “Upon my soul, so it’s you, ‘Joannes Frollo de Molendino!’” cried
      one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a
      well-favored and malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus
      leaves of a capital; “you are well named John of the Mill, for
      your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings
      fluttering on the breeze. How long have you been here?”

      “By the mercy of the devil,” retorted Joannes Frollo, “these four
      hours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my
      credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of
      Sicily intone the first verse of seven o’clock mass in the
      Sainte-Chapelle.”

      “Fine singers!” replied the other, “with voices even more pointed
      than their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John,
      the king should have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes
      Latin droned out in a Provençal accent.”

      “He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of
      the King of Sicily!” cried an old woman sharply from among the
      crowd beneath the window. “I just put it to you! A thousand
      _livres parisi_ for a mass! and out of the tax on sea fish in the
      markets of Paris, to boot!”

      “Peace, old crone,” said a tall, grave person, stopping up his
      nose on the side towards the fishwife; “a mass had to be founded.
      Would you wish the king to fall ill again?”

      “Bravely spoken, Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of king’s
      robes!” cried the little student, clinging to the capital.

      A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky
      name of the poor furrier of the king’s robes.

      “Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!” said some.

      “_Cornutus et hirsutus_, horned and hairy,” another went on.

      “He! of course,” continued the small imp on the capital, “What
      are they laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother
      of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the king’s house, son of
      Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of the Bois de Vincennes,—all
      _bourgeois_ of Paris, all married, from father to son.”

      The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in
      reply, tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all
      sides; but he perspired and panted in vain; like a wedge entering
      the wood, his efforts served only to bury still more deeply in
      the shoulders of his neighbors, his large, apoplectic face,
      purple with spite and rage.

      At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself,
      came to his rescue.

      “Abomination! scholars addressing a _bourgeois_ in that fashion
      in my day would have been flogged with a fagot, which would have
      afterwards been used to burn them.”

      The whole band burst into laughter.

      “Holà hé! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil
      fortune?”

      “Hold, I know him” said one of them; “’tis Master Andry Musnier.”

      “Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the
      university!” said the other.

      “Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a third; “the four
      nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four
      procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers.”

      “Well,” began Jean Frollo once more, “we must play the devil with
      them.”[2]

      “Musnier, we’ll burn your books.”

      “Musnier, we’ll beat your lackeys.”

      “Musnier, we’ll kiss your wife.”

      “That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde.”

      “Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow.”

      “Devil take you!” growled Master Andry Musnier.

      “Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his
      capital, “hold your tongue, or I’ll drop on your head!”

      Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the
      height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally
      multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained
      silent.

      Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:

      “That’s what I’ll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!”

      “Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused
      our privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However,
      there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of
      the Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the
      university, nothing!”

      “Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!”
      interposed one of the clerks established on the window-sill.

      “Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!” cried
      Joannes.

      “We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard,” went
      on the other, “made of Master Andry’s books.”

      “And the desks of the scribes!” added his neighbor.

      “And the beadles’ wands!”

      “And the spittoons of the deans!”

      “And the cupboards of the procurators!”

      “And the hutches of the electors!”

      “And the stools of the rector!”

      “Down with them!” put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; “down
      with Master Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians,
      the doctors and the decretists; the procurators, the electors and
      the rector!”

      “The end of the world has come!” muttered Master Andry, stopping
      up his ears.

      “By the way, there’s the rector! see, he is passing through the
      Place,” cried one of those in the window.

      Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the
      Place.

      “Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?” demanded
      Jehan Frollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the
      inner pillars, could not see what was going on outside.

      “Yes, yes,” replied all the others, “it is really he, Master
      Thibaut, the rector.”

      It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of the
      university, who were marching in procession in front of the
      embassy, and at that moment traversing the Place. The students
      crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed with
      sarcasms and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking at
      the head of his company, had to support the first broadside; it
      was severe.

      “Good day, monsieur le recteur! Holà hé! good day there!”

      “How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned
      his dice?”

      “How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as
      his!”

      “Holà hé! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! _Tybalde
      aleator_! Old fool! old gambler!”

      “God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?”

      “Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the
      love of gambling and of dice!”

      “Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, _Tybalde ad
      dados_, with your back turned to the university, and trotting
      towards the town?”

      “He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue
      Thibautodé?”[3] cried Jehan du M. Moulin.

      The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder,
      clapping their hands furiously.

      “You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé, are you
      not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?”

      Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.

      “Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!”

      “Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?”

      “He is Gilbert de Suilly, _Gilbertus de Soliaco_, the chancellor
      of the College of Autun.”

      “Hold on, here’s my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it
      in his face.”

      “_Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces_.”

      “Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!”

      “Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese
      given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the fief of Roogny.”

      “Down with the doctors!”

      “Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!”

      “My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève! You have done me
      a wrong. ’Tis true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to
      little Ascanio Falzapada, who comes from the province of Bourges,
      since he is an Italian.”

      “That is an injustice,” said all the scholars. “Down with the
      Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève!”

      “Ho hé! Master Joachim de Ladehors! Ho hé! Louis Dahuille! Ho hé
      Lambert Hoctement!”

      “May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation!”

      “And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray
      _amices; cum tunices grisis_!”

      “_Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis_!”

      “Holà hé! Masters of Arts! All the beautiful black copes! all the
      fine red copes!”

      “They make a fine tail for the rector.”

      “One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way to his
      bridal with the sea.”

      “Say, Jehan! here are the canons of Sainte-Geneviève!”

      “To the deuce with the whole set of canons!”

      “Abbé Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart! Are you in search of
      Marie la Giffarde?”

      “She is in the Rue de Glatigny.”

      “She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees.”

      “She is paying her four deniers[4] _quatuor denarios_.”

      “_Aut unum bombum_.”

      “Would you like to have her pay you in the face?”

      “Comrades! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Picardy, with his
      wife on the crupper!”

      “_Post equitem sedet atra cura_—behind the horseman sits black
      care.”

      “Courage, Master Simon!”

      “Good day, Mister Elector!”

      “Good night, Madame Electress!”

      “How happy they are to see all that!” sighed Joannes de
      Molendino, still perched in the foliage of his capital.

      Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master Andry
      Musnier, was inclining his ear to the furrier of the king’s
      robes, Master Gilles Lecornu.

      “I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has
      ever beheld such outbreaks among the students! It is the accursed
      inventions of this century that are ruining
      everything,—artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that
      other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing
      will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing
      nigh.”

      “I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,” said
      the fur-merchant.

      At this moment, midday sounded.

      “Ha!” exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice.

      The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued; a
      vast movement of feet, hands, and heads; a general outbreak of
      coughs and handkerchiefs; each one arranged himself, assumed his
      post, raised himself up, and grouped himself. Then came a great
      silence; all necks remained outstretched, all mouths remained
      open, all glances were directed towards the marble table. Nothing
      made its appearance there. The bailiff’s four sergeants were
      still there, stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes
      turned to the estrade reserved for the Flemish envoys. The door
      remained closed, the platform empty. This crowd had been waiting
      since daybreak for three things: noonday, the embassy from
      Flanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time.

      On this occasion, it was too much.

      They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour;
      nothing came. The dais remained empty, the theatre dumb. In the
      meantime, wrath had succeeded to impatience. Irritated words
      circulated in a low tone, still, it is true. “The mystery! the
      mystery!” they murmured, in hollow voices. Heads began to
      ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as
      yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du
      Moulin who struck the first spark from it.

      “The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings!” he exclaimed
      at the full force of his lungs, twining like a serpent around his
      pillar.

      The crowd clapped their hands.

      “The mystery!” it repeated, “and may all the devils take
      Flanders!”

      “We must have the mystery instantly,” resumed the student; “or
      else, my advice is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts,
      by way of a morality and a comedy.”

      “Well said,” cried the people, “and let us begin the hanging with
      his sergeants.”

      A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn
      pale, and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards
      them, and they already beheld the frail wooden railing, which
      separated them from it, giving way and bending before the
      pressure of the throng.

      It was a critical moment.

      “To the sack, to the sack!” rose the cry on all sides.

      At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have
      described above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage,
      the mere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed
      its wrath into curiosity as by enchantment.

      “Silence! silence!”

      The personage, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb,
      advanced to the edge of the marble table with a vast amount of
      bows, which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more and more
      resembled genuflections.

      In the meanwhile, tranquillity had gradually been restored. All
      that remained was that slight murmur which always rises above the
      silence of a crowd.

      “Messieurs the _bourgeois_,” said he, “and mesdemoiselles the
      _bourgeoises_, we shall have the honor of declaiming and
      representing, before his eminence, monsieur the cardinal, a very
      beautiful morality which has for its title, ‘The Good Judgment of
      Madame the Virgin Mary.’ I am to play Jupiter. His eminence is,
      at this moment, escorting the very honorable embassy of the Duke
      of Austria; which is detained, at present, listening to the
      harangue of monsieur the rector of the university, at the gate
      Baudets. As soon as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal,
      arrives, we will begin.”

      It is certain, that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter
      was required to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the
      bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented
      this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence,
      responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against
      us that the classic precept, _Nec deus intersit_, could be
      invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very
      handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd,
      by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of
      mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; and had it not
      been for the rouge, and the huge red beard, each of which covered
      one-half of his face,—had it not been for the roll of gilded
      cardboard, spangled, and all bristling with strips of tinsel,
      which he held in his hand, and in which the eyes of the initiated
      easily recognized thunderbolts,—had not his feet been
      flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might
      have borne comparison, so far as the severity of his mien was
      concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de
      Berry.



      CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

      Nevertheless, as he harangued them, the satisfaction and
      admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by
      his words; and when he reached that untoward conclusion: “As soon
      as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will
      begin,” his voice was drowned in a thunder of hooting.

      “Begin instantly! The mystery! the mystery immediately!” shrieked
      the people. And above all the voices, that of Johannes de
      Molendino was audible, piercing the uproar like the fife’s
      derisive serenade: “Commence instantly!” yelped the scholar.

      “Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!” vociferated
      Robin Poussepain and the other clerks perched in the window.

      “The morality this very instant!” repeated the crowd; “this very
      instant! the sack and the rope for the comedians, and the
      cardinal!”

      Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge,
      dropped his thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand; then he bowed
      and trembled and stammered: “His eminence—the ambassadors—Madame
      Marguerite of Flanders—.” He did not know what to say. In truth,
      he was afraid of being hung.

      Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not
      having waited, he saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss;
      that is to say, a gallows.

      Luckily, some one came to rescue him from his embarrassment, and
      assume the responsibility.

      An individual who was standing beyond the railing, in the free
      space around the marble table, and whom no one had yet caught
      sight of, since his long, thin body was completely sheltered from
      every visual ray by the diameter of the pillar against which he
      was leaning; this individual, we say, tall, gaunt, pallid, blond,
      still young, although already wrinkled about the brow and cheeks,
      with brilliant eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in garments of
      black serge, worn and shining with age, approached the marble
      table, and made a sign to the poor sufferer. But the other was so
      confused that he did not see him. The new comer advanced another
      step.

      “Jupiter,” said he, “my dear Jupiter!”

      The other did not hear.

      At last, the tall blond, driven out of patience, shrieked almost
      in his face,—

      “Michel Giborne!”

      “Who calls me?” said Jupiter, as though awakened with a start.

      “I,” replied the person clad in black.

      “Ah!” said Jupiter.

      “Begin at once,” went on the other. “Satisfy the populace; I
      undertake to appease the bailiff, who will appease monsieur the
      cardinal.”

      Jupiter breathed once more.

      “Messeigneurs the _bourgeois_,” he cried, at the top of his lungs
      to the crowd, which continued to hoot him, “we are going to begin
      at once.”

      “_Evoe Jupiter! Plaudite cives_! All hail, Jupiter! Applaud,
      citizens!” shouted the scholars.

      “Noël! Noël! good, good,” shouted the people.

      The hand clapping was deafening, and Jupiter had already
      withdrawn under his tapestry, while the hall still trembled with
      acclamations.

      In the meanwhile, the personage who had so magically turned the
      tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it,
      had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and
      would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless, and
      mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve by two
      young women, who, standing in the front row of the spectators,
      had noticed his colloquy with Michel Giborne-Jupiter.

      “Master,” said one of them, making him a sign to approach.

      “Hold your tongue, my dear Liénarde,” said her neighbor, pretty,
      fresh, and very brave, in consequence of being dressed up in her
      best attire. “He is not a clerk, he is a layman; you must not say
      master to him, but messire.”

      “Messire,” said Liénarde.

      The stranger approached the railing.

      “What would you have of me, damsels?” he asked, with alacrity.

      “Oh! nothing,” replied Liénarde, in great confusion; “it is my
      neighbor, Gisquette la Gencienne, who wishes to speak with you.”

      “Not so,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde who
      called you master; I only told her to say messire.”

      The two young girls dropped their eyes. The man, who asked
      nothing better than to enter into conversation, looked at them
      with a smile.

      “So you have nothing to say to me, damsels?”

      “Oh! nothing at all,” replied Gisquette.

      “Nothing,” said Liénarde.

      The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step; but the two
      curious maidens had no mind to let slip their prize.

      “Messire,” said Gisquette, with the impetuosity of an open
      sluice, or of a woman who has made up her mind, “do you know that
      soldier who is to play the part of Madame the Virgin in the
      mystery?”

      “You mean the part of Jupiter?” replied the stranger.

      “Hé! yes,” said Liénarde, “isn’t she stupid? So you know
      Jupiter?”

      “Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown; “yes, madam.”

      “He has a fine beard!” said Liénarde.

      “Will what they are about to say here be fine?” inquired
      Gisquette, timidly.

      “Very fine, mademoiselle,” replied the unknown, without the
      slightest hesitation.

      “What is it to be?” said Liénarde.

      “‘The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,’—a morality, if you
      please, damsel.”

      “Ah! that makes a difference,” responded Liénarde.

      A brief silence ensued—broken by the stranger.

      “It is a perfectly new morality, and one which has never yet been
      played.”

      “Then it is not the same one,” said Gisquette, “that was given
      two years ago, on the day of the entrance of monsieur the legate,
      and where three handsome maids played the parts—”

      “Of sirens,” said Liénarde.

      “And all naked,” added the young man.

      Liénarde lowered her eyes modestly. Gisquette glanced at her and
      did the same. He continued, with a smile,—

      “It was a very pleasant thing to see. To-day it is a morality
      made expressly for Madame the Demoiselle of Flanders.”

      “Will they sing shepherd songs?” inquired Gisquette.

      “Fie!” said the stranger, “in a morality? you must not confound
      styles. If it were a farce, well and good.”

      “That is a pity,” resumed Gisquette. “That day, at the Ponceau
      Fountain, there were wild men and women, who fought and assumed
      many aspects, as they sang little motets and bergerettes.”

      “That which is suitable for a legate,” returned the stranger,
      with a good deal of dryness, “is not suitable for a princess.”

      “And beside them,” resumed Liénarde, “played many brass
      instruments, making great melodies.”

      “And for the refreshment of the passers-by,” continued Gisquette,
      “the fountain spouted through three mouths, wine, milk, and
      hippocrass, of which every one drank who wished.”

      “And a little below the Ponceau, at the Trinity,” pursued
      Liénarde, “there was a passion performed, and without any
      speaking.”

      “How well I remember that!” exclaimed Gisquette; “God on the
      cross, and the two thieves on the right and the left.” Here the
      young gossips, growing warm at the memory of the entrance of
      monsieur the legate, both began to talk at once.

      “And, further on, at the Painters’ Gate, there were other
      personages, very richly clad.”

      “And at the fountain of Saint-Innocent, that huntsman, who was
      chasing a hind with great clamor of dogs and hunting-horns.”

      “And, at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages, representing the
      fortress of Dieppe!”

      “And when the legate passed, you remember, Gisquette? they made
      the assault, and the English all had their throats cut.”

      “And against the gate of the Châtelet, there were very fine
      personages!”

      “And on the Port au Change, which was all draped above!”

      “And when the legate passed, they let fly on the bridge more than
      two hundred sorts of birds; wasn’t it beautiful, Liénarde?”

      “It will be better to-day,” finally resumed their interlocutor,
      who seemed to listen to them with impatience.

      “Do you promise us that this mystery will be fine?” said
      Gisquette.

      “Without doubt,” he replied; then he added, with a certain
      emphasis,—“I am the author of it, damsels.”

      “Truly?” said the young girls, quite taken aback.

      “Truly!” replied the poet, bridling a little; “that is, to say,
      there are two of us; Jehan Marchand, who has sawed the planks and
      erected the framework of the theatre and the woodwork; and I, who
      have made the piece. My name is Pierre Gringoire.”

      The author of the “Cid” could not have said “Pierre Corneille”
      with more pride.

      Our readers have been able to observe, that a certain amount of
      time must have already elapsed from the moment when Jupiter had
      retired beneath the tapestry to the instant when the author of
      the new morality had thus abruptly revealed himself to the
      innocent admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde. Remarkable fact:
      that whole crowd, so tumultuous but a few moments before, now
      waited amiably on the word of the comedian; which proves the
      eternal truth, still experienced every day in our theatres, that
      the best means of making the public wait patiently is to assure
      them that one is about to begin instantly.

      However, scholar Johannes had not fallen asleep.

      “Holà hé!” he shouted suddenly, in the midst of the peaceable
      waiting which had followed the tumult. “Jupiter, Madame the
      Virgin, buffoons of the devil! are you jeering at us? The piece!
      the piece! commence or we will commence again!”

      This was all that was needed.

      The music of high and low instruments immediately became audible
      from the interior of the stage; the tapestry was raised; four
      personages, in motley attire and painted faces, emerged from it,
      climbed the steep ladder of the theatre, and, arrived upon the
      upper platform, arranged themselves in a line before the public,
      whom they saluted with profound reverences; then the symphony
      ceased.

      The mystery was about to begin.

      The four personages, after having reaped a rich reward of
      applause for their reverences, began, in the midst of profound
      silence, a prologue, which we gladly spare the reader. Moreover,
      as happens in our own day, the public was more occupied with the
      costumes that the actors wore than with the roles that they were
      enacting; and, in truth, they were right. All four were dressed
      in parti-colored robes of yellow and white, which were
      distinguished from each other only by the nature of the stuff;
      the first was of gold and silver brocade; the second, of silk;
      the third, of wool; the fourth, of linen. The first of these
      personages carried in his right hand a sword; the second, two
      golden keys; the third, a pair of scales; the fourth, a spade:
      and, in order to aid sluggish minds which would not have seen
      clearly through the transparency of these attributes, there was
      to be read, in large, black letters, on the hem of the robe of
      brocade, MY NAME IS NOBILITY; on the hem of the silken robe, MY
      NAME IS CLERGY; on the hem of the woolen robe, MY NAME IS
      MERCHANDISE; on the hem of the linen robe, MY NAME IS LABOR. The
      sex of the two male characters was briefly indicated to every
      judicious spectator, by their shorter robes, and by the cap which
      they wore on their heads; while the two female characters, less
      briefly clad, were covered with hoods.

      Much ill-will would also have been required, not to comprehend,
      through the medium of the poetry of the prologue, that Labor was
      wedded to Merchandise, and Clergy to Nobility, and that the two
      happy couples possessed in common a magnificent golden dolphin,
      which they desired to adjudge to the fairest only. So they were
      roaming about the world seeking and searching for this beauty,
      and, after having successively rejected the Queen of Golconda,
      the Princess of Trebizonde, the daughter of the Grand Khan of
      Tartary, etc., Labor and Clergy, Nobility and Merchandise, had
      come to rest upon the marble table of the Palais de Justice, and
      to utter, in the presence of the honest audience, as many
      sentences and maxims as could then be dispensed at the Faculty of
      Arts, at examinations, sophisms, determinances, figures, and
      acts, where the masters took their degrees.

      All this was, in fact, very fine.

      Nevertheless, in that throng, upon which the four allegories vied
      with each other in pouring out floods of metaphors, there was no
      ear more attentive, no heart that palpitated more, not an eye was
      more haggard, no neck more outstretched, than the eye, the ear,
      the neck, and the heart of the author, of the poet, of that brave
      Pierre Gringoire, who had not been able to resist, a moment
      before, the joy of telling his name to two pretty girls. He had
      retreated a few paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he
      listened, looked, enjoyed. The amiable applause which had greeted
      the beginning of his prologue was still echoing in his bosom, and
      he was completely absorbed in that species of ecstatic
      contemplation with which an author beholds his ideas fall, one by
      one, from the mouth of the actor into the vast silence of the
      audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire!

      It pains us to say it, but this first ecstasy was speedily
      disturbed. Hardly had Gringoire raised this intoxicating cup of
      joy and triumph to his lips, when a drop of bitterness was
      mingled with it.

      A tattered mendicant, who could not collect any coins, lost as he
      was in the midst of the crowd, and who had not probably found
      sufficient indemnity in the pockets of his neighbors, had hit
      upon the idea of perching himself upon some conspicuous point, in
      order to attract looks and alms. He had, accordingly, hoisted
      himself, during the first verses of the prologue, with the aid of
      the pillars of the reserve gallery, to the cornice which ran
      round the balustrade at its lower edge; and there he had seated
      himself, soliciting the attention and the pity of the multitude,
      with his rags and a hideous sore which covered his right arm.
      However, he uttered not a word.

      The silence which he preserved allowed the prologue to proceed
      without hindrance, and no perceptible disorder would have ensued,
      if ill-luck had not willed that the scholar Joannes should catch
      sight, from the heights of his pillar, of the mendicant and his
      grimaces. A wild fit of laughter took possession of the young
      scamp, who, without caring that he was interrupting the
      spectacle, and disturbing the universal composure, shouted
      boldly,—

      “Look! see that sickly creature asking alms!”

      Any one who has thrown a stone into a frog pond, or fired a shot
      into a covey of birds, can form an idea of the effect produced by
      these incongruous words, in the midst of the general attention.
      It made Gringoire shudder as though it had been an electric
      shock. The prologue stopped short, and all heads turned
      tumultuously towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted
      by this, saw, in this incident, a good opportunity for reaping
      his harvest, and who began to whine in a doleful way, half
      closing his eyes the while,—“Charity, please!”

      “Well—upon my soul,” resumed Joannes, “it’s Clopin Trouillefou!
      Holà hé, my friend, did your sore bother you on the leg, that you
      have transferred it to your arm?” So saying, with the dexterity
      of a monkey, he flung a bit of silver into the gray felt hat
      which the beggar held in his ailing arm. The mendicant received
      both the alms and the sarcasm without wincing, and continued, in
      lamentable tones,—

      “Charity, please!”

      This episode considerably distracted the attention of the
      audience; and a goodly number of spectators, among them Robin
      Poussepain, and all the clerks at their head, gayly applauded
      this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with his shrill voice,
      and the mendicant had just improvised in the middle of the
      prologue.

      Gringoire was highly displeased. On recovering from his first
      stupefaction, he bestirred himself to shout, to the four
      personages on the stage, “Go on! What the devil!—go on!”—without
      even deigning to cast a glance of disdain upon the two
      interrupters.

      At that moment, he felt some one pluck at the hem of his surtout;
      he turned round, and not without ill-humor, and found
      considerable difficulty in smiling; but he was obliged to do so,
      nevertheless. It was the pretty arm of Gisquette la Gencienne,
      which, passed through the railing, was soliciting his attention
      in this manner.

      “Monsieur,” said the young girl, “are they going to continue?”

      “Of course,” replied Gringoire, a good deal shocked by the
      question.

      “In that case, messire,” she resumed, “would you have the
      courtesy to explain to me—”

      “What they are about to say?” interrupted Gringoire. “Well,
      listen.”

      “No,” said Gisquette, “but what they have said so far.”

      Gringoire started, like a man whose wound has been probed to the
      quick.

      “A plague on the stupid and dull-witted little girl!” he
      muttered, between his teeth.

      From that moment forth, Gisquette was nothing to him.

      In the meantime, the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the
      public, seeing that they were beginning to speak again, began
      once more to listen, not without having lost many beauties in the
      sort of soldered joint which was formed between the two portions
      of the piece thus abruptly cut short. Gringoire commented on it
      bitterly to himself. Nevertheless, tranquillity was gradually
      restored, the scholar held his peace, the mendicant counted over
      some coins in his hat, and the piece resumed the upper hand.

      It was, in fact, a very fine work, and one which, as it seems to
      us, might be put to use to-day, by the aid of a little
      rearrangement. The exposition, rather long and rather empty, that
      is to say, according to the rules, was simple; and Gringoire, in
      the candid sanctuary of his own conscience, admired its
      clearness. As the reader may surmise, the four allegorical
      personages were somewhat weary with having traversed the three
      sections of the world, without having found suitable opportunity
      for getting rid of their golden dolphin. Thereupon a eulogy of
      the marvellous fish, with a thousand delicate allusions to the
      young betrothed of Marguerite of Flanders, then sadly cloistered
      in at Amboise, and without a suspicion that Labor and Clergy,
      Nobility and Merchandise had just made the circuit of the world
      in his behalf. The said dauphin was then young, was handsome, was
      stout, and, above all (magnificent origin of all royal virtues),
      he was the son of the Lion of France. I declare that this bold
      metaphor is admirable, and that the natural history of the
      theatre, on a day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in
      the least startled by a dolphin who is the son of a lion. It is
      precisely these rare and Pindaric mixtures which prove the poet’s
      enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in order to play the part of critic
      also, the poet might have developed this beautiful idea in
      something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the
      mystery was to last from noon until four o’clock, in accordance
      with the orders of monsieur the provost, and that it was
      necessary to say something. Besides, the people listened
      patiently.

      All at once, in the very middle of a quarrel between Mademoiselle
      Merchandise and Madame Nobility, at the moment when Monsieur
      Labor was giving utterance to this wonderful line,—

    In forest ne’er was seen a more triumphant beast;

      the door of the reserved gallery which had hitherto remained so
      inopportunely closed, opened still more inopportunely; and the
      ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, “His eminence,
      Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”



      CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

      Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the
      Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the
      detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy,
      which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of
      September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the
      explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple,
      would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic
      moment, than these few words, which fell from the lips of the
      usher, “His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

      It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained
      monsieur the cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the
      audacity for that. A true eclectic, as it would be expressed
      nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate and
      calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves amid all
      circumstances (_stare in dimidio rerum_), and who are full of
      reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by
      cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of
      philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have
      given a clew of thread which they have been walking along
      unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth
      of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that
      is to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning
      our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth
      century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which
      he deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father
      du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime
      words, worthy of all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a
      Parrhisian in language, for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies
      liberty of speech; of which I have made use even towards
      messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to Monsieur the
      Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and
      without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.”

      There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for
      his presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre
      Gringoire. Quite the contrary; our poet had too much good sense
      and too threadbare a coat, not to attach particular importance to
      having the numerous allusions in his prologue, and, in
      particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son of the Lion of
      France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not interest
      which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that
      the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten; it
      is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it,
      as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to
      nine parts of self-esteem.

      Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the
      cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and
      expanded by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of
      prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though
      stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just
      remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious
      ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity,
      without which they would not touch the earth. Gringoire enjoyed
      seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire assembly (of
      knaves, it is true, but what matters that?) stupefied, petrified,
      and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable
      tirades which welled up every instant from all parts of his
      bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and
      that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who, at the presentation
      of his comedy of the “Florentine,” asked, “Who is the ill-bred
      lout who made that rhapsody?” Gringoire would gladly have
      inquired of his neighbor, “Whose masterpiece is this?”

      The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the
      abrupt and unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.

      That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The
      entrance of his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned
      towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to hear one’s
      self. “The cardinal! The cardinal!” repeated all mouths. The
      unhappy prologue stopped short for the second time.

      The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade.
      While he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the
      audience, the tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a
      better view of him. Each man vied with the other in thrusting his
      head over his neighbor’s shoulder.

      He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well
      worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop
      and Comte of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis
      XI., through his brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had
      married the king’s eldest daughter, and to Charles the Bold
      through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. Now, the dominating trait,
      the peculiar and distinctive trait of the character of the
      Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and
      devotion to the powers that be. The reader can form an idea of
      the numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had
      caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his
      spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer
      shipwreck on either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that
      Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de Nemours and the Constable
      de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had made the voyage
      successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But
      although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he
      never recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political
      career, so long uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit
      of saying that the year 1476 had been “white and black” for
      him—meaning thereby, that in the course of that year he had lost
      his mother, the Duchesse de la Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the
      Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the
      other.

      Nevertheless, he was a fine man; he led a joyous cardinal’s life,
      liked to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Challuau, did
      not hate Richarde la Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, bestowed
      alms on pretty girls rather than on old women,—and for all these
      reasons was very agreeable to the _populace_ of Paris. He never
      went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops
      and abbés of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to
      carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout
      women of Saint Germain d’ Auxerre, when passing at night beneath
      the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized
      to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during
      the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic
      proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown
      to the Tiara—_Bibamus papaliter_.

      It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved
      him on his entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the
      mob, which had been so displeased but a moment before, and very
      little disposed to respect a cardinal on the very day when it was
      to elect a pope. But the Parisians cherish little rancor; and
      then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority,
      the good _bourgeois_ had got the upper hand of the cardinal, and
      this triumph was sufficient for them. Moreover, the Cardinal de
      Bourbon was a handsome man,—he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he
      carried off very well,—that is to say, he had all the women on
      his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience.
      Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal
      for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man,
      and when he wears his scarlet robe well.

      He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary
      smile of the great for the people, and directed his course slowly
      towards his scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of
      something quite different. His cortege—what we should nowadays
      call his staff—of bishops and abbés invaded the estrade in his
      train, not without causing redoubled tumult and curiosity among
      the audience. Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them
      out and naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one
      of them: this one, the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my
      memory serves me right);—this one, the primicier of
      Saint-Denis;—this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbé of
      Saint-Germain des Prés, that libertine brother of a mistress of
      Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities. As for the
      scholars, they swore. This was their day, their feast of fools,
      their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of law
      clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was not
      sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the
      crowd—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnès la Gadine, and Rabine Piédebou.
      Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one’s ease and
      revile the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good
      company as dignitaries of the church and loose women? So they did
      not abstain; and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a
      frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the
      unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students restrained
      during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot iron of Saint
      Louis. Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at defiance in his own
      court of law! Each one of them selected from the new-comers on
      the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his
      target. Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to
      an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening
      tones, with his impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, “_Cappa
      repleta mero_!”

      All these details which we here lay bare for the edification of
      the reader, were so covered by the general uproar, that they were
      lost in it before reaching the reserved platforms; moreover, they
      would have moved the cardinal but little, so much a part of the
      customs were the liberties of that day. Moreover, he had another
      cause for solicitude, and his mien as wholly preoccupied with it,
      which entered the estrade the same time as himself; this was the
      embassy from Flanders.

      Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing
      trouble about the possible consequences of the marriage of his
      cousin Marguerite de Bourgoyne to his cousin Charles, Dauphin de
      Vienne; nor as to how long the good understanding which had been
      patched up between the Duke of Austria and the King of France
      would last; nor how the King of England would take this disdain
      of his daughter. All that troubled him but little; and he gave a
      warm reception every evening to the wine of the royal vintage of
      Chaillot, without a suspicion that several flasks of that same
      wine (somewhat revised and corrected, it is true, by Doctor
      Coictier), cordially offered to Edward IV. by Louis XI., would,
      some fine morning, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. “The much honored
      embassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria,” brought the cardinal
      none of these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. It
      was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on
      the second page of this book,—for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be
      obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what
      _bourgeois_;—for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen;—for him, a
      Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish
      beer-drinkers,—and that in public! This was, certainly, one of
      the most irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good
      pleasure of the king.

      So he turned toward the door, and with the best grace in the
      world (so well had he trained himself to it), when the usher
      announced, in a sonorous voice, “Messieurs the Envoys of Monsieur
      the Duke of Austria.” It is useless to add that the whole hall
      did the same.

      Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a contrast in
      the midst of the frisky ecclesiastical escort of Charles de
      Bourbon, the eight and forty ambassadors of Maximilian of
      Austria, having at their head the reverend Father in God, Jehan,
      Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and
      Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff of Ghent. A deep
      silence settled over the assembly, accompanied by stifled
      laughter at the preposterous names and all the _bourgeois_
      designations which each of these personages transmitted with
      imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and
      titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were
      Master Loys Roelof, alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire
      Clays d’Etuelde, alderman of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust,
      Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders; Master Jehan
      Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de
      la Moere, first alderman of the kuere of the city of Ghent;
      Master Gheldolf van der Hage, first alderman of the _parchons_ of
      the said town; and the Sieur de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock,
      and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.; bailiffs, aldermen,
      burgomasters; burgomasters, aldermen, bailiffs—all stiff,
      affectedly grave, formal, dressed out in velvet and damask,
      hooded with caps of black velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold
      thread; good Flemish heads, after all, severe and worthy faces,
      of the family which Rembrandt makes to stand out so strong and
      grave from the black background of his “Night Patrol”; personages
      all of whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of
      Austria had done well in “trusting implicitly,” as the manifest
      ran, “in their sense, valor, experience, loyalty, and good
      wisdom.”

      There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelligent,
      crafty-looking face, a sort of combined monkey and diplomat phiz,
      before whom the cardinal made three steps and a profound bow, and
      whose name, nevertheless, was only, “Guillaume Rym, counsellor
      and pensioner of the City of Ghent.”

      Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Rym was. A rare genius
      who in a time of revolution would have made a brilliant
      appearance on the surface of events, but who in the fifteenth
      century was reduced to cavernous intrigues, and to “living in
      mines,” as the Duc de Saint-Simon expresses it. Nevertheless, he
      was appreciated by the “miner” of Europe; he plotted familiarly
      with Louis XI., and often lent a hand to the king’s secret jobs.
      All which things were quite unknown to that throng, who were
      amazed at the cardinal’s politeness to that frail figure of a
      Flemish bailiff.



      CHAPTER IV. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

      While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging
      very low bows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of
      lofty stature, with a large face and broad shoulders, presented
      himself, in order to enter abreast with Guillaume Rym; one would
      have pronounced him a bull-dog by the side of a fox. His felt
      doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the velvet and silk
      which surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom who had
      stolen in, the usher stopped him.

      “Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!”

      The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.

      “What does this knave want with me?” said he, in stentorian
      tones, which rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange
      colloquy. “Don’t you see that I am one of them?”

      “Your name?” demanded the usher.

      “Jacques Coppenole.”

      “Your titles?”

      “Hosier at the sign of the ‘Three Little Chains,’ of Ghent.”

      The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce
      aldermen and burgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The
      cardinal was on thorns. All the people were staring and
      listening. For two days his eminence had been exerting his utmost
      efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape, and to render
      them a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was
      startling. But Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached
      the usher.

      “Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the
      city of Ghent,” he whispered, very low.

      “Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master Jacques
      Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of
      Ghent.”

      This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away
      the difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.

      “No, cross of God?” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder,
      “Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more,
      nothing less. Cross of God! hosier; that’s fine enough. Monsieur
      the Archduke has more than once sought his _gant_[5] in my hose.”

      Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in
      Paris, and, consequently, always applauded.

      Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the
      auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the
      communication between him and them had been prompt, electric,
      and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish
      hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these
      plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and
      indistinct in the fifteenth century.

      This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before
      monsieur the cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows
      habituated to respect and obedience towards the underlings of the
      sergeants of the bailiff of Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s
      train-bearer.

      Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute
      of the all-powerful _bourgeois_ feared by Louis XI. Then, while
      Guillaume Rym, a “sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines
      puts it, watched them both with a smile of raillery and
      superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal quite abashed
      and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no
      doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other, after
      all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom
      Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less
      afraid of the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a
      cardinal who would have stirred up a revolt among the men of
      Ghent against the favorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold;
      it is not a cardinal who could have fortified the populace with a
      word against her tears and prayers, when the Maid of Flanders
      came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at the very
      foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to raise his
      leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most
      illustrious seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume
      Hugonet.

      Nevertheless, all was over for the poor cardinal, and he was
      obliged to quaff to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such bad
      company.

      The reader has, probably, not forgotten the impudent beggar who
      had been clinging fast to the fringes of the cardinal’s gallery
      ever since the beginning of the prologue. The arrival of the
      illustrious guests had by no means caused him to relax his hold,
      and, while the prelates and ambassadors were packing themselves
      into the stalls—like genuine Flemish herrings—he settled himself
      at his ease, and boldly crossed his legs on the architrave. The
      insolence of this proceeding was extraordinary, yet no one
      noticed it at first, the attention of all being directed
      elsewhere. He, on his side, perceived nothing that was going on
      in the hall; he wagged his head with the unconcern of a
      Neapolitan, repeating from time to time, amid the clamor, as from
      a mechanical habit, “Charity, please!” And, assuredly, he was,
      out of all those present, the only one who had not deigned to
      turn his head at the altercation between Coppenole and the usher.
      Now, chance ordained that the master hosier of Ghent, with whom
      the people were already in lively sympathy, and upon whom all
      eyes were riveted—should come and seat himself in the front row
      of the gallery, directly above the mendicant; and people were not
      a little amazed to see the Flemish ambassador, on concluding his
      inspection of the knave thus placed beneath his eyes, bestow a
      friendly tap on that ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round;
      there was surprise, recognition, a lighting up of the two
      countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest
      heed in the world to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched
      being began to converse in a low tone, holding each other’s
      hands, in the meantime, while the rags of Clopin Trouillefou,
      spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais, produced the
      effect of a caterpillar on an orange.

      The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth
      and gayety in the hall, that the cardinal was not slow to
      perceive it; he half bent forward, and, as from the point where
      he was placed he could catch only an imperfect view of
      Trouillerfou’s ignominious doublet, he very naturally imagined
      that the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted with his
      audacity, he exclaimed: “Bailiff of the Courts, toss me that
      knave into the river!”

      “Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal,” said Coppenole, without
      quitting Clopin’s hand, “he’s a friend of mine.”

      “Good! good!” shouted the populace. From that moment, Master
      Coppenole enjoyed in Paris as in Ghent, “great favor with the
      people; for men of that sort do enjoy it,” says Philippe de
      Comines, “when they are thus disorderly.” The cardinal bit his
      lips. He bent towards his neighbor, the Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève,
      and said to him in a low tone,—“Fine ambassadors monsieur the
      archduke sends here, to announce to us Madame Marguerite!”

      “Your eminence,” replied the abbé, “wastes your politeness on
      these Flemish swine. _Margaritas ante porcos_, pearls before
      swine.”

      “Say rather,” retorted the cardinal, with a smile, “_Porcos ante
      Margaritam_, swine before the pearl.”

      The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this
      play upon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved; he was
      quits with Coppenole, he also had had his jest applauded.

      Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of
      generalizing an image or an idea, as the expression runs in the
      style of to-day, permit us to ask them if they have formed a very
      clear conception of the spectacle presented at this moment, upon
      which we have arrested their attention, by the vast parallelogram
      of the grand hall of the palace.

      In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a
      large and magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into
      which enter in procession, through a small, arched door, grave
      personages, announced successively by the shrill voice of an
      usher. On the front benches were already a number of venerable
      figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around the
      dais—which remains silent and dignified—below, opposite,
      everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thousands of
      glances directed by the people on each face upon the dais, a
      thousand whispers over each name. Certainly, the spectacle is
      curious, and well deserves the attention of the spectators. But
      yonder, quite at the end, what is that sort of trestle work with
      four motley puppets upon it, and more below? Who is that man
      beside the trestle, with a black doublet and a pale face? Alas!
      my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and his prologue.

      We have all forgotten him completely.

      This is precisely what he feared.

      From the moment of the cardinal’s entrance, Gringoire had never
      ceased to tremble for the safety of his prologue. At first he had
      enjoined the actors, who had stopped in suspense, to continue,
      and to raise their voices; then, perceiving that no one was
      listening, he had stopped them; and, during the entire quarter of
      an hour that the interruption lasted, he had not ceased to stamp,
      to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette and Liénarde, and to
      urge his neighbors to the continuance of the prologue; all in
      vain. No one quitted the cardinal, the embassy, and the
      gallery—sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays. We must
      also believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue had
      begun slightly to weary the audience at the moment when his
      eminence had arrived, and created a diversion in so terrible a
      fashion. After all, on the gallery as well as on the marble
      table, the spectacle was the same: the conflict of Labor and
      Clergy, of Nobility and Merchandise. And many people preferred to
      see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other in flesh
      and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court,
      under the cardinal’s robe, under Coppenole’s jerkin, than
      painted, decked out, talking in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed
      beneath the yellow amid white tunics in which Gringoire had so
      ridiculously clothed them.

      Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet reestablished to some
      extent, he devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all.

      “Monsieur,” he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a
      fine, big man, with a patient face, “suppose we begin again.”

      “What?” said his neighbor.

      “Hé! the Mystery,” said Gringoire.

      “As you like,” returned his neighbor.

      This semi-approbation sufficed for Gringoire, and, conducting his
      own affairs, he began to shout, confounding himself with the
      crowd as much as possible: “Begin the mystery again! begin
      again!”

      “The devil!” said Joannes de Molendino, “what are they jabbering
      down yonder, at the end of the hall?” (for Gringoire was making
      noise enough for four.) “Say, comrades, isn’t that mystery
      finished? They want to begin it all over again. That’s not fair!”

      “No, no!” shouted all the scholars. “Down with the mystery! Down
      with it!”

      But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the more
      vigorously: “Begin again! begin again!”

      These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal.

      “Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts,” said he to a tall, black man,
      placed a few paces from him, “are those knaves in a holy-water
      vessel, that they make such a hellish noise?”

      The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a
      sort of bat of the judicial order, related to both the rat and
      the bird, the judge and the soldier.

      He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear
      of the latter’s displeasure, he awkwardly explained to him the
      seeming disrespect of the audience: that noonday had arrived
      before his eminence, and that the comedians had been forced to
      begin without waiting for his eminence.

      The cardinal burst into a laugh.

      “On my faith, the rector of the university ought to have done the
      same. What say you, Master Guillaume Rym?”

      “Monseigneur,” replied Guillaume Rym, “let us be content with
      having escaped half of the comedy. There is at least that much
      gained.”

      “Can these rascals continue their farce?” asked the bailiff.

      “Continue, continue,” said the cardinal, “it’s all the same to
      me. I’ll read my breviary in the meantime.”

      The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, after
      having invoked silence by a wave of the hand,—

      “_Bourgeois_, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those
      who wish the play to begin again, and those who wish it to end,
      his eminence orders that it be continued.”

      Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the public and
      the author long cherished a grudge against the cardinal.

      So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire
      hoped that the rest of his work, at least, would be listened to.
      This hope was speedily dispelled like his other illusions;
      silence had indeed, been restored in the audience, after a
      fashion; but Gringoire had not observed that at the moment when
      the cardinal gave the order to continue, the gallery was far from
      full, and that after the Flemish envoys there had arrived new
      personages forming part of the _cortège_, whose names and ranks,
      shouted out in the midst of his dialogue by the intermittent cry
      of the usher, produced considerable ravages in it. Let the reader
      imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece, of the
      yelping of an usher, flinging in between two rhymes, and often in
      the middle of a line, parentheses like the following,—

      “Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the
      Ecclesiastical Courts!”

      “Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of
      the night watch of the city of Paris!”

      “Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac,
      master of the king’s artillery!”

      “Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the
      king our sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!”

      “Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and
      chamberlain of the king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest
      of Vincennes!”

      “Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at
      Paris!” etc., etc., etc.

      This was becoming unbearable.

      This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow
      the piece, made Gringoire all the more indignant because he could
      not conceal from himself the fact that the interest was
      continually increasing, and that all his work required was a
      chance of being heard.

      It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more
      dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were
      bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in
      person, (_vera incessa patuit dea_) presented herself to them,
      clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the ship of
      the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin
      promised to the most beautiful. Jupiter, whose thunder could be
      heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and
      Venus was on the point of carrying it off,—that is to say,
      without allegory, of marrying monsieur the dauphin, when a young
      child clad in white damask, and holding in her hand a daisy (a
      transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite of
      Flanders) came to contest it with Venus.

      Theatrical effect and change.

      After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants agreed to
      submit to the good judgment of time holy Virgin. There was
      another good part, that of the king of Mesopotamia; but through
      so many interruptions, it was difficult to make out what end he
      served. All these persons had ascended by the ladder to the
      stage.

      But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor
      understood. On the entrance of the cardinal, one would have said
      that an invisible magic thread had suddenly drawn all glances
      from the marble table to the gallery, from the southern to the
      western extremity of the hall. Nothing could disenchant the
      audience; all eyes remained fixed there, and the new-comers and
      their accursed names, and their faces, and their costumes,
      afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing. With
      the exception of Gisquette and Liénarde, who turned round from
      time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve; with the
      exception of the big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one
      looked at the poor, deserted morality full face. Gringoire saw
      only profiles.

      With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory
      and of poetry crumble away bit by bit! And to think that these
      people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against
      the bailiff through impatience to hear his work! now that they
      had it they did not care for it. This same representation which
      had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal flood
      and ebb of popular favor! To think that they had been on the
      point of hanging the bailiff’s sergeant! What would he not have
      given to be still at that hour of honey!

      But the usher’s brutal monologue came to an end; every one had
      arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors
      continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs
      rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him
      deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable
      harangue.

      “Messieurs the _bourgeois_ and squires of Paris, I don’t know,
      cross of God! what we are doing here. I certainly do see yonder
      in the corner on that stage, some people who appear to be
      fighting. I don’t know whether that is what you call a “mystery,”
      but it is not amusing; they quarrel with their tongues and
      nothing more. I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter
      of an hour; nothing comes; they are cowards who only scratch each
      other with insults. You ought to send for the fighters of London
      or Rotterdam; and, I can tell you! you would have had blows of
      the fist that could be heard in the Place; but these men excite
      our pity. They ought at least, to give us a moorish dance, or
      some other mummer! That is not what was told me; I was promised a
      feast of fools, with the election of a pope. We have our pope of
      fools at Ghent also; we’re not behindhand in that, cross of God!
      But this is the way we manage it; we collect a crowd like this
      one here, then each person in turn passes his head through a
      hole, and makes a grimace at the rest; time one who makes the
      ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation; that’s the way
      it is. It is very diverting. Would you like to make your pope
      after the fashion of my country? At all events, it will be less
      wearisome than to listen to chatterers. If they wish to come and
      make their grimaces through the hole, they can join the game.
      What say you, Messieurs les _bourgeois_? You have here enough
      grotesque specimens of both sexes, to allow of laughing in
      Flemish fashion, and there are enough of us ugly in countenance
      to hope for a fine grinning match.”

      Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage,
      indignation, deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of
      the popular hosier was received with such enthusiasm by these
      _bourgeois_ who were flattered at being called “squires,” that
      all resistance was useless. There was nothing to be done but to
      allow one’s self to drift with the torrent. Gringoire hid his
      face between his two hands, not being so fortunate as to have a
      mantle with which to veil his head, like Agamemnon of Timantis.



      CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.

      In the twinkling of an eye, all was ready to execute Coppenole’s
      idea. _Bourgeois_, scholars and law clerks all set to work. The
      little chapel situated opposite the marble table was selected for
      the scene of the grinning match. A pane broken in the pretty rose
      window above the door, left free a circle of stone through which
      it was agreed that the competitors should thrust their heads. In
      order to reach it, it was only necessary to mount upon a couple
      of hogsheads, which had been produced from I know not where, and
      perched one upon the other, after a fashion. It was settled that
      each candidate, man or woman (for it was possible to choose a
      female pope), should, for the sake of leaving the impression of
      his grimace fresh and complete, cover his face and remain
      concealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In
      less than an instant, the chapel was crowded with competitors,
      upon whom the door was then closed.

      Coppenole, from his post, ordered all, directed all, arranged
      all. During the uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than
      Gringoire, had retired with all his suite, under the pretext of
      business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrival had so
      deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure.
      Guillaume Rym was the only one who noticed his eminence’s
      discomfiture. The attention of the populace, like the sun,
      pursued its revolution; having set out from one end of the hall,
      and halted for a space in the middle, it had now reached the
      other end. The marble table, the brocaded gallery had each had
      their day; it was now the turn of the chapel of Louis XI.
      Henceforth, the field was open to all folly. There was no one
      there now, but the Flemings and the rabble.

      The grimaces began. The first face which appeared at the
      aperture, with eyelids turned up to the reds, a mouth open like a
      maw, and a brow wrinkled like our hussar boots of the Empire,
      evoked such an inextinguishable peal of laughter that Homer would
      have taken all these louts for gods. Nevertheless, the grand hall
      was anything but Olympus, and Gringoire’s poor Jupiter knew it
      better than any one else. A second and third grimace followed,
      then another and another; and the laughter and transports of
      delight went on increasing. There was in this spectacle, a
      peculiar power of intoxication and fascination, of which it would
      be difficult to convey to the reader of our day and our salons
      any idea.

      Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting
      successively all geometrical forms, from the triangle to the
      trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; all human
      expressions, from wrath to lewdness; all ages, from the wrinkles
      of the new-born babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying; all
      religious phantasmagories, from Faun to Beelzebub; all animal
      profiles, from the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle.
      Let the reader imagine all these grotesque figures of the Pont
      Neuf, those nightmares petrified beneath the hand of Germain
      Pilon, assuming life and breath, and coming in turn to stare you
      in the face with burning eyes; all the masks of the Carnival of
      Venice passing in succession before your glass,—in a word, a
      human kaleidoscope.

      The orgy grew more and more Flemish. Teniers could have given but
      a very imperfect idea of it. Let the reader picture to himself in
      bacchanal form, Salvator Rosa’s battle. There were no longer
      either scholars or ambassadors or _bourgeois_ or men or women;
      there was no longer any Clopin Trouillefou, nor Gilles Lecornu,
      nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Robin Poussepain. All was universal
      license. The grand hall was no longer anything but a vast furnace
      of effrontry and joviality, where every mouth was a cry, every
      individual a posture; everything shouted and howled. The strange
      visages which came, in turn, to gnash their teeth in the rose
      window, were like so many brands cast into the brazier; and from
      the whole of this effervescing crowd, there escaped, as from a
      furnace, a sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like the
      wings of a gnat.

      “Ho hé! curse it!”

      “Just look at that face!”

      “It’s not good for anything.”

      “Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull’s muzzle; it
      only lacks the horns. It can’t be your husband.”

      “Another!”

      “Belly of the pope! what sort of a grimace is that?”

      “Holà hé! that’s cheating. One must show only one’s face.”

      “That damned Perrette Callebotte! she’s capable of that!”

      “Good! Good!”

      “I’m stifling!”

      “There’s a fellow whose ears won’t go through!” Etc., etc.

      But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst of this
      witches’ sabbath, he was still to be seen on the top of his
      pillar, like the cabin-boy on the topmast. He floundered about
      with incredible fury. His mouth was wide open, and from it there
      escaped a cry which no one heard, not that it was covered by the
      general clamor, great as that was but because it attained, no
      doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp sounds, the thousand
      vibrations of Sauveur, or the eight thousand of Biot.

      As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed,
      he had regained his composure. He had hardened himself against
      adversity.—“Continue!” he had said for the third time, to his
      comedians, speaking machines; then as he was marching with great
      strides in front of the marble table, a fancy seized him to go
      and appear in his turn at the aperture of the chapel, were it
      only for the pleasure of making a grimace at that ungrateful
      populace.—“But no, that would not be worthy of us; no, vengeance!
      let us combat until the end,” he repeated to himself; “the power
      of poetry over people is great; I will bring them back. We shall
      see which will carry the day, grimaces or polite literature.”

      Alas! he had been left the sole spectator of his piece. It was
      far worse than it had been a little while before. He no longer
      beheld anything but backs.

      I am mistaken. The big, patient man, whom he had already
      consulted in a critical moment, had remained with his face turned
      towards the stage. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, they had
      deserted him long ago.

      Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only
      spectator. He approached him and addressed him, shaking his arm
      slightly; for the good man was leaning on the balustrade and
      dozing a little.

      “Monsieur,” said Gringoire, “I thank you!”

      “Monsieur,” replied the big man with a yawn, “for what?”

      “I see what wearies you,” resumed the poet; “’tis all this noise
      which prevents your hearing comfortably. But be at ease! your
      name shall descend to posterity! Your name, if you please?”

      “Renauld Chateau, guardian of the seals of the Châtelet of Paris,
      at your service.”

      “Monsieur, you are the only representative of the muses here,”
      said Gringoire.

      “You are too kind, sir,” said the guardian of the seals at the
      Châtelet.

      “You are the only one,” resumed Gringoire, “who has listened to
      the piece decorously. What do you think of it?”

      “He! he!” replied the fat magistrate, half aroused, “it’s
      tolerably jolly, that’s a fact.”

      Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a
      thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, cut
      their conversation short. The Pope of the Fools had been elected.

      “Noël! Noël! Noël!”[6] shouted the people on all sides. That was,
      in fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment
      through the aperture in the rose window. After all the
      pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces, which had succeeded
      each other at that hole without realizing the ideal of the
      grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had
      constructed, nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than
      the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master
      Coppenole himself applauded, and Clopin Trouillefou, who had been
      among the competitors (and God knows what intensity of ugliness
      his visage could attain), confessed himself conquered: We will do
      the same. We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that
      tetrahedral nose, that horseshoe mouth; that little left eye
      obstructed with a red, bushy, bristling eyebrow, while the right
      eye disappeared entirely beneath an enormous wart; of those teeth
      in disarray, broken here and there, like the embattled parapet of
      a fortress; of that callous lip, upon which one of these teeth
      encroached, like the tusk of an elephant; of that forked chin;
      and above all, of the expression spread over the whole; of that
      mixture of malice, amazement, and sadness. Let the reader dream
      of this whole, if he can.

      The acclamation was unanimous; people rushed towards the chapel.
      They made the lucky Pope of the Fools come forth in triumph. But
      it was then that surprise and admiration attained their highest
      pitch; the grimace was his face.

      Or rather, his whole person was a grimace. A huge head, bristling
      with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, a
      counterpart perceptible in front; a system of thighs and legs so
      strangely astray that they could touch each other only at the
      knees, and, viewed from the front, resembled the crescents of two
      scythes joined by the handles; large feet, monstrous hands; and,
      with all this deformity, an indescribable and redoubtable air of
      vigor, agility, and courage,—strange exception to the eternal
      rule which wills that force as well as beauty shall be the result
      of harmony. Such was the pope whom the fools had just chosen for
      themselves.

      One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and
      badly put together again.

      When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the
      chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall;
      _squared_ on the _base_, as a great man says; with his doublet
      half red, half violet, sown with silver bells, and, above all, in
      the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him on
      the instant, and shouted with one voice,—

      “’Tis Quasimodo, the bellringer! ’tis Quasimodo, the hunchback of
      Notre-Dame! Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged!
      Noël! Noël!”

      It will be seen that the poor fellow had a choice of surnames.

      “Let the women with child beware!” shouted the scholars.

      “Or those who wish to be,” resumed Joannes.

      The women did, in fact, hide their faces.

      “Oh! the horrible monkey!” said one of them.

      “As wicked as he is ugly,” retorted another.

      “He’s the devil,” added a third.

      “I have the misfortune to live near Notre-Dame; I hear him
      prowling round the eaves by night.”

      “With the cats.”

      “He’s always on our roofs.”

      “He throws spells down our chimneys.”

      “The other evening, he came and made a grimace at me through my
      attic window. I thought that it was a man. Such a fright as I
      had!”

      “I’m sure that he goes to the witches’ sabbath. Once he left a
      broom on my leads.”

      “Oh! what a displeasing hunchback’s face!”

      “Oh! what an ill-favored soul!”

      “Whew!”

      The men, on the contrary, were delighted and applauded.
      Quasimodo, the object of the tumult, still stood on the threshold
      of the chapel, sombre and grave, and allowed them to admire him.

      One scholar (Robin Poussepain, I think), came and laughed in his
      face, and too close. Quasimodo contented himself with taking him
      by the girdle, and hurling him ten paces off amid the crowd; all
      without uttering a word.

      Master Coppenole, in amazement, approached him.

      “Cross of God! Holy Father! you possess the handsomest ugliness
      that I have ever beheld in my life. You would deserve to be pope
      at Rome, as well as at Paris.”

      So saying, he placed his hand gayly on his shoulder. Quasimodo
      did not stir. Coppenole went on,—

      “You are a rogue with whom I have a fancy for carousing, were it
      to cost me a new dozen of twelve livres of Tours. How does it
      strike you?”

      Quasimodo made no reply.

      “Cross of God!” said the hosier, “are you deaf?”

      He was, in truth, deaf.

      Nevertheless, he began to grow impatient with Coppenole’s
      behavior, and suddenly turned towards him with so formidable a
      gnashing of teeth, that the Flemish giant recoiled, like a
      bull-dog before a cat.

      Then there was created around that strange personage, a circle of
      terror and respect, whose radius was at least fifteen geometrical
      feet. An old woman explained to Coppenole that Quasimodo was
      deaf.

      “Deaf!” said the hosier, with his great Flemish laugh. “Cross of
      God! He’s a perfect pope!”

      “Hé! I recognize him,” exclaimed Jehan, who had, at last,
      descended from his capital, in order to see Quasimodo at closer
      quarters, “he’s the bellringer of my brother, the archdeacon.
      Good-day, Quasimodo!”

      “What a devil of a man!” said Robin Poussepain still all bruised
      with his fall. “He shows himself; he’s a hunchback. He walks;
      he’s bandy-legged. He looks at you; he’s one-eyed. You speak to
      him; he’s deaf. And what does this Polyphemus do with his
      tongue?”

      “He speaks when he chooses,” said the old woman; “he became deaf
      through ringing the bells. He is not dumb.”

      “That he lacks,” remarks Jehan.

      “And he has one eye too many,” added Robin Poussepain.

      “Not at all,” said Jehan wisely. “A one-eyed man is far less
      complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.”

      In the meantime, all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the
      cutpurses, joined with the scholars, had gone in procession to
      seek, in the cupboard of the law clerks’ company, the cardboard
      tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the Fools. Quasimodo
      allowed them to array him in them without wincing, and with a
      sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat himself on a
      motley litter. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised
      him on their shoulders; and a sort of bitter and disdainful joy
      lighted up the morose face of the cyclops, when he beheld beneath
      his deformed feet all those heads of handsome, straight,
      well-made men. Then the ragged and howling procession set out on
      its march, according to custom, around the inner galleries of the
      Courts, before making the circuit of the streets and squares.



      CHAPTER VI. ESMERALDA.

      We are delighted to be able to inform the reader, that during the
      whole of this scene, Gringoire and his piece had stood firm. His
      actors, spurred on by him, had not ceased to spout his comedy,
      and he had not ceased to listen to it. He had made up his mind
      about the tumult, and was determined to proceed to the end, not
      giving up the hope of a return of attention on the part of the
      public. This gleam of hope acquired fresh life, when he saw
      Quasimodo, Coppenole, and the deafening escort of the pope of the
      procession of fools quit the hall amid great uproar. The throng
      rushed eagerly after them. “Good,” he said to himself, “there go
      all the mischief-makers.” Unfortunately, all the mischief-makers
      constituted the entire audience. In the twinkling of an eye, the
      grand hall was empty.

      To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained, some
      scattered, others in groups around the pillars, women, old men,
      or children, who had had enough of the uproar and tumult. Some
      scholars were still perched astride of the window-sills, engaged
      in gazing into the Place.

      “Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still as many as are
      required to hear the end of my mystery. They are few in number,
      but it is a choice audience, a lettered audience.”

      An instant later, a symphony which had been intended to produce
      the greatest effect on the arrival of the Virgin, was lacking.
      Gringoire perceived that his music had been carried off by the
      procession of the Pope of the Fools. “Skip it,” said he,
      stoically.

      He approached a group of _bourgeois_, who seemed to him to be
      discussing his piece. This is the fragment of conversation which
      he caught,—

      “You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hôtel de Navarre, which belonged
      to Monsieur de Nemours?”

      “Yes, opposite the Chapelle de Braque.”

      “Well, the treasury has just let it to Guillaume Alixandre,
      historian, for six livres, eight sols, parisian, a year.”

      “How rents are going up!”

      “Come,” said Gringoire to himself, with a sigh, “the others are
      listening.”

      “Comrades,” suddenly shouted one of the young scamps from the
      window, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the Place!”

      This word produced a magical effect. Every one who was left in
      the hall flew to the windows, climbing the walls in order to see,
      and repeating, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda?” At the same time, a
      great sound of applause was heard from without.

      “What’s the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda?” said Gringoire,
      wringing his hands in despair. “Ah, good heavens! it seems to be
      the turn of the windows now.”

      He returned towards the marble table, and saw that the
      representation had been interrupted. It was precisely at the
      instant when Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. But
      Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the stage.

      “Michel Giborne!” cried the irritated poet, “what are you doing
      there? Is that your part? Come up!”

      “Alas!” said Jupiter, “a scholar has just seized the ladder.”

      Gringoire looked. It was but too true. All communication between
      his plot and its solution was intercepted.

      “The rascal,” he murmured. “And why did he take that ladder?”

      “In order to go and see the Esmeralda,” replied Jupiter
      piteously. “He said, ‘Come, here’s a ladder that’s of no use!’
      and he took it.”

      This was the last blow. Gringoire received it with resignation.

      “May the devil fly away with you!” he said to the comedian, “and
      if I get my pay, you shall receive yours.”

      Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but the last in the
      field, like a general who has fought well.

      And as he descended the winding stairs of the courts: “A fine
      rabble of asses and dolts these Parisians!” he muttered between
      his teeth; “they come to hear a mystery and don’t listen to it at
      all! They are engrossed by every one, by Clopin Trouillefou, by
      the cardinal, by Coppenole, by Quasimodo, by the devil! but by
      Madame the Virgin Mary, not at all. If I had known, I’d have
      given you Virgin Mary; you ninnies! And I! to come to see faces
      and behold only backs! to be a poet, and to reap the success of
      an apothecary! It is true that Homerus begged through the Greek
      towns, and that Naso died in exile among the Muscovites. But may
      the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with their
      Esmeralda! What is that word, in the first place?—’tis Egyptian!”



      BOOK SECOND.



      CHAPTER I. FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

      Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark
      when Gringoire issued forth from the Courts. This gloom pleased
      him; he was in haste to reach some obscure and deserted alley, in
      order there to meditate at his ease, and in order that the
      philosopher might place the first dressing upon the wound of the
      poet. Philosophy, moreover, was his sole refuge, for he did not
      know where he was to lodge for the night. After the brilliant
      failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to
      the lodging which he occupied in the Rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau,
      opposite to the Port-au-Foin, having depended upon receiving from
      monsieur the provost for his epithalamium, the wherewithal to pay
      Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed
      animals in Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say,
      twelve sols parisian; twelve times the value of all that he
      possessed in the world, including his trunk-hose, his shirt, and
      his cap. After reflecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath
      the little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the
      Sainte-Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the
      night, having all the pavements of Paris to choose from, he
      remembered to have noticed the week previously in the Rue de la
      Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament, a
      stepping stone for mounting a mule, and to have said to himself
      that that stone would furnish, on occasion, a very excellent
      pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for
      having sent this happy idea to him; but, as he was preparing to
      cross the Place, in order to reach the tortuous labyrinth of the
      city, where meander all those old sister streets, the Rues de la
      Barillerie, de la Vieille-Draperie, de la Savaterie, de la
      Juiverie, etc., still extant to-day, with their nine-story
      houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which was
      also emerging from the court house, and rushing across the
      courtyard, with great cries, a great flashing of torches, and the
      music which belonged to him, Gringoire. This sight revived the
      pain of his self-love; he fled. In the bitterness of his dramatic
      misadventure, everything which reminded him of the festival of
      that day irritated his wound and made it bleed.

      He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel; children
      were running about here and there with fire lances and rockets.

      “Pest on firework candles!” said Gringoire; and he fell back on
      the Pont au Change. To the house at the head of the bridge there
      had been affixed three small banners, representing the king, the
      dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and six little pennons on
      which were portrayed the Duke of Austria, the Cardinal de
      Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne de France, and Monsieur
      the Bastard of Bourbon, and I know not whom else; all being
      illuminated with torches. The rabble were admiring.

      “Happy painter, Jehan Fourbault!” said Gringoire with a deep
      sigh; and he turned his back upon the bannerets and pennons. A
      street opened before him; he thought it so dark and deserted that
      he hoped to there escape from all the rumors as well as from all
      the gleams of the festival. At the end of a few moments his foot
      came in contact with an obstacle; he stumbled and fell. It was
      the May truss, which the clerks of the clerks’ law court had
      deposited that morning at the door of a president of the
      parliament, in honor of the solemnity of the day. Gringoire bore
      this new disaster heroically; he picked himself up, and reached
      the water’s edge. After leaving behind him the civic Tournelle[7]
      and the criminal tower, and skirted the great walls of the king’s
      garden, on that unpaved strand where the mud reached to his
      ankles, he reached the western point of the city, and considered
      for some time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has
      disappeared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf. The islet
      appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the
      narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it. One
      could divine by the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in the
      form of a beehive where the ferryman of cows took refuge at
      night.

      “Happy ferryman!” thought Gringoire; “you do not dream of glory,
      and you do not make marriage songs! What matters it to you, if
      kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry? You know no other daisies
      (_marguerites_) than those which your April greensward gives your
      cows to browse upon; while I, a poet, am hooted, and shiver, and
      owe twelve sous, and the soles of my shoes are so transparent,
      that they might serve as glasses for your lantern! Thanks,
      ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!”

      He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big double
      Saint-Jean cracker, which suddenly went off from the happy cabin.
      It was the cow ferryman, who was taking his part in the
      rejoicings of the day, and letting off fireworks.

      This cracker made Gringoire’s skin bristle up all over.

      “Accursed festival!” he exclaimed, “wilt thou pursue me
      everywhere? Oh! good God! even to the ferryman’s!”

      Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible
      temptation took possession of him:

      “Oh!” said he, “I would gladly drown myself, were the water not
      so cold!”

      Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since he
      could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan
      Fourbault’s bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and
      crackers, to go to the Place de Grève.

      “At least,” he said to himself, “I shall there have a firebrand
      of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of
      the three great armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been
      erected on the public refreshment-stall of the city.”



      CHAPTER II. THE PLACE DE GRÈVE.

      There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of the
      Place de Grève, such as it existed then; it consists in the
      charming little turret, which occupies the angle north of the
      Place, and which, already enshrouded in the ignoble plaster which
      fills with paste the delicate lines of its sculpture, would soon
      have disappeared, perhaps submerged by that flood of new houses
      which so rapidly devours all the ancient façades of Paris.

      The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de Grève
      without casting a glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret
      strangled between two hovels of the time of Louis XV., can easily
      reconstruct in their minds the aggregate of edifices to which it
      belonged, and find again entire in it the ancient Gothic place of
      the fifteenth century.

      It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on
      one side by the quay, and on the other three by a series of
      lofty, narrow, and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire the
      variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood, and
      already presenting complete specimens of the different domestic
      architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the fifteenth
      to the eleventh century, from the casement which had begun to
      dethrone the arch, to the Roman semicircle, which had been
      supplanted by the ogive, and which still occupies, below it, the
      first story of that ancient house de la Tour Roland, at the
      corner of the Place upon the Seine, on the side of the street
      with the Tannerie. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all
      that mass of buildings, except the black indentation of the
      roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the place; for
      one of the radical differences between the cities of that time,
      and the cities of the present day, lay in the façades which
      looked upon the places and streets, and which were then gables.
      For the last two centuries the houses have been turned round.

      In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy and
      hybrid construction, formed of three buildings placed in
      juxtaposition. It was called by three names which explain its
      history, its destination, and its architecture: “The House of the
      Dauphin,” because Charles V., when Dauphin, had inhabited it;
      “The Marchandise,” because it had served as town hall; and “The
      Pillared House” (_domus ad piloria_), because of a series of
      large pillars which sustained the three stories. The city found
      there all that is required for a city like Paris; a chapel in
      which to pray to God; a _plaidoyer_, or pleading room, in which
      to hold hearings, and to repel, at need, the King’s people; and
      under the roof, an _arsenac_ full of artillery. For the
      _bourgeois_ of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray
      in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the
      city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town
      hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Grève had then that
      sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable
      ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of
      Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must
      be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, “a justice and
      a ladder,” as they were called in that day, erected side by side
      in the centre of the pavement, contributed not a little to cause
      eyes to be turned away from that fatal place, where so many
      beings full of life and health have agonized; where, fifty years
      later, that fever of Saint Vallier was destined to have its
      birth, that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all
      maladies because it comes not from God, but from man.

      It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think that
      the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still encumbered
      with its iron wheels, its stone gibbets, and all its
      paraphernalia of torture, permanent and riveted to the pavement,
      the Grève, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Cross du Trahoir,
      the Marché aux Pourceaux, that hideous Montfaucon, the barrier
      des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis,
      Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques, without
      reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop of
      the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the decree of
      life and death,—without reckoning the judicial drownings in the
      river Seine; it is consoling to-day, after having lost
      successively all the pieces of its armor, its luxury of torment,
      its penalty of imagination and fancy, its torture for which it
      reconstructed every five years a leather bed at the Grand
      Châtelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almost expunged
      from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chased
      from place to place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any
      more than a dishonored corner of the Grève,—than a miserable
      guillotine, furtive, uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid
      of being caught in the act, so quickly does it disappear after
      having dealt its blow.



      CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

      When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Grève, he was
      paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont aux
      Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble on the Pont au Change, and
      the pennons of Jehan Fourbault; but the wheels of all the
      bishop’s mills had splashed him as he passed, and his doublet was
      drenched; it seemed to him besides, that the failure of his piece
      had rendered him still more sensible to cold than usual. Hence he
      made haste to draw near the bonfire, which was burning
      magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a considerable
      crowd formed a circle around it.

      “Accursed Parisians!” he said to himself (for Gringoire, like a
      true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues) “there they are
      obstructing my fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of a
      chimney corner; my shoes drink in the water, and all those cursed
      mills wept upon me! That devil of a Bishop of Paris, with his
      mills! I’d just like to know what use a bishop can make of a
      mill! Does he expect to become a miller instead of a bishop? If
      only my malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon him! and
      his cathedral, and his mills! Just see if those boobies will put
      themselves out! Move aside! I’d like to know what they are doing
      there! They are warming themselves, much pleasure may it give
      them! They are watching a hundred fagots burn; a fine spectacle!”

      On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was much
      larger than was required simply for the purpose of getting warm
      at the king’s fire, and that this concourse of people had not
      been attracted solely by the beauty of the hundred fagots which
      were burning.

      In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young
      girl was dancing.

      Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel,
      is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that
      he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was
      he by this dazzling vision.

      She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender
      form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined
      that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of
      the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was
      Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful
      shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old
      Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time
      that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her
      great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.

      All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and,
      in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque
      tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her
      head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of
      gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare
      shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at
      times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural
      creature.

      “In truth,” said Gringoire to himself, “she is a salamander, she
      is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean
      Mount!”

      At that moment, one of the salamander’s braids of hair became
      unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to
      it, rolled to the ground.

      “Hé, no!” said he, “she is a gypsy!”

      All illusions had disappeared.

      She began her dance once more; she took from the ground two
      swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and which she
      made to turn in one direction, while she turned in the other; it
      was a purely gypsy effect. But, disenchanted though Gringoire
      was, the whole effect of this picture was not without its charm
      and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring light,
      which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd,
      on the brow of the young girl, and at the background of the Place
      cast a pallid reflection, on one side upon the ancient, black,
      and wrinkled façade of the House of Pillars, on the other, upon
      the old stone gibbet.

      Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with
      scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than all the
      others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was the face
      of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man, whose costume was
      concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not appear to be
      more than five and thirty years of age; nevertheless, he was
      bald; he had merely a few tufts of thin, gray hair on his
      temples; his broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with
      wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary
      youthfulness, an ardent life, a profound passion. He kept them
      fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl
      of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his
      revery seemed to become more and more sombre. From time to time,
      a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more
      melancholy than the sigh.

      The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people
      applauded her lovingly.

      “Djali!” said the gypsy.

      Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white goat,
      alert, wide-awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and
      gilded collar, which he had not hitherto perceived, and which had
      remained lying curled up on one corner of the carpet watching his
      mistress dance.

      “Djali!” said the dancer, “it is your turn.”

      And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to
      the goat.

      “Djali,” she continued, “what month is this?”

      The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the
      tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in fact.

      “Djali,” pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round,
      “what day of the month is this?”

      Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the
      tambourine.

      “Djali,” pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the
      tambourine, “what hour of the day is it?”

      Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the clock of the Pillar
      House rang out seven.

      The people were amazed.

      “There’s sorcery at the bottom of it,” said a sinister voice in
      the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed his
      eyes from the gypsy.

      She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth and
      drowned the morose exclamation.

      It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she
      continued to question her goat.

      “Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of the
      pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candlemas?”

      Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat,
      marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire
      circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the
      interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.

      “Djali,” resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing
      success, “how preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to
      the king in the ecclesiastical court?”

      The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began to bleat,
      waving his fore feet in so strange a manner, that, with the
      exception of the bad French, and worse Latin, Jacques Charmolue
      was there complete,—gesture, accent, and attitude.

      And the crowd applauded louder than ever.

      “Sacrilege! profanation!” resumed the voice of the bald man.

      The gypsy turned round once more.

      “Ah!” said she, “’tis that villanous man!” Then, thrusting her
      under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which
      appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette on her heel,
      and set about collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the
      multitude.

      Big blanks, little blanks, targes[8] and eagle liards showered
      into it.

      All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his
      hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted. “The devil!”
      said the poet, finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality,
      that is, to say, a void. In the meantime, the pretty girl stood
      there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her
      tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire broke into a violent
      perspiration.

      If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given
      it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover,
      America had not yet been discovered.

      Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.

      “Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?” cried a
      sharp voice, which proceeded from the darkest corner of the
      Place.

      The young girl turned round in affright. It was no longer the
      voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman, bigoted and
      malicious.

      However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of
      children who were prowling about there.

      “It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland,” they exclaimed, with wild
      laughter, “it is the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn’t she
      supped? Let’s carry her the remains of the city refreshments!”

      All rushed towards the Pillar House.

      In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer’s
      embarrassment, to disappear. The children’s shouts had reminded
      him that he, also, had not supped, so he ran to the public
      buffet. But the little rascals had better legs than he; when he
      arrived, they had stripped the table. There remained not so much
      as a miserable _camichon_ at five sous the pound. Nothing
      remained upon the wall but slender fleurs-de-lis, mingled with
      rose bushes, painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre
      supper.

      It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a
      still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is
      to sleep. That was Gringoire’s condition. No supper, no shelter;
      he saw himself pressed on all sides by necessity, and he found
      necessity very crabbed. He had long ago discovered the truth,
      that Jupiter created men during a fit of misanthropy, and that
      during a wise man’s whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy
      in a state of siege. As for himself, he had never seen the
      blockade so complete; he heard his stomach sounding a parley, and
      he considered it very much out of place that evil destiny should
      capture his philosophy by famine.

      This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more, when a
      song, quaint but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It
      was the young gypsy who was singing.

      Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was
      indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial,
      winged, so to speak. There were continual outbursts, melodies,
      unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn with aerial and
      hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a
      nightingale to rout, but in which harmony was always present;
      then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the
      bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful face followed, with
      singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest
      inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would have pronounced
      her now a mad creature, now a queen.

      The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire,
      and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little
      relation did the expression which she imparted to her song bear
      to the sense of the words. Thus, these four lines, in her mouth,
      were madly gay,—

  Un cofre de gran riqueza
        Hallaron dentro un pilar,
  Dentro del, nuevas banderas
       Con figuras de espantar.[9]

      And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to
      this stanza,—

  Alarabes de cavallo
        Sin poderse menear,
  Con espadas, y los cuellos,
        Ballestas de buen echar,

      Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her
      song breathed joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a
      bird, from serenity and heedlessness.

      The gypsy’s song had disturbed Gringoire’s revery as the swan
      disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture, and
      forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in the
      course of many hours when he did not feel that he suffered.

      The moment was brief.

      The same woman’s voice, which had interrupted the gypsy’s dance,
      interrupted her song.

      “Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?” it cried, still
      from the same obscure corner of the place.

      The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.

      “Oh!” he exclaimed, “accursed saw with missing teeth, which comes
      to break the lyre!”

      Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself; “To the
      devil with the sacked nun!” said some of them. And the old
      invisible kill-joy might have had occasion to repent of her
      aggressions against the gypsy had their attention not been
      diverted at this moment by the procession of the Pope of the
      Fools, which, after having traversed many streets and squares,
      debouched on the Place de Grève, with all its torches and all its
      uproar.

      This procession, which our readers have seen set out from the
      Palais de Justice, had organized on the way, and had been
      recruited by all the knaves, idle thieves, and unemployed
      vagabonds in Paris; so that it presented a very respectable
      aspect when it arrived at the Grève.

      First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horseback, with
      his counts on foot holding his bridle and stirrups for him;
      behind them, the male and female Egyptians, pell-mell, with their
      little children crying on their shoulders; all—duke, counts, and
      populace—in rags and tatters. Then came the Kingdom of Argot;
      that is to say, all the thieves of France, arranged according to
      the order of their dignity; the minor people walking first. Thus
      defiled by fours, with the divers insignia of their grades, in
      that strange faculty, most of them lame, some cripples, others
      one-armed, shop clerks, pilgrims, _hubins_, bootblacks,
      thimble-riggers, street arabs, beggars, the blear-eyed beggars,
      thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, merchants, sham soldiers,
      goldsmiths, passed masters of pickpockets, isolated thieves. A
      catalogue that would weary Homer. In the centre of the conclave
      of the passed masters of pickpockets, one had some difficulty in
      distinguishing the King of Argot, the grand coësre, so called,
      crouching in a little cart drawn by two big dogs. After the
      kingdom of the Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee. Guillaume
      Rousseau, Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically
      in his robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons
      wrestling and executing military dances; surrounded by his
      macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of the chamber of
      accounts. Last of all came the corporation of law clerks, with
      its maypoles crowned with flowers, its black robes, its music
      worthy of the orgy, and its large candles of yellow wax. In the
      centre of this crowd, the grand officers of the Brotherhood of
      Fools bore on their shoulders a litter more loaded down with
      candles than the reliquary of Sainte-Geneviève in time of pest;
      and on this litter shone resplendent, with crosier, cope, and
      mitre, the new Pope of the Fools, the bellringer of Notre-Dame,
      Quasimodo the hunchback.

      Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music. The
      Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The
      slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat’s
      horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century. The
      Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one
      could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy
      of the art, still imprisoned in the _ré-la-mi_. But it was around
      the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch
      were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but
      soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to
      reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will
      remember that this was Gringoire’s orchestra.

      It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and
      blissful expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of
      Quasimodo had attained during the transit from the Palais de
      Justice, to the Place de Grève. It was the first enjoyment of
      self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day, he had
      known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust for
      his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a
      veritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he hated
      because he felt that he was hated by it. What mattered it that
      his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples, thieves, and
      beggars? it was still a people and he was its sovereign. And he
      accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this derisive
      respect, with which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a
      good deal of very real fear. For the hunchback was robust; for
      the bandy-legged fellow was agile; for the deaf man was
      malicious: three qualities which temper ridicule.

      We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of the
      Fools understood both the sentiments which he felt and the
      sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was lodged in this
      failure of a body had, necessarily, something incomplete and deaf
      about it. Thus, what he felt at the moment was to him, absolutely
      vague, indistinct, and confused. Only joy made itself felt, only
      pride dominated. Around that sombre and unhappy face, there hung
      a radiance.

      It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the very
      moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, in that
      semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen to dart from the crowd,
      and to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger, his crosier
      of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock popeship.

      This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald brow,
      who, a moment earlier, standing with the gypsy’s group had
      chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and of hatred. He
      was dressed in an ecclesiastical costume. At the moment when he
      stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him up
      to that time, recognized him: “Hold!” he said, with an
      exclamation of astonishment. “Eh! ’tis my master in Hermes, Dom
      Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want of
      that old one-eyed fellow? He’ll get himself devoured!”

      A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo had
      hurled himself from the litter, and the women turned aside their
      eyes in order not to see him tear the archdeacon asunder.

      He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and fell
      upon his knees.

      The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his
      tinsel cope.

      Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands
      clasped. Then there was established between them a strange
      dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke. The
      priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious;
      Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless, it is
      certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his
      thumb.

      At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo’s powerful shoulder a
      rough shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.

      Quasimodo rose.

      Then the Brotherhood of Fools, their first stupor having passed
      off, wished to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The
      Egyptians, the men of slang, and all the fraternity of law
      clerks, gathered howling round the priest.

      Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play the
      muscles of his athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants
      with the snarl of an angry tiger.

      The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasimodo,
      and retired in silence.

      Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as he
      passed.

      When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the cloud of
      curious and idle were minded to follow them. Quasimodo then
      constituted himself the rearguard, and followed the archdeacon,
      walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous, bristling, gathering
      up his limbs, licking his boar’s tusks, growling like a wild
      beast, and imparting to the crowd immense vibrations, with a look
      or a gesture.

      Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street, where
      no one dared to venture after them; so thoroughly did the mere
      chimera of Quasimodo gnashing his teeth bar the entrance.

      “Here’s a marvellous thing,” said Gringoire; “but where the deuce
      shall I find some supper?”



      CHAPTER IV. THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN
      THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING.

      Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at all hazards. He had seen
      her, accompanied by her goat, take to the Rue de la Coutellerie;
      he took the Rue de la Coutellerie.

      “Why not?” he said to himself.

      Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had
      noticed that nothing is more propitious to revery than following
      a pretty woman without knowing whither she is going. There was in
      this voluntary abdication of his freewill, in this fancy
      submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a
      mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something
      indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which
      pleased Gringoire,—a spirit essentially compound, undecided, and
      complex, holding the extremities of all extremes, incessantly
      suspended between all human propensities, and neutralizing one by
      the other. He was fond of comparing himself to Mahomet’s coffin,
      attracted in two different directions by two loadstones, and
      hesitating eternally between the heights and the depths, between
      the vault and the pavement, between fall and ascent, between
      zenith and nadir.

      If Gringoire had lived in our day, what a fine middle course he
      would hold between classicism and romanticism!

      But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred
      years, and ’tis a pity. His absence is a void which is but too
      sensibly felt to-day.

      Moreover, for the purpose of thus following passers-by (and
      especially female passers-by) in the streets, which Gringoire was
      fond of doing, there is no better disposition than ignorance of
      where one is going to sleep.

      So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl, who
      hastened her pace and made her goat trot as she saw the
      _bourgeois_ returning home and the taverns—the only shops which
      had been open that day—closing.

      “After all,” he half thought to himself, “she must lodge
      somewhere; gypsies have kindly hearts. Who knows?—”

      And in the points of suspense which he placed after this
      reticence in his mind, there lay I know not what flattering
      ideas.

      Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of
      _bourgeois_ closing their doors, he caught some scraps of their
      conversation, which broke the thread of his pleasant hypotheses.

      Now it was two old men accosting each other.

      “Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibaut Fernicle?”
      (Gringoire had been aware of this since the beginning of the
      winter.)

      “Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have a
      winter such as we had three years ago, in ’80, when wood cost
      eight sous the measure?”

      “Bah! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, compared with the winter of
      1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day until Candlemas! and so
      cold that the pen of the registrar of the parliament froze every
      three words, in the Grand Chamber! which interrupted the
      registration of justice.”

      Further on there were two female neighbors at their windows,
      holding candles, which the fog caused to sputter.

      “Has your husband told you about the mishap, Mademoiselle la
      Boudraque?”

      “No. What is it, Mademoiselle Turquant?”

      “The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary at the Châtelet, took
      fright at the Flemings and their procession, and overturned
      Master Philippe Avrillot, lay monk of the Célestins.”

      “Really?”

      “Actually.”

      “A _bourgeois_ horse! ’tis rather too much! If it had been a
      cavalry horse, well and good!”

      And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had lost the thread of
      his ideas, nevertheless.

      Fortunately, he speedily found it again, and he knotted it
      together without difficulty, thanks to the gypsy, thanks to
      Djali, who still walked in front of him; two fine, delicate, and
      charming creatures, whose tiny feet, beautiful forms, and
      graceful manners he was engaged in admiring, almost confusing
      them in his contemplation; believing them to be both young girls,
      from their intelligence and good friendship; regarding them both
      as goats,—so far as the lightness, agility, and dexterity of
      their walk were concerned.

      But the streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every
      moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare
      intervals now that they encountered a passer-by in the street, or
      a light in the windows. Gringoire had become involved, in his
      pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of alleys,
      squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient sepulchre
      of the Saints-Innocents, and which resembles a ball of thread
      tangled by a cat. “Here are streets which possess but little
      logic!” said Gringoire, lost in the thousands of circuits which
      returned upon themselves incessantly, but where the young girl
      pursued a road which seemed familiar to her, without hesitation
      and with a step which became ever more rapid. As for him, he
      would have been utterly ignorant of his situation had he not
      espied, in passing, at the turn of a street, the octagonal mass
      of the pillory of the fish markets, the open-work summit of which
      threw its black, fretted outlines clearly upon a window which was
      still lighted in the Rue Verdelet.

      The young girl’s attention had been attracted to him for the last
      few moments; she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with
      uneasiness; she had even once come to a standstill, and taking
      advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakery
      to survey him intently, from head to foot, then, having cast this
      glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little pout which he had
      already noticed, after which she passed on.

      This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for thought.
      There was certainly both disdain and mockery in that graceful
      grimace. So he dropped his head, began to count the
      paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a little greater
      distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to
      lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.

      He hastened his steps.

      The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, a twist of tow
      soaked in oil, which burned in a cage at the feet of the Holy
      Virgin at the street corner, permitted Gringoire to make out the
      gypsy struggling in the arms of two men, who were endeavoring to
      stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered
      his horns and bleated.

      “Help! gentlemen of the watch!” shouted Gringoire, and advanced
      bravely. One of the men who held the young girl turned towards
      him. It was the formidable visage of Quasimodo.

      Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance
      another step.

      Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the
      pavement with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly
      into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across one arm like
      a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran
      after them all, bleating plaintively.

      “Murder! murder!” shrieked the unhappy gypsy.

      “Halt, rascals, and yield me that wench!” suddenly shouted in a
      voice of thunder, a cavalier who appeared suddenly from a
      neighboring square.

      It was a captain of the king’s archers, armed from head to foot,
      with his sword in his hand.

      He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her
      across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback,
      recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey,
      fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely,
      made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their
      fists. It was a squad of the king’s police, which was making the
      rounds, by order of Messire Robert d’Estouteville, guard of the
      provostship of Paris.

      Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed
      at the mouth, he bit; and had it been broad daylight, there is no
      doubt that his face alone, rendered more hideous by wrath, would
      have put the entire squad to flight. But by night he was deprived
      of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.

      His companion had disappeared during the struggle.

      The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer’s
      saddle, placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and
      gazed fixedly at him for several seconds, as though enchanted
      with his good looks and with the aid which he had just rendered
      her. Then breaking silence first, she said to him, making her
      sweet voice still sweeter than usual,—

      “What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?”

      “Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, at your service, my beauty!”
      replied the officer, drawing himself up.

      “Thanks,” said she.

      And while Captain Phœbus was turning up his moustache in
      Burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse, like an arrow
      falling to earth, and fled.

      A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.

      “Nombrill of the Pope!” said the captain, causing Quasimodo’s
      straps to be drawn tighter, “I should have preferred to keep the
      wench.”

      “What would you have, captain?” said one gendarme. “The warbler
      has fled, and the bat remains.”



      CHAPTER V. RESULT OF THE DANGERS.

      Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the
      pavement in front of the Holy Virgin at the street corner. Little
      by little, he regained his senses; at first, for several minutes,
      he was floating in a sort of half-somnolent revery, which was not
      without its charm, in which æriel figures of the gypsy and her
      goat were coupled with Quasimodo’s heavy fist. This state lasted
      but a short time. A decidedly vivid sensation of cold in the part
      of his body which was in contact with the pavement, suddenly
      aroused him and caused his spirit to return to the surface.

      “Whence comes this chill?” he said abruptly, to himself. He then
      perceived that he was lying half in the middle of the gutter.

      “That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!” he muttered between his
      teeth; and he tried to rise. But he was too much dazed and
      bruised; he was forced to remain where he was. Moreover, his hand
      was tolerably free; he stopped up his nose and resigned himself.

      “The mud of Paris,” he said to himself—for decidedly he thought
      that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the
      night; and what can one do in a refuge, except dream?—“the mud of
      Paris is particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of
      volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the opinion of
      Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists—”

      The word _alchemists_ suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of
      Archdeacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he
      had just witnessed in part; that the gypsy was struggling with
      two men, that Quasimodo had a companion; and the morose and
      haughty face of the archdeacon passed confusedly through his
      memory. “That would be strange!” he said to himself. And on that
      fact and that basis he began to construct a fantastic edifice of
      hypothesis, that card-castle of philosophers; then, suddenly
      returning once more to reality, “Come! I’m freezing!” he
      ejaculated.

      The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable. Each
      molecule of the gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating
      from Gringoire’s loins, and the equilibrium between the
      temperature of his body and the temperature of the brook, began
      to be established in rough fashion.

      Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him. A group of
      children, those little bare-footed savages who have always roamed
      the pavements of Paris under the eternal name of _gamins_, and
      who, when we were also children ourselves, threw stones at all of
      us in the afternoon, when we came out of school, because our
      trousers were not torn—a swarm of these young scamps rushed
      towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter
      which seemed to pay but little heed to the sleep of the
      neighbors. They were dragging after them some sort of hideous
      sack; and the noise of their wooden shoes alone would have roused
      the dead. Gringoire who was not quite dead yet, half raised
      himself.

      “Ohé, Hennequin Dandèche! Ohé, Jehan Pincebourde!” they shouted
      in deafening tones, “old Eustache Moubon, the merchant at the
      corner, has just died. We’ve got his straw pallet, we’re going to
      have a bonfire out of it. It’s the turn of the Flemish to-day!”

      And behold, they flung the pallet directly upon Gringoire, beside
      whom they had arrived, without espying him. At the same time, one
      of them took a handful of straw and set off to light it at the
      wick of the good Virgin.

      “S’death!” growled Gringoire, “am I going to be too warm now?”

      It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water;
      he made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of
      money who is on the point of being boiled, and who seeks to
      escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon
      the street urchins, and fled.

      “Holy Virgin!” shrieked the children; “’tis the merchant’s
      ghost!”

      And they fled in their turn.

      The straw mattress remained master of the field. Belleforêt,
      Father Le Juge, and Corrozet affirm that it was picked up on the
      morrow, with great pomp, by the clergy of the quarter, and borne
      to the treasury of the church of Saint Opportune, where the
      sacristan, even as late as 1789, earned a tolerably handsome
      revenue out of the great miracle of the Statue of the Virgin at
      the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, which had, by its mere
      presence, on the memorable night between the sixth and seventh of
      January, 1482, exorcised the defunct Eustache Moubon, who, in
      order to play a trick on the devil, had at his death maliciously
      concealed his soul in his straw pallet.



      CHAPTER VI. THE BROKEN JUG.

      After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without
      knowing whither, knocking his head against many a street corner,
      leaping many a gutter, traversing many an alley, many a court,
      many a square, seeking flight and passage through all the
      meanderings of the ancient passages of the Halles, exploring in
      his panic terror what the fine Latin of the maps calls _tota via,
      cheminum et viaria_, our poet suddenly halted for lack of breath
      in the first place, and in the second, because he had been
      collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which had just occurred
      to his mind. “It strikes me, Master Pierre Gringoire,” he said to
      himself, placing his finger to his brow, “that you are running
      like a madman. The little scamps are no less afraid of you than
      you are of them. It strikes me, I say, that you heard the clatter
      of their wooden shoes fleeing southward, while you were fleeing
      northward. Now, one of two things, either they have taken flight,
      and the pallet, which they must have forgotten in their terror,
      is precisely that hospitable bed in search of which you have been
      running ever since morning, and which madame the Virgin
      miraculously sends you, in order to recompense you for having
      made a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and
      mummeries; or the children have not taken flight, and in that
      case they have put the brand to the pallet, and that is precisely
      the good fire which you need to cheer, dry, and warm you. In
      either case, good fire or good bed, that straw pallet is a gift
      from heaven. The blessed Virgin Marie who stands at the corner of
      the Rue Mauconseil, could only have made Eustache Moubon die for
      that express purpose; and it is folly on your part to flee thus
      zigzag, like a Picard before a Frenchman, leaving behind you what
      you seek before you; and you are a fool!”

      Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching,
      with his nose to the wind and his ears on the alert, he tried to
      find the blessed pallet again, but in vain. There was nothing to
      be found but intersections of houses, closed courts, and
      crossings of streets, in the midst of which he hesitated and
      doubted incessantly, being more perplexed and entangled in this
      medley of streets than he would have been even in the labyrinth
      of the Hôtel des Tournelles. At length he lost patience, and
      exclaimed solemnly: “Cursed be cross roads! ’tis the devil who
      has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!”

      This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of
      reddish reflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at
      the extremity of a long and narrow lane, completed the elevation
      of his moral tone. “God be praised!” said he, “There it is
      yonder! There is my pallet burning.” And comparing himself to the
      pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, “_Salve_,” he added
      piously, “_salve, maris stella_!”

      Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, or to
      the pallet? We are utterly unable to say.

      He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which sloped
      downwards, was unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep, when
      he noticed a very singular thing. It was not deserted; here and
      there along its extent crawled certain vague and formless masses,
      all directing their course towards the light which flickered at
      the end of the street, like those heavy insects which drag along
      by night, from blade to blade of grass, towards the shepherd’s
      fire.

      Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the
      place where one’s pocket is situated. Gringoire continued to
      advance, and had soon joined that one of the forms which dragged
      along most indolently, behind the others. On drawing near, he
      perceived that it was nothing else than a wretched legless
      cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on his two hands like a
      wounded field-spider which has but two legs left. At the moment
      when he passed close to this species of spider with a human
      countenance, it raised towards him a lamentable voice: “_La buona
      mancia, signor! la buona mancia_!”[10]

      “Deuce take you,” said Gringoire, “and me with you, if I know
      what you mean!”

      And he passed on.

      He overtook another of these itinerant masses, and examined it.
      It was an impotent man, both halt and crippled, and halt and
      crippled to such a degree that the complicated system of crutches
      and wooden legs which sustained him, gave him the air of a
      mason’s scaffolding on the march. Gringoire, who liked noble and
      classical comparisons, compared him in thought to the living
      tripod of Vulcan.

      This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping his hat
      on a level with Gringoire’s chin, like a shaving dish, while he
      shouted in the latter’s ears: “_Señor cabellero, para comprar un
      pedaso de pan_!”[11]

      “It appears,” said Gringoire, “that this one can also talk; but
      ’tis a rude language, and he is more fortunate than I if he
      understands it.” Then, smiting his brow, in a sudden transition
      of ideas: “By the way, what the deuce did they mean this morning
      with their _Esmeralda?_”

      He was minded to augment his pace, but for the third time
      something barred his way. This something or, rather, some one was
      a blind man, a little blind fellow with a bearded, Jewish face,
      who, rowing away in the space about him with a stick, and towed
      by a large dog, droned through his nose with a Hungarian accent:
      “_Facitote caritatem_!”

      “Well, now,” said Gringoire, “here’s one at last who speaks a
      Christian tongue. I must have a very charitable aspect, since
      they ask alms of me in the present lean condition of my purse. My
      friend,” and he turned towards the blind man, “I sold my last
      shirt last week; that is to say, since you understand only the
      language of Cicero: _Vendidi hebdomade nuper transita meam
      ultimam chemisam_.”

      That said, he turned his back upon the blind man, and pursued his
      way. But the blind man began to increase his stride at the same
      time; and, behold! the cripple and the legless man, in his bowl,
      came up on their side in great haste, and with great clamor of
      bowl and crutches, upon the pavement. Then all three, jostling
      each other at poor Gringoire’s heels, began to sing their song to
      him,—

      “_Caritatem_!” chanted the blind man.

      “_La buona mancia_!” chanted the cripple in the bowl.

      And the lame man took up the musical phrase by repeating: “_Un
      pedaso de pan_!”

      Gringoire stopped up his ears. “Oh, tower of Babel!” he
      exclaimed.

      He set out to run. The blind man ran! The lame man ran! The
      cripple in the bowl ran!

      And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the street,
      cripples in bowls, blind men and lame men, swarmed about him, and
      men with one arm, and with one eye, and the leprous with their
      sores, some emerging from little streets adjacent, some from the
      air-holes of cellars, howling, bellowing, yelping, all limping
      and halting, all flinging themselves towards the light, and
      humped up in the mire, like snails after a shower.

      Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not
      knowing very well what was to become of him, marched along in
      terror among them, turning out for the lame, stepping over the
      cripples in bowls, with his feet imbedded in that ant-hill of
      lame men, like the English captain who got caught in the
      quicksand of a swarm of crabs.

      The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his
      steps. But it was too late. This whole legion had closed in
      behind him, and his three beggars held him fast. So he proceeded,
      impelled both by this irresistible flood, by fear, and by a
      vertigo which converted all this into a sort of horrible dream.

      At last he reached the end of the street. It opened upon an
      immense place, where a thousand scattered lights flickered in the
      confused mists of night. Gringoire flew thither, hoping to
      escape, by the swiftness of his legs, from the three infirm
      spectres who had clutched him.

      “_Onde vas, hombre_?” (Where are you going, my man?) cried the
      cripple, flinging away his crutches, and running after him with
      the best legs that ever traced a geometrical step upon the
      pavements of Paris.

      In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, crowned
      Gringoire with his heavy iron bowl, and the blind man glared in
      his face with flaming eyes!

      “Where am I?” said the terrified poet.

      “In the Court of Miracles,” replied a fourth spectre, who had
      accosted them.

      “Upon my soul,” resumed Gringoire, “I certainly do behold the
      blind who see, and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?”

      They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.

      The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth, that
      redoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man had never
      penetrated at such an hour; the magic circle where the officers
      of the Châtelet and the sergeants of the provostship, who
      ventured thither, disappeared in morsels; a city of thieves, a
      hideous wart on the face of Paris; a sewer, from which escaped
      every morning, and whither returned every night to crouch, that
      stream of vices, of mendicancy and vagabondage which always
      overflows in the streets of capitals; a monstrous hive, to which
      returned at nightfall, with their booty, all the drones of the
      social order; a lying hospital where the bohemian, the disfrocked
      monk, the ruined scholar, the ne’er-do-wells of all nations,
      Spaniards, Italians, Germans,—of all religions, Jews, Christians,
      Mahometans, idolaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by
      day, were transformed by night into brigands; an immense
      dressing-room, in a word, where, at that epoch, the actors of
      that eternal comedy, which theft, prostitution, and murder play
      upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and undressed.

      It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the
      squares of Paris at that date. Fires, around which swarmed
      strange groups, blazed here and there. Every one was going,
      coming, and shouting. Shrill laughter was to be heard, the
      wailing of children, the voices of women. The hands and heads of
      this throng, black against the luminous background, outlined
      against it a thousand eccentric gestures. At times, upon the
      ground, where trembled the light of the fires, mingled with
      large, indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog passing, which
      resembled a man, a man who resembled a dog. The limits of races
      and species seemed effaced in this city, as in a pandemonium.
      Men, women, beasts, age, sex, health, maladies, all seemed to be
      in common among these people; all went together, they mingled,
      confounded, superposed; each one there participated in all.

      The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire to
      distinguish, amid his trouble, all around the immense place, a
      hideous frame of ancient houses, whose wormeaten, shrivelled,
      stunted façades, each pierced with one or two lighted attic
      windows, seemed to him, in the darkness, like enormous heads of
      old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous and crabbed, winking as
      they looked on at the Witches’ Sabbath.

      It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen,
      creeping, swarming, fantastic.

      Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars
      as by three pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces
      which frothed and yelped around him, unhappy Gringoire endeavored
      to summon his presence of mind, in order to recall whether it was
      a Saturday. But his efforts were vain; the thread of his memory
      and of his thought was broken; and, doubting everything, wavering
      between what he saw and what he felt, he put to himself this
      unanswerable question,—

      “If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?”

      At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng which
      surrounded him, “Let’s take him to the king! let’s take him to
      the king!”

      “Holy Virgin!” murmured Gringoire, “the king here must be a ram.”

      “To the king! to the king!” repeated all voices.

      They dragged him off. Each vied with the other in laying his
      claws upon him. But the three beggars did not loose their hold
      and tore him from the rest, howling, “He belongs to us!”

      The poet’s already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in this
      struggle.

      While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished. After
      taking a few steps, the sentiment of reality returned to him. He
      began to become accustomed to the atmosphere of the place. At the
      first moment there had arisen from his poet’s head, or, simply
      and prosaically, from his empty stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to
      speak, which, spreading between objects and himself, permitted
      him to catch a glimpse of them only in the incoherent fog of
      nightmare,—in those shadows of dreams which distort every
      outline, agglomerating objects into unwieldy groups, dilating
      things into chimeras, and men into phantoms. Little by little,
      this hallucination was succeeded by a less bewildered and
      exaggerating view. Reality made its way to the light around him,
      struck his eyes, struck his feet, and demolished, bit by bit, all
      that frightful poetry with which he had, at first, believed
      himself to be surrounded. He was forced to perceive that he was
      not walking in the Styx, but in mud, that he was elbowed not by
      demons, but by thieves; that it was not his soul which was in
      question, but his life (since he lacked that precious
      conciliator, which places itself so effectually between the
      bandit and the honest man—a purse). In short, on examining the
      orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell from the
      witches’ sabbath to the dram-shop.

      The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a
      brigand’s dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with
      wine.

      The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged
      escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not
      fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of hell. It
      was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of the tavern.
      Were we not in the fifteenth century, we would say that Gringoire
      had descended from Michael Angelo to Callot.

      Around a great fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone,
      the flames of which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod,
      which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten tables were
      placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a geometrical
      turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism, or to see to it
      that they did not make too unusual angles. Upon these tables
      gleamed several dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these
      pots were grouped many bacchic visages, purple with the fire and
      the wine. There was a man with a huge belly and a jovial face,
      noisily kissing a woman of the town, thickset and brawny. There
      was a sort of sham soldier, a “naquois,” as the slang expression
      runs, who was whistling as he undid the bandages from his
      fictitious wound, and removing the numbness from his sound and
      vigorous knee, which had been swathed since morning in a thousand
      ligatures. On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow,
      preparing with celandine and beef’s blood, his “leg of God,” for
      the next day. Two tables further on, a palmer, with his pilgrim’s
      costume complete, was practising the lament of the Holy Queen,
      not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl. Further on, a young
      scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy from an old pretender, who
      was instructing him in the art of foaming at the mouth, by
      chewing a morsel of soap. Beside him, a man with the dropsy was
      getting rid of his swelling, and making four or five female
      thieves, who were disputing at the same table, over a child who
      had been stolen that evening, hold their noses. All circumstances
      which, two centuries later, “seemed so ridiculous to the court,”
      as Sauval says, “that they served as a pastime to the king, and
      as an introduction to the royal ballet of Night, divided into
      four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon.”
      “Never,” adds an eye witness of 1653, “have the sudden
      metamorphoses of the Court of Miracles been more happily
      presented. Benserade prepared us for it by some very gallant
      verses.”

      Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs. Each one held his
      own course, carping and swearing, without listening to his
      neighbor. Pots clinked, and quarrels sprang up at the shock of
      the pots, and the broken pots made rents in the rags.

      A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the fire. Some children
      were mingled in this orgy. The stolen child wept and cried.
      Another, a big boy four years of age, seated with legs dangling,
      upon a bench that was too high for him, before a table that
      reached to his chin, and uttering not a word. A third, gravely
      spreading out upon the table with his finger, the melted tallow
      which dripped from a candle. Last of all, a little fellow
      crouching in the mud, almost lost in a cauldron, which he was
      scraping with a tile, and from which he was evoking a sound that
      would have made Stradivarius swoon.

      Near the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar. This
      was the king on his throne.

      The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in front of
      this hogshead, and the entire bacchanal rout fell silent for a
      moment, with the exception of the cauldron inhabited by the
      child.

      Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes.

      “_Hombre, quita tu sombrero_!” said one of the three knaves, in
      whose grasp he was, and, before he had comprehended the meaning,
      the other had snatched his hat—a wretched headgear, it is true,
      but still good on a sunny day or when there was but little rain.
      Gringoire sighed.

      Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the summit of his cask,—

      “Who is this rogue?”

      Gringoire shuddered. That voice, although accentuated by menace,
      recalled to him another voice, which, that very morning, had
      dealt the deathblow to his mystery, by drawling, nasally, in the
      midst of the audience, “Charity, please!” He raised his head. It
      was indeed Clopin Trouillefou.

      Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore neither
      one rag more nor one rag less. The sore upon his arm had already
      disappeared. He held in his hand one of those whips made of
      thongs of white leather, which police sergeants then used to
      repress the crowd, and which were called _boullayes_. On his head
      he wore a sort of headgear, bound round and closed at the top.
      But it was difficult to make out whether it was a child’s cap or
      a king’s crown, the two things bore so strong a resemblance to
      each other.

      Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained some hope,
      on recognizing in the King of the Cour des Miracles his accursed
      mendicant of the Grand Hall.

      “Master,” stammered he; “monseigneur—sire—how ought I to address
      you?” he said at length, having reached the culminating point of
      his crescendo, and knowing neither how to mount higher, nor to
      descend again.

      “Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you please.
      But make haste. What have you to say in your own defence?”

      “_In your own defence?_” thought Gringoire, “that displeases me.”
      He resumed, stuttering, “I am he, who this morning—”

      “By the devil’s claws!” interrupted Clopin, “your name, knave,
      and nothing more. Listen. You are in the presence of three
      powerful sovereigns: myself, Clopin Trouillefou, King of Thunes,
      successor to the Grand Coësre, supreme suzerain of the Realm of
      Argot; Mathias Hunyadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and of Bohemia, the
      old yellow fellow whom you see yonder, with a dish clout round
      his head; Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow
      who is not listening to us but caressing a wench. We are your
      judges. You have entered the Kingdom of Argot, without being an
      _argotier_; you have violated the privileges of our city. You
      must be punished unless you are a _capon_, a _franc-mitou_ or a
      _rifodé_; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,—a thief,
      a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort? Justify
      yourself; announce your titles.”

      “Alas!” said Gringoire, “I have not that honor. I am the author—”

      “That is sufficient,” resumed Trouillefou, without permitting him
      to finish. “You are going to be hanged. ’Tis a very simple
      matter, gentlemen and honest _bourgeois_! as you treat our people
      in your abode, so we treat you in ours! The law which you apply
      to vagabonds, vagabonds apply to you. ’Tis your fault if it is
      harsh. One really must behold the grimace of an honest man above
      the hempen collar now and then; that renders the thing honorable.
      Come, friend, divide your rags gayly among these damsels. I am
      going to have you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you are to
      give them your purse to drink your health. If you have any
      mummery to go through with, there’s a very good God the Father in
      that mortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre
      aux Bœufs. You have four minutes in which to fling your soul at
      his head.”

      The harangue was formidable.

      “Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches like the
      Holy Father the Pope!” exclaimed the Emperor of Galilee, smashing
      his pot in order to prop up his table.

      “Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings,” said Gringoire coolly (for I
      know not how, firmness had returned to him, and he spoke with
      resolution), “don’t think of such a thing; my name is Pierre
      Gringoire. I am the poet whose morality was presented this
      morning in the grand hall of the Courts.”

      “Ah! so it was you, master!” said Clopin. “I was there, _par la
      tête Dieu_! Well! comrade, is that any reason, because you bored
      us to death this morning, that you should not be hung this
      evening?”

      “I shall find difficulty in getting out of it,” said Gringoire to
      himself. Nevertheless, he made one more effort: “I don’t see why
      poets are not classed with vagabonds,” said he. “Vagabond, Æsopus
      certainly was; Homerus was a beggar; Mercurius was a thief—”

      Clopin interrupted him: “I believe that you are trying to blarney
      us with your jargon. Zounds! let yourself be hung, and don’t kick
      up such a row over it!”

      “Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes,” replied Gringoire,
      disputing the ground foot by foot. “It is worth trouble—One
      moment!—Listen to me—You are not going to condemn me without
      having heard me”—

      His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in the uproar which rose
      around him. The little boy scraped away at his cauldron with more
      spirit than ever; and, to crown all, an old woman had just placed
      on the tripod a frying-pan of grease, which hissed away on the
      fire with a noise similar to the cry of a troop of children in
      pursuit of a masker.

      In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a momentary
      conference with the Duke of Egypt, and the Emperor of Galilee,
      who was completely drunk. Then he shouted shrilly: “Silence!”
      and, as the cauldron and the frying-pan did not heed him, and
      continued their duet, he jumped down from his hogshead, gave a
      kick to the boiler, which rolled ten paces away bearing the child
      with it, a kick to the frying-pan, which upset in the fire with
      all its grease, and gravely remounted his throne, without
      troubling himself about the stifled tears of the child, or the
      grumbling of the old woman, whose supper was wasting away in a
      fine white flame.

      Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and the
      passed masters of pickpockets, and the isolated robbers, came and
      ranged themselves around him in a horseshoe, of which Gringoire,
      still roughly held by the body, formed the centre. It was a
      semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, axes, legs
      staggering with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces sordid,
      dull, and stupid. In the midst of this Round Table of beggary,
      Clopin Trouillefou,—as the doge of this senate, as the king of
      this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,—dominated; first by
      virtue of the height of his hogshead, and next by virtue of an
      indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable air, which caused
      his eyes to flash, and corrected in his savage profile the
      bestial type of the race of vagabonds. One would have pronounced
      him a boar amid a herd of swine.

      “Listen,” said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with
      his horny hand; “I don’t see why you should not be hung. It is
      true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very
      natural, for you _bourgeois_ are not accustomed to it. You form
      for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After all, we don’t
      wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating yourself from
      your predicament for the moment. Will you become one of us?”

      The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition
      produced upon Gringoire, who beheld life slipping away from him,
      and who was beginning to lose his hold upon it. He clutched at it
      again with energy.

      “Certainly I will, and right heartily,” said he.

      “Do you consent,” resumed Clopin, “to enroll yourself among the
      people of the knife?”

      “Of the knife, precisely,” responded Gringoire.

      “You recognize yourself as a member of the free
      _bourgeoisie?_”[12] added the King of Thunes.

      “Of the free _bourgeoisie_.”

      “Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?”

      “Of the Kingdom of Argot[13].”

      “A vagabond?”

      “A vagabond.”

      “In your soul?”

      “In my soul.”

      “I must call your attention to the fact,” continued the king,
      “that you will be hung all the same.”

      “The devil!” said the poet.

      “Only,” continued Clopin imperturbably, “you will be hung later
      on, with more ceremony, at the expense of the good city of Paris,
      on a handsome stone gibbet, and by honest men. That is a
      consolation.”

      “Just so,” responded Gringoire.

      “There are other advantages. In your quality of a high-toned
      sharper, you will not have to pay the taxes on mud, or the poor,
      or lanterns, to which the _bourgeois_ of Paris are subject.”

      “So be it,” said the poet. “I agree. I am a vagabond, a thief, a
      sharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and I am all
      that already, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a philosopher;
      _et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho continentur_,—all
      things are contained in philosophy, all men in the philosopher,
      as you know.”

      The King of Thunes scowled.

      “What do you take me for, my friend? What Hungarian Jew patter
      are you jabbering at us? I don’t know Hebrew. One isn’t a Jew
      because one is a bandit. I don’t even steal any longer. I’m above
      that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes; cutpurse, no.”

      Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt words,
      which wrath rendered more and more jerky.

      “I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; ’tis Latin.”

      “I tell you,” resumed Clopin angrily, “that I’m not a Jew, and
      that I’ll have you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that little
      shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side, and whom I entertain
      strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter one of these days,
      like the counterfeit coin that he is!”

      So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian
      Jew who had accosted Gringoire with his _facitote caritatem_, and
      who, understanding no other language beheld with surprise the
      King of Thunes’s ill-humor overflow upon him.

      At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down.

      “So you will be a vagabond, you knave?” he said to our poet.

      “Of course,” replied the poet.

      “Willing is not all,” said the surly Clopin; “good will doesn’t
      put one onion the more into the soup, and ’tis good for nothing
      except to go to Paradise with; now, Paradise and the thieves’
      band are two different things. In order to be received among the
      thieves,[14] you must prove that you are good for something, and
      for that purpose, you must search the manikin.”

      “I’ll search anything you like,” said Gringoire.

      Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from the
      circle, and returned a moment later. They brought two thick
      posts, terminated at their lower extremities in spreading timber
      supports, which made them stand readily upon the ground; to the
      upper extremity of the two posts they fitted a cross-beam, and
      the whole constituted a very pretty portable gibbet, which
      Gringoire had the satisfaction of beholding rise before him, in a
      twinkling. Nothing was lacking, not even the rope, which swung
      gracefully over the cross-beam.

      “What are they going to do?” Gringoire asked himself with some
      uneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put
      an end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed manikin, which the
      vagabonds were suspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of
      scarecrow dressed in red, and so hung with mule-bells and larger
      bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian mules
      with them. These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with
      the vibration of the rope, then gradually died away, and finally
      became silent when the manikin had been brought into a state of
      immobility by that law of the pendulum which has dethroned the
      water clock and the hour-glass. Then Clopin, pointing out to
      Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the manikin,—“Climb
      up there.”

      “Death of the devil!” objected Gringoire; “I shall break my neck.
      Your stool limps like one of Martial’s distiches; it has one
      hexameter leg and one pentameter leg.”

      “Climb!” repeated Clopin.

      Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some
      oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of
      gravity.

      “Now,” went on the King of Thunes, “twist your right foot round
      your left leg, and rise on the tip of your left foot.”

      “Monseigneur,” said Gringoire, “so you absolutely insist on my
      breaking some one of my limbs?”

      Clopin tossed his head.

      “Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here’s the gist of the
      matter in two words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I tell you; in
      that way you will be able to reach the pocket of the manikin, you
      will rummage it, you will pull out the purse that is there,—and
      if you do all this without our hearing the sound of a bell, all
      is well: you shall be a vagabond. All we shall then have to do,
      will be to thrash you soundly for the space of a week.”

      “_Ventre-Dieu_! I will be careful,” said Gringoire. “And suppose
      I do make the bells sound?”

      “Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?”

      “I don’t understand at all,” replied Gringoire.

      “Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and take away
      its purse; if a single bell stirs during the operation, you will
      be hung. Do you understand that?”

      “Good,” said Gringoire; “I understand that. And then?”

      “If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the
      bells, you are a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight
      consecutive days. You understand now, no doubt?”

      “No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage
      to me? hanged in one case, cudgelled in the other?”

      “And a vagabond,” resumed Clopin, “and a vagabond; is that
      nothing? It is for your interest that we should beat you, in
      order to harden you to blows.”

      “Many thanks,” replied the poet.

      “Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping upon his cask, which
      resounded like a huge drum! “Search the manikin, and let there be
      an end to this! I warn you for the last time, that if I hear a
      single bell, you will take the place of the manikin.”

      The band of thieves applauded Clopin’s words, and arranged
      themselves in a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless
      that Gringoire perceived that he amused them too much not to have
      everything to fear from them. No hope was left for him,
      accordingly, unless it were the slight chance of succeeding in
      the formidable operation which was imposed upon him; he decided
      to risk it, but it was not without first having addressed a
      fervent prayer to the manikin he was about to plunder, and who
      would have been easier to move to pity than the vagabonds. These
      myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him
      like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to
      hiss.

      “Oh!” he said, in a very low voice, “is it possible that my life
      depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells?
      Oh!” he added, with clasped hands, “bells, do not ring,
      hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!”

      He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou.

      “And if there should come a gust of wind?”

      “You will be hanged,” replied the other, without hesitation.

      Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was
      possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he wound
      his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his left
      foot, and stretched out his arm: but at the moment when his hand
      touched the manikin, his body, which was now supported upon one
      leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made an
      involuntary effort to support himself by the manikin, lost his
      balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal
      vibration of the thousand bells of the manikin, which, yielding
      to the impulse imparted by his hand, described first a rotary
      motion, and then swayed majestically between the two posts.

      “Malediction!” he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead,
      with his face to the earth.

      Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the
      diabolical laughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of
      Trouillefou saying,—

      “Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony.” He rose.
      They had already detached the manikin to make room for him.

      The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, passed
      the rope about his neck, and, tapping him on the shoulder,—

      “Adieu, my friend. You can’t escape now, even if you digested
      with the pope’s guts.”

      The word “Mercy!” died away upon Gringoire’s lips. He cast his
      eyes about him; but there was no hope: all were laughing.

      “Bellevigne de l’Étoile,” said the King of Thunes to an enormous
      vagabond, who stepped out from the ranks, “climb upon the cross
      beam.”

      Bellevigne de l’Étoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam, and in
      another minute, Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld him, with
      terror, seated upon the beam above his head.

      “Now,” resumed Clopin Trouillefou, “as soon as I clap my hands,
      you, Andry the Red, will fling the stool to the ground with a
      blow of your knee; you, François Chanteprune, will cling to the
      feet of the rascal; and you, Bellevigne, will fling yourself on
      his shoulders; and all three at once, do you hear?”

      Gringoire shuddered.

      “Are you ready?” said Clopin Trouillefou to the three thieves,
      who held themselves in readiness to fall upon Gringoire. A moment
      of horrible suspense ensued for the poor victim, during which
      Clopin tranquilly thrust into the fire with the tip of his foot,
      some bits of vine shoots which the flame had not caught. “Are you
      ready?” he repeated, and opened his hands to clap. One second
      more and all would have been over.

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

      “One moment!” said he; “I forgot! It is our custom not to hang a
      man without inquiring whether there is any woman who wants him.
      Comrade, this is your last resource. You must wed either a female
      vagabond or the noose.”

      This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the reader,
      remains to-day written out at length, in ancient English
      legislation. (See _Burington’s Observations_.)

      Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had
      returned to life within an hour. So he did not dare to trust to
      it too implicitly.

      “Holà!” cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, “holà!
      women, females, is there among you, from the sorceress to her
      cat, a wench who wants this rascal? Holà, Colette la Charonne!
      Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piédebou! Thonne la
      Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille!
      Mathurine Girorou!—Holà! Isabeau-la-Thierrye! Come and see! A man
      for nothing! Who wants him?”

      Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserable
      condition. The female vagabonds did not seem to be much affected
      by the proposition. The unhappy wretch heard them answer: “No!
      no! hang him; there’ll be the more fun for us all!”

      Nevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to smell of
      him. The first was a big wench, with a square face. She examined
      the philosopher’s deplorable doublet attentively. His garment was
      worn, and more full of holes than a stove for roasting chestnuts.
      The girl made a wry face. “Old rag!” she muttered, and addressing
      Gringoire, “Let’s see your cloak!” “I have lost it,” replied
      Gringoire. “Your hat?” “They took it away from me.” “Your shoes?”
      “They have hardly any soles left.” “Your purse?” “Alas!”
      stammered Gringoire, “I have not even a sou.” “Let them hang you,
      then, and say ‘Thank you!’” retorted the vagabond wench, turning
      her back on him.

      The second,—old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness
      conspicuous even in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round
      Gringoire. He almost trembled lest she should want him. But she
      mumbled between her teeth, “He’s too thin,” and went off.

      The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly. “Save
      me!” said the poor fellow to her, in a low tone. She gazed at him
      for a moment with an air of pity, then dropped her eyes, made a
      plait in her petticoat, and remained in indecision. He followed
      all these movements with his eyes; it was the last gleam of hope.
      “No,” said the young girl, at length, “no! Guillaume Longuejoue
      would beat me.” She retreated into the crowd.

      “You are unlucky, comrade,” said Clopin.

      Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. “No one wants him,”
      he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great
      delight of all; “no one wants him? once, twice, three times!”
      and, turning towards the gibbet with a sign of his hand, “Gone!”

      Bellevigne de l’Étoile, Andry the Red, François Chanteprune,
      stepped up to Gringoire.

      At that moment a cry arose among the thieves: “_La Esmeralda! La
      Esmeralda!_”

      Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence the
      clamor proceeded.

      The crowd opened, and gave passage to a pure and dazzling form.

      It was the gypsy.

      “La Esmeralda!” said Gringoire, stupefied in the midst of his
      emotions, by the abrupt manner in which that magic word knotted
      together all his reminiscences of the day.

      This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, to
      exercise her sway of charm and beauty. The vagabonds, male and
      female, ranged themselves gently along her path, and their brutal
      faces beamed beneath her glance.

      She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali
      followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She examined
      him for a moment in silence.

      “You are going to hang this man?” she said gravely, to Clopin.

      “Yes, sister,” replied the King of Thunes, “unless you will take
      him for your husband.”

      She made her pretty little pout with her under lip. “I’ll take
      him,” said she.

      Gringoire firmly believed that he had been in a dream ever since
      morning, and that this was the continuation of it.

      The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. They
      undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the stool. His
      emotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down.

      The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering
      a word. The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: “Fling it on the
      ground,” said she.

      The crock broke into four pieces.

      “Brother,” then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon
      their foreheads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband
      for four years. Go.”



      CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.

      A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched
      chamber, very cosy, very warm, seated at a table which appeared
      to ask nothing better than to make some loans from a larder
      hanging near by, having a good bed in prospect, and alone with a
      pretty girl. The adventure smacked of enchantment. He began
      seriously to take himself for a personage in a fairy tale; he
      cast his eyes about him from time to time to time, as though to
      see if the chariot of fire, harnessed to two-winged chimeras,
      which alone could have so rapidly transported him from Tartarus
      to Paradise, were still there. At times, also, he fixed his eyes
      obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling to
      reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely.
      His reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by
      this thread.

      The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him; she
      went and came, displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and
      indulged in a pout now and then. At last she came and seated
      herself near the table, and Gringoire was able to scrutinize her
      at his ease.

      You have been a child, reader, and you would, perhaps, be very
      happy to be one still. It is quite certain that you have not,
      more than once (and for my part, I have passed whole days, the
      best employed of my life, at it) followed from thicket to
      thicket, by the side of running water, on a sunny day, a
      beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in abrupt
      angles, and kissing the tips of all the branches. You recollect
      with what amorous curiosity your thought and your gaze were
      riveted upon this little whirlwind, hissing and humming with
      wings of purple and azure, in the midst of which floated an
      imperceptible body, veiled by the very rapidity of its movement.
      The aerial being which was dimly outlined amid this quivering of
      wings, appeared to you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to
      touch, impossible to see. But when, at length, the dragon-fly
      alighted on the tip of a reed, and, holding your breath the
      while, you were able to examine the long, gauze wings, the long
      enamel robe, the two globes of crystal, what astonishment you
      felt, and what fear lest you should again behold the form
      disappear into a shade, and the creature into a chimera! Recall
      these impressions, and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire
      felt on contemplating, beneath her visible and palpable form,
      that Esmeralda of whom, up to that time, he had only caught a
      glimpse, amidst a whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult.

      Sinking deeper and deeper into his revery: “So this,” he said to
      himself, following her vaguely with his eyes, “is _la Esmeralda!_
      a celestial creature! a street dancer! so much, and so little!
      ’Twas she who dealt the death-blow to my mystery this morning,
      ’tis she who saves my life this evening! My evil genius! My good
      angel! A pretty woman, on my word! and who must needs love me
      madly to have taken me in that fashion. By the way,” said he,
      rising suddenly, with that sentiment of the true which formed the
      foundation of his character and his philosophy, “I don’t know
      very well how it happens, but I am her husband!”

      With this idea in his head and in his eyes, he stepped up to the
      young girl in a manner so military and so gallant that she drew
      back.

      “What do you want of me?” said she.

      “Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?” replied Gringoire, with so
      passionate an accent that he was himself astonished at it on
      hearing himself speak.

      The gypsy opened her great eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

      “What!” resumed Gringoire, growing warmer and warmer, and
      supposing that, after all, he had to deal merely with a virtue of
      the Cour des Miracles; “am I not thine, sweet friend, art thou
      not mine?”

      And, quite ingenuously, he clasped her waist.

      The gypsy’s corsage slipped through his hands like the skin of an
      eel. She bounded from one end of the tiny room to the other,
      stooped down, and raised herself again, with a little poniard in
      her hand, before Gringoire had even had time to see whence the
      poniard came; proud and angry, with swelling lips and inflated
      nostrils, her cheeks as red as an api apple,[15] and her eyes
      darting lightnings. At the same time, the white goat placed
      itself in front of her, and presented to Gringoire a hostile
      front, bristling with two pretty horns, gilded and very sharp.
      All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.

      The dragon-fly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing better
      than to sting.

      Our philosopher was speechless, and turned his astonished eyes
      from the goat to the young girl. “Holy Virgin!” he said at last,
      when surprise permitted him to speak, “here are two hearty
      dames!”

      The gypsy broke the silence on her side.

      “You must be a very bold knave!”

      “Pardon, mademoiselle,” said Gringoire, with a smile. “But why
      did you take me for your husband?”

      “Should I have allowed you to be hanged?”

      “So,” said the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes.
      “You had no other idea in marrying me than to save me from the
      gibbet?”

      “And what other idea did you suppose that I had?”

      Gringoire bit his lips. “Come,” said he, “I am not yet so
      triumphant in Cupido, as I thought. But then, what was the good
      of breaking that poor jug?”

      Meanwhile Esmeralda’s dagger and the goat’s horns were still upon
      the defensive.

      “Mademoiselle Esmeralda,” said the poet, “let us come to terms. I
      am not a clerk of the court, and I shall not go to law with you
      for thus carrying a dagger in Paris, in the teeth of the
      ordinances and prohibitions of M. the Provost. Nevertheless, you
      are not ignorant of the fact that Noël Lescrivain was condemned,
      a week ago, to pay ten Parisian sous, for having carried a
      cutlass. But this is no affair of mine, and I will come to the
      point. I swear to you, upon my share of Paradise, not to approach
      you without your leave and permission, but do give me some
      supper.”

      The truth is, Gringoire was, like M. Despreaux, “not very
      voluptuous.” He did not belong to that chevalier and musketeer
      species, who take young girls by assault. In the matter of love,
      as in all other affairs, he willingly assented to temporizing and
      adjusting terms; and a good supper, and an amiable tête-à-tête
      appeared to him, especially when he was hungry, an excellent
      interlude between the prologue and the catastrophe of a love
      adventure.

      The gypsy did not reply. She made her disdainful little grimace,
      drew up her head like a bird, then burst out laughing, and the
      tiny poniard disappeared as it had come, without Gringoire being
      able to see where the wasp concealed its sting.

      A moment later, there stood upon the table a loaf of rye bread, a
      slice of bacon, some wrinkled apples and a jug of beer. Gringoire
      began to eat eagerly. One would have said, to hear the furious
      clashing of his iron fork and his earthenware plate, that all his
      love had turned to appetite.

      The young girl seated opposite him, watched him in silence,
      visibly preoccupied with another thought, at which she smiled
      from time to time, while her soft hand caressed the intelligent
      head of the goat, gently pressed between her knees.

      A candle of yellow wax illuminated this scene of voracity and
      revery.

      Meanwhile, the first cravings of his stomach having been stilled,
      Gringoire felt some false shame at perceiving that nothing
      remained but one apple.

      “You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?”

      She replied by a negative sign of the head, and her pensive
      glance fixed itself upon the vault of the ceiling.

      “What the deuce is she thinking of?” thought Gringoire, staring
      at what she was gazing at; “’tis impossible that it can be that
      stone dwarf carved in the keystone of that arch, which thus
      absorbs her attention. What the deuce! I can bear the
      comparison!”

      He raised his voice, “Mademoiselle!”

      She seemed not to hear him.

      He repeated, still more loudly, “Mademoiselle Esmeralda!”

      Trouble wasted. The young girl’s mind was elsewhere, and
      Gringoire’s voice had not the power to recall it. Fortunately,
      the goat interfered. She began to pull her mistress gently by the
      sleeve.

      “What dost thou want, Djali?” said the gypsy, hastily, as though
      suddenly awakened.

      “She is hungry,” said Gringoire, charmed to enter into
      conversation. Esmeralda began to crumble some bread, which Djali
      ate gracefully from the hollow of her hand.

      Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to resume her revery.
      He hazarded a delicate question.

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

      The young girl looked at him intently, and said, “No.”

      “For your lover?” went on Gringoire.

      She pouted, and replied, “No.”

      “For your friend?” pursued Gringoire.

      She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary
      reflection, “Perhaps.”

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

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

      “Yes,” replied the gypsy; “it is to be brother and sister; two
      souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.”

      “And love?” pursued Gringoire.

      “Oh! love!” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed.
      “That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled
      into one angel. It is heaven.”

      The street dancer had a beauty as she spoke thus, that struck
      Gringoire singularly, and seemed to him in perfect keeping with
      the almost oriental exaltation of her words. Her pure, red lips
      half smiled; her serene and candid brow became troubled, at
      intervals, under her thoughts, like a mirror under the breath;
      and from beneath her long, drooping, black eyelashes, there
      escaped a sort of ineffable light, which gave to her profile that
      ideal serenity which Raphael found at the mystic point of
      intersection of virginity, maternity, and divinity.

      Nevertheless, Gringoire continued,—

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

      “A man.”

      “And I—” said he, “what, then, am I?”

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

      “Good,” said Gringoire, “without a horse, no man. Do you love any
      one?”

      “As a lover?—”

      “Yes.”

      She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar
      expression: “That I shall know soon.”

      “Why not this evening?” resumed the poet tenderly. “Why not me?”

      She cast a grave glance upon him and said,—

      “I can never love a man who cannot protect me.”

      Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the
      young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he had
      rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found
      herself two hours previously. This memory, effaced by his own
      adventures of the evening, now recurred to him. He smote his
      brow.

      “By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to have begun there. Pardon my
      foolish absence of mind. How did you contrive to escape from the
      claws of Quasimodo?”

      This question made the gypsy shudder.

      “Oh! the horrible hunchback,” said she, hiding her face in her
      hands. And she shuddered as though with violent cold.

      “Horrible, in truth,” said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; “but
      how did you manage to escape him?”

      La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained silent.

      “Do you know why he followed you?” began Gringoire again, seeking
      to return to his question by a circuitous route.

      “I don’t know,” said the young girl, and she added hastily, “but
      you were following me also, why were you following me?”

      “In good faith,” responded Gringoire, “I don’t know either.”

      Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed the table with his knife. The
      young girl smiled and seemed to be gazing through the wall at
      something. All at once she began to sing in a barely articulate
      voice,—

   Quando las pintadas aves,
   Mudas estan, y la tierra—[16]

      She broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali.

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

      “She is my sister,” she answered.

      “Why are you called _la Esmeralda?_” asked the poet.

      “I do not know.”

      “But why?”

      She drew from her bosom a sort of little oblong bag, suspended
      from her neck by a string of adrézarach beads. This bag exhaled a
      strong odor of camphor. It was covered with green silk, and bore
      in its centre a large piece of green glass, in imitation of an
      emerald.

      “Perhaps it is because of this,” said she.

      Gringoire was on the point of taking the bag in his hand. She
      drew back.

      “Don’t touch it! It is an amulet. You would injure the charm or
      the charm would injure you.”

      The poet’s curiosity was more and more aroused.

      “Who gave it to you?”

      She laid one finger on her mouth and concealed the amulet in her
      bosom. He tried a few more questions, but she hardly replied.

      “What is the meaning of the words, _la Esmeralda?_”

      “I don’t know,” said she.

      “To what language do they belong?”

      “They are Egyptian, I think.”

      “I suspected as much,” said Gringoire, “you are not a native of
      France?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Are your parents alive?”

      She began to sing, to an ancient air,—

 Mon père est oiseau,
  Ma mère est oiselle.
  Je passe l’eau sans nacelle,
  Je passe l’eau sans bateau,
  Ma mère est oiselle,
  Mon père est oiseau.[17]

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

      “When I was very young.”

      “And when to Paris?”

      “Last year. At the moment when we were entering the papal gate I
      saw a reed warbler flit through the air, that was at the end of
      August; I said, it will be a hard winter.”

      “So it was,” said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of a
      conversation. “I passed it in blowing my fingers. So you have the
      gift of prophecy?”

      She retired into her laconics again.

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

      “Yes.”

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

      She made her customary pretty grimace.

      “I don’t even know your name.”

      “My name? If you want it, here it is,—Pierre Gringoire.”

      “I know a prettier one,” said she.

      “Naughty girl!” retorted the poet. “Never mind, you shall not
      provoke me. Wait, perhaps you will love me more when you know me
      better; and then, you have told me your story with so much
      confidence, that I owe you a little of mine. You must know, then,
      that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am a son of the
      farmer of the notary’s office of Gonesse. My father was hung by
      the Burgundians, and my mother disembowelled by the Picards, at
      the siege of Paris, twenty years ago. At six years of age,
      therefore, I was an orphan, without a sole to my foot except the
      pavements of Paris. I do not know how I passed the interval from
      six to sixteen. A fruit dealer gave me a plum here, a baker flung
      me a crust there; in the evening I got myself taken up by the
      watch, who threw me into prison, and there I found a bundle of
      straw. All this did not prevent my growing up and growing thin,
      as you see. In the winter I warmed myself in the sun, under the
      porch of the Hôtel de Sens, and I thought it very ridiculous that
      the fire on Saint John’s Day was reserved for the dog days. At
      sixteen, I wished to choose a calling. I tried all in succession.
      I became a soldier; but I was not brave enough. I became a monk;
      but I was not sufficiently devout; and then I’m a bad hand at
      drinking. In despair, I became an apprentice of the woodcutters,
      but I was not strong enough; I had more of an inclination to
      become a schoolmaster; ’tis true that I did not know how to read,
      but that’s no reason. I perceived at the end of a certain time,
      that I lacked something in every direction; and seeing that I was
      good for nothing, of my own free will I became a poet and
      rhymester. That is a trade which one can always adopt when one is
      a vagabond, and it’s better than stealing, as some young brigands
      of my acquaintance advised me to do. One day I met by luck, Dom
      Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an
      interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a
      veritable man of letters, who knows Latin from the _de Officiis_
      of Cicero to the mortuology of the Celestine Fathers, and a
      barbarian neither in scholastics, nor in politics, nor in
      rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the
      Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great
      concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de
      Justice. I have also made a book which will contain six hundred
      pages, on the wonderful comet of 1465, which sent one man mad. I
      have enjoyed still other successes. Being somewhat of an
      artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue’s great
      bombard, which burst, as you know, on the day when it was tested,
      on the Pont de Charenton, and killed four and twenty curious
      spectators. You see that I am not a bad match in marriage. I know
      a great many sorts of very engaging tricks, which I will teach
      your goat; for example, to mimic the Bishop of Paris, that cursed
      Pharisee whose mill wheels splash passers-by the whole length of
      the Pont aux Meuniers. And then my mystery will bring me in a
      great deal of coined money, if they will only pay me. And
      finally, I am at your orders, I and my wits, and my science and
      my letters, ready to live with you, damsel, as it shall please
      you, chastely or joyously; husband and wife, if you see fit;
      brother and sister, if you think that better.”

      Gringoire ceased, awaiting the effect of his harangue on the
      young girl. Her eyes were fixed on the ground.

      “_Phœbus,_” she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards the
      poet, “_Phœbus_,—what does that mean?”

      Gringoire, without exactly understanding what the connection
      could be between his address and this question, was not sorry to
      display his erudition. Assuming an air of importance, he
      replied,—

      “It is a Latin word which means _sun._”

      “Sun!” she repeated.

      “It is the name of a handsome archer, who was a god,” added
      Gringoire.

      “A god!” repeated the gypsy, and there was something pensive and
      passionate in her tone.

      At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened and fell.
      Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up; when he straightened up,
      the young girl and the goat had disappeared. He heard the sound
      of a bolt. It was a little door, communicating, no doubt, with a
      neighboring cell, which was being fastened on the outside.

      “Has she left me a bed, at least?” said our philosopher.

      He made the tour of his cell. There was no piece of furniture
      adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long wooden
      coffer; and its cover was carved, to boot; which afforded
      Gringoire, when he stretched himself out upon it, a sensation
      somewhat similar to that which Micromégas would feel if he were
      to lie down on the Alps.

      “Come!” said he, adjusting himself as well as possible, “I must
      resign myself. But here’s a strange nuptial night. ’Tis a pity.
      There was something innocent and antediluvian about that broken
      crock, which quite pleased me.”



      BOOK THIRD.



      CHAPTER I. NOTRE-DAME.

      The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic
      and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in
      growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant,
      before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and
      men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without
      respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip
      Augustus, who laid the last.

      On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of
      a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. _Tempus edax, homo
      edacior_[18]; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is
      blind, man is stupid.

      If we had leisure to examine with the reader, one by one, the
      diverse traces of destruction imprinted upon the old church,
      time’s share would be the least, the share of men the most,
      especially _the men of art_, since there have been individuals
      who assumed the title of architects during the last two
      centuries.

      And, in the first place, to cite only a few leading examples,
      there certainly are few finer architectural pages than this
      façade, where, successively and at once, the three portals
      hollowed out in an arch; the broidered and dentated cordon of the
      eight and twenty royal niches; the immense central rose window,
      flanked by its two lateral windows, like a priest by his deacon
      and subdeacon; the frail and lofty gallery of trefoil arcades,
      which supports a heavy platform above its fine, slender columns;
      and lastly, the two black and massive towers with their slate
      penthouses, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, superposed
      in five gigantic stories;—develop themselves before the eye, in a
      mass and without confusion, with their innumerable details of
      statuary, carving, and sculpture, joined powerfully to the
      tranquil grandeur of the whole; a vast symphony in stone, so to
      speak; the colossal work of one man and one people, all together
      one and complex, like the Iliads and the Romanceros, whose sister
      it is; prodigious product of the grouping together of all the
      forces of an epoch, where, upon each stone, one sees the fancy of
      the workman disciplined by the genius of the artist start forth
      in a hundred fashions; a sort of human creation, in a word,
      powerful and fecund as the divine creation of which it seems to
      have stolen the double character,—variety, eternity.

      And what we here say of the façade must be said of the entire
      church; and what we say of the cathedral church of Paris, must be
      said of all the churches of Christendom in the Middle Ages. All
      things are in place in that art, self-created, logical, and well
      proportioned. To measure the great toe of the foot is to measure
      the giant.

      Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it still appears to
      us, when we go piously to admire the grave and puissant
      cathedral, which inspires terror, so its chronicles assert: _quæ
      mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus_.

      Three important things are to-day lacking in that façade: in the
      first place, the staircase of eleven steps which formerly raised
      it above the soil; next, the lower series of statues which
      occupied the niches of the three portals; and lastly the upper
      series, of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, which
      garnished the gallery of the first story, beginning with
      Childebert, and ending with Phillip Augustus, holding in his hand
      “the imperial apple.”

      Time has caused the staircase to disappear, by raising the soil
      of the city with a slow and irresistible progress; but, while
      thus causing the eleven steps which added to the majestic height
      of the edifice, to be devoured, one by one, by the rising tide of
      the pavements of Paris,—time has bestowed upon the church perhaps
      more than it has taken away, for it is time which has spread over
      the façade that sombre hue of the centuries which makes the old
      age of monuments the period of their beauty.

      But who has thrown down the two rows of statues? who has left the
      niches empty? who has cut, in the very middle of the central
      portal, that new and bastard arch? who has dared to frame therein
      that commonplace and heavy door of carved wood, à la Louis XV.,
      beside the arabesques of Biscornette? The men, the architects,
      the artists of our day.

      And if we enter the interior of the edifice, who has overthrown
      that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial for magnitude
      among statues, as the grand hall of the Palais de Justice was
      among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg among spires? And those
      myriads of statues, which peopled all the spaces between the
      columns of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing,
      equestrian, men, women, children, kings, bishops, gendarmes, in
      stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in copper, in wax even,—who
      has brutally swept them away? It is not time.

      And who substituted for the ancient gothic altar, splendidly
      encumbered with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble
      sarcophagus, with angels’ heads and clouds, which seems a
      specimen pillaged from the Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides? Who
      stupidly sealed that heavy anachronism of stone in the
      Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV.,
      fulfilling the request of Louis XIII.?

      And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows,
      “high in color,” which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers
      to hesitate between the rose of the grand portal and the arches
      of the apse? And what would a sub-chanter of the sixteenth
      century say, on beholding the beautiful yellow wash, with which
      our archiepiscopal vandals have desmeared their cathedral? He
      would remember that it was the color with which the hangman
      smeared “accursed” edifices; he would recall the Hôtel du
      Petit-Bourbon, all smeared thus, on account of the constable’s
      treason. “Yellow, after all, of so good a quality,” said Sauval,
      “and so well recommended, that more than a century has not yet
      caused it to lose its color.” He would think that the sacred
      place had become infamous, and would flee.

      And if we ascend the cathedral, without mentioning a thousand
      barbarisms of every sort,—what has become of that charming little
      bell tower, which rested upon the point of intersection of the
      cross-roofs, and which, no less frail and no less bold than its
      neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle,
      buried itself in the sky, farther forward than the towers,
      slender, pointed, sonorous, carved in open work. An architect of
      good taste amputated it (1787), and considered it sufficient to
      mask the wound with that large, leaden plaster, which resembles a
      pot cover.

      ’Tis thus that the marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been
      treated in nearly every country, especially in France. One can
      distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of
      which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has
      insensibly notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it
      everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which,
      blind and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves tumultuously
      upon it, torn its rich garment of carving and sculpture, burst
      its rose windows, broken its necklace of arabesques and tiny
      figures, torn out its statues, sometimes because of their mitres,
      sometimes because of their crowns; lastly, fashions, even more
      grotesque and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid
      deviations of the Renaissance, have followed each other in the
      necessary decadence of architecture. Fashions have wrought more
      harm than revolutions. They have cut to the quick; they have
      attacked the very bone and framework of art; they have cut,
      slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in form as in the
      symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty. And then
      they have made it over; a presumption of which neither time nor
      revolutions at least have been guilty. They have audaciously
      adjusted, in the name of “good taste,” upon the wounds of gothic
      architecture, their miserable gewgaws of a day, their ribbons of
      marble, their pompons of metal, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped
      ornaments, volutes, whorls, draperies, garlands, fringes, stone
      flames, bronze clouds, pudgy cupids, chubby-cheeked cherubim,
      which begin to devour the face of art in the oratory of Catherine
      de Medicis, and cause it to expire, two centuries later, tortured
      and grimacing, in the boudoir of the Dubarry.

      Thus, to sum up the points which we have just indicated, three
      sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles
      and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of
      violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of
      the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations,
      amputations, dislocation of the joints, _restorations_; this is
      the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to
      Vitruvius and Vignole. This magnificent art produced by the
      Vandals has been slain by the academies. The centuries, the
      revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and
      grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects,
      licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discernment
      and choice of bad taste, substituting the _chicorées_ of Louis
      XV. for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the Parthenon.
      It is the kick of the ass at the dying lion. It is the old oak
      crowning itself, and which, to heap the measure full, is stung,
      bitten, and gnawed by caterpillars.

      How far it is from the epoch when Robert Cenalis, comparing
      Notre-Dame de Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, _so
      much lauded by the ancient pagans_, which Erostatus _has_
      immortalized, found the Gallic temple “more excellent in length,
      breadth, height, and structure.”[19]

      Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a complete,
      definite, classified monument. It is no longer a Romanesque
      church; nor is it a Gothic church. This edifice is not a type.
      Notre-Dame de Paris has not, like the Abbey of Tournus, the grave
      and massive frame, the large and round vault, the glacial
      bareness, the majestic simplicity of the edifices which have the
      rounded arch for their progenitor. It is not, like the Cathedral
      of Bourges, the magnificent, light, multiform, tufted, bristling
      efflorescent product of the pointed arch. Impossible to class it
      in that ancient family of sombre, mysterious churches, low and
      crushed as it were by the round arch, almost Egyptian, with the
      exception of the ceiling; all hieroglyphics, all sacerdotal, all
      symbolical, more loaded in their ornaments, with lozenges and
      zigzags, than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with
      animals than with men; the work of the architect less than of the
      bishop; first transformation of art, all impressed with
      theocratic and military discipline, taking root in the Lower
      Empire, and stopping with the time of William the Conqueror.
      Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty,
      aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed
      in form, bold in attitude; communal and _bourgeois_ as political
      symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second
      transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable
      and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which
      begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX.
      Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first;
      nor of pure Arabian race, like the second.

      It is an edifice of the transition period. The Saxon architect
      completed the erection of the first pillars of the nave, when the
      pointed arch, which dates from the Crusade, arrived and placed
      itself as a conqueror upon the large Romanesque capitals which
      should support only round arches. The pointed arch, mistress
      since that time, constructed the rest of the church.
      Nevertheless, timid and inexperienced at the start, it sweeps
      out, grows larger, restrains itself, and dares no longer dart
      upwards in spires and lancet windows, as it did later on, in so
      many marvellous cathedrals. One would say that it were conscious
      of the vicinity of the heavy Romanesque pillars.

      However, these edifices of the transition from the Romanesque to
      the Gothic, are no less precious for study than the pure types.
      They express a shade of the art which would be lost without them.
      It is the graft of the pointed upon the round arch.

      Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this
      variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a
      page not only of the history of the country, but of the history
      of science and art as well. Thus, in order to indicate here only
      the principal details, while the little Red Door almost attains
      to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the fifteenth century,
      the pillars of the nave, by their size and weight, go back to the
      Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One would suppose
      that six centuries separated these pillars from that door. There
      is no one, not even the hermetics, who does not find in the
      symbols of the grand portal a satisfactory compendium of their
      science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was
      so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the
      philosophers’ church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round
      pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with
      which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity,
      schism, Saint-Germain des Prés, Saint-Jacques de la
      Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame.
      This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of
      Paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of one, the limbs of
      another, the haunches of another, something of all.

      We repeat it, these hybrid constructions are not the least
      interesting for the artist, for the antiquarian, for the
      historian. They make one feel to what a degree architecture is a
      primitive thing, by demonstrating (what is also demonstrated by
      the cyclopean vestiges, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic
      Hindoo pagodas) that the greatest products of architecture are
      less the works of individuals than of society; rather the
      offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man
      of genius; the deposit left by a whole people; the heaps
      accumulated by centuries; the residue of successive evaporations
      of human society,—in a word, species of formations. Each wave of
      time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on
      the monument, each individual brings his stone. Thus do the
      beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of
      architecture, Babel, is a hive.

      Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.
      Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending,
      _pendent opera interrupta_; they proceed quietly in accordance
      with the transformed art. The new art takes the monument where it
      finds it, incrusts itself there, assimilates it to itself,
      develops it according to its fancy, and finishes it if it can.
      The thing is accomplished without trouble, without effort,
      without reaction,—following a natural and tranquil law. It is a
      graft which shoots up, a sap which circulates, a vegetation which
      starts forth anew. Certainly there is matter here for many large
      volumes, and often the universal history of humanity in the
      successive engrafting of many arts at many levels, upon the same
      monument. The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in
      these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human
      intelligence is there summed up and totalized. Time is the
      architect, the nation is the builder.

      Not to consider here anything except the Christian architecture
      of Europe, that younger sister of the great masonries of the
      Orient, it appears to the eyes as an immense formation divided
      into three well-defined zones, which are superposed, the one upon
      the other: the Romanesque zone[20], the Gothic zone, the zone of
      the Renaissance, which we would gladly call the Greco-Roman zone.
      The Roman layer, which is the most ancient and deepest, is
      occupied by the round arch, which reappears, supported by the
      Greek column, in the modern and upper layer of the Renaissance.
      The pointed arch is found between the two. The edifices which
      belong exclusively to any one of these three layers are perfectly
      distinct, uniform, and complete. There is the Abbey of Jumiéges,
      there is the Cathedral of Reims, there is the Sainte-Croix of
      Orléans. But the three zones mingle and amalgamate along the
      edges, like the colors in the solar spectrum. Hence, complex
      monuments, edifices of gradation and transition. One is Roman at
      the base, Gothic in the middle, Greco-Roman at the top. It is
      because it was six hundred years in building. This variety is
      rare. The donjon keep of d’Étampes is a specimen of it. But
      monuments of two formations are more frequent. There is
      Notre-Dame de Paris, a pointed-arch edifice, which is imbedded by
      its pillars in that Roman zone, in which are plunged the portal
      of Saint-Denis, and the nave of Saint-Germain des Prés. There is
      the charming, half-Gothic chapter-house of Bocherville, where the
      Roman layer extends half way up. There is the cathedral of Rouen,
      which would be entirely Gothic if it did not bathe the tip of its
      central spire in the zone of the Renaissance.[21]

      However, all these shades, all these differences, do not affect
      the surfaces of edifices only. It is art which has changed its
      skin. The very constitution of the Christian church is not
      attacked by it. There is always the same internal woodwork, the
      same logical arrangement of parts. Whatever may be the carved and
      embroidered envelope of a cathedral, one always finds beneath
      it—in the state of a germ, and of a rudiment at the least—the
      Roman basilica. It is eternally developed upon the soil according
      to the same law. There are, invariably, two naves, which
      intersect in a cross, and whose upper portion, rounded into an
      apse, forms the choir; there are always the side aisles, for
      interior processions, for chapels,—a sort of lateral walks or
      promenades where the principal nave discharges itself through the
      spaces between the pillars. That settled, the number of chapels,
      doors, bell towers, and pinnacles are modified to infinity,
      according to the fancy of the century, the people, and art. The
      service of religion once assured and provided for, architecture
      does what she pleases. Statues, stained glass, rose windows,
      arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs,—she combines
      all these imaginings according to the arrangement which best
      suits her. Hence, the prodigious exterior variety of these
      edifices, at whose foundation dwells so much order and unity. The
      trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious.



      CHAPTER II. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

      We have just attempted to restore, for the reader’s benefit, that
      admirable church of Notre-Dame de Paris. We have briefly pointed
      out the greater part of the beauties which it possessed in the
      fifteenth century, and which it lacks to-day; but we have omitted
      the principal thing,—the view of Paris which was then to be
      obtained from the summits of its towers.

      That was, in fact,—when, after having long groped one’s way up
      the dark spiral which perpendicularly pierces the thick wall of
      the belfries, one emerged, at last abruptly, upon one of the
      lofty platforms inundated with light and air,—that was, in fact,
      a fine picture which spread out, on all sides at once, before the
      eye; a spectacle _sui generis_, of which those of our readers who
      have had the good fortune to see a Gothic city entire, complete,
      homogeneous,—a few of which still remain, Nuremberg in Bavaria
      and Vittoria in Spain,—can readily form an idea; or even smaller
      specimens, provided that they are well preserved,—Vitré in
      Brittany, Nordhausen in Prussia.

      The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago—the Paris of the
      fifteenth century—was already a gigantic city. We Parisians
      generally make a mistake as to the ground which we think that we
      have gained, since Paris has not increased much over one-third
      since the time of Louis XI. It has certainly lost more in beauty
      than it has gained in size.

      Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of
      the City which has the form of a cradle. The strand of that
      island was its first boundary wall, the Seine its first moat.
      Paris remained for many centuries in its island state, with two
      bridges, one on the north, the other on the south; and two bridge
      heads, which were at the same time its gates and its
      fortresses,—the Grand-Châtelet on the right bank, the
      Petit-Châtelet on the left. Then, from the date of the kings of
      the first race, Paris, being too cribbed and confined in its
      island, and unable to return thither, crossed the water. Then,
      beyond the Grand, beyond the Petit-Châtelet, a first circle of
      walls and towers began to infringe upon the country on the two
      sides of the Seine. Some vestiges of this ancient enclosure still
      remained in the last century; to-day, only the memory of it is
      left, and here and there a tradition, the Baudets or Baudoyer
      gate, _Porta Bagauda_.

      Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the
      heart of the city outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, and
      effaces this wall. Philip Augustus makes a new dike for it. He
      imprisons Paris in a circular chain of great towers, both lofty
      and solid. For the period of more than a century, the houses
      press upon each other, accumulate, and raise their level in this
      basin, like water in a reservoir. They begin to deepen; they pile
      story upon story; they mount upon each other; they gush forth at
      the top, like all laterally compressed growth, and there is a
      rivalry as to which shall thrust its head above its neighbors,
      for the sake of getting a little air. The street glows narrower
      and deeper, every space is overwhelmed and disappears. The houses
      finally leap the wall of Philip Augustus, and scatter joyfully
      over the plain, without order, and all askew, like runaways.
      There they plant themselves squarely, cut themselves gardens from
      the fields, and take their ease. Beginning with 1367, the city
      spreads to such an extent into the suburbs, that a new wall
      becomes necessary, particularly on the right bank; Charles V.
      builds it. But a city like Paris is perpetually growing. It is
      only such cities that become capitals. They are funnels, into
      which all the geographical, political, moral, and intellectual
      water-sheds of a country, all the natural slopes of a people,
      pour; wells of civilization, so to speak, and also sewers, where
      commerce, industry, intelligence, population,—all that is sap,
      all that is life, all that is the soul of a nation, filters and
      amasses unceasingly, drop by drop, century by century.

      So Charles V.’s wall suffered the fate of that of Philip
      Augustus. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Faubourg
      strides across it, passes beyond it, and runs farther. In the
      sixteenth, it seems to retreat visibly, and to bury itself deeper
      and deeper in the old city, so thick had the new city already
      become outside of it. Thus, beginning with the fifteenth century,
      where our story finds us, Paris had already outgrown the three
      concentric circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the
      Apostate, existed, so to speak, in germ in the Grand-Châtelet and
      the Petit-Châtelet. The mighty city had cracked, in succession,
      its four enclosures of walls, like a child grown too large for
      his garments of last year. Under Louis XI., this sea of houses
      was seen to be pierced at intervals by several groups of ruined
      towers, from the ancient wall, like the summits of hills in an
      inundation,—like archipelagos of the old Paris submerged beneath
      the new. Since that time Paris has undergone yet another
      transformation, unfortunately for our eyes; but it has passed
      only one more wall, that of Louis XV., that miserable wall of mud
      and spittle, worthy of the king who built it, worthy of the poet
      who sung it,—

      Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.[22]

      In the fifteenth century, Paris was still divided into three
      wholly distinct and separate towns, each having its own
      physiognomy, its own specialty, its manners, customs, privileges,
      and history: the City, the University, the Town. The City, which
      occupied the island, was the most ancient, the smallest, and the
      mother of the other two, crowded in between them like (may we be
      pardoned the comparison) a little old woman between two large and
      handsome maidens. The University covered the left bank of the
      Seine, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, points which
      correspond in the Paris of to-day, the one to the wine market,
      the other to the mint. Its wall included a large part of that
      plain where Julian had built his hot baths. The hill of
      Sainte-Geneviève was enclosed in it. The culminating point of
      this sweep of walls was the Papal gate, that is to say, near the
      present site of the Pantheon. The Town, which was the largest of
      the three fragments of Paris, held the right bank. Its quay,
      broken or interrupted in many places, ran along the Seine, from
      the Tour de Billy to the Tour du Bois; that is to say, from the
      place where the granary stands to-day, to the present site of the
      Tuileries. These four points, where the Seine intersected the
      wall of the capital, the Tournelle and the Tour de Nesle on the
      right, the Tour de Billy and the Tour du Bois on the left, were
      called pre-eminently, _the four towers of Paris_. The Town
      encroached still more extensively upon the fields than the
      University. The culminating point of the Town wall (that of
      Charles V.) was at the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin,
      whose situation has not been changed.

      As we have just said, each of these three great divisions of
      Paris was a town, but too special a town to be complete, a city
      which could not get along without the other two. Hence three
      entirely distinct aspects: churches abounded in the City;
      palaces, in the Town; and colleges, in the University. Neglecting
      here the originalities, of secondary importance in old Paris, and
      the capricious regulations regarding the public highways, we will
      say, from a general point of view, taking only masses and the
      whole group, in this chaos of communal jurisdictions, that the
      island belonged to the bishop, the right bank to the provost of
      the merchants, the left bank to the Rector; over all ruled the
      provost of Paris, a royal not a municipal official. The City had
      Notre-Dame; the Town, the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville; the
      University, the Sorbonne. The Town had the markets (Halles); the
      city, the Hospital; the University, the Pré-aux-Clercs. Offences
      committed by the scholars on the left bank were tried in the law
      courts on the island, and were punished on the right bank at
      Montfaucon; unless the rector, feeling the university to be
      strong and the king weak, intervened; for it was the students’
      privilege to be hanged on their own grounds.

      The greater part of these privileges, it may be noted in passing,
      and there were some even better than the above, had been extorted
      from the kings by revolts and mutinies. It is the course of
      things from time immemorial; the king only lets go when the
      people tear away. There is an old charter which puts the matter
      naively: _àpropos_ of fidelity: _Civibus fidelitas in reges, quæ
      tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrupta, multa peperit
      privilegia_.

      In the fifteenth century, the Seine bathed five islands within
      the walls of Paris: Louviers island, where there were then trees,
      and where there is no longer anything but wood; l’île aux Vaches,
      and l’île Notre-Dame, both deserted, with the exception of one
      house, both fiefs of the bishop—in the seventeenth century, a
      single island was formed out of these two, which was built upon
      and named l’île Saint-Louis—, lastly the City, and at its point,
      the little islet of the cow tender, which was afterwards engulfed
      beneath the platform of the Pont-Neuf. The City then had five
      bridges: three on the right, the Pont Notre-Dame, and the Pont au
      Change, of stone, the Pont aux Meuniers, of wood; two on the
      left, the Petit Pont, of stone, the Pont Saint-Michel, of wood;
      all loaded with houses.

      The University had six gates, built by Philip Augustus; there
      were, beginning with la Tournelle, the Porte Saint-Victor, the
      Porte Bordelle, the Porte Papale, the Porte Saint-Jacques, the
      Porte Saint-Michel, the Porte Saint-Germain. The Town had six
      gates, built by Charles V.; beginning with the Tour de Billy they
      were: the Porte Saint-Antoine, the Porte du Temple, the Porte
      Saint-Martin, the Porte Saint-Denis, the Porte Montmartre, the
      Porte Saint-Honoré. All these gates were strong, and also
      handsome, which does not detract from strength. A large, deep
      moat, with a brisk current during the high water of winter,
      bathed the base of the wall round Paris; the Seine furnished the
      water. At night, the gates were shut, the river was barred at
      both ends of the city with huge iron chains, and Paris slept
      tranquilly.

      From a bird’s-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town,
      and the University, each presented to the eye an inextricable
      skein of eccentrically tangled streets. Nevertheless, at first
      sight, one recognized the fact that these three fragments formed
      but one body. One immediately perceived three long parallel
      streets, unbroken, undisturbed, traversing, almost in a straight
      line, all three cities, from one end to the other; from North to
      South, perpendicularly, to the Seine, which bound them together,
      mingled them, infused them in each other, poured and transfused
      the people incessantly, from one to the other, and made one out
      of the three. The first of these streets ran from the Porte
      Saint-Martin: it was called the Rue Saint-Jacques in the
      University, Rue de la Juiverie in the City, Rue Saint-Martin in
      the Town; it crossed the water twice, under the name of the Petit
      Pont and the Pont Notre-Dame. The second, which was called the
      Rue de la Harpe on the left bank, Rue de la Barillerié in the
      island, Rue Saint-Denis on the right bank, Pont Saint-Michel on
      one arm of the Seine, Pont au Change on the other, ran from the
      Porte Saint-Michel in the University, to the Porte Saint-Denis in
      the Town. However, under all these names, there were but two
      streets, parent streets, generating streets,—the two arteries of
      Paris. All the other veins of the triple city either derived
      their supply from them or emptied into them.

      Independently of these two principal streets, piercing Paris
      diametrically in its whole breadth, from side to side, common to
      the entire capital, the City and the University had also each its
      own great special street, which ran lengthwise by them, parallel
      to the Seine, cutting, as it passed, at right angles, the two
      arterial thoroughfares. Thus, in the Town, one descended in a
      straight line from the Porte Saint-Antoine to the Porte
      Saint-Honoré; in the University from the Porte Saint-Victor to
      the Porte Saint-Germain. These two great thoroughfares
      intersected by the two first, formed the canvas upon which
      reposed, knotted and crowded together on every hand, the
      labyrinthine network of the streets of Paris. In the
      incomprehensible plan of these streets, one distinguished
      likewise, on looking attentively, two clusters of great streets,
      like magnified sheaves of grain, one in the University, the other
      in the Town, which spread out gradually from the bridges to the
      gates.

      Some traces of this geometrical plan still exist to-day.

      Now, what aspect did this whole present, when, as viewed from the
      summit of the towers of Notre-Dame, in 1482? That we shall try to
      describe.

      For the spectator who arrived, panting, upon that pinnacle, it
      was first a dazzling confusing view of roofs, chimneys, streets,
      bridges, places, spires, bell towers. Everything struck your eye
      at once: the carved gable, the pointed roof, the turrets
      suspended at the angles of the walls; the stone pyramids of the
      eleventh century, the slate obelisks of the fifteenth; the round,
      bare tower of the donjon keep; the square and fretted tower of
      the church; the great and the little, the massive and the aerial.
      The eye was, for a long time, wholly lost in this labyrinth,
      where there was nothing which did not possess its originality,
      its reason, its genius, its beauty,—nothing which did not proceed
      from art; beginning with the smallest house, with its painted and
      carved front, with external beams, elliptical door, with
      projecting stories, to the royal Louvre, which then had a
      colonnade of towers. But these are the principal masses which
      were then to be distinguished when the eye began to accustom
      itself to this tumult of edifices.

      In the first place, the City.—“The island of the City,” as Sauval
      says, who, in spite of his confused medley, sometimes has such
      happy turns of expression,—“the island of the city is made like a
      great ship, stuck in the mud and run aground in the current, near
      the centre of the Seine.”

      We have just explained that, in the fifteenth century, this ship
      was anchored to the two banks of the river by five bridges. This
      form of a ship had also struck the heraldic scribes; for it is
      from that, and not from the siege by the Normans, that the ship
      which blazons the old shield of Paris, comes, according to Favyn
      and Pasquier. For him who understands how to decipher them,
      armorial bearings are algebra, armorial bearings have a tongue.
      The whole history of the second half of the Middle Ages is
      written in armorial bearings,—the first half is in the symbolism
      of the Roman churches. They are the hieroglyphics of feudalism,
      succeeding those of theocracy.

      Thus the City first presented itself to the eye, with its stern
      to the east, and its prow to the west. Turning towards the prow,
      one had before one an innumerable flock of ancient roofs, over
      which arched broadly the lead-covered apse of the
      Sainte-Chapelle, like an elephant’s haunches loaded with its
      tower. Only here, this tower was the most audacious, the most
      open, the most ornamented spire of cabinet-maker’s work that ever
      let the sky peep through its cone of lace. In front of
      Notre-Dame, and very near at hand, three streets opened into the
      cathedral square,—a fine square, lined with ancient houses. Over
      the south side of this place bent the wrinkled and sullen façade
      of the Hôtel Dieu, and its roof, which seemed covered with warts
      and pustules. Then, on the right and the left, to east and west,
      within that wall of the City, which was yet so contracted, rose
      the bell towers of its one and twenty churches, of every date, of
      every form, of every size, from the low and wormeaten belfry of
      Saint-Denis du Pas (_Carcer Glaucini_) to the slender needles of
      Saint-Pierre aux Bœufs and Saint-Landry.

      Behind Notre-Dame, the cloister and its Gothic galleries spread
      out towards the north; on the south, the half-Roman palace of the
      bishop; on the east, the desert point of the Terrain. In this
      throng of houses the eye also distinguished, by the lofty
      open-work mitres of stone which then crowned the roof itself,
      even the most elevated windows of the palace, the hotel given by
      the city, under Charles VI., to Juvénal des Ursins; a little
      farther on, the pitch-covered sheds of the Palus Market; in still
      another quarter the new apse of Saint-Germain le Vieux,
      lengthened in 1458, with a bit of the Rue aux Febves; and then,
      in places, a square crowded with people; a pillory, erected at
      the corner of a street; a fine fragment of the pavement of Philip
      Augustus, a magnificent flagging, grooved for the horses’ feet,
      in the middle of the road, and so badly replaced in the sixteenth
      century by the miserable cobblestones, called the _pavement of
      the League;_ a deserted back courtyard, with one of those
      diaphanous staircase turrets, such as were erected in the
      fifteenth century, one of which is still to be seen in the Rue
      des Bourdonnais. Lastly, at the right of the Sainte-Chapelle,
      towards the west, the Palais de Justice rested its group of
      towers at the edge of the water. The thickets of the king’s
      gardens, which covered the western point of the City, masked the
      Island du Passeur. As for the water, from the summit of the
      towers of Notre-Dame one hardly saw it, on either side of the
      City; the Seine was hidden by bridges, the bridges by houses.

      And when the glance passed these bridges, whose roofs were
      visibly green, rendered mouldy before their time by the vapors
      from the water, if it was directed to the left, towards the
      University, the first edifice which struck it was a large, low
      sheaf of towers, the Petit-Châtelet, whose yawning gate devoured
      the end of the Petit-Pont. Then, if your view ran along the bank,
      from east to west, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, there
      was a long cordon of houses, with carved beams, stained-glass
      windows, each story projecting over that beneath it, an
      interminable zigzag of _bourgeois_ gables, frequently interrupted
      by the mouth of a street, and from time to time also by the front
      or angle of a huge stone mansion, planted at its ease, with
      courts and gardens, wings and detached buildings, amid this
      populace of crowded and narrow houses, like a grand gentleman
      among a throng of rustics. There were five or six of these
      mansions on the quay, from the house of Lorraine, which shared
      with the Bernardins the grand enclosure adjoining the Tournelle,
      to the Hôtel de Nesle, whose principal tower ended Paris, and
      whose pointed roofs were in a position, during three months of
      the year, to encroach, with their black triangles, upon the
      scarlet disk of the setting sun.

      This side of the Seine was, however, the least mercantile of the
      two. Students furnished more of a crowd and more noise there than
      artisans, and there was not, properly speaking, any quay, except
      from the Pont Saint-Michel to the Tour de Nesle. The rest of the
      bank of the Seine was now a naked strand, the same as beyond the
      Bernardins; again, a throng of houses, standing with their feet
      in the water, as between the two bridges.

      There was a great uproar of laundresses; they screamed, and
      talked, and sang from morning till night along the beach, and
      beat a great deal of linen there, just as in our day. This is not
      the least of the gayeties of Paris.

      The University presented a dense mass to the eye. From one end to
      the other, it was homogeneous and compact. The thousand roofs,
      dense, angular, clinging to each other, composed, nearly all, of
      the same geometrical element, offered, when viewed from above,
      the aspect of a crystallization of the same substance.

      The capricious ravine of streets did not cut this block of houses
      into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were
      scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some
      everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful
      edifices were the product of the same art as the simple roofs
      which they overshot, and were, actually, only a multiplication of
      the square or the cube of the same geometrical figure. Hence they
      complicated the whole effect, without disturbing it; completed,
      without overloading it. Geometry is harmony. Some fine mansions
      here and there made magnificent outlines against the picturesque
      attics of the left bank. The house of Nevers, the house of Rome,
      the house of Reims, which have disappeared; the Hôtel de Cluny,
      which still exists, for the consolation of the artist, and whose
      tower was so stupidly deprived of its crown a few years ago.
      Close to Cluny, that Roman palace, with fine round arches, were
      once the hot baths of Julian. There were a great many abbeys, of
      a beauty more devout, of a grandeur more solemn than the
      mansions, but not less beautiful, not less grand. Those which
      first caught the eye were the Bernardins, with their three bell
      towers; Sainte-Geneviève, whose square tower, which still exists,
      makes us regret the rest; the Sorbonne, half college, half
      monastery, of which so admirable a nave survives; the fine
      quadrilateral cloister of the Mathurins; its neighbor, the
      cloister of Saint-Benoît, within whose walls they have had time
      to cobble up a theatre, between the seventh and eighth editions
      of this book; the Cordeliers, with their three enormous adjacent
      gables; the Augustins, whose graceful spire formed, after the
      Tour de Nesle, the second denticulation on this side of Paris,
      starting from the west. The colleges, which are, in fact, the
      intermediate ring between the cloister and the world, hold the
      middle position in the monumental series between the hotels and
      the abbeys, with a severity full of elegance, sculpture less
      giddy than the palaces, an architecture less severe than the
      convents. Unfortunately, hardly anything remains of these
      monuments, where Gothic art combined with so just a balance,
      richness and economy. The churches (and they were numerous and
      splendid in the University, and they were graded there also in
      all the ages of architecture, from the round arches of
      Saint-Julian to the pointed arches of Saint-Séverin), the
      churches dominated the whole; and, like one harmony more in this
      mass of harmonies, they pierced in quick succession the multiple
      open work of the gables with slashed spires, with open-work bell
      towers, with slender pinnacles, whose line was also only a
      magnificent exaggeration of the acute angle of the roofs.

      The ground of the University was hilly; Mount Sainte-Geneviève
      formed an enormous mound to the south; and it was a sight to see
      from the summit of Notre-Dame how that throng of narrow and
      tortuous streets (to-day the Latin Quarter), those bunches of
      houses which, spread out in every direction from the top of this
      eminence, precipitated themselves in disorder, and almost
      perpendicularly down its flanks, nearly to the water’s edge,
      having the air, some of falling, others of clambering up again,
      and all of holding to one another. A continual flux of a thousand
      black points which passed each other on the pavements made
      everything move before the eyes; it was the populace seen thus
      from aloft and afar.

      Lastly, in the intervals of these roofs, of these spires, of
      these accidents of numberless edifices, which bent and writhed,
      and jagged in so eccentric a manner the extreme line of the
      University, one caught a glimpse, here and there, of a great
      expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick, round tower, a crenellated
      city gate, shadowing forth the fortress; it was the wall of
      Philip Augustus. Beyond, the fields gleamed green; beyond, fled
      the roads, along which were scattered a few more suburban houses,
      which became more infrequent as they became more distant. Some of
      these faubourgs were important: there were, first, starting from
      la Tournelle, the Bourg Saint-Victor, with its one arch bridge
      over the Bièvre, its abbey where one could read the epitaph of
      Louis le Gros, _epitaphium Ludovici Grossi_, and its church with
      an octagonal spire, flanked with four little bell towers of the
      eleventh century (a similar one can be seen at Étampes; it is not
      yet destroyed); next, the Bourg Saint-Marceau, which already had
      three churches and one convent; then, leaving the mill of the
      Gobelins and its four white walls on the left, there was the
      Faubourg Saint-Jacques with the beautiful carved cross in its
      square; the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, which was then
      Gothic, pointed, charming; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the
      fourteenth century, which Napoleon turned into a hayloft;
      Notre-Dame des Champs, where there were Byzantine mosaics;
      lastly, after having left behind, full in the country, the
      Monastery des Chartreux, a rich edifice contemporary with the
      Palais de Justice, with its little garden divided into
      compartments, and the haunted ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to
      the west, upon the three Roman spires of Saint-Germain des Prés.
      The Bourg Saint-Germain, already a large community, formed
      fifteen or twenty streets in the rear; the pointed bell tower of
      Saint-Sulpice marked one corner of the town. Close beside it one
      descried the quadrilateral enclosure of the fair of
      Saint-Germain, where the market is situated to-day; then the
      abbot’s pillory, a pretty little round tower, well capped with a
      leaden cone; the brickyard was further on, and the Rue du Four,
      which led to the common bakehouse, and the mill on its hillock,
      and the lazar house, a tiny house, isolated and half seen.

      But that which attracted the eye most of all, and fixed it for a
      long time on that point, was the abbey itself. It is certain that
      this monastery, which had a grand air, both as a church and as a
      seignory; that abbatial palace, where the bishops of Paris
      counted themselves happy if they could pass the night; that
      refectory, upon which the architect had bestowed the air, the
      beauty, and the rose window of a cathedral; that elegant chapel
      of the Virgin; that monumental dormitory; those vast gardens;
      that portcullis; that drawbridge; that envelope of battlements
      which notched to the eye the verdure of the surrounding meadows;
      those courtyards, where gleamed men at arms, intermingled with
      golden copes;—the whole grouped and clustered about three lofty
      spires, with round arches, well planted upon a Gothic apse, made
      a magnificent figure against the horizon.

      When, at length, after having contemplated the University for a
      long time, you turned towards the right bank, towards the Town,
      the character of the spectacle was abruptly altered. The Town, in
      fact much larger than the University, was also less of a unit. At
      the first glance, one saw that it was divided into many masses,
      singularly distinct. First, to the eastward, in that part of the
      town which still takes its name from the marsh where Camulogènes
      entangled Cæsar, was a pile of palaces. The block extended to the
      very water’s edge. Four almost contiguous hotels, Jouy, Sens,
      Barbeau, the house of the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks,
      broken with slender turrets, in the Seine.

      These four edifices filled the space from the Rue des
      Nonaindières, to the abbey of the Celestins, whose spire
      gracefully relieved their line of gables and battlements. A few
      miserable, greenish hovels, hanging over the water in front of
      these sumptuous hotels, did not prevent one from seeing the fine
      angles of their façades, their large, square windows with stone
      mullions, their pointed porches overloaded with statues, the
      vivid outlines of their walls, always clear cut, and all those
      charming accidents of architecture, which cause Gothic art to
      have the air of beginning its combinations afresh with every
      monument.

      Behind these palaces, extended in all directions, now broken,
      fenced in, battlemented like a citadel, now veiled by great trees
      like a Carthusian convent, the immense and multiform enclosure of
      that miraculous Hôtel de Saint-Pol, where the King of France
      possessed the means of lodging superbly two and twenty princes of
      the rank of the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy, with their
      domestics and their suites, without counting the great lords, and
      the emperor when he came to view Paris, and the lions, who had
      their separate hotel at the royal hotel. Let us say here that a
      prince’s apartment was then composed of never less than eleven
      large rooms, from the chamber of state to the oratory, not to
      mention the galleries, baths, vapor-baths, and other “superfluous
      places,” with which each apartment was provided; not to mention
      the private gardens for each of the king’s guests; not to mention
      the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general
      refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were
      twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the
      wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and
      riding at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables,
      barns, libraries, arsenals and foundries. This was what a king’s
      palace, a Louvre, a Hôtel de Saint-Pol was then. A city within a
      city.

      From the tower where we are placed, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, almost
      half hidden by the four great houses of which we have just
      spoken, was still very considerable and very marvellous to see.
      One could there distinguish, very well, though cleverly united
      with the principal building by long galleries, decked with
      painted glass and slender columns, the three hotels which Charles
      V. had amalgamated with his palace: the Hôtel du Petit-Muce, with
      the airy balustrade, which formed a graceful border to its roof;
      the Hôtel of the Abbé de Saint-Maur, having the vanity of a
      stronghold, a great tower, machicolations, loopholes, iron
      gratings, and over the large Saxon door, the armorial bearings of
      the abbé, between the two mortises of the drawbridge; the Hôtel
      of the Comte d’Étampes, whose donjon keep, ruined at its summit,
      was rounded and notched like a cock’s comb; here and there, three
      or four ancient oaks, forming a tuft together like enormous
      cauliflowers; gambols of swans, in the clear water of the
      fishponds, all in folds of light and shade; many courtyards of
      which one beheld picturesque bits; the Hôtel of the Lions, with
      its low, pointed arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron
      gratings and its perpetual roar; shooting up above the whole, the
      scale-ornamented spire of the Ave-Maria; on the left, the house
      of the Provost of Paris, flanked by four small towers, delicately
      grooved, in the middle; at the extremity, the Hôtel Saint-Pol,
      properly speaking, with its multiplied façades, its successive
      enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excrescences,
      with which the fancy of the architects had loaded it during the
      last two centuries, with all the apses of its chapels, all the
      gables of its galleries, a thousand weathercocks for the four
      winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose conical roof,
      surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those pointed
      caps which have their edges turned up.

      Continuing to mount the stories of this amphitheatre of palaces
      spread out afar upon the ground, after crossing a deep ravine
      hollowed out of the roofs in the Town, which marked the passage
      of the Rue Saint-Antoine, the eye reached the house of Angoulême,
      a vast construction of many epochs, where there were perfectly
      new and very white parts, which melted no better into the whole
      than a red patch on a blue doublet. Nevertheless, the remarkably
      pointed and lofty roof of the modern palace, bristling with
      carved eaves, covered with sheets of lead, where coiled a
      thousand fantastic arabesques of sparkling incrustations of
      gilded bronze, that roof, so curiously damascened, darted upwards
      gracefully from the midst of the brown ruins of the ancient
      edifice; whose huge and ancient towers, rounded by age like
      casks, sinking together with old age, and rending themselves from
      top to bottom, resembled great bellies unbuttoned. Behind rose
      the forest of spires of the Palais des Tournelles. Not a view in
      the world, either at Chambord or at the Alhambra, is more magic,
      more aerial, more enchanting, than that thicket of spires, tiny
      bell towers, chimneys, weather-vanes, winding staircases,
      lanterns through which the daylight makes its way, which seem cut
      out at a blow, pavilions, spindle-shaped turrets, or, as they
      were then called, _tournelles_, all differing in form, in height,
      and attitude. One would have pronounced it a gigantic stone
      chess-board.

      To the right of the Tournelles, that truss of enormous towers,
      black as ink, running into each other and tied, as it were, by a
      circular moat; that donjon keep, much more pierced with loopholes
      than with windows; that drawbridge, always raised; that
      portcullis, always lowered,—is the Bastille. Those sorts of black
      beaks which project from between the battlements, and which you
      take from a distance to be cave spouts, are cannons.

      Beneath them, at the foot of the formidable edifice, behold the
      Porte Sainte-Antoine, buried between its two towers.

      Beyond the Tournelles, as far as the wall of Charles V., spread
      out, with rich compartments of verdure and of flowers, a velvet
      carpet of cultivated land and royal parks, in the midst of which
      one recognized, by its labyrinth of trees and alleys, the famous
      Dædalus garden which Louis XI. had given to Coictier. The
      doctor’s observatory rose above the labyrinth like a great
      isolated column, with a tiny house for a capital. Terrible
      astrologies took place in that laboratory.

      There to-day is the Place Royale.

      As we have just said, the quarter of the palace, of which we have
      just endeavored to give the reader some idea by indicating only
      the chief points, filled the angle which Charles V.’s wall made
      with the Seine on the east. The centre of the Town was occupied
      by a pile of houses for the populace. It was there, in fact, that
      the three bridges disgorged upon the right bank, and bridges lead
      to the building of houses rather than palaces. That congregation
      of _bourgeois_ habitations, pressed together like the cells in a
      hive, had a beauty of its own. It is with the roofs of a capital
      as with the waves of the sea,—they are grand. First the streets,
      crossed and entangled, forming a hundred amusing figures in the
      block; around the market-place, it was like a star with a
      thousand rays.

      The Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, with their innumerable
      ramifications, rose one after the other, like trees intertwining
      their branches; and then the tortuous lines, the Rues de la
      Plâtrerie, de la Verrerie, de la Tixeranderie, etc., meandered
      over all. There were also fine edifices which pierced the
      petrified undulations of that sea of gables. At the head of the
      Pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming
      beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was the
      Châlelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate,
      but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so
      hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the
      thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the
      rich square bell tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, with its
      angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, although it
      was not finished in the fifteenth century. (It lacked, in
      particular, the four monsters, which, still perched to-day on the
      corners of its roof, have the air of so many sphinxes who are
      propounding to new Paris the riddle of the ancient Paris. Rault,
      the sculptor, only placed them in position in 1526, and received
      twenty francs for his pains.) There was the Maison-aux-Piliers,
      the Pillar House, opening upon that Place de Grève of which we
      have given the reader some idea; there was Saint-Gervais, which a
      front “in good taste” has since spoiled; Saint-Méry, whose
      ancient pointed arches were still almost round arches;
      Saint-Jean, whose magnificent spire was proverbial; there were
      twenty other monuments, which did not disdain to bury their
      wonders in that chaos of black, deep, narrow streets. Add the
      crosses of carved stone, more lavishly scattered through the
      squares than even the gibbets; the cemetery of the Innocents,
      whose architectural wall could be seen in the distance above the
      roofs; the pillory of the Markets, whose top was visible between
      two chimneys of the Rue de la Cossonnerie; the ladder of the
      Croix-du-Trahoir, in its square always black with people; the
      circular buildings of the wheat mart; the fragments of Philip
      Augustus’s ancient wall, which could be made out here and there,
      drowned among the houses, its towers gnawed by ivy, its gates in
      ruins, with crumbling and deformed stretches of wall; the quay
      with its thousand shops, and its bloody knacker’s yards; the
      Seine encumbered with boats, from the Port au Foin to
      For-l’Évêque, and you will have a confused picture of what the
      central trapezium of the Town was like in 1482.

      With these two quarters, one of hotels, the other of houses, the
      third feature of aspect presented by the city was a long zone of
      abbeys, which bordered it in nearly the whole of its
      circumference, from the rising to the setting sun, and, behind
      the circle of fortifications which hemmed in Paris, formed a
      second interior enclosure of convents and chapels. Thus,
      immediately adjoining the park des Tournelles, between the Rue
      Saint-Antoine and the Vieille Rue du Temple, there stood
      Sainte-Catherine, with its immense cultivated lands, which were
      terminated only by the wall of Paris. Between the old and the new
      Rue du Temple, there was the Temple, a sinister group of towers,
      lofty, erect, and isolated in the middle of a vast, battlemented
      enclosure. Between the Rue Neuve-du-Temple and the Rue
      Saint-Martin, there was the Abbey of Saint-Martin, in the midst
      of its gardens, a superb fortified church, whose girdle of
      towers, whose diadem of bell towers, yielded in force and
      splendor only to Saint-Germain des Prés. Between the Rue
      Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis, spread the enclosure of the
      Trinité.

      Lastly, between the Rue Saint-Denis, and the Rue Montorgueil,
      stood the Filles-Dieu. On one side, the rotting roofs and unpaved
      enclosure of the Cour des Miracles could be descried. It was the
      sole profane ring which was linked to that devout chain of
      convents.

      Finally, the fourth compartment, which stretched itself out in
      the agglomeration of the roofs on the right bank, and which
      occupied the western angle of the enclosure, and the banks of the
      river down stream, was a fresh cluster of palaces and hôtels
      pressed close about the base of the Louvre. The old Louvre of
      Philip Augustus, that immense edifice whose great tower rallied
      about it three and twenty chief towers, not to reckon the lesser
      towers, seemed from a distance to be enshrined in the Gothic
      roofs of the Hôtel d’Alençon, and the Petit-Bourbon. This hydra
      of towers, giant guardian of Paris, with its four and twenty
      heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or
      scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections,
      terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town
      towards the west.

      Thus an immense block, which the Romans called _insula_, or
      island, of _bourgeois_ houses, flanked on the right and the left
      by two blocks of palaces, crowned, the one by the Louvre, the
      other by the Tournelles, bordered on the north by a long girdle
      of abbeys and cultivated enclosures, all amalgamated and melted
      together in one view; upon these thousands of edifices, whose
      tiled and slated roofs outlined upon each other so many fantastic
      chains, the bell towers, tattooed, fluted, and ornamented with
      twisted bands, of the four and forty churches on the right bank;
      myriads of cross streets; for boundary on one side, an enclosure
      of lofty walls with square towers (that of the University had
      round towers); on the other, the Seine, cut by bridges, and
      bearing on its bosom a multitude of boats; behold the Town of
      Paris in the fifteenth century.

      Beyond the walls, several suburban villages pressed close about
      the gates, but less numerous and more scattered than those of the
      University. Behind the Bastille there were twenty hovels
      clustered round the curious sculptures of the Croix-Faubin and
      the flying buttresses of the Abbey of Saint-Antoine des Champs;
      then Popincourt, lost amid wheat fields; then la Courtille, a
      merry village of wine-shops; the hamlet of Saint-Laurent with its
      church whose bell tower, from afar, seemed to add itself to the
      pointed towers of the Porte Saint-Martin; the Faubourg
      Saint-Denis, with the vast enclosure of Saint-Ladre; beyond the
      Montmartre Gate, the Grange-Batelière, encircled with white
      walls; behind it, with its chalky slopes, Montmartre, which had
      then almost as many churches as windmills, and which has kept
      only the windmills, for society no longer demands anything but
      bread for the body. Lastly, beyond the Louvre, the Faubourg
      Saint-Honoré, already considerable at that time, could be seen
      stretching away into the fields, and Petit-Bretagne gleaming
      green, and the Marché aux Pourceaux spreading abroad, in whose
      centre swelled the horrible apparatus used for boiling
      counterfeiters. Between la Courtille and Saint-Laurent, your eye
      had already noticed, on the summit of an eminence crouching amid
      desert plains, a sort of edifice which resembled from a distance
      a ruined colonnade, mounted upon a basement with its foundation
      laid bare. This was neither a Parthenon, nor a temple of the
      Olympian Jupiter. It was Montfaucon.

      Now, if the enumeration of so many edifices, summary as we have
      endeavored to make it, has not shattered in the reader’s mind the
      general image of old Paris, as we have constructed it, we will
      recapitulate it in a few words. In the centre, the island of the
      City, resembling as to form an enormous tortoise, and throwing
      out its bridges with tiles for scales; like legs from beneath its
      gray shell of roofs. On the left, the monolithic trapezium, firm,
      dense, bristling, of the University; on the right, the vast
      semicircle of the Town, much more intermixed with gardens and
      monuments. The three blocks, city, university, and town, marbled
      with innumerable streets. Across all, the Seine, “foster-mother
      Seine,” as says Father Du Breul, blocked with islands, bridges,
      and boats. All about an immense plain, patched with a thousand
      sorts of cultivated plots, sown with fine villages. On the left,
      Issy, Vanvres, Vaugirarde, Montrouge, Gentilly, with its round
      tower and its square tower, etc.; on the right, twenty others,
      from Conflans to Ville-l’Évêque. On the horizon, a border of
      hills arranged in a circle like the rim of the basin. Finally,
      far away to the east, Vincennes, and its seven quadrangular
      towers to the south, Bicêtre and its pointed turrets; to the
      north, Saint-Denis and its spire; to the west, Saint Cloud and
      its donjon keep. Such was the Paris which the ravens, who lived
      in 1482, beheld from the summits of the towers of Notre-Dame.

      Nevertheless, Voltaire said of this city, that “before Louis
      XIV., it possessed but four fine monuments”: the dome of the
      Sorbonne, the Val-de-Grâce, the modern Louvre, and I know not
      what the fourth was—the Luxembourg, perhaps. Fortunately,
      Voltaire was the author of “Candide” in spite of this, and in
      spite of this, he is, among all the men who have followed each
      other in the long series of humanity, the one who has best
      possessed the diabolical laugh. Moreover, this proves that one
      can be a fine genius, and yet understand nothing of an art to
      which one does not belong. Did not Molière imagine that he was
      doing Raphael and Michael-Angelo a very great honor, by calling
      them “those Mignards of their age?”

      Let us return to Paris and to the fifteenth century.

      It was not then merely a handsome city; it was a homogeneous
      city, an architectural and historical product of the Middle Ages,
      a chronicle in stone. It was a city formed of two layers only;
      the Romanesque layer and the Gothic layer; for the Roman layer
      had disappeared long before, with the exception of the Hot Baths
      of Julian, where it still pierced through the thick crust of the
      Middle Ages. As for the Celtic layer, no specimens were any
      longer to be found, even when sinking wells.

      Fifty years later, when the Renaissance began to mingle with this
      unity which was so severe and yet so varied, the dazzling luxury
      of its fantasies and systems, its debasements of Roman round
      arches, Greek columns, and Gothic bases, its sculpture which was
      so tender and so ideal, its peculiar taste for arabesques and
      acanthus leaves, its architectural paganism, contemporary with
      Luther, Paris, was perhaps, still more beautiful, although less
      harmonious to the eye, and to the thought.

      But this splendid moment lasted only for a short time; the
      Renaissance was not impartial; it did not content itself with
      building, it wished to destroy; it is true that it required the
      room. Thus Gothic Paris was complete only for a moment.
      Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie had barely been completed when the
      demolition of the old Louvre was begun.

      After that, the great city became more disfigured every day.
      Gothic Paris, beneath which Roman Paris was effaced, was effaced
      in its turn; but can any one say what Paris has replaced it?

      There is the Paris of Catherine de Medicis at the
      Tuileries;[23]—the Paris of Henri II., at the Hôtel de Ville, two
      edifices still in fine taste;—the Paris of Henri IV., at the
      Place Royale: façades of brick with stone corners, and slated
      roofs, tri-colored houses;—the Paris of Louis XIII., at the
      Val-de-Grâce: a crushed and squat architecture, with vaults like
      basket-handles, and something indescribably pot-bellied in the
      column, and thickset in the dome;—the Paris of Louis XIV., in the
      Invalides: grand, rich, gilded, cold;—the Paris of Louis XV., in
      Saint-Sulpice: volutes, knots of ribbon, clouds, vermicelli and
      chiccory leaves, all in stone;—the Paris of Louis XVI., in the
      Pantheon: Saint Peter of Rome, badly copied (the edifice is
      awkwardly heaped together, which has not amended its lines);—the
      Paris of the Republic, in the School of Medicine: a poor Greek
      and Roman taste, which resembles the Coliseum or the Parthenon as
      the constitution of the year III., resembles the laws of
      Minos,—it is called in architecture, “the Messidor”[24]
      taste;—the Paris of Napoleon in the Place Vendôme: this one is
      sublime, a column of bronze made of cannons;—the Paris of the
      Restoration, at the Bourse: a very white colonnade supporting a
      very smooth frieze; the whole is square and cost twenty millions.

      To each of these characteristic monuments there is attached by a
      similarity of taste, fashion, and attitude, a certain number of
      houses scattered about in different quarters and which the eyes
      of the connoisseur easily distinguishes and furnishes with a
      date. When one knows how to look, one finds the spirit of a
      century, and the physiognomy of a king, even in the knocker on a
      door.

      The Paris of the present day has then, no general physiognomy. It
      is a collection of specimens of many centuries, and the finest
      have disappeared. The capital grows only in houses, and what
      houses! At the rate at which Paris is now proceeding, it will
      renew itself every fifty years.

      Thus the historical significance of its architecture is being
      effaced every day. Monuments are becoming rarer and rarer, and
      one seems to see them gradually engulfed, by the flood of houses.
      Our fathers had a Paris of stone; our sons will have one of
      plaster.

      So far as the modern monuments of new Paris are concerned, we
      would gladly be excused from mentioning them. It is not that we
      do not admire them as they deserve. The Sainte-Geneviève of M.
      Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy cake that has ever been
      made in stone. The Palace of the Legion of Honor is also a very
      distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an
      English jockey cap, on a grand scale. The towers of Saint-Sulpice
      are two huge clarinets, and the form is as good as any other; the
      telegraph, contorted and grimacing, forms an admirable accident
      upon their roofs. Saint-Roch has a door which, for magnificence,
      is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin. It has, also,
      a crucifixion in high relief, in a cellar, with a sun of gilded
      wood. These things are fairly marvellous. The lantern of the
      labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes is also very ingenious.

      As for the Palace of the Bourse, which is Greek as to its
      colonnade, Roman in the round arches of its doors and windows, of
      the Renaissance by virtue of its flattened vault, it is
      indubitably a very correct and very pure monument; the proof is
      that it is crowned with an attic, such as was never seen in
      Athens, a beautiful, straight line, gracefully broken here and
      there by stovepipes. Let us add that if it is according to rule
      that the architecture of a building should be adapted to its
      purpose in such a manner that this purpose shall be immediately
      apparent from the mere aspect of the building, one cannot be too
      much amazed at a structure which might be indifferently—the
      palace of a king, a chamber of communes, a town-hall, a college,
      a riding-school, an academy, a warehouse, a court-house, a
      museum, a barracks, a sepulchre, a temple, or a theatre. However,
      it is an Exchange. An edifice ought to be, moreover, suitable to
      the climate. This one is evidently constructed expressly for our
      cold and rainy skies. It has a roof almost as flat as roofs in
      the East, which involves sweeping the roof in winter, when it
      snows; and of course roofs are made to be swept. As for its
      purpose, of which we just spoke, it fulfils it to a marvel; it is
      a bourse in France as it would have been a temple in Greece. It
      is true that the architect was at a good deal of trouble to
      conceal the clock face, which would have destroyed the purity of
      the fine lines of the façade; but, on the other hand, we have
      that colonnade which circles round the edifice and under which,
      on days of high religious ceremony, the theories of the
      stock-brokers and the courtiers of commerce can be developed so
      majestically.

      These are very superb structures. Let us add a quantity of fine,
      amusing, and varied streets, like the Rue de Rivoli, and I do not
      despair of Paris presenting to the eye, when viewed from a
      balloon, that richness of line, that opulence of detail, that
      diversity of aspect, that grandiose something in the simple, and
      unexpected in the beautiful, which characterizes a checker-board.

      However, admirable as the Paris of to-day may seem to you,
      reconstruct the Paris of the fifteenth century, call it up before
      you in thought; look at the sky athwart that surprising forest of
      spires, towers, and belfries; spread out in the centre of the
      city, tear away at the point of the islands, fold at the arches
      of the bridges, the Seine, with its broad green and yellow
      expanses, more variable than the skin of a serpent; project
      clearly against an azure horizon the Gothic profile of this
      ancient Paris. Make its contour float in a winter’s mist which
      clings to its numerous chimneys; drown it in profound night and
      watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that sombre labyrinth
      of edifices; cast upon it a ray of light which shall vaguely
      outline it and cause to emerge from the fog the great heads of
      the towers; or take that black silhouette again, enliven with
      shadow the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and
      make it start out more toothed than a shark’s jaw against a
      copper-colored western sky,—and then compare.

      And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with
      which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the
      morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter
      or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you
      command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the
      chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun
      which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First
      come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as
      when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then,
      all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear
      also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell
      tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony.
      First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure
      and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid
      morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt
      together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a
      magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of
      sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous
      belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and
      prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its
      oscillations.

      Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and
      profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold
      the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the
      belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill,
      of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one
      tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and
      whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from
      the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which
      incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of
      Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it,
      executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like
      flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a
      shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the
      Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with
      its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides,
      and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at
      regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of
      Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the
      hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all
      forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
      Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens
      and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts
      forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very
      depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior
      chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating
      pores of their vaulted roofs.

      Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of
      listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by
      day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in
      this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this
      concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a
      million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite
      breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the
      four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like
      immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade,
      all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime,
      and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and
      joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and
      chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand
      brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone,
      three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer
      anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the
      noise of a tempest.



      BOOK FOURTH.



      CHAPTER I. GOOD SOULS.

      Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place,
      one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been
      deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre-Dame, on the wooden
      bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left, opposite that
      great image of Saint Christopher, which the figure of Messire
      Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had been gazing
      at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to
      overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of
      wood it was customary to expose foundlings for public charity.
      Whoever cared to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was
      a copper basin for alms.

      The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the morning
      of Quasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared to excite
      to a high degree, the curiosity of the numerous group which had
      congregated about the wooden bed. The group was formed for the
      most part of the fair sex. Hardly any one was there except old
      women.

      In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the
      bed, four were noticeable, who, from their gray _cagoule_, a sort
      of cassock, were recognizable as attached to some devout
      sisterhood. I do not see why history has not transmitted to
      posterity the names of these four discreet and venerable damsels.
      They were Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la
      Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, all four widows, all four dames
      of the Chapel Étienne Haudry, who had quitted their house with
      the permission of their mistress, and in conformity with the
      statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, in order to come and hear the sermon.

      However, if these good Haudriettes were, for the moment,
      complying with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, they certainly
      violated with joy those of Michel de Brache, and the Cardinal of
      Pisa, which so inhumanly enjoined silence upon them.

      “What is this, sister?” said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at the
      little creature exposed, which was screaming and writhing on the
      wooden bed, terrified by so many glances.

      “What is to become of us,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way
      children are made now?”

      “I’m not learned in the matter of children,” resumed Agnès, “but
      it must be a sin to look at this one.”

      “’Tis not a child, Agnès.”

      “’Tis an abortion of a monkey,” remarked Gauchère.

      “’Tis a miracle,” interposed Henriette la Gaultière.

      “Then,” remarked Agnès, “it is the third since the Sunday of the
      _Lætare_: for, in less than a week, we had the miracle of the
      mocker of pilgrims divinely punished by Notre-Dame
      d’Aubervilliers, and that was the second miracle within a month.”

      “This pretended foundling is a real monster of abomination,”
      resumed Jehanne.

      “He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter,” continued Gauchère.
      “Hold your tongue, you little howler!”

      “To think that Monsieur of Reims sent this enormity to Monsieur
      of Paris,” added la Gaultière, clasping her hands.

      “I imagine,” said Agnès la Herme, “that it is a beast, an
      animal,—the fruit of a Jew and a sow; something not Christian, in
      short, which ought to be thrown into the fire or into the water.”

      “I really hope,” resumed la Gaultière, “that nobody will apply
      for it.”

      “Ah, good heavens!” exclaimed Agnès; “those poor nurses yonder in
      the foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of the lane as
      you go to the river, just beside Monseigneur the bishop! what if
      this little monster were to be carried to them to suckle? I’d
      rather give suck to a vampire.”

      “How innocent that poor la Herme is!” resumed Jehanne; “don’t you
      see, sister, that this little monster is at least four years old,
      and that he would have less appetite for your breast than for a
      turnspit.”

      The “little monster” we should find it difficult ourselves to
      describe him otherwise, was, in fact, not a new-born child. It
      was a very angular and very lively little mass, imprisoned in its
      linen sack, stamped with the cipher of Messire Guillaume
      Chartier, then bishop of Paris, with a head projecting. That head
      was deformed enough; one beheld only a forest of red hair, one
      eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth cried, and the
      teeth seemed to ask only to be allowed to bite. The whole
      struggled in the sack, to the great consternation of the crowd,
      which increased and was renewed incessantly around it.

      Dame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a rich and noble woman, who held by
      the hand a pretty girl about five or six years of age, and
      dragged a long veil about, suspended to the golden horn of her
      headdress, halted as she passed the wooden bed, and gazed for a
      moment at the wretched creature, while her charming little
      daughter, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, spelled out with her
      tiny, pretty finger, the permanent inscription attached to the
      wooden bed: “Foundlings.”

      “Really,” said the dame, turning away in disgust, “I thought that
      they only exposed children here.”

      She turned her back, throwing into the basin a silver florin,
      which rang among the liards, and made the poor goodwives of the
      chapel of Étienne Haudry open their eyes.

      A moment later, the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, the
      king’s protonotary, passed, with an enormous missal under one arm
      and his wife on the other (Damoiselle Guillemette la Mairesse),
      having thus by his side his two regulators,—spiritual and
      temporal.

      “Foundling!” he said, after examining the object; “found,
      apparently, on the banks of the river Phlegethon.”

      “One can only see one eye,” observed Damoiselle Guillemette;
      “there is a wart on the other.”

      “It’s not a wart,” returned Master Robert Mistricolle, “it is an
      egg which contains another demon exactly similar, who bears
      another little egg which contains another devil, and so on.”

      “How do you know that?” asked Guillemette la Mairesse.

      “I know it pertinently,” replied the protonotary.

      “Monsieur le protonotare,” asked Gauchère, “what do you
      prognosticate of this pretended foundling?”

      “The greatest misfortunes,” replied Mistricolle.

      “Ah! good heavens!” said an old woman among the spectators, “and
      that besides our having had a considerable pestilence last year,
      and that they say that the English are going to disembark in a
      company at Harfleur.”

      “Perhaps that will prevent the queen from coming to Paris in the
      month of September,” interposed another; “trade is so bad
      already.”

      “My opinion is,” exclaimed Jehanne de la Tarme, “that it would be
      better for the louts of Paris, if this little magician were put
      to bed on a fagot than on a plank.”

      “A fine, flaming fagot,” added the old woman.

      “It would be more prudent,” said Mistricolle.

      For several minutes, a young priest had been listening to the
      reasoning of the Haudriettes and the sentences of the notary. He
      had a severe face, with a large brow, a profound glance. He
      thrust the crowd silently aside, scrutinized the “little
      magician,” and stretched out his hand upon him. It was high time,
      for all the devotees were already licking their chops over the
      “fine, flaming fagot.”

      “I adopt this child,” said the priest.

      He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators
      followed him with frightened glances. A moment later, he had
      disappeared through the “Red Door,” which then led from the
      church to the cloister.

      When the first surprise was over, Jehanne de la Tarme bent down
      to the ear of la Gaultière,—

      “I told you so, sister,—that young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo,
      is a sorcerer.”



      CHAPTER II. CLAUDE FROLLO.

      In fact, Claude Frollo was no common person.

      He belonged to one of those middle-class families which were
      called indifferently, in the impertinent language of the last
      century, the high _bourgeoise_ or the petty nobility. This family
      had inherited from the brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe,
      which was dependent upon the Bishop of Paris, and whose
      twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth century the object
      of so many suits before the official. As possessor of this fief,
      Claude Frollo was one of the twenty-seven seigneurs keeping claim
      to a manor in fee in Paris and its suburbs; and for a long time,
      his name was to be seen inscribed in this quality, between the
      Hôtel de Tancarville, belonging to Master François Le Rez, and
      the college of Tours, in the records deposited at Saint Martin
      des Champs.

      Claude Frollo had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to
      the ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in
      Latin; he had been trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to
      speak low. While still a child, his father had cloistered him in
      the college of Torchi in the University. There it was that he had
      grown up, on the missal and the lexicon.

      Moreover, he was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied
      ardently, and learned quickly; he never uttered a loud cry in
      recreation hour, mixed but little in the bacchanals of the Rue du
      Fouarre, did not know what it was to _dare alapas et capillos
      laniare_, and had cut no figure in that revolt of 1463, which the
      annalists register gravely, under the title of “The sixth trouble
      of the University.” He seldom rallied the poor students of
      Montaigu on the _cappettes_ from which they derived their name,
      or the bursars of the college of Dormans on their shaved tonsure,
      and their surtout parti-colored of bluish-green, blue, and violet
      cloth, _azurini coloris et bruni_, as says the charter of the
      Cardinal des Quatre-Couronnes.

      On the other hand, he was assiduous at the great and the small
      schools of the Rue Saint Jean de Beauvais. The first pupil whom
      the Abbé de Saint Pierre de Val, at the moment of beginning his
      reading on canon law, always perceived, glued to a pillar of the
      school Saint-Vendregesile, opposite his rostrum, was Claude
      Frollo, armed with his horn ink-bottle, biting his pen,
      scribbling on his threadbare knee, and, in winter, blowing on his
      fingers. The first auditor whom Messire Miles d’Isliers, doctor
      in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning, all breathless, at
      the opening of the gates of the school of the Chef-Saint-Denis,
      was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, the young clerk
      might have held his own, in mystical theology, against a father
      of the church; in canonical theology, against a father of the
      councils; in scholastic theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.

      Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. From the
      “Master of Sentences,” he had passed to the “Capitularies of
      Charlemagne;” and he had devoured in succession, in his appetite
      for science, decretals upon decretals, those of Theodore, Bishop
      of Hispalus; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms; those of Yves,
      Bishop of Chartres; next the decretal of Gratian, which succeeded
      the capitularies of Charlemagne; then the collection of Gregory
      IX.; then the Epistle of _Superspecula_, of Honorius III. He
      rendered clear and familiar to himself that vast and tumultuous
      period of civil law and canon law in conflict and at strife with
      each other, in the chaos of the Middle Ages,—a period which
      Bishop Theodore opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in
      1227.

      Decretals digested, he flung himself upon medicine, on the
      liberal arts. He studied the science of herbs, the science of
      unguents; he became an expert in fevers and in contusions, in
      sprains and abcesses. Jacques d’ Espars would have received him
      as a physician; Richard Hellain, as a surgeon. He also passed
      through all the degrees of licentiate, master, and doctor of
      arts. He studied the languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, a triple
      sanctuary then very little frequented. His was a veritable fever
      for acquiring and hoarding, in the matter of science. At the age
      of eighteen, he had made his way through the four faculties; it
      seemed to the young man that life had but one sole object:
      learning.

      It was towards this epoch, that the excessive heat of the summer
      of 1466 caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried
      off more than forty thousand souls in the vicomty of Paris, and
      among others, as Jean de Troyes states, “Master Arnoul,
      astrologer to the king, who was a very fine man, both wise and
      pleasant.” The rumor spread in the University that the Rue
      Tirechappe was especially devastated by the malady. It was there
      that Claude’s parents resided, in the midst of their fief. The
      young scholar rushed in great alarm to the paternal mansion. When
      he entered it, he found that both father and mother had died on
      the preceding day. A very young brother of his, who was in
      swaddling clothes, was still alive and crying abandoned in his
      cradle. This was all that remained to Claude of his family; the
      young man took the child under his arm and went off in a pensive
      mood. Up to that moment, he had lived only in science; he now
      began to live in life.

      This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude’s existence. Orphaned,
      the eldest, head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt
      himself rudely recalled from the reveries of school to the
      realities of this world. Then, moved with pity, he was seized
      with passion and devotion towards that child, his brother; a
      sweet and strange thing was a human affection to him, who had
      hitherto loved his books alone.

      This affection developed to a singular point; in a soul so new,
      it was like a first love. Separated since infancy from his
      parents, whom he had hardly known; cloistered and immured, as it
      were, in his books; eager above all things to study and to learn;
      exclusively attentive up to that time, to his intelligence which
      broadened in science, to his imagination, which expanded in
      letters,—the poor scholar had not yet had time to feel the place
      of his heart.

      This young brother, without mother or father, this little child
      which had fallen abruptly from heaven into his arms, made a new
      man of him. He perceived that there was something else in the
      world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne, and the verses of
      Homer; that man needed affections; that life without tenderness
      and without love was only a set of dry, shrieking, and rending
      wheels. Only, he imagined, for he was at the age when illusions
      are as yet replaced only by illusions, that the affections of
      blood and family were the sole ones necessary, and that a little
      brother to love sufficed to fill an entire existence.

      He threw himself, therefore, into the love for his little Jehan
      with the passion of a character already profound, ardent,
      concentrated; that poor frail creature, pretty, fair-haired,
      rosy, and curly,—that orphan with another orphan for his only
      support, touched him to the bottom of his heart; and grave
      thinker as he was, he set to meditating upon Jehan with an
      infinite compassion. He kept watch and ward over him as over
      something very fragile, and very worthy of care. He was more than
      a brother to the child; he became a mother to him.

      Little Jehan had lost his mother while he was still at the
      breast; Claude gave him to a nurse. Besides the fief of
      Tirechappe, he had inherited from his father the fief of Moulin,
      which was a dependency of the square tower of Gentilly; it was a
      mill on a hill, near the château of Winchestre (Bicêtre). There
      was a miller’s wife there who was nursing a fine child; it was
      not far from the university, and Claude carried the little Jehan
      to her in his own arms.

      From that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, he
      took life very seriously. The thought of his little brother
      became not only his recreation, but the object of his studies. He
      resolved to consecrate himself entirely to a future for which he
      was responsible in the sight of God, and never to have any other
      wife, any other child than the happiness and fortune of his
      brother. Therefore, he attached himself more closely than ever to
      the clerical profession. His merits, his learning, his quality of
      immediate vassal of the Bishop of Paris, threw the doors of the
      church wide open to him. At the age of twenty, by special
      dispensation of the Holy See, he was a priest, and served as the
      youngest of the chaplains of Notre-Dame the altar which is
      called, because of the late mass which is said there, _altare
      pigrorum_.

      There, plunged more deeply than ever in his dear books, which he
      quitted only to run for an hour to the fief of Moulin, this
      mixture of learning and austerity, so rare at his age, had
      promptly acquired for him the respect and admiration of the
      monastery. From the cloister, his reputation as a learned man had
      passed to the people, among whom it had changed a little, a
      frequent occurrence at that time, into reputation as a sorcerer.

      It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo day,
      from saying his mass at the Altar of the Lazy, which was by the
      side of the door leading to the nave on the right, near the image
      of the Virgin, that his attention had been attracted by the group
      of old women chattering around the bed for foundlings.

      Then it was that he approached the unhappy little creature, which
      was so hated and so menaced. That distress, that deformity, that
      abandonment, the thought of his young brother, the idea which
      suddenly occurred to him, that if he were to die, his dear little
      Jehan might also be flung miserably on the plank for
      foundlings,—all this had gone to his heart simultaneously; a
      great pity had moved in him, and he had carried off the child.

      When he removed the child from the sack, he found it greatly
      deformed, in very sooth. The poor little wretch had a wart on his
      left eye, his head placed directly on his shoulders, his spinal
      column was crooked, his breast bone prominent, and his legs
      bowed; but he appeared to be lively; and although it was
      impossible to say in what language he lisped, his cry indicated
      considerable force and health. Claude’s compassion increased at
      the sight of this ugliness; and he made a vow in his heart to
      rear the child for the love of his brother, in order that,
      whatever might be the future faults of the little Jehan, he
      should have beside him that charity done for his sake. It was a
      sort of investment of good works, which he was effecting in the
      name of his young brother; it was a stock of good works which he
      wished to amass in advance for him, in case the little rogue
      should some day find himself short of that coin, the only sort
      which is received at the toll-bar of paradise.

      He baptized his adopted child, and gave him the name of
      Quasimodo, either because he desired thereby to mark the day,
      when he had found him, or because he wished to designate by that
      name to what a degree the poor little creature was incomplete,
      and hardly sketched out. In fact, Quasimodo, blind, hunchbacked,
      knock-kneed, was only an “almost.”



      CHAPTER III. _IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE_.

      Now, in 1482, Quasimodo had grown up. He had become a few years
      previously the bellringer of Notre-Dame, thanks to his father by
      adoption, Claude Frollo,—who had become archdeacon of Josas,
      thanks to his suzerain, Messire Louis de Beaumont,—who had become
      Bishop of Paris, at the death of Guillaume Chartier in 1472,
      thanks to his patron, Olivier Le Daim, barber to Louis XI., king
      by the grace of God.

      So Quasimodo was the ringer of the chimes of Notre-Dame.

      In the course of time there had been formed a certain peculiarly
      intimate bond which united the ringer to the church. Separated
      forever from the world, by the double fatality of his unknown
      birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned from his infancy in
      that impassable double circle, the poor wretch had grown used to
      seeing nothing in this world beyond the religious walls which had
      received him under their shadow. Notre-Dame had been to him
      successively, as he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the
      house, the country, the universe.

      There was certainly a sort of mysterious and pre-existing harmony
      between this creature and this church. When, still a little
      fellow, he had dragged himself tortuously and by jerks beneath
      the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his human face and his
      bestial limbs, the natural reptile of that humid and sombre
      pavement, upon which the shadow of the Romanesque capitals cast
      so many strange forms.

      Later on, the first time that he caught hold, mechanically, of
      the ropes to the towers, and hung suspended from them, and set
      the bell to clanging, it produced upon his adopted father,
      Claude, the effect of a child whose tongue is unloosed and who
      begins to speak.

      It is thus that, little by little, developing always in sympathy
      with the cathedral, living there, sleeping there, hardly ever
      leaving it, subject every hour to the mysterious impress, he came
      to resemble it, he incrusted himself in it, so to speak, and
      became an integral part of it. His salient angles fitted into the
      retreating angles of the cathedral (if we may be allowed this
      figure of speech), and he seemed not only its inhabitant but more
      than that, its natural tenant. One might almost say that he had
      assumed its form, as the snail takes on the form of its shell. It
      was his dwelling, his hole, his envelope. There existed between
      him and the old church so profound an instinctive sympathy, so
      many magnetic affinities, so many material affinities, that he
      adhered to it somewhat as a tortoise adheres to its shell. The
      rough and wrinkled cathedral was his shell.

      It is useless to warn the reader not to take literally all the
      similes which we are obliged to employ here to express the
      singular, symmetrical, direct, almost consubstantial union of a
      man and an edifice. It is equally unnecessary to state to what a
      degree that whole cathedral was familiar to him, after so long
      and so intimate a cohabitation. That dwelling was peculiar to
      him. It had no depths to which Quasimodo had not penetrated, no
      height which he had not scaled. He often climbed many stones up
      the front, aided solely by the uneven points of the carving. The
      towers, on whose exterior surface he was frequently seen
      clambering, like a lizard gliding along a perpendicular wall,
      those two gigantic twins, so lofty, so menacing, so formidable,
      possessed for him neither vertigo, nor terror, nor shocks of
      amazement.

      To see them so gentle under his hand, so easy to scale, one would
      have said that he had tamed them. By dint of leaping, climbing,
      gambolling amid the abysses of the gigantic cathedral he had
      become, in some sort, a monkey and a goat, like the Calabrian
      child who swims before he walks, and plays with the sea while
      still a babe.

      Moreover, it was not his body alone which seemed fashioned after
      the Cathedral, but his mind also. In what condition was that
      mind? What bent had it contracted, what form had it assumed
      beneath that knotted envelope, in that savage life? This it would
      be hard to determine. Quasimodo had been born one-eyed,
      hunchbacked, lame. It was with great difficulty, and by dint of
      great patience that Claude Frollo had succeeded in teaching him
      to talk. But a fatality was attached to the poor foundling.
      Bellringer of Notre-Dame at the age of fourteen, a new infirmity
      had come to complete his misfortunes: the bells had broken the
      drums of his ears; he had become deaf. The only gate which nature
      had left wide open for him had been abruptly closed, and forever.

      In closing, it had cut off the only ray of joy and of light which
      still made its way into the soul of Quasimodo. His soul fell into
      profound night. The wretched being’s misery became as incurable
      and as complete as his deformity. Let us add that his deafness
      rendered him to some extent dumb. For, in order not to make
      others laugh, the very moment that he found himself to be deaf,
      he resolved upon a silence which he only broke when he was alone.
      He voluntarily tied that tongue which Claude Frollo had taken so
      much pains to unloose. Hence, it came about, that when necessity
      constrained him to speak, his tongue was torpid, awkward, and
      like a door whose hinges have grown rusty.

      If now we were to try to penetrate to the soul of Quasimodo
      through that thick, hard rind; if we could sound the depths of
      that badly constructed organism; if it were granted to us to look
      with a torch behind those non-transparent organs to explore the
      shadowy interior of that opaque creature, to elucidate his
      obscure corners, his absurd no-thoroughfares, and suddenly to
      cast a vivid light upon the soul enchained at the extremity of
      that cave, we should, no doubt, find the unhappy Psyche in some
      poor, cramped, and ricketty attitude, like those prisoners
      beneath the Leads of Venice, who grew old bent double in a stone
      box which was both too low and too short for them.

      It is certain that the mind becomes atrophied in a defective
      body. Quasimodo was barely conscious of a soul cast in his own
      image, moving blindly within him. The impressions of objects
      underwent a considerable refraction before reaching his mind. His
      brain was a peculiar medium; the ideas which passed through it
      issued forth completely distorted. The reflection which resulted
      from this refraction was, necessarily, divergent and perverted.

      Hence a thousand optical illusions, a thousand aberrations of
      judgment, a thousand deviations, in which his thought strayed,
      now mad, now idiotic.

      The first effect of this fatal organization was to trouble the
      glance which he cast upon things. He received hardly any
      immediate perception of them. The external world seemed much
      farther away to him than it does to us.

      The second effect of his misfortune was to render him malicious.

      He was malicious, in fact, because he was savage; he was savage
      because he was ugly. There was logic in his nature, as there is
      in ours.

      His strength, so extraordinarily developed, was a cause of still
      greater malevolence: “_Malus puer robustus_,” says Hobbes.

      This justice must, however be rendered to him. Malevolence was
      not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first steps among men,
      he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out,
      blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery
      or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing but hatred
      around him. He had caught the general malevolence. He had picked
      up the weapon with which he had been wounded.

      After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance;
      his cathedral was sufficient for him. It was peopled with marble
      figures,—kings, saints, bishops,—who at least did not burst out
      laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with
      tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the
      monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He
      resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be
      scoffing at other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed
      him; the monsters were his friends and guarded him. So he held
      long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole hours
      crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation
      with it. If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his
      serenade.

      And the cathedral was not only society for him, but the universe,
      and all nature beside. He dreamed of no other hedgerows than the
      painted windows, always in flower; no other shade than that of
      the foliage of stone which spread out, loaded with birds, in the
      tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than the
      colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris,
      roaring at their bases.

      What he loved above all else in the maternal edifice, that which
      aroused his soul, and made it open its poor wings, which it kept
      so miserably folded in its cavern, that which sometimes rendered
      him even happy, was the bells. He loved them, fondled them,
      talked to them, understood them. From the chime in the spire,
      over the intersection of the aisles and nave, to the great bell
      of the front, he cherished a tenderness for them all. The central
      spire and the two towers were to him as three great cages, whose
      birds, reared by himself, sang for him alone. Yet it was these
      very bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often love best
      that child which has caused them the most suffering.

      It is true that their voice was the only one which he could still
      hear. On this score, the big bell was his beloved. It was she
      whom he preferred out of all that family of noisy girls which
      bustled above him, on festival days. This bell was named Marie.
      She was alone in the southern tower, with her sister Jacqueline,
      a bell of lesser size, shut up in a smaller cage beside hers.
      This Jacqueline was so called from the name of the wife of Jean
      Montagu, who had given it to the church, which had not prevented
      his going and figuring without his head at Montfaucon. In the
      second tower there were six other bells, and, finally, six
      smaller ones inhabited the belfry over the crossing, with the
      wooden bell, which rang only between after dinner on Good Friday
      and the morning of the day before Easter. So Quasimodo had
      fifteen bells in his seraglio; but big Marie was his favorite.

      No idea can be formed of his delight on days when the grand peal
      was sounded. At the moment when the archdeacon dismissed him, and
      said, “Go!” he mounted the spiral staircase of the clock tower
      faster than any one else could have descended it. He entered
      perfectly breathless into the aerial chamber of the great bell;
      he gazed at her a moment, devoutly and lovingly; then he gently
      addressed her and patted her with his hand, like a good horse,
      which is about to set out on a long journey. He pitied her for
      the trouble that she was about to suffer. After these first
      caresses, he shouted to his assistants, placed in the lower story
      of the tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel
      creaked, the enormous capsule of metal started slowly into
      motion. Quasimodo followed it with his glance and trembled. The
      first shock of the clapper and the brazen wall made the framework
      upon which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo vibrated with the
      bell.

      “Vah!” he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter. However, the
      movement of the bass was accelerated, and, in proportion as it
      described a wider angle, Quasimodo’s eye opened also more and
      more widely, phosphoric and flaming. At length the grand peal
      began; the whole tower trembled; woodwork, leads, cut stones, all
      groaned at once, from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils
      of its summit. Then Quasimodo boiled and frothed; he went and
      came; he trembled from head to foot with the tower. The bell,
      furious, running riot, presented to the two walls of the tower
      alternately its brazen throat, whence escaped that tempestuous
      breath, which is audible leagues away. Quasimodo stationed
      himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose with
      the oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelming
      breath, gazed by turns at the deep place, which swarmed with
      people, two hundred feet below him, and at that enormous, brazen
      tongue which came, second after second, to howl in his ear.

      It was the only speech which he understood, the only sound which
      broke for him the universal silence. He swelled out in it as a
      bird does in the sun. All of a sudden, the frenzy of the bell
      seized upon him; his look became extraordinary; he lay in wait
      for the great bell as it passed, as a spider lies in wait for a
      fly, and flung himself abruptly upon it, with might and main.
      Then, suspended above the abyss, borne to and fro by the
      formidable swinging of the bell, he seized the brazen monster by
      the ear-laps, pressed it between both knees, spurred it on with
      his heels, and redoubled the fury of the peal with the whole
      shock and weight of his body. Meanwhile, the tower trembled; he
      shrieked and gnashed his teeth, his red hair rose erect, his
      breast heaving like a bellows, his eye flashed flames, the
      monstrous bell neighed, panting, beneath him; and then it was no
      longer the great bell of Notre-Dame nor Quasimodo: it was a
      dream, a whirlwind, a tempest, dizziness mounted astride of
      noise; a spirit clinging to a flying crupper, a strange centaur,
      half man, half bell; a sort of horrible Astolphus, borne away
      upon a prodigious hippogriff of living bronze.

      The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a
      breath of life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral. It
      seemed as though there escaped from him, at least according to
      the growing superstitions of the crowd, a mysterious emanation
      which animated all the stones of Notre-Dame, and made the deep
      bowels of the ancient church to palpitate. It sufficed for people
      to know that he was there, to make them believe that they beheld
      the thousand statues of the galleries and the fronts in motion.
      And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature
      beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice;
      it was possessed and filled with Quasimodo, as with a familiar
      spirit. One would have said that he made the immense edifice
      breathe. He was everywhere about it; in fact, he multiplied
      himself on all points of the structure. Now one perceived with
      affright at the very top of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf
      climbing, writhing, crawling on all fours, descending outside
      above the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going
      to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it was Quasimodo
      dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the church
      one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching and
      scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one
      caught sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a bundle
      of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope; it
      was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus. Often at night a
      hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of
      carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the
      circumference of the apse; again it was the hunchback of
      Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole
      church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes
      and mouths were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the
      monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and
      day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around the monstrous
      cathedral, barking. And, if it was a Christmas Eve, while the
      great bell, which seemed to emit the death rattle, summoned the
      faithful to the midnight mass, such an air was spread over the
      sombre façade that one would have declared that the grand portal
      was devouring the throng, and that the rose window was watching
      it. And all this came from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him
      for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be
      its demon: he was in fact its soul.

      To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that
      Quasimodo has existed, Notre-Dame is to-day deserted, inanimate,
      dead. One feels that something has disappeared from it. That
      immense body is empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has quitted
      it, one sees its place and that is all. It is like a skull which
      still has holes for the eyes, but no longer sight.



      CHAPTER IV. THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.

      Nevertheless, there was one human creature whom Quasimodo
      excepted from his malice and from his hatred for others, and whom
      he loved even more, perhaps, than his cathedral: this was Claude
      Frollo.

      The matter was simple; Claude Frollo had taken him in, had
      adopted him, had nourished him, had reared him. When a little
      lad, it was between Claude Frollo’s legs that he was accustomed
      to seek refuge, when the dogs and the children barked after him.
      Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, to read, to write. Claude
      Frollo had finally made him the bellringer. Now, to give the big
      bell in marriage to Quasimodo was to give Juliet to Romeo.

      Hence Quasimodo’s gratitude was profound, passionate, boundless;
      and although the visage of his adopted father was often clouded
      or severe, although his speech was habitually curt, harsh,
      imperious, that gratitude never wavered for a single moment. The
      archdeacon had in Quasimodo the most submissive slave, the most
      docile lackey, the most vigilant of dogs. When the poor
      bellringer became deaf, there had been established between him
      and Claude Frollo, a language of signs, mysterious and understood
      by themselves alone. In this manner the archdeacon was the sole
      human being with whom Quasimodo had preserved communication. He
      was in sympathy with but two things in this world: Notre-Dame and
      Claude Frollo.

      There is nothing which can be compared with the empire of the
      archdeacon over the bellringer; with the attachment of the
      bellringer for the archdeacon. A sign from Claude and the idea of
      giving him pleasure would have sufficed to make Quasimodo hurl
      himself headlong from the summit of Notre-Dame. It was a
      remarkable thing—all that physical strength which had reached in
      Quasimodo such an extraordinary development, and which was placed
      by him blindly at the disposition of another. There was in it, no
      doubt, filial devotion, domestic attachment; there was also the
      fascination of one spirit by another spirit. It was a poor,
      awkward, and clumsy organization, which stood with lowered head
      and supplicating eyes before a lofty and profound, a powerful and
      superior intellect. Lastly, and above all, it was gratitude.
      Gratitude so pushed to its extremest limit, that we do not know
      to what to compare it. This virtue is not one of those of which
      the finest examples are to be met with among men. We will say
      then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as never a dog, never a
      horse, never an elephant loved his master.



      CHAPTER V. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

      In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo,
      about thirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old.

      Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the college of
      Torchi, the tender protector of a little child, the young and
      dreamy philosopher who knew many things and was ignorant of many.
      He was a priest, austere, grave, morose; one charged with souls;
      monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, the bishop’s second acolyte,
      having charge of the two deaneries of Montlhéry, and Châteaufort,
      and one hundred and seventy-four country curacies. He was an
      imposing and sombre personage, before whom the choir boys in alb
      and in jacket trembled, as well as the machicots[25], and the
      brothers of Saint-Augustine and the matutinal clerks of
      Notre-Dame, when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the
      choir, majestic, thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so
      bent upon his breast that all one saw of his face was his large,
      bald brow.

      Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor the
      education of his young brother, those two occupations of his
      life. But as time went on, some bitterness had been mingled with
      these things which were so sweet. In the long run, says Paul
      Diacre, the best lard turns rancid. Little Jehan Frollo, surnamed
      (_du Moulin_) “of the Mill” because of the place where he had
      been reared, had not grown up in the direction which Claude would
      have liked to impose upon him. The big brother counted upon a
      pious, docile, learned, and honorable pupil. But the little
      brother, like those young trees which deceive the gardener’s
      hopes and turn obstinately to the quarter whence they receive sun
      and air, the little brother did not grow and did not multiply,
      but only put forth fine bushy and luxuriant branches on the side
      of laziness, ignorance, and debauchery. He was a regular devil,
      and a very disorderly one, who made Dom Claude scowl; but very
      droll and very subtle, which made the big brother smile.

      Claude had confided him to that same college of Torchi where he
      had passed his early years in study and meditation; and it was a
      grief to him that this sanctuary, formerly edified by the name of
      Frollo, should to-day be scandalized by it. He sometimes preached
      Jehan very long and severe sermons, which the latter intrepidly
      endured. After all, the young scapegrace had a good heart, as can
      be seen in all comedies. But the sermon over, he none the less
      tranquilly resumed his course of seditions and enormities. Now it
      was a _béjaune_ or yellow beak (as they called the new arrivals
      at the university), whom he had been mauling by way of welcome; a
      precious tradition which has been carefully preserved to our own
      day. Again, he had set in movement a band of scholars, who had
      flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion, _quasi
      classico excitati_, had then beaten the tavern-keeper “with
      offensive cudgels,” and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to
      smashing in the hogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then it was
      a fine report in Latin, which the sub-monitor of Torchi carried
      piteously to Dom Claude with this dolorous marginal
      comment,—_Rixa; prima causa vinum optimum potatum_. Finally, it
      was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy of sixteen, that his
      debauchery often extended as far as the Rue de Glatigny.

      Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all
      this, had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that
      sister which, at least does not laugh in your face, and which
      always pays you, though in money that is sometimes a little
      hollow, for the attention which you have paid to her. Hence, he
      became more and more learned, and, at the same time, as a natural
      consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad
      as a man. There are for each of us several parallelisms between
      our intelligence, our habits, and our character, which develop
      without a break, and break only in the great disturbances of
      life.

      As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of
      human learning—positive, exterior, and permissible—since his
      youth, he was obliged, unless he came to a halt, _ubi defuit
      orbis_, to proceed further and seek other aliments for the
      insatiable activity of his intelligence. The antique symbol of
      the serpent biting its tail is, above all, applicable to science.
      It would appear that Claude Frollo had experienced this. Many
      grave persons affirm that, after having exhausted the _fas_ of
      human learning, he had dared to penetrate into the _nefas_. He
      had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree
      of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by
      tasting the forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as
      the reader has seen, in the conferences of the theologians in
      Sorbonne,—in the assemblies of the doctors of art, after the
      manner of Saint-Hilaire,—in the disputes of the decretalists,
      after the manner of Saint-Martin,—in the congregations of
      physicians at the holy water font of Notre-Dame, _ad cupam
      Nostræ-Dominæ_. All the dishes permitted and approved, which
      those four great kitchens called the four faculties could
      elaborate and serve to the understanding, he had devoured, and
      had been satiated with them before his hunger was appeased. Then
      he had penetrated further, lower, beneath all that finished,
      material, limited knowledge; he had, perhaps, risked his soul,
      and had seated himself in the cavern at that mysterious table of
      the alchemists, of the astrologers, of the hermetics, of which
      Averroès, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicolas Flamel hold the end in
      the Middle Ages; and which extends in the East, by the light of
      the seven-branched candlestick, to Solomon, Pythagoras, and
      Zoroaster.

      That is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. It
      is certain that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery of the
      Saints-Innocents, where, it is true, his father and mother had
      been buried, with other victims of the plague of 1466; but that
      he appeared far less devout before the cross of their grave than
      before the strange figures with which the tomb of Nicolas Flamel
      and Claude Pernelle, erected just beside it, was loaded.

      It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along the
      Rue des Lombards, and furtively enter a little house which formed
      the corner of the Rue des Ecrivans and the Rue Marivault. It was
      the house which Nicolas Flamel had built, where he had died about
      1417, and which, constantly deserted since that time, had already
      begun to fall in ruins,—so greatly had the hermetics and the
      alchemists of all countries wasted away the walls, merely by
      carving their names upon them. Some neighbors even affirm that
      they had once seen, through an air-hole, Archdeacon Claude
      excavating, turning over, digging up the earth in the two
      cellars, whose supports had been daubed with numberless couplets
      and hieroglyphics by Nicolas Flamel himself. It was supposed that
      Flamel had buried the philosopher’s stone in the cellar; and the
      alchemists, for the space of two centuries, from Magistri to
      Father Pacifique, never ceased to worry the soil until the house,
      so cruelly ransacked and turned over, ended by falling into dust
      beneath their feet.

      Again, it is certain that the archdeacon had been seized with a
      singular passion for the symbolical door of Notre-Dame, that page
      of a conjuring book written in stone, by Bishop Guillaume de
      Paris, who has, no doubt, been damned for having affixed so
      infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by the rest of
      the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had the credit also of having
      fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint Christopher, and of
      that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance
      of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision, called
      “Monsieur Legris.” But, what every one might have noticed was the
      interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the
      parapet of the area in front of the church, in contemplating the
      sculptures of the front; examining now the foolish virgins with
      their lamps reversed, now the wise virgins with their lamps
      upright; again, calculating the angle of vision of that raven
      which belongs to the left front, and which is looking at a
      mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the
      philosopher’s stone, if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas
      Flamel.

      It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church
      of Notre-Dame at that epoch to be so beloved, in two different
      degrees, and with so much devotion, by two beings so dissimilar
      as Claude and Quasimodo. Beloved by one, a sort of instinctive
      and savage half-man, for its beauty, for its stature, for the
      harmonies which emanated from its magnificent ensemble; beloved
      by the other, a learned and passionate imagination, for its myth,
      for the sense which it contains, for the symbolism scattered
      beneath the sculptures of its front,—like the first text
      underneath the second in a palimpsest,—in a word, for the enigma
      which it is eternally propounding to the understanding.

      Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established
      himself in that one of the two towers which looks upon the Grève,
      just beside the frame for the bells, a very secret little cell,
      into which no one, not even the bishop, entered without his
      leave, it was said. This tiny cell had formerly been made almost
      at the summit of the tower, among the ravens’ nests, by Bishop
      Hugo de Besançon[26] who had wrought sorcery there in his day.
      What that cell contained, no one knew; but from the strand of the
      Terrain, at night, there was often seen to appear, disappear, and
      reappear at brief and regular intervals, at a little dormer
      window opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red,
      intermittent, singular light which seemed to follow the panting
      breaths of a bellows, and to proceed from a flame, rather than
      from a light. In the darkness, at that height, it produced a
      singular effect; and the goodwives said: “There’s the archdeacon
      blowing! hell is sparkling up yonder!”

      There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but
      there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and
      the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought
      to mention however, that the sciences of Egypt, that necromancy
      and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent, had no more
      envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the
      gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this was
      sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, “stop
      thief!” at all events, it did not prevent the archdeacon from
      being considered by the learned heads of the chapter, as a soul
      who had ventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost in the
      caves of the cabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult
      sciences. Neither were the people deceived thereby; with any one
      who possessed any sagacity, Quasimodo passed for the demon;
      Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. It was evident that the
      bellringer was to serve the archdeacon for a given time, at the
      end of which he would carry away the latter’s soul, by way of
      payment. Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity
      of his life, was in bad odor among all pious souls; and there was
      no devout nose so inexperienced that it could not smell him out
      to be a magician.

      And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they
      had also formed in his heart. That at least, is what one had
      grounds for believing on scrutinizing that face upon which the
      soul was only seen to shine through a sombre cloud. Whence that
      large, bald brow? that head forever bent? that breast always
      heaving with sighs? What secret thought caused his mouth to smile
      with so much bitterness, at the same moment that his scowling
      brows approached each other like two bulls on the point of
      fighting? Why was what hair he had left already gray? What was
      that internal fire which sometimes broke forth in his glance, to
      such a degree that his eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall
      of a furnace?

      These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired an
      especially high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story
      takes place. More than once a choir-boy had fled in terror at
      finding him alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his
      look. More than once, in the choir, at the hour of the offices,
      his neighbor in the stalls had heard him mingle with the plain
      song, _ad omnem tonum_, unintelligible parentheses. More than
      once the laundress of the Terrain charged “with washing the
      chapter” had observed, not without affright, the marks of nails
      and clenched fingers on the surplice of monsieur the archdeacon
      of Josas.

      However, he redoubled his severity, and had never been more
      exemplary. By profession as well as by character, he had always
      held himself aloof from women; he seemed to hate them more than
      ever. The mere rustling of a silken petticoat caused his hood to
      fall over his eyes. Upon this score he was so jealous of
      austerity and reserve, that when the Dame de Beaujeu, the king’s
      daughter, came to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame, in the month
      of December, 1481, he gravely opposed her entrance, reminding the
      bishop of the statute of the Black Book, dating from the vigil of
      Saint-Barthélemy, 1334, which interdicts access to the cloister
      to “any woman whatever, old or young, mistress or maid.” Upon
      which the bishop had been constrained to recite to him the
      ordinance of Legate Odo, which excepts certain great dames,
      _aliquæ magnates mulieres, quæ sine scandalo vitari non possunt_.
      And again the archdeacon had protested, objecting that the
      ordinance of the legate, which dated back to 1207, was anterior
      by a hundred and twenty-seven years to the Black Book, and
      consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refused to
      appear before the princess.

      It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and
      gypsies had seemed to redouble for some time past. He had
      petitioned the bishop for an edict which expressly forbade the
      Bohemian women to come and dance and beat their tambourines on
      the place of the Parvis; and for about the same length of time,
      he had been ransacking the mouldy placards of the officialty, in
      order to collect the cases of sorcerers and witches condemned to
      fire or the rope, for complicity in crimes with rams, sows, or
      goats.



      CHAPTER VI. UNPOPULARITY.

      The archdeacon and the bellringer, as we have already said, were
      but little loved by the populace great and small, in the vicinity
      of the cathedral. When Claude and Quasimodo went out together,
      which frequently happened, and when they were seen traversing in
      company, the valet behind the master, the cold, narrow, and
      gloomy streets of the block of Notre-Dame, more than one evil
      word, more than one ironical quaver, more than one insulting jest
      greeted them on their way, unless Claude Frollo, which was rarely
      the case, walked with head upright and raised, showing his severe
      and almost august brow to the dumbfounded jeerers.

      Both were in their quarter like “the poets” of whom Régnier
      speaks,—

   “All sorts of persons run after poets,
   As warblers fly shrieking after owls.”

      Sometimes a mischievous child risked his skin and bones for the
      ineffable pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo’s hump. Again,
      a young girl, more bold and saucy than was fitting, brushed the
      priest’s black robe, singing in his face the sardonic ditty,
      “_niche, niche_, the devil is caught.” Sometimes a group of
      squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of the
      steps to a porch, scolded noisily as the archdeacon and the
      bellringer passed, and tossed them this encouraging welcome, with
      a curse: “Hum! there’s a fellow whose soul is made like the other
      one’s body!” Or a band of schoolboys and street urchins, playing
      hop-scotch, rose in a body and saluted him classically, with some
      cry in Latin: “_Eia! eia! Claudius cum claudo_!”

      But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest and
      the bellringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear all these gracious
      things, and Claude was too dreamy.



      BOOK FIFTH.



      CHAPTER I. _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.

      Dom Claude’s fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him,
      at about the epoch when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a
      visit which he long remembered.

      It was in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, to
      his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, with
      the exception, possibly, of some glass phials, relegated to a
      corner, and filled with a decidedly equivocal powder, which
      strongly resembled the alchemist’s “powder of projection,”
      presented nothing strange or mysterious. There were, indeed, here
      and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they were pure
      sentences of learning and piety, extracted from good authors. The
      archdeacon had just seated himself, by the light of a
      three-jetted copper lamp, before a vast coffer crammed with
      manuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the open volume of
      Honorius d’Autun, _De predestinatione et libero arbitrio_, and he
      was turning over, in deep meditation, the leaves of a printed
      folio which he had just brought, the sole product of the press
      which his cell contained. In the midst of his revery there came a
      knock at his door. “Who’s there?” cried the learned man, in the
      gracious tone of a famished dog, disturbed over his bone.

      A voice without replied, “Your friend, Jacques Coictier.” He went
      to open the door.

      It was, in fact, the king’s physician; a person about fifty years
      of age, whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a crafty
      eye. Another man accompanied him. Both wore long slate-colored
      robes, furred with minever, girded and closed, with caps of the
      same stuff and hue. Their hands were concealed by their sleeves,
      their feet by their robes, their eyes by their caps.

      “God help me, messieurs!” said the archdeacon, showing them in;
      “I was not expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour.” And
      while speaking in this courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and
      scrutinizing glance from the physician to his companion.

      “’Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerable a
      learned man as Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe,” replied Doctor
      Coictier, whose Franche-Comté accent made all his phrases drag
      along with the majesty of a train-robe.

      There then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of
      those congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom,
      at that epoch preceded all conversations between learned men, and
      which did not prevent them from detesting each other in the most
      cordial manner in the world. However, it is the same nowadays;
      every wise man’s mouth complimenting another wise man is a vase
      of honeyed gall.

      Claude Frollo’s felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference
      principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician
      had found means to extract, in the course of his much envied
      career, from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy
      much better and more certain than the pursuit of the
      philosopher’s stone.

      “In truth, Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy on
      learning of the bishopric given your nephew, my reverend seigneur
      Pierre Versé. Is he not Bishop of Amiens?”

      “Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grace and mercy of God.”

      “Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the
      head of your company of the chamber of accounts, Monsieur
      President?”

      “Vice-President, Dom Claude. Alas! nothing more.”

      “How is your superb house in the Rue Saint-André des Arcs coming
      on? ’Tis a Louvre. I love greatly the apricot tree which is
      carved on the door, with this play of words: ‘A
      L’ABRI-COTIER—Sheltered from reefs.’”

      “Alas! Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear. In
      proportion as the house is erected, I am ruined.”

      “Ho! have you not your revenues from the jail, and the bailiwick
      of the Palais, and the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls,
      and booths of the enclosure? ’Tis a fine breast to suck.”

      “My castellany of Poissy has brought me in nothing this year.”

      “But your tolls of Triel, of Saint-James, of
      Saint-Germain-en-Laye are always good.”

      “Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that.”

      “You have your office of counsellor to the king. That is fixed.”

      “Yes, brother Claude; but that accursed seigneury of Poligny,
      which people make so much noise about, is worth not sixty gold
      crowns, year out and year in.”

      In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques
      Coictier, there was that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking
      accent, and the sad cruel smile of a superior and unhappy man who
      toys for a moment, by way of distraction, with the dense
      prosperity of a vulgar man. The other did not perceive it.

      “Upon my soul,” said Claude at length, pressing his hand, “I am
      glad to see you and in such good health.”

      “Thanks, Master Claude.”

      “By the way,” exclaimed Dom Claude, “how is your royal patient?”

      “He payeth not sufficiently his physician,” replied the doctor,
      casting a side glance at his companion.

      “Think you so, Gossip Coictier,” said the latter.

      These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew
      upon this unknown personage the attention of the archdeacon
      which, to tell the truth, had not been diverted from him a single
      moment since the stranger had set foot across the threshold of
      his cell. It had even required all the thousand reasons which he
      had for handling tenderly Doctor Jacques Coictier, the
      all-powerful physician of King Louis XI., to induce him to
      receive the latter thus accompanied. Hence, there was nothing
      very cordial in his manner when Jacques Coictier said to him,—

      “By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired
      to see you on account of your reputation.”

      “Monsieur belongs to science?” asked the archdeacon, fixing his
      piercing eye upon Coictier’s companion. He found beneath the
      brows of the stranger a glance no less piercing or less
      distrustful than his own.

      He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to
      judge, an old man about sixty years of age and of medium stature,
      who appeared somewhat sickly and broken in health. His profile,
      although of a very ordinary outline, had something powerful and
      severe about it; his eyes sparkled beneath a very deep
      superciliary arch, like a light in the depths of a cave; and
      beneath his cap which was well drawn down and fell upon his nose,
      one recognized the broad expanse of a brow of genius.

      He took it upon himself to reply to the archdeacon’s question,—

      “Reverend master,” he said in a grave tone, “your renown has
      reached my ears, and I wish to consult you. I am but a poor
      provincial gentleman, who removeth his shoes before entering the
      dwellings of the learned. You must know my name. I am called
      Gossip Tourangeau.”

      “Strange name for a gentleman,” said the archdeacon to himself.

      Nevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a
      strong and earnest character. The instinct of his own lofty
      intellect made him recognize an intellect no less lofty under
      Gossip Tourangeau’s furred cap, and as he gazed at the solemn
      face, the ironical smile which Jacques Coictier’s presence called
      forth on his gloomy face, gradually disappeared as twilight fades
      on the horizon of night. Stern and silent, he had resumed his
      seat in his great armchair; his elbow rested as usual, on the
      table, and his brow on his hand. After a few moments of
      reflection, he motioned his visitors to be seated, and, turning
      to Gossip Tourangeau he said,—

      “You come to consult me, master, and upon what science?”

      “Your reverence,” replied Tourangeau, “I am ill, very ill. You
      are said to be great Æsculapius, and I am come to ask your advice
      in medicine.”

      “Medicine!” said the archdeacon, tossing his head. He seemed to
      meditate for a moment, and then resumed: “Gossip Tourangeau,
      since that is your name, turn your head, you will find my reply
      already written on the wall.”

      Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription engraved
      above his head: “_Medicine is the daughter of
      dreams_.—JAMBLIQUE.”

      Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his companion’s
      question with a displeasure which Dom Claude’s response had but
      redoubled. He bent down to the ear of Gossip Tourangeau, and said
      to him, softly enough not to be heard by the archdeacon: “I
      warned you that he was mad. You insisted on seeing him.”

      “’Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor
      Jacques,” replied his comrade in the same low tone, and with a
      bitter smile.

      “As you please,” replied Coictier dryly. Then, addressing the
      archdeacon: “You are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you
      are no more at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey is over a
      nut. Medicine a dream! I suspect that the pharmacopolists and the
      master physicians would insist upon stoning you if they were
      here. So you deny the influence of philtres upon the blood, and
      unguents on the skin! You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers
      and metals, which is called the world, made expressly for that
      eternal invalid called man!”

      “I deny,” said Dom Claude coldly, “neither pharmacy nor the
      invalid. I reject the physician.”

      “Then it is not true,” resumed Coictier hotly, “that gout is an
      internal eruption; that a wound caused by artillery is to be
      cured by the application of a young mouse roasted; that young
      blood, properly injected, restores youth to aged veins; it is not
      true that two and two make four, and that emprostathonos follows
      opistathonos.”

      The archdeacon replied without perturbation: “There are certain
      things of which I think in a certain fashion.”

      Coictier became crimson with anger.

      “There, there, my good Coictier, let us not get angry,” said
      Gossip Tourangeau. “Monsieur the archdeacon is our friend.”

      Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low tone,—

      “After all, he’s mad.”

      “_Pasque-dieu_, Master Claude,” resumed Gossip Tourangeau, after
      a silence, “You embarrass me greatly. I had two things to consult
      you upon, one touching my health and the other touching my star.”

      “Monsieur,” returned the archdeacon, “if that be your motive, you
      would have done as well not to put yourself out of breath
      climbing my staircase. I do not believe in Medicine. I do not
      believe in Astrology.”

      “Indeed!” said the man, with surprise.

      Coictier gave a forced laugh.

      “You see that he is mad,” he said, in a low tone, to Gossip
      Tourangeau. “He does not believe in astrology.”

      “The idea of imagining,” pursued Dom Claude, “that every ray of a
      star is a thread which is fastened to the head of a man!”

      “And what then, do you believe in?” exclaimed Gossip Tourangeau.

      The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy
      smile to escape, which seemed to give the lie to his response:
      “_Credo in Deum_.”

      “_Dominum nostrum_,” added Gossip Tourangeau, making the sign of
      the cross.

      “Amen,” said Coictier.

      “Reverend master,” resumed Tourangeau, “I am charmed in soul to
      see you in such a religious frame of mind. But have you reached
      the point, great savant as you are, of no longer believing in
      science?”

      “No,” said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau,
      and a ray of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, “no, I do not
      reject science. I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly,
      with my nails in the earth, through the innumerable ramifications
      of its caverns, without perceiving far in front of me, at the end
      of the obscure gallery, a light, a flame, a something, the
      reflection, no doubt, of the dazzling central laboratory where
      the patient and the wise have found out God.”

      “And in short,” interrupted Tourangeau, “what do you hold to be
      true and certain?”

      “Alchemy.”

      Coictier exclaimed, “Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no
      doubt, but why blaspheme medicine and astrology?”

      “Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the
      stars,” said the archdeacon, commandingly.

      “That’s driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast,” replied the
      physician with a grin.

      “Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I am not
      the king’s physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden
      of Dædalus in which to observe the constellations. Don’t get
      angry, but listen to me. What truth have you deduced, I will not
      say from medicine, which is too foolish a thing, but from
      astrology? Cite to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon,
      the treasures of the number ziruph and those of the number
      zephirod!”

      “Will you deny,” said Coictier, “the sympathetic force of the
      collar bone, and the cabalistics which are derived from it?”

      “An error, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas end in reality.
      Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries. Will you contest
      results like this? Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand
      years is transformed into rock crystals. Lead is the ancestor of
      all metals. For gold is not a metal, gold is light. Lead requires
      only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in
      succession from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic,
      from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are not these facts?
      But to believe in the collar bone, in the full line and in the
      stars, is as ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants of
      Grand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into a mole, and that
      grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp species.”

      “I have studied hermetic science!” exclaimed Coictier, “and I
      affirm—”

      The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: “And I have
      studied medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the
      truth.” (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a
      phial filled with the powder which we have mentioned above),
      “here alone is light! Hippocrates is a dream; Urania is a dream;
      Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be God.
      Herein lies the one and only science. I have sounded the depths
      of medicine and astrology, I tell you! Naught, nothingness! The
      human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!”

      And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired
      attitude. Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence. Coictier
      tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated
      in a low voice,—

      “A madman!”

      “And,” said Tourangeau suddenly, “the wondrous result,—have you
      attained it, have you made gold?”

      “If I had made it,” replied the archdeacon, articulating his
      words slowly, like a man who is reflecting, “the king of France
      would be named Claude and not Louis.”

      The stranger frowned.

      “What am I saying?” resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain.
      “What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild
      the empire of the Orient?”

      “Very good!” said the stranger.

      “Oh, the poor fool!” murmured Coictier.

      The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his
      thoughts,—

      “But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees
      against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a
      glimpse, I do not contemplate! I do not read, I spell out!”

      “And when you know how to read!” demanded the stranger, “will you
      make gold?”

      “Who doubts it?” said the archdeacon.

      “In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money,
      and I should much desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend
      master, is your science inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?”

      “Whose archdeacon I am?” Dom Claude contented himself with
      replying, with tranquil hauteur.

      “That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to initiate
      me? Let me spell with you.”

      Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.

      “Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to
      undertake this voyage across mysterious things. Your head is very
      gray! One comes forth from the cavern only with white hair, but
      only those with dark hair enter it. Science alone knows well how
      to hollow, wither, and dry up human faces; she needs not to have
      old age bring her faces already furrowed. Nevertheless, if the
      desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at your
      age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages,
      come to me; ’tis well, I will make the effort. I will not tell
      you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the
      pyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower
      of Babylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian
      temple of Eklinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the
      Chaldean masonry works constructed according to the sacred form
      of the Sikra, nor the temple of Solomon, which is destroyed, nor
      the stone doors of the sepulchre of the kings of Israel, which
      are broken. We will content ourselves with the fragments of the
      book of Hermes which we have here. I will explain to you the
      statue of Saint Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and that of
      the two angels which are on the front of the Sainte-Chapelle, and
      one of which holds in his hands a vase, the other, a cloud—”

      Here Jacques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the archdeacon’s
      impetuous replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with
      the triumphant tone of one learned man correcting
      another,—“_Erras amice Claudi_. The symbol is not the number. You
      take Orpheus for Hermes.”

      “’Tis you who are in error,” replied the archdeacon, gravely.
      “Dædalus is the base; Orpheus is the wall; Hermes is the
      edifice,—that is all. You shall come when you will,” he
      continued, turning to Tourangeau, “I will show you the little
      parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas Flamel’s
      alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold of Guillaume de
      Paris. I will teach you the secret virtues of the Greek word,
      _peristera_. But, first of all, I will make you read, one after
      the other, the marble letters of the alphabet, the granite pages
      of the book. We shall go to the portal of Bishop Guillaume and of
      Saint-Jean le Rond at the Sainte-Chapelle, then to the house of
      Nicholas Flamel, Rue Manvault, to his tomb, which is at the
      Saints-Innocents, to his two hospitals, Rue de Montmorency. I
      will make you read the hieroglyphics which cover the four great
      iron cramps on the portal of the hospital Saint-Gervais, and of
      the Rue de la Ferronnerie. We will spell out in company, also,
      the façade of Saint-Côme, of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents, of
      Saint Martin, of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie—.”

      For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his
      glance, had appeared not to understand Dom Claude. He
      interrupted.

      “_Pasque-dieu_! what are your books, then?”

      “Here is one of them,” said the archdeacon.

      And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger
      the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the
      starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone
      flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed
      sphinx, seated in the middle of the city.

      The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in
      silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the
      printed book which lay open on the table, and his left towards
      Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book to the
      church,—“Alas,” he said, “this will kill that.”

      Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress
      an exclamation. “Hé, but now, what is there so formidable in
      this: ‘GLOSSA IN EPISTOLAS D. PAULI, _Norimbergæ, Antonius
      Koburger_, 1474.’ This is not new. ’Tis a book of Pierre Lombard,
      the Master of Sentences. Is it because it is printed?”

      “You have said it,” replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a
      profound meditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent
      backward on the folio which had come from the famous press of
      Nuremberg. Then he added these mysterious words: “Alas! alas!
      small things come at the end of great things; a tooth triumphs
      over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish
      kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice.”

      The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master
      Jacques was repeating to his companion in low tones, his eternal
      refrain, “_He is mad!_” To which his companion this time replied,
      “I believe that he is.”

      It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister.
      The two visitors withdrew. “Master,” said Gossip Tourangeau, as
      he took leave of the archdeacon, “I love wise men and great
      minds, and I hold you in singular esteem. Come to-morrow to the
      Palace des Tournelles, and inquire for the Abbé de Sainte-Martin,
      of Tours.”

      The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehending
      at last who Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling that passage of
      the register of Sainte-Martin, of Tours:—_Abbas beati Martini,
      SCILICET REX FRANCIÆ, est canonicus de consuetudine et habet
      parvam præbendam quam habet sanctus Venantius, et debet sedere in
      sede thesaurarii_.

      It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had frequent
      conferences with Louis XI., when his majesty came to Paris, and
      that Dom Claude’s influence quite overshadowed that of Olivier le
      Daim and Jacques Coictier, who, as was his habit, rudely took the
      king to task on that account.



      CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.

      Our lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek
      what could have been the thought concealed beneath those
      enigmatic words of the archdeacon: “This will kill that. The book
      will kill the edifice.”

      To our mind, this thought had two faces. In the first place, it
      was a priestly thought. It was the affright of the priest in the
      presence of a new agent, the printing press. It was the terror
      and dazzled amazement of the men of the sanctuary, in the
      presence of the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit
      and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed word:
      something similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should behold
      the angel Legion unfold his six million wings. It was the cry of
      the prophet who already hears emancipated humanity roaring and
      swarming; who beholds in the future, intelligence sapping faith,
      opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the
      prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought,
      volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic
      recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who examines the
      brazen battering ram, and says:—“The tower will crumble.” It
      signified that one power was about to succeed another power. It
      meant, “The press will kill the church.”

      But underlying this thought, the first and most simple one, no
      doubt, there was in our opinion another, newer one, a corollary
      of the first, less easy to perceive and more easy to contest, a
      view as philosophical and belonging no longer to the priest alone
      but to the savant and the artist. It was a presentiment that
      human thought, in changing its form, was about to change its mode
      of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no
      longer be written with the same matter, and in the same manner;
      that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about to
      make way for the book of paper, more solid and still more
      durable. In this connection the archdeacon’s vague formula had a
      second sense. It meant, “Printing will kill architecture.”

      In fact, from the origin of things down to the fifteenth century
      of the Christian era, inclusive, architecture is the great book
      of humanity, the principal expression of man in his different
      stages of development, either as a force or as an intelligence.

      When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when
      the mass of reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and
      so confused that speech naked and flying, ran the risk of losing
      them on the way, men transcribed them on the soil in a manner
      which was at once the most visible, most durable, and most
      natural. They sealed each tradition beneath a monument.

      The first monuments were simple masses of rock, “which the iron
      had not touched,” as Moses says. Architecture began like all
      writing. It was first an alphabet. Men planted a stone upright,
      it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph, and upon each
      hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital on the
      column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere, at the
      same moment, on the surface of the entire world. We find the
      “standing stones” of the Celts in Asian Siberia; in the pampas of
      America.

      Later on, they made words; they placed stone upon stone, they
      coupled those syllables of granite, and attempted some
      combinations. The Celtic dolmen and cromlech, the Etruscan
      tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are words. Some, especially the
      tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even, when men had a great
      deal of stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. The immense
      pile of Karnac is a complete sentence.

      At last they made books. Traditions had brought forth symbols,
      beneath which they disappeared like the trunk of a tree beneath
      its foliage; all these symbols in which humanity placed faith
      continued to grow, to multiply, to intersect, to become more and
      more complicated; the first monuments no longer sufficed to
      contain them, they were overflowing in every part; these
      monuments hardly expressed now the primitive tradition, simple
      like themselves, naked and prone upon the earth. The symbol felt
      the need of expansion in the edifice. Then architecture was
      developed in proportion with human thought; it became a giant
      with a thousand heads and a thousand arms, and fixed all this
      floating symbolism in an eternal, visible, palpable form. While
      Dædalus, who is force, measured; while Orpheus, who is
      intelligence, sang;—the pillar, which is a letter; the arcade,
      which is a syllable; the pyramid, which is a word,—all set in
      movement at once by a law of geometry and by a law of poetry,
      grouped themselves, combined, amalgamated, descended, ascended,
      placed themselves side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in
      stories in the sky, until they had written under the dictation of
      the general idea of an epoch, those marvellous books which were
      also marvellous edifices: the Pagoda of Eklinga, the Rhamseion of
      Egypt, the Temple of Solomon.

      The generating idea, the word, was not only at the foundation of
      all these edifices, but also in the form. The temple of Solomon,
      for example, was not alone the binding of the holy book; it was
      the holy book itself. On each one of its concentric walls, the
      priests could read the word translated and manifested to the eye,
      and thus they followed its transformations from sanctuary to
      sanctuary, until they seized it in its last tabernacle, under its
      most concrete form, which still belonged to architecture: the
      arch. Thus the word was enclosed in an edifice, but its image was
      upon its envelope, like the human form on the coffin of a mummy.

      And not only the form of edifices, but the sites selected for
      them, revealed the thought which they represented, according as
      the symbol to be expressed was graceful or grave. Greece crowned
      her mountains with a temple harmonious to the eye; India
      disembowelled hers, to chisel therein those monstrous
      subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic rows of granite
      elephants.

      Thus, during the first six thousand years of the world, from the
      most immemorial pagoda of Hindustan, to the cathedral of Cologne,
      architecture was the great handwriting of the human race. And
      this is so true, that not only every religious symbol, but every
      human thought, has its page and its monument in that immense
      book.

      All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This
      law of liberty following unity is written in architecture. For,
      let us insist upon this point, masonry must not be thought to be
      powerful only in erecting the temple and in expressing the myth
      and sacerdotal symbolism; in inscribing in hieroglyphs upon its
      pages of stone the mysterious tables of the law. If it were
      thus,—as there comes in all human society a moment when the
      sacred symbol is worn out and becomes obliterated under freedom
      of thought, when man escapes from the priest, when the
      excrescence of philosophies and systems devour the face of
      religion,—architecture could not reproduce this new state of
      human thought; its leaves, so crowded on the face, would be empty
      on the back; its work would be mutilated; its book would be
      incomplete. But no.

      Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see more
      clearly because it is nearer to us. During its first period,
      while theocracy is organizing Europe, while the Vatican is
      rallying and reclassing about itself the elements of a Rome made
      from the Rome which lies in ruins around the Capitol, while
      Christianity is seeking all the stages of society amid the
      rubbish of anterior civilization, and rebuilding with its ruins a
      new hierarchic universe, the keystone to whose vault is the
      priest—one first hears a dull echo from that chaos, and then,
      little by little, one sees, arising from beneath the breath of
      Christianity, from beneath the hand of the barbarians, from the
      fragments of the dead Greek and Roman architectures, that
      mysterious Romanesque architecture, sister of the theocratic
      masonry of Egypt and of India, inalterable emblem of pure
      catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the papal unity. All the
      thought of that day is written, in fact, in this sombre,
      Romanesque style. One feels everywhere in it authority, unity,
      the impenetrable, the absolute, Gregory VII.; always the priest,
      never the man; everywhere caste, never the people.

      But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular movement, and
      every great popular movement, whatever may be its cause and
      object, always sets free the spirit of liberty from its final
      precipitate. New things spring into life every day. Here opens
      the stormy period of the Jacqueries, Pragueries, and Leagues.
      Authority wavers, unity is divided. Feudalism demands to share
      with theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable arrival of the
      people, who will assume the part of the lion: _Quia nominor leo_.
      Seignory pierces through sacerdotalism; the commonality, through
      seignory. The face of Europe is changed. Well! the face of
      architecture is changed also. Like civilization, it has turned a
      page, and the new spirit of the time finds her ready to write at
      its dictation. It returns from the crusades with the pointed
      arch, like the nations with liberty.

      Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque
      architecture dies. The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and
      betakes itself to blazoning the donjon keep, in order to lend
      prestige to feudalism. The cathedral itself, that edifice
      formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the _bourgeoisie_, by
      the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and falls into the
      power of the artist. The artist builds it after his own fashion.
      Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Fancy and caprice, welcome.
      Provided the priest has his basilica and his altar, he has
      nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The
      architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion,
      to Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the
      people. Hence the rapid and innumerable transformations of that
      architecture which owns but three centuries, so striking after
      the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque architecture, which
      owns six or seven. Nevertheless, art marches on with giant
      strides. Popular genius amid originality accomplish the task
      which the bishops formerly fulfilled. Each race writes its line
      upon the book, as it passes; it erases the ancient Romanesque
      hieroglyphs on the frontispieces of cathedrals, and at the most
      one only sees dogma cropping out here and there, beneath the new
      symbol which it has deposited. The popular drapery hardly permits
      the religious skeleton to be suspected. One cannot even form an
      idea of the liberties which the architects then take, even toward
      the Church. There are capitals knitted of nuns and monks,
      shamelessly coupled, as on the hall of chimney pieces in the
      Palais de Justice, in Paris. There is Noah’s adventure carved to
      the last detail, as under the great portal of Bourges. There is a
      bacchanalian monk, with ass’s ears and glass in hand, laughing in
      the face of a whole community, as on the lavatory of the Abbey of
      Bocherville. There exists at that epoch, for thought written in
      stone, a privilege exactly comparable to our present liberty of
      the press. It is the liberty of architecture.

      This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a façade, an
      entire church, presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to
      worship, or even hostile to the Church. In the thirteenth
      century, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicholas Flamel, in the
      fifteenth, wrote such seditious pages. Saint-Jacques de la
      Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition.

      Thought was then free only in this manner; hence it never wrote
      itself out completely except on the books called edifices.
      Thought, under the form of edifice, could have beheld itself
      burned in the public square by the hands of the executioner, in
      its manuscript form, if it had been sufficiently imprudent to
      risk itself thus; thought, as the door of a church, would have
      been a spectator of the punishment of thought as a book. Having
      thus only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the
      light, flung itself upon it from all quarters. Hence the immense
      quantity of cathedrals which have covered Europe—a number so
      prodigious that one can hardly believe it even after having
      verified it. All the material forces, all the intellectual forces
      of society converged towards the same point: architecture. In
      this manner, under the pretext of building churches to God, art
      was developed in its magnificent proportions.

      Then whoever was born a poet became an architect. Genius,
      scattered in the masses, repressed in every quarter under
      feudalism as under a _testudo_ of brazen bucklers, finding no
      issue except in the direction of architecture,—gushed forth
      through that art, and its Iliads assumed the form of cathedrals.
      All other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under the discipline
      of architecture. They were the workmen of the great work. The
      architect, the poet, the master, summed up in his person the
      sculpture which carved his façades, painting which illuminated
      his windows, music which set his bells to pealing, and breathed
      into his organs. There was nothing down to poor poetry,—properly
      speaking, that which persisted in vegetating in
      manuscripts,—which was not forced, in order to make something of
      itself, to come and frame itself in the edifice in the shape of a
      hymn or of prose; the same part, after all, which the tragedies
      of Æschylus had played in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece;
      Genesis, in the temple of Solomon.

      Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the
      principal writing, the universal writing. In that granite book,
      begun by the Orient, continued by Greek and Roman antiquity, the
      Middle Ages wrote the last page. Moreover, this phenomenon of an
      architecture of the people following an architecture of caste,
      which we have just been observing in the Middle Ages, is
      reproduced with every analogous movement in the human
      intelligence at the other great epochs of history. Thus, in order
      to enunciate here only summarily, a law which it would require
      volumes to develop: in the high Orient, the cradle of primitive
      times, after Hindoo architecture came Phœnician architecture,
      that opulent mother of Arabian architecture; in antiquity, after
      Egyptian architecture, of which Etruscan style and cyclopean
      monuments are but one variety, came Greek architecture (of which
      the Roman style is only a continuation), surcharged with the
      Carthaginian dome; in modern times, after Romanesque architecture
      came Gothic architecture. And by separating there three series
      into their component parts, we shall find in the three eldest
      sisters, Hindoo architecture, Egyptian architecture, Romanesque
      architecture, the same symbol; that is to say, theocracy, caste,
      unity, dogma, myth, God: and for the three younger sisters,
      Phœnician architecture, Greek architecture, Gothic architecture,
      whatever, nevertheless, may be the diversity of form inherent in
      their nature, the same signification also; that is to say,
      liberty, the people, man.

      In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one feels the
      priest, nothing but the priest, whether he calls himself Brahmin,
      Magian, or Pope. It is not the same in the architectures of the
      people. They are richer and less sacred. In the Phœnician, one
      feels the merchant; in the Greek, the republican; in the Gothic,
      the citizen.

      The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are
      immutability, horror of progress, the preservation of traditional
      lines, the consecration of the primitive types, the constant
      bending of all the forms of men and of nature to the
      incomprehensible caprices of the symbol. These are dark books,
      which the initiated alone understand how to decipher. Moreover,
      every form, every deformity even, has there a sense which renders
      it inviolable. Do not ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Romanesque masonry
      to reform their design, or to improve their statuary. Every
      attempt at perfecting is an impiety to them. In these
      architectures it seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had
      spread over the stone like a sort of second petrifaction. The
      general characteristics of popular masonry, on the contrary, are
      progress, originality, opulence, perpetual movement. They are
      already sufficiently detached from religion to think of their
      beauty, to take care of it, to correct without relaxation their
      parure of statues or arabesques. They are of the age. They have
      something human, which they mingle incessantly with the divine
      symbol under which they still produce. Hence, edifices
      comprehensible to every soul, to every intelligence, to every
      imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to understand as
      nature. Between theocratic architecture and this there is the
      difference that lies between a sacred language and a vulgar
      language, between hieroglyphics and art, between Solomon and
      Phidias.

      If the reader will sum up what we have hitherto briefly, very
      briefly, indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also a
      thousand objections of detail, he will be led to this: that
      architecture was, down to the fifteenth century, the chief
      register of humanity; that in that interval not a thought which
      is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the world,
      which has not been worked into an edifice; that every popular
      idea, and every religious law, has had its monumental records;
      that the human race has, in short, had no important thought which
      it has not written in stone. And why? Because every thought,
      either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating
      itself; because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to
      move others also, and leave a trace. Now, what a precarious
      immortality is that of the manuscript! How much more solid,
      durable, unyielding, is a book of stone! In order to destroy the
      written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient. To demolish the
      constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution
      are required. The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the
      deluge, perhaps, passed over the Pyramids.

      In the fifteenth century everything changes.

      Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only
      more durable and more resisting than architecture, but still more
      simple and easy. Architecture is dethroned. Gutenberg’s letters
      of lead are about to supersede Orpheus’s letters of stone.

      _The book is about to kill the edifice_.

      The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is
      the mother of revolution. It is the mode of expression of
      humanity which is totally renewed; it is human thought stripping
      off one form and donning another; it is the complete and
      definitive change of skin of that symbolical serpent which since
      the days of Adam has represented intelligence.

      In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it
      is volatile, irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the
      air. In the days of architecture it made a mountain of itself,
      and took powerful possession of a century and a place. Now it
      converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters itself to the
      four winds, and occupies all points of air and space at once.

      We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more
      indelible? It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from
      duration in time to immortality. One can demolish a mass; how can
      one extirpate ubiquity? If a flood comes, the mountains will have
      long disappeared beneath the waves, while the birds will still be
      flying about; and if a single ark floats on the surface of the
      cataclysm, they will alight upon it, will float with it, will be
      present with it at the ebbing of the waters; and the new world
      which emerges from this chaos will behold, on its awakening, the
      thought of the world which has been submerged soaring above it,
      winged and living.

      And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only
      the most conservative, but also the most simple, the most
      convenient, the most practicable for all; when one reflects that
      it does not drag after it bulky baggage, and does not set in
      motion a heavy apparatus; when one compares thought forced, in
      order to transform itself into an edifice, to put in motion four
      or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole mountain of stones,
      a whole forest of timber-work, a whole nation of workmen; when
      one compares it to the thought which becomes a book, and for
      which a little paper, a little ink, and a pen suffice,—how can
      one be surprised that human intelligence should have quitted
      architecture for printing? Cut the primitive bed of a river
      abruptly with a canal hollowed out below its level, and the river
      will desert its bed.

      Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing,
      architecture withers away little by little, becomes lifeless and
      bare. How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, the
      thought of the times and of the people withdrawing from it! The
      chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century; the press
      is, as yet, too weak, and, at the most, draws from powerful
      architecture a superabundance of life. But practically beginning
      with the sixteenth century, the malady of architecture is
      visible; it is no longer the expression of society; it becomes
      classic art in a miserable manner; from being Gallic, European,
      indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman; from being true and
      modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which is
      called the Renaissance. A magnificent decadence, however, for the
      ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic
      press of Mayence, still penetrates for a while longer with its
      rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian
      columns.

      It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.

      Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer
      anything but an art like any other; as soon as it is no longer
      the total art, the sovereign art, the tyrant art,—it has no
      longer the power to retain the other arts. So they emancipate
      themselves, break the yoke of the architect, and take themselves
      off, each one in its own direction. Each one of them gains by
      this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything. Sculpture becomes
      statuary, the image trade becomes painting, the canon becomes
      music. One would pronounce it an empire dismembered at the death
      of its Alexander, and whose provinces become kingdoms.

      Hence Raphael, Michael Angelo, Jean Goujon, Palestrina, those
      splendors of the dazzling sixteenth century.

      Thought emancipates itself in all directions at the same time as
      the arts. The arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already made
      large incisions into Catholicism. The sixteenth century breaks
      religious unity. Before the invention of printing, reform would
      have been merely a schism; printing converted it into a
      revolution. Take away the press; heresy is enervated. Whether it
      be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is the precursor of Luther.

      Nevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is completely set,
      when the Gothic genius is forever extinct upon the horizon,
      architecture grows dim, loses its color, becomes more and more
      effaced. The printed book, the gnawing worm of the edifice, sucks
      and devours it. It becomes bare, denuded of its foliage, and
      grows visibly emaciated. It is petty, it is poor, it is nothing.
      It no longer expresses anything, not even the memory of the art
      of another time. Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other arts,
      because human thought is abandoning it, it summons bunglers in
      place of artists. Glass replaces the painted windows. The
      stone-cutter succeeds the sculptor. Farewell all sap, all
      originality, all life, all intelligence. It drags along, a
      lamentable workshop mendicant, from copy to copy. Michael Angelo,
      who, no doubt, felt even in the sixteenth century that it was
      dying, had a last idea, an idea of despair. That Titan of art
      piled the Pantheon on the Parthenon, and made Saint-Peter’s at
      Rome. A great work, which deserved to remain unique, the last
      originality of architecture, the signature of a giant artist at
      the bottom of the colossal register of stone which was closed
      forever. With Michael Angelo dead, what does this miserable
      architecture, which survived itself in the state of a spectre,
      do? It takes Saint-Peter in Rome, copies it and parodies it. It
      is a mania. It is a pity. Each century has its Saint-Peter’s of
      Rome; in the seventeenth century, the Val-de-Grâce; in the
      eighteenth, Sainte-Geneviève. Each country has its Saint-Peter’s
      of Rome. London has one; Petersburg has another; Paris has two or
      three. The insignificant testament, the last dotage of a decrepit
      grand art falling back into infancy before it dies.

      If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we have just
      described, we examine the general aspect of art from the
      sixteenth to the eighteenth century, we notice the same phenomena
      of decay and phthisis. Beginning with François II., the
      architectural form of the edifice effaces itself more and more,
      and allows the geometrical form, like the bony structure of an
      emaciated invalid, to become prominent. The fine lines of art
      give way to the cold and inexorable lines of geometry. An edifice
      is no longer an edifice; it is a polyhedron. Meanwhile,
      architecture is tormented in her struggles to conceal this
      nudity. Look at the Greek pediment inscribed upon the Roman
      pediment, and vice versâ. It is still the Pantheon on the
      Parthenon: Saint-Peter’s of Rome. Here are the brick houses of
      Henri IV., with their stone corners; the Place Royale, the Place
      Dauphine. Here are the churches of Louis XIII., heavy, squat,
      thickset, crowded together, loaded with a dome like a hump. Here
      is the Mazarin architecture, the wretched Italian pasticcio of
      the Four Nations. Here are the palaces of Louis XIV., long
      barracks for courtiers, stiff, cold, tiresome. Here, finally, is
      Louis XV., with chiccory leaves and vermicelli, and all the
      warts, and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit,
      toothless, and coquettish old architecture. From François II. to
      Louis XV., the evil has increased in geometrical progression. Art
      has no longer anything but skin upon its bones. It is miserably
      perishing.

      Meanwhile what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving
      architecture comes to it. In proportion as architecture ebbs,
      printing swells and grows. That capital of forces which human
      thought had been expending in edifices, it henceforth expends in
      books. Thus, from the sixteenth century onward, the press, raised
      to the level of decaying architecture, contends with it and kills
      it. In the seventeenth century it is already sufficiently the
      sovereign, sufficiently triumphant, sufficiently established in
      its victory, to give to the world the feast of a great literary
      century. In the eighteenth, having reposed for a long time at the
      Court of Louis XIV., it seizes again the old sword of Luther,
      puts it into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes impetuously to the
      attack of that ancient Europe, whose architectural expression it
      has already killed. At the moment when the eighteenth century
      comes to an end, it has destroyed everything. In the nineteenth,
      it begins to reconstruct.

      Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented human
      thought for the last three centuries? which translates it? which
      expresses not only its literary and scholastic vagaries, but its
      vast, profound, universal movement? which constantly superposes
      itself, without a break, without a gap, upon the human race,
      which walks a monster with a thousand legs?—Architecture or
      printing?

      It is printing. Let the reader make no mistake; architecture is
      dead; irretrievably slain by the printed book,—slain because it
      endures for a shorter time,—slain because it costs more. Every
      cathedral represents millions. Let the reader now imagine what an
      investment of funds it would require to rewrite the architectural
      book; to cause thousands of edifices to swarm once more upon the
      soil; to return to those epochs when the throng of monuments was
      such, according to the statement of an eye witness, “that one
      would have said that the world in shaking itself, had cast off
      its old garments in order to cover itself with a white vesture of
      churches.” _Erat enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo semet,
      rejecta vetustate, candidam ecclesiarum vestem indueret_. (GLABER
      RADOLPHUS.)

      A book is so soon made, costs so little, and can go so far! How
      can it surprise us that all human thought flows in this channel?
      This does not mean that architecture will not still have a fine
      monument, an isolated masterpiece, here and there. We may still
      have from time to time, under the reign of printing, a column
      made I suppose, by a whole army from melted cannon, as we had
      under the reign of architecture, Iliads and Romanceros,
      Mahabâhrata, and Nibelungen Lieds, made by a whole people, with
      rhapsodies piled up and melted together. The great accident of an
      architect of genius may happen in the twentieth century, like
      that of Dante in the thirteenth. But architecture will no longer
      be the social art, the collective art, the dominating art. The
      grand poem, the grand edifice, the grand work of humanity will no
      longer be built: it will be printed.

      And henceforth, if architecture should arise again accidentally,
      it will no longer be mistress. It will be subservient to the law
      of literature, which formerly received the law from it. The
      respective positions of the two arts will be inverted. It is
      certain that in architectural epochs, the poems, rare it is true,
      resemble the monuments. In India, Vyasa is branching, strange,
      impenetrable as a pagoda. In Egyptian Orient, poetry has like the
      edifices, grandeur and tranquillity of line; in antique Greece,
      beauty, serenity, calm; in Christian Europe, the Catholic
      majesty, the popular naïvete, the rich and luxuriant vegetation
      of an epoch of renewal. The Bible resembles the Pyramids; the
      Iliad, the Parthenon; Homer, Phidias. Dante in the thirteenth
      century is the last Romanesque church; Shakespeare in the
      sixteenth, the last Gothic cathedral.

      Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is
      necessarily incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two
      books, two registers, two testaments: masonry and printing; the
      Bible of stone and the Bible of paper. No doubt, when one
      contemplates these two Bibles, laid so broadly open in the
      centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible majesty of the
      writing of granite, those gigantic alphabets formulated in
      colonnades, in pylons, in obelisks, those sorts of human
      mountains which cover the world and the past, from the pyramid to
      the bell tower, from Cheops to Strasbourg. The past must be
      reread upon these pages of marble. This book, written by
      architecture, must be admired and perused incessantly; but the
      grandeur of the edifice which printing erects in its turn must
      not be denied.

      That edifice is colossal. Some compiler of statistics has
      calculated, that if all the volumes which have issued from the
      press since Gutenberg’s day were to be piled one upon another,
      they would fill the space between the earth and the moon; but it
      is not that sort of grandeur of which we wished to speak.
      Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one’s mind a
      comprehensive image of the total products of printing down to our
      own days, does not that total appear to us like an immense
      construction, resting upon the entire world, at which humanity
      toils without relaxation, and whose monstrous crest is lost in
      the profound mists of the future? It is the anthill of
      intelligence. It is the hive whither come all imaginations, those
      golden bees, with their honey.

      The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on
      its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its
      interior. Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques,
      rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriantly before the eyes. There,
      every individual work, however capricious and isolated it may
      seem, has its place and its projection. Harmony results from the
      whole. From the cathedral of Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron,
      a thousand tiny bell towers are piled pell-mell above this
      metropolis of universal thought. At its base are written some
      ancient titles of humanity which architecture had not registered.
      To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient
      bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the polyglot
      Bible rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some
      other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further
      on.

      Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete.
      The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the
      intellectual sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh
      materials for its work. The whole human race is on the
      scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole,
      or places his stone. Rétif de La Bretonne brings his hod of
      plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of the
      original and individual contribution of each writer, there are
      collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives the
      _Encyclopedia_, the revolution gives the _Moniteur_. Assuredly,
      it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless
      spirals; there also are confusion of tongues, incessant activity,
      indefatigable labor, eager competition of all humanity, refuge
      promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an overflow of
      barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel of the human race.



      BOOK SIXTH.



      CHAPTER I. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

      A very happy personage in the year of grace 1482, was the noble
      gentleman Robert d’Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de Beyne, Baron
      d’Ivry and Saint Andry en la Marche, counsellor and chamberlain
      to the king, and guard of the provostship of Paris. It was
      already nearly seventeen years since he had received from the
      king, on November 7, 1465, the comet year,[27] that fine charge
      of the provostship of Paris, which was reputed rather a seigneury
      than an office. _Dignitas_, says Joannes Lœmnœus, _quæ cum non
      exigua potestate politiam concernente, atque prærogativis multis
      et juribus conjuncta est_. A marvellous thing in ’82 was a
      gentleman bearing the king’s commission, and whose letters of
      institution ran back to the epoch of the marriage of the natural
      daughter of Louis XI. with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon.

      The same day on which Robert d’Estouteville took the place of
      Jacques de Villiers in the provostship of Paris, Master Jehan
      Dauvet replaced Messire Helye de Thorrettes in the first
      presidency of the Court of Parliament, Jehan Jouvenel des Ursins
      supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of chancellor of
      France, Regnault des Dormans ousted Pierre Puy from the charge of
      master of requests in ordinary of the king’s household. Now, upon
      how many heads had the presidency, the chancellorship, the
      mastership passed since Robert d’Estouteville had held the
      provostship of Paris. It had been “granted to him for
      safekeeping,” as the letters patent said; and certainly he kept
      it well. He had clung to it, he had incorporated himself with it,
      he had so identified himself with it that he had escaped that
      fury for change which possessed Louis XI., a tormenting and
      industrious king, whose policy it was to maintain the elasticity
      of his power by frequent appointments and revocations. More than
      this; the brave chevalier had obtained the reversion of the
      office for his son, and for two years already, the name of the
      noble man Jacques d’Estouteville, equerry, had figured beside his
      at the head of the register of the salary list of the provostship
      of Paris. A rare and notable favor indeed! It is true that Robert
      d’Estouteville was a good soldier, that he had loyally raised his
      pennon against “the league of public good,” and that he had
      presented to the queen a very marvellous stag in confectionery on
      the day of her entrance to Paris in 14.... Moreover, he possessed
      the good friendship of Messire Tristan l’Hermite, provost of the
      marshals of the king’s household. Hence a very sweet and pleasant
      existence was that of Messire Robert. In the first place, very
      good wages, to which were attached, and from which hung, like
      extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil
      and criminal registries of the provostship, plus the civil and
      criminal revenues of the tribunals of Embas of the Châtelet,
      without reckoning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and
      of Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of
      Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of salt. Add
      to this the pleasure of displaying himself in rides about the
      city, and of making his fine military costume, which you may
      still admire sculptured on his tomb in the abbey of Valmont in
      Normandy, and his morion, all embossed at Montlhéry, stand out a
      contrast against the parti-colored red and tawny robes of the
      aldermen and police. And then, was it nothing to wield absolute
      supremacy over the sergeants of the police, the porter and watch
      of the Châtelet, the two auditors of the Châtelet, _auditores
      castelleti_, the sixteen commissioners of the sixteen quarters,
      the jailer of the Châtelet, the four enfeoffed sergeants, the
      hundred and twenty mounted sergeants, with maces, the chevalier
      of the watch with his watch, his sub-watch, his counter-watch and
      his rear-watch? Was it nothing to exercise high and low justice,
      the right to interrogate, to hang and to draw, without reckoning
      petty jurisdiction in the first resort (_in prima instantia_, as
      the charters say), on that viscomty of Paris, so nobly appanaged
      with seven noble bailiwicks? Can anything sweeter be imagined
      than rendering judgments and decisions, as Messire Robert
      d’Estouteville daily did in the Grand Châtelet, under the large
      and flattened arches of Philip Augustus? and going, as he was
      wont to do every evening, to that charming house situated in the
      Rue Galilée, in the enclosure of the royal palace, which he held
      in right of his wife, Madame Ambroise de Loré, to repose after
      the fatigue of having sent some poor wretch to pass the night in
      “that little cell of the Rue de Escorcherie, which the provosts
      and aldermen of Paris used to make their prison; the same being
      eleven feet long, seven feet and four inches wide, and eleven
      feet high?”[28]

      And not only had Messire Robert d’Estouteville his special court
      as provost and vicomte of Paris; but in addition he had a share,
      both for eye and tooth, in the grand court of the king. There was
      no head in the least elevated which had not passed through his
      hands before it came to the headsman. It was he who went to seek
      M. de Nemours at the Bastille Saint Antoine, in order to conduct
      him to the Halles; and to conduct to the Grève M. de Saint-Pol,
      who clamored and resisted, to the great joy of the provost, who
      did not love monsieur the constable.

      Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life happy
      and illustrious, and to deserve some day a notable page in that
      interesting history of the provosts of Paris, where one learns
      that Oudard de Villeneuve had a house in the Rue des Boucheries,
      that Guillaume de Hangest purchased the great and the little
      Savoy, that Guillaume Thiboust gave the nuns of Sainte-Geneviève
      his houses in the Rue Clopin, that Hugues Aubriot lived in the
      Hôtel du Porc-Épic, and other domestic facts.

      Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently and
      joyously, Messire Robert d’Estouteville woke up on the morning of
      the seventh of January, 1482, in a very surly and peevish mood.
      Whence came this ill temper? He could not have told himself. Was
      it because the sky was gray? or was the buckle of his old belt of
      Montlhéry badly fastened, so that it confined his provostal
      portliness too closely? had he beheld ribald fellows, marching in
      bands of four, beneath his window, and setting him at defiance,
      in doublets but no shirts, hats without crowns, with wallet and
      bottle at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of the three
      hundred and seventy livres, sixteen sous, eight farthings, which
      the future King Charles VII. was to cut off from the provostship
      in the following year? The reader can take his choice; we, for
      our part, are much inclined to believe that he was in a bad
      humor, simply because he was in a bad humor.

      Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day for
      every one, and above all for the magistrate who is charged with
      sweeping away all the filth, properly and figuratively speaking,
      which a festival day produces in Paris. And then he had to hold a
      sitting at the Grand Châtelet. Now, we have noticed that judges
      in general so arrange matters that their day of audience shall
      also be their day of bad humor, so that they may always have some
      one upon whom to vent it conveniently, in the name of the king,
      law, and justice.

      However, the audience had begun without him. His lieutenants,
      civil, criminal, and private, were doing his work, according to
      usage; and from eight o’clock in the morning, some scores of
      _bourgeois_ and _bourgeoises_, heaped and crowded into an obscure
      corner of the audience chamber of Embas du Châtelet, between a
      stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been gazing blissfully at
      the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil and criminal justice
      dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Châtelet,
      lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in a somewhat confused and
      utterly haphazard manner.

      The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table studded with
      fleurs-de-lis stood at one end, with a large arm-chair of carved
      oak, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool on
      the left for the auditor, Master Florian. Below sat the clerk of
      the court, scribbling; opposite was the populace; and in front of
      the door, and in front of the table were many sergeants of the
      provostship in sleeveless jackets of violet camlet, with white
      crosses. Two sergeants of the Parloir-aux-Bourgeois, clothed in
      their jackets of Toussaint, half red, half blue, were posted as
      sentinels before a low, closed door, which was visible at the
      extremity of the hall, behind the table. A single pointed window,
      narrowly encased in the thick wall, illuminated with a pale ray
      of January sun two grotesque figures,—the capricious demon of
      stone carved as a tail-piece in the keystone of the vaulted
      ceiling, and the judge seated at the end of the hall on the
      fleurs-de-lis.

      Imagine, in fact, at the provost’s table, leaning upon his elbows
      between two bundles of documents of cases, with his foot on the
      train of his robe of plain brown cloth, his face buried in his
      hood of white lamb’s skin, of which his brows seemed to be of a
      piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majestically the load of
      fat on his cheeks which met under his chin, Master Florian
      Barbedienne, auditor of the Châtelet.

      Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. Master
      Florian delivered judgment, none the less, without appeal and
      very suitably. It is certainly quite sufficient for a judge to
      have the air of listening; and the venerable auditor fulfilled
      this condition, the sole one in justice, all the better because
      his attention could not be distracted by any noise.

      Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his deeds
      and gestures, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo du Moulin,
      that little student of yesterday, that “stroller,” whom one was
      sure of encountering all over Paris, anywhere except before the
      rostrums of the professors.

      “Stay,” he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin Poussepain,
      who was grinning at his side, while he was making his comments on
      the scenes which were being unfolded before his eyes, “yonder is
      Jehanneton du Buisson. The beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at
      the Marché-Neuf!—Upon my soul, he is condemning her, the old
      rascal! he has no more eyes than ears. Fifteen sous, four
      farthings, parisian, for having worn two rosaries! ’Tis somewhat
      dear. _Lex duri carminis_. Who’s that? Robin Chief-de-Ville,
      hauberkmaker. For having been passed and received master of the
      said trade! That’s his entrance money. He! two gentlemen among
      these knaves! Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly Two equerries,
      _Corpus Christi!_ Ah! they have been playing at dice. When shall
      I see our rector here? A hundred livres parisian, fine to the
      king! That Barbedienne strikes like a deaf man,—as he is! I’ll be
      my brother the archdeacon, if that keeps me from gaming; gaming
      by day, gaming by night, living at play, dying at play, and
      gaming away my soul after my shirt. Holy Virgin, what damsels!
      One after the other my lambs. Ambroise Lécuyère, Isabeau la
      Paynette, Bérarde Gironin! I know them all, by Heavens! A fine! a
      fine! That’s what will teach you to wear gilded girdles! ten sous
      parisis! you coquettes! Oh! the old snout of a judge! deaf and
      imbecile! Oh! Florian the dolt! Oh! Barbedienne the blockhead!
      There he is at the table! He’s eating the plaintiff, he’s eating
      the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams, he fills himself. Fines,
      lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal charges, salaries, damages,
      and interests, gehenna, prison, and jail, and fetters with
      expenses are Christmas spice cake and marchpanes of Saint-John to
      him! Look at him, the pig!—Come! Good! Another amorous woman!
      Thibaud-la-Thibaude, neither more nor less! For having come from
      the Rue Glatigny! What fellow is this? Gieffroy Mabonne, gendarme
      bearing the crossbow. He has cursed the name of the Father. A
      fine for la Thibaude! A fine for Gieffroy! A fine for them both!
      The deaf old fool! he must have mixed up the two cases! Ten to
      one that he makes the wench pay for the oath and the gendarme for
      the amour! Attention, Robin Poussepain! What are they going to
      bring in? Here are many sergeants! By Jupiter! all the
      bloodhounds of the pack are there. It must be the great beast of
      the hunt—a wild boar. And ’tis one, Robin, ’tis one. And a fine
      one too! _Hercle!_ ’tis our prince of yesterday, our Pope of the
      Fools, our bellringer, our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our
      grimace! ’Tis Quasimodo!”

      It was he indeed.

      It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and under
      good guard. The squad of policemen who surrounded him was
      assisted by the chevalier of the watch in person, wearing the
      arms of France embroidered on his breast, and the arms of the
      city on his back. There was nothing, however, about Quasimodo,
      except his deformity, which could justify the display of halberds
      and arquebuses; he was gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and
      then did his single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the
      bonds with which he was loaded.

      He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and sleepy
      that the women only pointed him out to each other in derision.

      Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over attentively
      the document in the complaint entered against Quasimodo, which
      the clerk handed him, and, having thus glanced at it, appeared to
      reflect for a moment. Thanks to this precaution, which he always
      was careful to take at the moment when on the point of beginning
      an examination, he knew beforehand the names, titles, and
      misdeeds of the accused, made cut and dried responses to
      questions foreseen, and succeeded in extricating himself from all
      the windings of the interrogation without allowing his deafness
      to be too apparent. The written charges were to him what the dog
      is to the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him
      here and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some
      unintelligible question, it passed for profundity with some, and
      for imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the
      magistracy sustain any injury; for it is far better that a judge
      should be reputed imbecile or profound than deaf. Hence he took
      great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of all, and he
      generally succeeded so well that he had reached the point of
      deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than is supposed.
      All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, all stutterers
      harangue, all deaf people speak low. As for him, he believed, at
      the most, that his ear was a little refractory. It was the sole
      concession which he made on this point to public opinion, in his
      moments of frankness and examination of his conscience.

      Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo’s affair, he threw
      back his head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of more
      majesty and impartiality, so that, at that moment, he was both
      deaf and blind. A double condition, without which no judge is
      perfect. It was in this magisterial attitude that he began the
      examination.

      “Your name?”

      Now this was a case which had not been “provided for by law,”
      where a deaf man should be obliged to question a deaf man.

      Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been addressed
      to him, continued to stare intently at the judge, and made no
      reply. The judge, being deaf, and being in no way warned of the
      deafness of the accused, thought that the latter had answered, as
      all accused do in general, and therefore he pursued, with his
      mechanical and stupid self-possession,—

      “Very well. And your age?”

      Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge
      supposed that it had been replied to, and continued,—

      “Now, your profession?”

      Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, meanwhile, to
      whisper together, and to exchange glances.

      “That will do,” went on the imperturbable auditor, when he
      supposed that the accused had finished his third reply. “You are
      accused before us, _primo_, of nocturnal disturbance; _secundo_,
      of a dishonorable act of violence upon the person of a foolish
      woman, _in præjudicium meretricis; tertio_, of rebellion and
      disloyalty towards the archers of the police of our lord, the
      king. Explain yourself upon all these points.—Clerk, have you
      written down what the prisoner has said thus far?”

      At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the
      clerk’s table caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so
      contagious, so universal, that the two deaf men were forced to
      perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging his hump with
      disdain, while Master Florian, equally astonished, and supposing
      that the laughter of the spectators had been provoked by some
      irreverent reply from the accused, rendered visible to him by
      that shrug of the shoulders, apostrophized him indignantly,—

      “You have uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter. Do
      you know to whom you are speaking?”

      This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general
      merriment. It struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, that
      the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the
      Parloi-aux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose stupidity was part
      of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness, for
      the good reason that he understood nothing of what was going on
      around him. The judge, more and more irritated, thought it his
      duty to continue in the same tone, hoping thereby to strike the
      accused with a terror which should react upon the audience, and
      bring it back to respect.

      “So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving knave that
      you are, that you permit yourself to be lacking in respect
      towards the Auditor of the Châtelet, to the magistrate committed
      to the popular police of Paris, charged with searching out
      crimes, delinquencies, and evil conduct; with controlling all
      trades, and interdicting monopoly; with maintaining the
      pavements; with debarring the hucksters of chickens, poultry, and
      water-fowl; of superintending the measuring of fagots and other
      sorts of wood; of purging the city of mud, and the air of
      contagious maladies; in a word, with attending continually to
      public affairs, without wages or hope of salary! Do you know that
      I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur
      the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor,
      _controller_, and examiner, with equal power in provostship,
      bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature?—”

      There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should
      stop. God knows where and when Master Florian would have landed,
      when thus launched at full speed in lofty eloquence, if the low
      door at the extreme end of the room had not suddenly opened, and
      given entrance to the provost in person. At his entrance Master
      Florian did not stop short, but, making a half-turn on his heels,
      and aiming at the provost the harangue with which he had been
      withering Quasimodo a moment before,—

      “Monseigneur,” said he, “I demand such penalty as you shall deem
      fitting against the prisoner here present, for grave and
      aggravated offence against the court.”

      And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the great
      drops of sweat which fell from his brow and drenched, like tears,
      the parchments spread out before him. Messire Robert
      d’Estouteville frowned and made a gesture so imperious and
      significant to Quasimodo, that the deaf man in some measure
      understood it.

      The provost addressed him with severity, “What have you done that
      you have been brought hither, knave?”

      The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his name,
      broke the silence which he habitually preserved, and replied, in
      a harsh and guttural voice, “Quasimodo.”

      The reply matched the question so little that the wild laugh
      began to circulate once more, and Messire Robert exclaimed, red
      with wrath,—

      “Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave?”

      “Bellringer of Notre-Dame,” replied Quasimodo, supposing that
      what was required of him was to explain to the judge who he was.

      “Bellringer!” interpolated the provost, who had waked up early
      enough to be in a sufficiently bad temper, as we have said, not
      to require to have his fury inflamed by such strange responses.
      “Bellringer! I’ll play you a chime of rods on your back through
      the squares of Paris! Do you hear, knave?”

      “If it is my age that you wish to know,” said Quasimodo, “I think
      that I shall be twenty at Saint Martin’s day.”

      This was too much; the provost could no longer restrain himself.

      “Ah! you are scoffing at the provostship, wretch! Messieurs the
      sergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave to the pillory
      of the Grève, you will flog him, and turn him for an hour. He
      shall pay me for it, _tête Dieu!_ And I order that the present
      judgment shall be cried, with the assistance of four sworn
      trumpeters, in the seven castellanies of the viscomty of Paris.”

      The clerk set to work incontinently to draw up the account of the
      sentence.

      “_Ventre Dieu!_ ’tis well adjudged!” cried the little scholar,
      Jehan Frollo du Moulin, from his corner.

      The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on
      Quasimodo. “I believe the knave said ‘_Ventre Dieu!_’ Clerk, add
      twelve deniers Parisian for the oath, and let the vestry of Saint
      Eustache have the half of it; I have a particular devotion for
      Saint Eustache.”

      In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor was simple
      and brief. The customs of the provostship and the viscomty had
      not yet been worked over by President Thibaut Baillet, and by
      Roger Barmne, the king’s advocate; they had not been obstructed,
      at that time, by that lofty hedge of quibbles and procedures,
      which the two jurisconsults planted there at the beginning of the
      sixteenth century. All was clear, expeditious, explicit. One went
      straight to the point then, and at the end of every path there
      was immediately visible, without thickets and without turnings;
      the wheel, the gibbet, or the pillory. One at least knew whither
      one was going.

      The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who affixed his
      seal to it, and departed to pursue his round of the audience
      hall, in a frame of mind which seemed destined to fill all the
      jails in Paris that day. Jehan Frollo and Robin Poussepain
      laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed on the whole with an
      indifferent and astonished air.

      However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was
      reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk
      felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner,
      and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he
      approached as near the auditor’s ear as possible, and said,
      pointing to Quasimodo, “That man is deaf.”

      He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken Master
      Florian’s interest in behalf of the condemned man. But, in the
      first place, we have already observed that Master Florian did not
      care to have his deafness noticed. In the next place, he was so
      hard of hearing that he did not catch a single word of what the
      clerk said to him; nevertheless, he wished to have the appearance
      of hearing, and replied, “Ah! ah! that is different; I did not
      know that. An hour more of the pillory, in that case.”

      And he signed the sentence thus modified.

      “’Tis well done,” said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a grudge
      against Quasimodo. “That will teach him to handle people
      roughly.”



      CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.

      The reader must permit us to take him back to the Place de Grève,
      which we quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in order to follow la
      Esmeralda.

      It is ten o’clock in the morning; everything is indicative of the
      day after a festival. The pavement is covered with rubbish;
      ribbons, rags, feathers from tufts of plumes, drops of wax from
      the torches, crumbs of the public feast. A goodly number of
      _bourgeois_ are “sauntering,” as we say, here and there, turning
      over with their feet the extinct brands of the bonfire, going
      into raptures in front of the Pillar House, over the memory of
      the fine hangings of the day before, and to-day staring at the
      nails that secured them a last pleasure. The venders of cider and
      beer are rolling their barrels among the groups. Some busy
      passers-by come and go. The merchants converse and call to each
      other from the thresholds of their shops. The festival, the
      ambassadors, Coppenole, the Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths;
      they vie with each other, each trying to criticise it best and
      laugh the most. And, meanwhile, four mounted sergeants, who have
      just posted themselves at the four sides of the pillory, have
      already concentrated around themselves a goodly proportion of the
      populace scattered on the Place, who condemn themselves to
      immobility and fatigue in the hope of a small execution.

      If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and noisy
      scene which is being enacted in all parts of the Place, will now
      transfer his gaze towards that ancient demi-Gothic,
      demi-Romanesque house of the Tour-Roland, which forms the corner
      on the quay to the west, he will observe, at the angle of the
      façade, a large public breviary, with rich illuminations,
      protected from the rain by a little penthouse, and from thieves
      by a small grating, which, however, permits of the leaves being
      turned. Beside this breviary is a narrow, arched window, closed
      by two iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on the
      square; the only opening which admits a small quantity of light
      and air to a little cell without a door, constructed on the
      ground-floor, in the thickness of the walls of the old house, and
      filled with a peace all the more profound, with a silence all the
      more gloomy, because a public place, the most populous and most
      noisy in Paris swarms and shrieks around it.

      This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three
      centuries, ever since Madame Rolande de la Tour-Roland, in
      mourning for her father who died in the Crusades, had caused it
      to be hollowed out in the wall of her own house, in order to
      immure herself there forever, keeping of all her palace only this
      lodging whose door was walled up, and whose window stood open,
      winter and summer, giving all the rest to the poor and to God.
      The afflicted damsel had, in fact, waited twenty years for death
      in this premature tomb, praying night and day for the soul of her
      father, sleeping in ashes, without even a stone for a pillow,
      clothed in a black sack, and subsisting on the bread and water
      which the compassion of the passers-by led them to deposit on the
      ledge of her window, thus receiving charity after having bestowed
      it. At her death, at the moment when she was passing to the other
      sepulchre, she had bequeathed this one in perpetuity to afflicted
      women, mothers, widows, or maidens, who should wish to pray much
      for others or for themselves, and who should desire to inter
      themselves alive in a great grief or a great penance. The poor of
      her day had made her a fine funeral, with tears and benedictions;
      but, to their great regret, the pious maid had not been
      canonized, for lack of influence. Those among them who were a
      little inclined to impiety, had hoped that the matter might be
      accomplished in Paradise more easily than at Rome, and had
      frankly besought God, instead of the pope, in behalf of the
      deceased. The majority had contented themselves with holding the
      memory of Rolande sacred, and converting her rags into relics.
      The city, on its side, had founded in honor of the damoiselle, a
      public breviary, which had been fastened near the window of the
      cell, in order that passers-by might halt there from time to
      time, were it only to pray; that prayer might remind them of
      alms, and that the poor recluses, heiresses of Madame Rolande’s
      vault, might not die outright of hunger and forgetfulness.

      Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in the
      cities of the Middle Ages. One often encountered in the most
      frequented street, in the most crowded and noisy market, in the
      very middle, under the feet of the horses, under the wheels of
      the carts, as it were, a cellar, a well, a tiny walled and grated
      cabin, at the bottom of which a human being prayed night and day,
      voluntarily devoted to some eternal lamentation, to some great
      expiation. And all the reflections which that strange spectacle
      would awaken in us to-day; that horrible cell, a sort of
      intermediary link between a house and the tomb, the cemetery and
      the city; that living being cut off from the human community, and
      thenceforth reckoned among the dead; that lamp consuming its last
      drop of oil in the darkness; that remnant of life flickering in
      the grave; that breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box
      of stone; that face forever turned towards the other world; that
      eye already illuminated with another sun; that ear pressed to the
      walls of a tomb; that soul a prisoner in that body; that body a
      prisoner in that dungeon cell, and beneath that double envelope
      of flesh and granite, the murmur of that soul in pain;—nothing of
      all this was perceived by the crowd. The piety of that age, not
      very subtle nor much given to reasoning, did not see so many
      facets in an act of religion. It took the thing in the block,
      honored, venerated, hallowed the sacrifice at need, but did not
      analyze the sufferings, and felt but moderate pity for them. It
      brought some pittance to the miserable penitent from time to
      time, looked through the hole to see whether he were still
      living, forgot his name, hardly knew how many years ago he had
      begun to die, and to the stranger, who questioned them about the
      living skeleton who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors
      replied simply, “It is the recluse.”

      Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without
      exaggeration, without magnifying glass, with the naked eye. The
      microscope had not yet been invented, either for things of matter
      or for things of the mind.

      Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it, the
      examples of this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities
      were in truth frequent, as we have just said. There were in Paris
      a considerable number of these cells, for praying to God and
      doing penance; they were nearly all occupied. It is true that the
      clergy did not like to have them empty, since that implied
      lukewarmness in believers, and that lepers were put into them
      when there were no penitents on hand. Besides the cell on the
      Grève, there was one at Montfaucon, one at the Charnier des
      Innocents, another I hardly know where,—at the Clichon House, I
      think; others still at many spots where traces of them are found
      in traditions, in default of memorials. The University had also
      its own. On Mount Sainte-Geneviève a sort of Job of the Middle
      Ages, for the space of thirty years, chanted the seven
      penitential psalms on a dunghill at the bottom of a cistern,
      beginning anew when he had finished, singing loudest at night,
      _magna voce per umbras_, and to-day, the antiquary fancies that
      he hears his voice as he enters the Rue du Puits-qui-parle—the
      street of the “Speaking Well.”

      To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Roland, we must say
      that it had never lacked recluses. After the death of Madame
      Roland, it had stood vacant for a year or two, though rarely.
      Many women had come thither to mourn, until their death, for
      relatives, lovers, faults. Parisian malice, which thrusts its
      finger into everything, even into things which concern it the
      least, affirmed that it had beheld but few widows there.

      In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin inscription
      on the wall indicated to the learned passer-by the pious purpose
      of this cell. The custom was retained until the middle of the
      sixteenth century of explaining an edifice by a brief device
      inscribed above the door. Thus, one still reads in France, above
      the wicket of the prison in the seignorial mansion of Tourville,
      _Sileto et spera_; in Ireland, beneath the armorial bearings
      which surmount the grand door to Fortescue Castle, _Forte scutum,
      salus ducum_; in England, over the principal entrance to the
      hospitable mansion of the Earls Cowper: _Tuum est_. At that time
      every edifice was a thought.

      As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland, these
      two words had been carved in large Roman capitals over the
      window,—

   TU, ORA.

      And this caused the people, whose good sense does not perceive so
      much refinement in things, and likes to translate _Ludovico
      Magno_ by _Porte Saint-Denis_, to give to this dark, gloomy, damp
      cavity, the name of “The Rat-Hole.” An explanation less sublime,
      perhaps, than the other; but, on the other hand, more
      picturesque.



      CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.

      At the epoch of this history, the cell in the Tour-Roland was
      occupied. If the reader desires to know by whom, he has only to
      lend an ear to the conversation of three worthy gossips, who, at
      the moment when we have directed his attention to the Rat-Hole,
      were directing their steps towards the same spot, coming up along
      the water’s edge from the Châtelet, towards the Grève.

      Two of these women were dressed like good _bourgeoises_ of Paris.
      Their fine white ruffs; their petticoats of linsey-woolsey,
      striped red and blue; their white knitted stockings, with clocks
      embroidered in colors, well drawn upon their legs; the
      square-toed shoes of tawny leather with black soles, and, above
      all, their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn, loaded down with
      ribbons and laces, which the women of Champagne still wear, in
      company with the grenadiers of the imperial guard of Russia,
      announced that they belonged to that class wives which holds the
      middle ground between what the lackeys call a woman and what they
      term a lady. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, and it was
      easy to see that, in their ease, this did not proceed from
      poverty, but simply from fear of being fined. Their companion was
      attired in very much the same manner; but there was that
      indescribable something about her dress and bearing which
      suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could see, by the
      way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that she had not
      been long in Paris. Add to this a plaited tucker, knots of ribbon
      on her shoes—and that the stripes of her petticoat ran
      horizontally instead of vertically, and a thousand other
      enormities which shocked good taste.

      The two first walked with that step peculiar to Parisian ladies,
      showing Paris to women from the country. The provincial held by
      the hand a big boy, who held in his a large, flat cake.

      We regret to be obliged to add, that, owing to the rigor of the
      season, he was using his tongue as a handkerchief.

      The child was making them drag him along, _non passibus æquis_,
      as Virgil says, and stumbling at every moment, to the great
      indignation of his mother. It is true that he was looking at his
      cake more than at the pavement. Some serious motive, no doubt,
      prevented his biting it (the cake), for he contented himself with
      gazing tenderly at it. But the mother should have rather taken
      charge of the cake. It was cruel to make a Tantalus of the
      chubby-cheeked boy.

      Meanwhile, the three demoiselles (for the name of _dames_ was
      then reserved for noble women) were all talking at once.

      “Let us make haste, Demoiselle Mahiette,” said the youngest of
      the three, who was also the largest, to the provincial, “I
      greatly fear that we shall arrive too late; they told us at the
      Châtelet that they were going to take him directly to the
      pillory.”

      “Ah, bah! what are you saying, Demoiselle Oudarde Musnier?”
      interposed the other Parisienne. “There are two hours yet to the
      pillory. We have time enough. Have you ever seen any one
      pilloried, my dear Mahiette?”

      “Yes,” said the provincial, “at Reims.”

      “Ah, bah! What is your pillory at Reims? A miserable cage into
      which only peasants are turned. A great affair, truly!”

      “Only peasants!” said Mahiette, “at the cloth market in Reims! We
      have seen very fine criminals there, who have killed their father
      and mother! Peasants! For what do you take us, Gervaise?”

      It is certain that the provincial was on the point of taking
      offence, for the honor of her pillory. Fortunately, that discreet
      damoiselle, Oudarde Musnier, turned the conversation in time.

      “By the way, Damoiselle Mahiette, what say you to our Flemish
      Ambassadors? Have you as fine ones at Reims?”

      “I admit,” replied Mahiette, “that it is only in Paris that such
      Flemings can be seen.”

      “Did you see among the embassy, that big ambassador who is a
      hosier?” asked Oudarde.

      “Yes,” said Mahiette. “He has the eye of a Saturn.”

      “And the big fellow whose face resembles a bare belly?” resumed
      Gervaise. “And the little one, with small eyes framed in red
      eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?”

      “’Tis their horses that are worth seeing,” said Oudarde,
      “caparisoned as they are after the fashion of their country!”

      “Ah my dear,” interrupted provincial Mahiette, assuming in her
      turn an air of superiority, “what would you say then, if you had
      seen in ’61, at the consecration at Reims, eighteen years ago,
      the horses of the princes and of the king’s company? Housings and
      caparisons of all sorts; some of damask cloth, of fine cloth of
      gold, furred with sables; others of velvet, furred with ermine;
      others all embellished with goldsmith’s work and large bells of
      gold and silver! And what money that had cost! And what handsome
      boy pages rode upon them!”

      “That,” replied Oudarde dryly, “does not prevent the Flemings
      having very fine horses, and having had a superb supper yesterday
      with monsieur, the provost of the merchants, at the
      Hôtel-de-Ville, where they were served with comfits and
      hippocras, and spices, and other singularities.”

      “What are you saying, neighbor!” exclaimed Gervaise. “It was with
      monsieur the cardinal, at the Petit Bourbon that they supped.”

      “Not at all. At the Hôtel-de-Ville.

      “Yes, indeed. At the Petit Bourbon!”

      “It was at the Hôtel-de-Ville,” retorted Oudarde sharply, “and
      Dr. Scourable addressed them a harangue in Latin, which pleased
      them greatly. My husband, who is sworn bookseller told me so.”

      “It was at the Petit Bourbon,” replied Gervaise, with no less
      spirit, “and this is what monsieur the cardinal’s procurator
      presented to them: twelve double quarts of hippocras, white,
      claret, and red; twenty-four boxes of double Lyons marchpane,
      gilded; as many torches, worth two livres a piece; and six
      demi-queues[29] of Beaune wine, white and claret, the best that
      could be found. I have it from my husband, who is a
      cinquantenier[30], at the Parloir-aux Bourgeois, and who was this
      morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with those of Prester
      John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia to
      Paris, under the last king, and who wore rings in their ears.”

      “So true is it that they supped at the Hôtel-de-Ville,” replied
      Oudarde but little affected by this catalogue, “that such a
      triumph of viands and comfits has never been seen.”

      “I tell you that they were served by Le Sec, sergeant of the
      city, at the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, and that that is where you
      are mistaken.”

      “At the Hôtel-de-Ville, I tell you!”

      “At the Petit-Bourbon, my dear! and they had illuminated with
      magic glasses the word _Hope_, which is written on the grand
      portal.”

      “At the Hôtel-de-Ville! At the Hôtel-de-Ville! And Husson-le-Voir
      played the flute!”

      “I tell you, no!”

      “I tell you, yes!”

      “I say, no!”

      Plump and worthy Oudarde was preparing to retort, and the quarrel
      might, perhaps, have proceeded to a pulling of caps, had not
      Mahiette suddenly exclaimed,—“Look at those people assembled
      yonder at the end of the bridge! There is something in their
      midst that they are looking at!”

      “In sooth,” said Gervaise, “I hear the sounds of a tambourine. I
      believe ’tis the little Esmeralda, who plays her mummeries with
      her goat. Eh, be quick, Mahiette! redouble your pace and drag
      along your boy. You are come hither to visit the curiosities of
      Paris. You saw the Flemings yesterday; you must see the gypsy
      to-day.”

      “The gypsy!” said Mahiette, suddenly retracing her steps, and
      clasping her son’s arm forcibly. “God preserve me from it! She
      would steal my child from me! Come, Eustache!”

      And she set out on a run along the quay towards the Grève, until
      she had left the bridge far behind her. In the meanwhile, the
      child whom she was dragging after her fell upon his knees; she
      halted breathless. Oudarde and Gervaise rejoined her.

      “That gypsy steal your child from you!” said Gervaise. “That’s a
      singular freak of yours!”

      Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air.

      “The singular point is,” observed Oudarde, “that _la sachette_
      has the same idea about the Egyptian woman.”

      “What is _la sachette_?” asked Mahiette.

      “Hé!” said Oudarde, “Sister Gudule.”

      “And who is Sister Gudule?” persisted Mahiette.

      “You are certainly ignorant of all but your Reims, not to know
      that!” replied Oudarde. “’Tis the recluse of the Rat-Hole.”

      “What!” demanded Mahiette, “that poor woman to whom we are
      carrying this cake?”

      Oudarde nodded affirmatively.

      “Precisely. You will see her presently at her window on the
      Grève. She has the same opinion as yourself of these vagabonds of
      Egypt, who play the tambourine and tell fortunes to the public.
      No one knows whence comes her horror of the gypsies and
      Egyptians. But you, Mahiette—why do you run so at the mere sight
      of them?”

      “Oh!” said Mahiette, seizing her child’s round head in both
      hands, “I don’t want that to happen to me which happened to
      Paquette la Chantefleurie.”

      “Oh! you must tell us that story, my good Mahiette,” said
      Gervaise, taking her arm.

      “Gladly,” replied Mahiette, “but you must be ignorant of all but
      your Paris not to know that! I will tell you then (but ’tis not
      necessary for us to halt that I may tell you the tale), that
      Paquette la Chantefleurie was a pretty maid of eighteen when I
      was one myself, that is to say, eighteen years ago, and ’tis her
      own fault if she is not to-day, like me, a good, plump, fresh
      mother of six and thirty, with a husband and a son. However,
      after the age of fourteen, it was too late! Well, she was the
      daughter of Guybertant, minstrel of the barges at Reims, the same
      who had played before King Charles VII., at his coronation, when
      he descended our river Vesle from Sillery to Muison, when Madame
      the Maid of Orleans was also in the boat. The old father died
      when Paquette was still a mere child; she had then no one but her
      mother, the sister of M. Pradon, master-brazier and coppersmith
      in Paris, Rue Parin-Garlin, who died last year. You see she was
      of good family. The mother was a good simple woman,
      unfortunately, and she taught Paquette nothing but a bit of
      embroidery and toy-making which did not prevent the little one
      from growing very large and remaining very poor. They both dwelt
      at Reims, on the river front, Rue de Folle-Peine. Mark this: For
      I believe it was this which brought misfortune to Paquette. In
      ’61, the year of the coronation of our King Louis XI. whom God
      preserve! Paquette was so gay and so pretty that she was called
      everywhere by no other name than _la Chantefleurie_—blossoming
      song. Poor girl! She had handsome teeth, she was fond of laughing
      and displaying them. Now, a maid who loves to laugh is on the
      road to weeping; handsome teeth ruin handsome eyes. So she was la
      Chantefleurie. She and her mother earned a precarious living;
      they had been very destitute since the death of the minstrel;
      their embroidery did not bring them in more than six farthings a
      week, which does not amount to quite two eagle liards. Where were
      the days when Father Guybertant had earned twelve sous parisian,
      in a single coronation, with a song? One winter (it was in that
      same year of ’61), when the two women had neither fagots nor
      firewood, it was very cold, which gave la Chantefleurie such a
      fine color that the men called her Paquette![31] and many called
      her Pâquerette![32] and she was ruined.—Eustache, just let me see
      you bite that cake if you dare!—We immediately perceived that she
      was ruined, one Sunday when she came to church with a gold cross
      about her neck. At fourteen years of age! do you see? First it
      was the young Vicomte de Cormontreuil, who has his bell tower
      three leagues distant from Reims; then Messire Henri de
      Triancourt, equerry to the King; then less than that, Chiart de
      Beaulion, sergeant-at-arms; then, still descending, Guery
      Aubergeon, carver to the King; then, Macé de Frépus, barber to
      monsieur the dauphin; then, Thévenin le Moine, King’s cook; then,
      the men growing continually younger and less noble, she fell to
      Guillaume Racine, minstrel of the hurdy-gurdy and to Thierry de
      Mer, lamplighter. Then, poor Chantefleurie, she belonged to every
      one: she had reached the last sou of her gold piece. What shall I
      say to you, my damoiselles? At the coronation, in the same year,
      ’61, ’twas she who made the bed of the king of the debauchees! In
      the same year!”

      Mahiette sighed, and wiped away a tear which trickled from her
      eyes.

      “This is no very extraordinary history,” said Gervaise, “and in
      the whole of it I see nothing of any Egyptian women or children.”

      “Patience!” resumed Mahiette, “you will see one child.—In ’66,
      ’twill be sixteen years ago this month, at Sainte-Paule’s day,
      Paquette was brought to bed of a little girl. The unhappy
      creature! it was a great joy to her; she had long wished for a
      child. Her mother, good woman, who had never known what to do
      except to shut her eyes, her mother was dead. Paquette had no
      longer any one to love in the world or any one to love her. La
      Chantefleurie had been a poor creature during the five years
      since her fall. She was alone, alone in this life, fingers were
      pointed at her, she was hooted at in the streets, beaten by the
      sergeants, jeered at by the little boys in rags. And then, twenty
      had arrived: and twenty is an old age for amorous women. Folly
      began to bring her in no more than her trade of embroidery in
      former days; for every wrinkle that came, a crown fled; winter
      became hard to her once more, wood became rare again in her
      brazier, and bread in her cupboard. She could no longer work
      because, in becoming voluptuous, she had grown lazy; and she
      suffered much more because, in growing lazy, she had become
      voluptuous. At least, that is the way in which monsieur the curé
      of Saint-Remy explains why these women are colder and hungrier
      than other poor women, when they are old.”

      “Yes,” remarked Gervaise, “but the gypsies?”

      “One moment, Gervaise!” said Oudarde, whose attention was less
      impatient. “What would be left for the end if all were in the
      beginning? Continue, Mahiette, I entreat you. That poor
      Chantefleurie!”

      Mahiette went on.

      “So she was very sad, very miserable, and furrowed her cheeks
      with tears. But in the midst of her shame, her folly, her
      debauchery, it seemed to her that she should be less wild, less
      shameful, less dissipated, if there were something or some one in
      the world whom she could love, and who could love her. It was
      necessary that it should be a child, because only a child could
      be sufficiently innocent for that. She had recognized this fact
      after having tried to love a thief, the only man who wanted her;
      but after a short time, she perceived that the thief despised
      her. Those women of love require either a lover or a child to
      fill their hearts. Otherwise, they are very unhappy. As she could
      not have a lover, she turned wholly towards a desire for a child,
      and as she had not ceased to be pious, she made her constant
      prayer to the good God for it. So the good God took pity on her,
      and gave her a little daughter. I will not speak to you of her
      joy; it was a fury of tears, and caresses, and kisses. She nursed
      her child herself, made swaddling-bands for it out of her
      coverlet, the only one which she had on her bed, and no longer
      felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in
      consequence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry
      claimed her once more; men came to see la Chantefleurie; she
      found customers again for her merchandise, and out of all these
      horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices with
      shoulder-straps of lace, and tiny bonnets of satin, without even
      thinking of buying herself another coverlet.—Master Eustache, I
      have already told you not to eat that cake.—It is certain that
      little Agnès, that was the child’s name, a baptismal name, for it
      was a long time since la Chantefleurie had had any surname—it is
      certain that that little one was more swathed in ribbons and
      embroideries than a dauphiness of Dauphiny! Among other things,
      she had a pair of little shoes, the like of which King Louis XI.
      certainly never had! Her mother had stitched and embroidered them
      herself; she had lavished on them all the delicacies of her art
      of embroideress, and all the embellishments of a robe for the
      good Virgin. They certainly were the two prettiest little pink
      shoes that could be seen. They were no longer than my thumb, and
      one had to see the child’s little feet come out of them, in order
      to believe that they had been able to get into them. ’Tis true
      that those little feet were so small, so pretty, so rosy! rosier
      than the satin of the shoes! When you have children, Oudarde, you
      will find that there is nothing prettier than those little hands
      and feet.”

      “I ask no better,” said Oudarde with a sigh, “but I am waiting
      until it shall suit the good pleasure of M. Andry Musnier.”

      “However, Paquette’s child had more that was pretty about it
      besides its feet. I saw her when she was only four months old;
      she was a love! She had eyes larger than her mouth, and the most
      charming black hair, which already curled. She would have been a
      magnificent brunette at the age of sixteen! Her mother became
      more crazy over her every day. She kissed her, caressed her,
      tickled her, washed her, decked her out, devoured her! She lost
      her head over her, she thanked God for her. Her pretty, little
      rosy feet above all were an endless source of wonderment, they
      were a delirium of joy! She was always pressing her lips to them,
      and she could never recover from her amazement at their
      smallness. She put them into the tiny shoes, took them out,
      admired them, marvelled at them, looked at the light through
      them, was curious to see them try to walk on her bed, and would
      gladly have passed her life on her knees, putting on and taking
      off the shoes from those feet, as though they had been those of
      an Infant Jesus.”

      “The tale is fair and good,” said Gervaise in a low tone; “but
      where do gypsies come into all that?”

      “Here,” replied Mahiette. “One day there arrived in Reims a very
      queer sort of people. They were beggars and vagabonds who were
      roaming over the country, led by their duke and their counts.
      They were browned by exposure to the sun, they had closely
      curling hair, and silver rings in their ears. The women were
      still uglier than the men. They had blacker faces, which were
      always uncovered, a miserable frock on their bodies, an old cloth
      woven of cords bound upon their shoulder, and their hair hanging
      like the tail of a horse. The children who scrambled between
      their legs would have frightened as many monkeys. A band of
      excommunicates. All these persons came direct from lower Egypt to
      Reims through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was said,
      and had prescribed to them as penance to roam through the world
      for seven years, without sleeping in a bed; and so they were
      called penancers, and smelt horribly. It appears that they had
      formerly been Saracens, which was why they believed in Jupiter,
      and claimed ten livres of Tournay from all archbishops, bishops,
      and mitred abbots with croziers. A bull from the Pope empowered
      them to do that. They came to Reims to tell fortunes in the name
      of the King of Algiers, and the Emperor of Germany. You can
      readily imagine that no more was needed to cause the entrance to
      the town to be forbidden them. Then the whole band camped with
      good grace outside the gate of Braine, on that hill where stands
      a mill, beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And
      everybody in Reims vied with his neighbor in going to see them.
      They looked at your hand, and told you marvellous prophecies;
      they were equal to predicting to Judas that he would become Pope.
      Nevertheless, ugly rumors were in circulation in regard to them;
      about children stolen, purses cut, and human flesh devoured. The
      wise people said to the foolish: “Don’t go there!” and then went
      themselves on the sly. It was an infatuation. The fact is, that
      they said things fit to astonish a cardinal. Mothers triumphed
      greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians had read in
      their hands all sorts of marvels written in pagan and in Turkish.
      One had an emperor; another, a pope; another, a captain. Poor
      Chantefleurie was seized with curiosity; she wished to know about
      herself, and whether her pretty little Agnès would not become
      some day Empress of Armenia, or something else. So she carried
      her to the Egyptians; and the Egyptian women fell to admiring the
      child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it with their black
      mouths, and to marvelling over its little band, alas! to the
      great joy of the mother. They were especially enthusiastic over
      her pretty feet and shoes. The child was not yet a year old. She
      already lisped a little, laughed at her mother like a little mad
      thing, was plump and quite round, and possessed a thousand
      charming little gestures of the angels of paradise.

      “She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her
      mother kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the
      good fortune which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnès.
      She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a queen. So she returned to her
      attic in the Rue Folle-Peine, very proud of bearing with her a
      queen. The next day she took advantage of a moment when the child
      was asleep on her bed, (for they always slept together), gently
      left the door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in
      the Rue de la Séchesserie, that the day would come when her
      daughter Agnès would be served at table by the King of England
      and the Archduke of Ethiopia, and a hundred other marvels. On her
      return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself:
      ‘Good! the child is still asleep!’ She found her door wider open
      than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to
      the bed.—The child was no longer there, the place was empty.
      Nothing remained of the child, but one of her pretty little
      shoes. She flew out of the room, dashed down the stairs, and
      began to beat her head against the wall, crying: ‘My child! who
      has my child? Who has taken my child?’ The street was deserted,
      the house isolated; no one could tell her anything about it. She
      went about the town, searched all the streets, ran hither and
      thither the whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible,
      snuffing at doors and windows like a wild beast which has lost
      its young. She was breathless, dishevelled, frightful to see, and
      there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped
      the passers-by and cried: ‘My daughter! my daughter! my pretty
      little daughter! If any one will give me back my daughter, I will
      be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall eat my heart
      if he will.’ She met M. le Curé of Saint-Remy, and said to him:
      ‘Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails, but give
      me back my child!’ It was heartrending, Oudarde; and I saw a very
      hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah! poor
      mother! In the evening she returned home. During her absence, a
      neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in
      their arms, then descend again, after closing the door. After
      their departure, something like the cries of a child were heard
      in Paquette’s room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter,
      ascended the stairs as though on wings, and entered.—A frightful
      thing to tell, Oudarde! Instead of her pretty little Agnès, so
      rosy and so fresh, who was a gift of the good God, a sort of
      hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed, deformed, was crawling
      and squalling over the floor. She hid her eyes in horror. ‘Oh!’
      said she, ‘have the witches transformed my daughter into this
      horrible animal?’ They hastened to carry away the little
      club-foot; he would have driven her mad. It was the monstrous
      child of some gypsy woman, who had given herself to the devil. He
      appeared to be about four years old, and talked a language which
      was no human tongue; there were words in it which were
      impossible. La Chantefleurie flung herself upon the little shoe,
      all that remained to her of all that she loved. She remained so
      long motionless over it, mute, and without breath, that they
      thought she was dead. Suddenly she trembled all over, covered her
      relic with furious kisses, and burst out sobbing as though her
      heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping also.
      She said: ‘Oh, my little daughter! my pretty little daughter!
      where art thou?’—and it wrung your very heart. I weep still when
      I think of it. Our children are the marrow of our bones, you
      see.—My poor Eustache! thou art so fair!—If you only knew how
      nice he is! yesterday he said to me: ‘I want to be a gendarme,
      that I do.’ Oh! my Eustache! if I were to lose thee!—All at once
      la Chantefleurie rose, and set out to run through Reims,
      screaming: ‘To the gypsies’ camp! to the gypsies’ camp! Police,
      to burn the witches!’ The gypsies were gone. It was pitch dark.
      They could not be followed. On the morrow, two leagues from
      Reims, on a heath between Gueux and Tilloy, the remains of a
      large fire were found, some ribbons which had belonged to
      Paquette’s child, drops of blood, and the dung of a ram. The
      night just past had been a Saturday. There was no longer any
      doubt that the Egyptians had held their Sabbath on that heath,
      and that they had devoured the child in company with Beelzebub,
      as the practice is among the Mahometans. When La Chantefleurie
      learned these horrible things, she did not weep, she moved her
      lips as though to speak, but could not. On the morrow, her hair
      was gray. On the second day, she had disappeared.

      “’Tis in truth, a frightful tale,” said Oudarde, “and one which
      would make even a Burgundian weep.”

      “I am no longer surprised,” added Gervaise, “that fear of the
      gypsies should spur you on so sharply.”

      “And you did all the better,” resumed Oudarde, “to flee with your
      Eustache just now, since these also are gypsies from Poland.”

      “No,” said Gervais, “’tis said that they come from Spain and
      Catalonia.”

      “Catalonia? ’tis possible,” replied Oudarde. “Pologne, Catalogne,
      Valogne, I always confound those three provinces, One thing is
      certain, that they are gypsies.”

      “Who certainly,” added Gervaise, “have teeth long enough to eat
      little children. I should not be surprised if la Smeralda ate a
      little of them also, though she pretends to be dainty. Her white
      goat knows tricks that are too malicious for there not to be some
      impiety underneath it all.”

      Mahiette walked on in silence. She was absorbed in that revery
      which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and
      which ends only after having communicated the emotion, from
      vibration to vibration, even to the very last fibres of the
      heart. Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, “And did they ever
      learn what became of la Chantefleurie?” Mahiette made no reply.
      Gervaise repeated her question, and shook her arm, calling her by
      name. Mahiette appeared to awaken from her thoughts.

      “What became of la Chantefleurie?” she said, repeating
      mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in her
      ear; then, making an effort to recall her attention to the
      meaning of her words, “Ah!” she continued briskly, “no one ever
      found out.”

      She added, after a pause,—

      “Some said that she had been seen to quit Reims at nightfall by
      the Fléchembault gate; others, at daybreak, by the old Basée
      gate. A poor man found her gold cross hanging on the stone cross
      in the field where the fair is held. It was that ornament which
      had wrought her ruin, in ’61. It was a gift from the handsome
      Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette had never been
      willing to part with it, wretched as she had been. She had clung
      to it as to life itself. So, when we saw that cross abandoned, we
      all thought that she was dead. Nevertheless, there were people of
      the Cabaret les Vantes, who said that they had seen her pass
      along the road to Paris, walking on the pebbles with her bare
      feet. But, in that case, she must have gone out through the Porte
      de Vesle, and all this does not agree. Or, to speak more truly, I
      believe that she actually did depart by the Porte de Vesle, but
      departed from this world.”

      “I do not understand you,” said Gervaise.

      “La Vesle,” replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, “is the
      river.”

      “Poor Chantefleurie!” said Oudarde, with a shiver,—“drowned!”

      “Drowned!” resumed Mahiette, “who could have told good Father
      Guybertant, when he passed under the bridge of Tingueux with the
      current, singing in his barge, that one day his dear little
      Paquette would also pass beneath that bridge, but without song or
      boat.

      “And the little shoe?” asked Gervaise.

      “Disappeared with the mother,” replied Mahiette.

      “Poor little shoe!” said Oudarde.

      Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to
      sigh in company with Mahiette. But Gervaise, more curious, had
      not finished her questions.

      “And the monster?” she said suddenly, to Mahiette.

      “What monster?” inquired the latter.

      “The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in
      Chantefleurie’s chamber, in exchange for her daughter. What did
      you do with it? I hope you drowned it also.”

      “No.” replied Mahiette.

      “What? You burned it then? In sooth, that is more just. A witch
      child!”

      “Neither the one nor the other, Gervaise. Monseigneur the
      archbishop interested himself in the child of Egypt, exorcised
      it, blessed it, removed the devil carefully from its body, and
      sent it to Paris, to be exposed on the wooden bed at Notre-Dame,
      as a foundling.”

      “Those bishops!” grumbled Gervaise, “because they are learned,
      they do nothing like anybody else. I just put it to you, Oudarde,
      the idea of placing the devil among the foundlings! For that
      little monster was assuredly the devil. Well, Mahiette, what did
      they do with it in Paris? I am quite sure that no charitable
      person wanted it.”

      “I do not know,” replied the Rémoise, “’twas just at that time
      that my husband bought the office of notary, at Beru, two leagues
      from the town, and we were no longer occupied with that story;
      besides, in front of Beru, stand the two hills of Cernay, which
      hide the towers of the cathedral in Reims from view.”

      While chatting thus, the three worthy _bourgeoises_ had arrived
      at the Place de Grève. In their absorption, they had passed the
      public breviary of the Tour-Roland without stopping, and took
      their way mechanically towards the pillory around which the
      throng was growing more dense with every moment. It is probable
      that the spectacle which at that moment attracted all looks in
      that direction, would have made them forget completely the
      Rat-Hole, and the halt which they intended to make there, if big
      Eustache, six years of age, whom Mahiette was dragging along by
      the hand, had not abruptly recalled the object to them: “Mother,”
      said he, as though some instinct warned him that the Rat-Hole was
      behind him, “can I eat the cake now?”

      If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say, less greedy, he
      would have continued to wait, and would only have hazarded that
      simple question, “Mother, can I eat the cake, now?” on their
      return to the University, to Master Andry Musnier’s, Rue Madame
      la Valence, when he had the two arms of the Seine and the five
      bridges of the city between the Rat-Hole and the cake.

      This question, highly imprudent at the moment when Eustache put
      it, aroused Mahiette’s attention.

      “By the way,” she exclaimed, “we are forgetting the recluse! Show
      me the Rat-Hole, that I may carry her her cake.”

      “Immediately,” said Oudarde, “’tis a charity.”

      But this did not suit Eustache.

      “Stop! my cake!” said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with
      his shoulders, which, in such cases, is the supreme sign of
      discontent.

      The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the
      vicinity of the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two,—

      “We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of
      alarming the recluse. Do you two pretend to read the _Dominus_ in
      the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the aperture; the
      recluse knows me a little. I will give you warning when you can
      approach.”

      She proceeded alone to the window. At the moment when she looked
      in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her
      frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as
      though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of
      moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth contracted, like that
      of a person on the point of weeping. A moment later, she laid her
      finger on her lips, and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and
      look.

      Mahiette, much touched, stepped up in silence, on tiptoe, as
      though approaching the bedside of a dying person.

      It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented itself to
      the eyes of the two women, as they gazed through the grating of
      the Rat-Hole, neither stirring nor breathing.

      The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched
      ceiling, and viewed from within, it bore a considerable
      resemblance to the interior of a huge bishop’s mitre. On the bare
      flagstones which formed the floor, in one corner, a woman was
      sitting, or rather, crouching. Her chin rested on her knees,
      which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. Thus
      doubled up, clad in a brown sack, which enveloped her entirely in
      large folds, her long, gray hair pulled over in front, falling
      over her face and along her legs nearly to her feet, she
      presented, at the first glance, only a strange form outlined
      against the dark background of the cell, a sort of dusky
      triangle, which the ray of daylight falling through the opening,
      cut roughly into two shades, the one sombre, the other
      illuminated. It was one of those spectres, half light, half
      shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the extraordinary
      work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb,
      or leaning against the grating of a prison cell.

      It was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor a
      definite form; it was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the
      real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness and
      day. It was with difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her
      hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe profile; her
      dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape,
      which contracted on the hard, cold pavement. The little of human
      form of which one caught a sight beneath this envelope of
      mourning, caused a shudder.

      That figure, which one might have supposed to be riveted to the
      flagstones, appeared to possess neither movement, nor thought,
      nor breath. Lying, in January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on
      a granite floor, without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose
      oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but never the sun,
      to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to
      think. One would have said that she had turned to stone with the
      cell, ice with the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes
      fixed. At first sight one took her for a spectre; at the second,
      for a statue.

      Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a
      breath, and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves
      which the wind sweeps aside.

      Nevertheless, from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an
      ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look,
      incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be
      seen from without; a gaze which seemed to fix all the sombre
      thoughts of that soul in distress upon some mysterious object.

      Such was the creature who had received, from her habitation, the
      name of the “recluse”; and, from her garment, the name of “the
      sacked nun.”

      The three women, for Gervaise had rejoined Mahiette and Oudarde,
      gazed through the window. Their heads intercepted the feeble
      light in the cell, without the wretched being whom they thus
      deprived of it seeming to pay any attention to them. “Do not let
      us trouble her,” said Oudarde, in a low voice, “she is in her
      ecstasy; she is praying.”

      Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing anxiety at
      that wan, withered, dishevelled head, and her eyes filled with
      tears. “This is very singular,” she murmured.

      She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a
      glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was
      immovably riveted.

      When she withdrew her head from the window, her countenance was
      inundated with tears.

      “What do you call that woman?” she asked Oudarde.

      Oudarde replied,—

      “We call her Sister Gudule.”

      “And I,” returned Mahiette, “call her Paquette la Chantefleurie.”

      Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the
      astounded Oudarde to thrust her head through the window and look.

      Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the
      recluse were fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink
      satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and
      silver.

      Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing
      upon the unhappy mother, began to weep.

      But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse.
      Her hands remained clasped; her lips mute; her eyes fixed; and
      that little shoe, thus gazed at, broke the heart of any one who
      knew her history.

      The three women had not yet uttered a single word; they dared not
      speak, even in a low voice. This deep silence, this deep grief,
      this profound oblivion in which everything had disappeared except
      one thing, produced upon them the effect of the grand altar at
      Christmas or Easter. They remained silent, they meditated, they
      were ready to kneel. It seemed to them that they were ready to
      enter a church on the day of Tenebræ.

      At length Gervaise, the most curious of the three, and
      consequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse
      speak:

      “Sister! Sister Gudule!”

      She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time.
      The recluse did not move; not a word, not a glance, not a sigh,
      not a sign of life.

      Oudarde, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing
      voice,—“Sister!” said she, “Sister Sainte-Gudule!”

      The same silence; the same immobility.

      “A singular woman!” exclaimed Gervaise, “and one not to be moved
      by a catapult!”

      “Perchance she is deaf,” said Oudarde.

      “Perhaps she is blind,” added Gervaise.

      “Dead, perchance,” returned Mahiette.

      It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this
      inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and
      concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the
      exterior organs no longer penetrated.

      “Then we must leave the cake on the window,” said Oudarde; “some
      scamp will take it. What shall we do to rouse her?”

      Eustache, who, up to that moment had been diverted by a little
      carriage drawn by a large dog, which had just passed, suddenly
      perceived that his three conductresses were gazing at something
      through the window, and, curiosity taking possession of him in
      his turn, he climbed upon a stone post, elevated himself on
      tiptoe, and applied his fat, red face to the opening, shouting,
      “Mother, let me see too!”

      At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child’s voice, the
      recluse trembled; she turned her head with the sharp, abrupt
      movement of a steel spring, her long, fleshless hands cast aside
      the hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child, bitter,
      astonished, desperate eyes. This glance was but a lightning
      flash.

      “Oh my God!” she suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on her
      knees, and it seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her chest as
      it passed from it, “do not show me those of others!”

      “Good day, madam,” said the child, gravely.

      Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse.
      A long shiver traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth
      chattered; she half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows
      against her hips, and clasping her feet in her hands as though to
      warm them,—

      “Oh, how cold it is!”

      “Poor woman!” said Oudarde, with great compassion, “would you
      like a little fire?”

      She shook her head in token of refusal.

      “Well,” resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; “here is
      some hippocras which will warm you; drink it.”

      Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied,
      “Water.”

      Oudarde persisted,—“No, sister, that is no beverage for January.
      You must drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of
      maize, which we have baked for you.”

      She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said,
      “Black bread.”

      “Come,” said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of
      charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, “here is a cloak which
      is a little warmer than yours.”

      She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake,
      and replied, “A sack.”

      “But,” resumed the good Oudarde, “you must have perceived to some
      extent, that yesterday was a festival.”

      “I do perceive it,” said the recluse; “’tis two days now since I
      have had any water in my crock.”

      She added, after a silence, “’Tis a festival, I am forgotten.
      People do well. Why should the world think of me, when I do not
      think of it? Cold charcoal makes cold ashes.”

      And as though fatigued with having said so much, she dropped her
      head on her knees again. The simple and charitable Oudarde, who
      fancied that she understood from her last words that she was
      complaining of the cold, replied innocently, “Then you would like
      a little fire?”

      “Fire!” said the sacked nun, with a strange accent; “and will you
      also make a little for the poor little one who has been beneath
      the sod for these fifteen years?”

      Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed,
      she had raised herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her
      thin, white hand towards the child, who was regarding her with a
      look of astonishment. “Take away that child!” she cried. “The
      Egyptian woman is about to pass by.”

      Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck
      the stone, with the sound of one stone against another stone. The
      three women thought her dead. A moment later, however, she moved,
      and they beheld her drag herself, on her knees and elbows, to the
      corner where the little shoe was. Then they dared not look; they
      no longer saw her; but they heard a thousand kisses and a
      thousand sighs, mingled with heartrending cries, and dull blows
      like those of a head in contact with a wall. Then, after one of
      these blows, so violent that all three of them staggered, they
      heard no more.

      “Can she have killed herself?” said Gervaise, venturing to pass
      her head through the air-hole. “Sister! Sister Gudule!”

      “Sister Gudule!” repeated Oudarde.

      “Ah! good heavens! she no longer moves!” resumed Gervaise; “is
      she dead? Gudule! Gudule!”

      Mahiette, choked to such a point that she could not speak, made
      an effort. “Wait,” said she. Then bending towards the window,
      “Paquette!” she said, “Paquette le Chantefleurie!”

      A child who innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a
      bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than
      was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into
      the cell of Sister Gudule.

      The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and
      leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette and
      Oudarde, and the other woman and the child recoiled even to the
      parapet of the quay.

      Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to
      the grating of the air-hole. “Oh! oh!” she cried, with an
      appalling laugh; “’tis the Egyptian who is calling me!”

      At that moment, a scene which was passing at the pillory caught
      her wild eye. Her brow contracted with horror, she stretched her
      two skeleton arms from her cell, and shrieked in a voice which
      resembled a death-rattle, “So ’tis thou once more, daughter of
      Egypt! ’Tis thou who callest me, stealer of children! Well! Be
      thou accursed! accursed! accursed! accursed!”



      CHAPTER IV. A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER.

      These words were, so to speak, the point of union of two scenes,
      which had, up to that time, been developed in parallel lines at
      the same moment, each on its particular theatre; one, that which
      the reader has just perused, in the Rat-Hole; the other, which he
      is about to read, on the ladder of the pillory. The first had for
      witnesses only the three women with whom the reader has just made
      acquaintance; the second had for spectators all the public which
      we have seen above, collecting on the Place de Grève, around the
      pillory and the gibbet.

      That crowd which the four sergeants posted at nine o’clock in the
      morning at the four corners of the pillory had inspired with the
      hope of some sort of an execution, no doubt, not a hanging, but a
      whipping, a cropping of ears, something, in short,—that crowd had
      increased so rapidly that the four policemen, too closely
      besieged, had had occasion to “press” it, as the expression then
      ran, more than once, by sound blows of their whips, and the
      haunches of their horses.

      This populace, disciplined to waiting for public executions, did
      not manifest very much impatience. It amused itself with watching
      the pillory, a very simple sort of monument, composed of a cube
      of masonry about six feet high and hollow in the interior. A very
      steep staircase, of unhewn stone, which was called by distinction
      “the ladder,” led to the upper platform, upon which was visible a
      horizontal wheel of solid oak. The victim was bound upon this
      wheel, on his knees, with his hands behind his back. A wooden
      shaft, which set in motion a capstan concealed in the interior of
      the little edifice, imparted a rotatory motion to the wheel,
      which always maintained its horizontal position, and in this
      manner presented the face of the condemned man to all quarters of
      the square in succession. This was what was called “turning” a
      criminal.

      As the reader perceives, the pillory of the Grève was far from
      presenting all the recreations of the pillory of the Halles.
      Nothing architectural, nothing monumental. No roof to the iron
      cross, no octagonal lantern, no frail, slender columns spreading
      out on the edge of the roof into capitals of acanthus leaves and
      flowers, no waterspouts of chimeras and monsters, on carved
      woodwork, no fine sculpture, deeply sunk in the stone.

      They were forced to content themselves with those four stretches
      of rubble work, backed with sandstone, and a wretched stone
      gibbet, meagre and bare, on one side.

      The entertainment would have been but a poor one for lovers of
      Gothic architecture. It is true that nothing was ever less
      curious on the score of architecture than the worthy gapers of
      the Middle Ages, and that they cared very little for the beauty
      of a pillory.

      The victim finally arrived, bound to the tail of a cart, and when
      he had been hoisted upon the platform, where he could be seen
      from all points of the Place, bound with cords and straps upon
      the wheel of the pillory, a prodigious hoot, mingled with
      laughter and acclamations, burst forth upon the Place. They had
      recognized Quasimodo.

      It was he, in fact. The change was singular. Pilloried on the
      very place where, on the day before, he had been saluted,
      acclaimed, and proclaimed Pope and Prince of Fools, in the
      cortège of the Duke of Egypt, the King of Thunes, and the Emperor
      of Galilee! One thing is certain, and that is, that there was not
      a soul in the crowd, not even himself, though in turn triumphant
      and the sufferer, who set forth this combination clearly in his
      thought. Gringoire and his philosophy were missing at this
      spectacle.

      Soon Michel Noiret, sworn trumpeter to the king, our lord,
      imposed silence on the louts, and proclaimed the sentence, in
      accordance with the order and command of monsieur the provost.
      Then he withdrew behind the cart, with his men in livery
      surcoats.

      Quasimodo, impassible, did not wince. All resistance had been
      rendered impossible to him by what was then called, in the style
      of the criminal chancellery, “the vehemence and firmness of the
      bonds” which means that the thongs and chains probably cut into
      his flesh; moreover, it is a tradition of jail and wardens, which
      has not been lost, and which the handcuffs still preciously
      preserve among us, a civilized, gentle, humane people (the
      galleys and the guillotine in parentheses).

      He had allowed himself to be led, pushed, carried, lifted, bound,
      and bound again. Nothing was to be seen upon his countenance but
      the astonishment of a savage or an idiot. He was known to be
      deaf; one might have pronounced him to be blind.

      They placed him on his knees on the circular plank; he made no
      resistance. They removed his shirt and doublet as far as his
      girdle; he allowed them to have their way. They entangled him
      under a fresh system of thongs and buckles; he allowed them to
      bind and buckle him. Only from time to time he snorted noisily,
      like a calf whose head is hanging and bumping over the edge of a
      butcher’s cart.

      “The dolt,” said Jehan Frollo of the Mill, to his friend Robin
      Poussepain (for the two students had followed the culprit, as was
      to have been expected), “he understands no more than a cockchafer
      shut up in a box!”

      There was wild laughter among the crowd when they beheld
      Quasimodo’s hump, his camel’s breast, his callous and hairy
      shoulders laid bare. During this gayety, a man in the livery of
      the city, short of stature and robust of mien, mounted the
      platform and placed himself near the victim. His name speedily
      circulated among the spectators. It was Master Pierrat Torterue,
      official torturer to the Châtelet.

      He began by depositing on an angle of the pillory a black
      hour-glass, the upper lobe of which was filled with red sand,
      which it allowed to glide into the lower receptacle; then he
      removed his parti-colored surtout, and there became visible,
      suspended from his right hand, a thin and tapering whip of long,
      white, shining, knotted, plaited thongs, armed with metal nails.
      With his left hand, he negligently folded back his shirt around
      his right arm, to the very armpit.

      In the meantime, Jehan Frollo, elevating his curly blonde head
      above the crowd (he had mounted upon the shoulders of Robin
      Poussepain for the purpose), shouted: “Come and look, gentle
      ladies and men! they are going to peremptorily flagellate Master
      Quasimodo, the bellringer of my brother, monsieur the archdeacon
      of Josas, a knave of oriental architecture, who has a back like a
      dome, and legs like twisted columns!”

      And the crowd burst into a laugh, especially the boys and young
      girls.

      At length the torturer stamped his foot. The wheel began to turn.
      Quasimodo wavered beneath his bonds. The amazement which was
      suddenly depicted upon his deformed face caused the bursts of
      laughter to redouble around him.

      All at once, at the moment when the wheel in its revolution
      presented to Master Pierrat, the humped back of Quasimodo, Master
      Pierrat raised his arm; the fine thongs whistled sharply through
      the air, like a handful of adders, and fell with fury upon the
      wretch’s shoulders.

      Quasimodo leaped as though awakened with a start. He began to
      understand. He writhed in his bonds; a violent contraction of
      surprise and pain distorted the muscles of his face, but he
      uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his head backward, to
      the right, then to the left, balancing it as a bull does who has
      been stung in the flanks by a gadfly.

      A second blow followed the first, then a third, and another and
      another, and still others. The wheel did not cease to turn, nor
      the blows to rain down.

      Soon the blood burst forth, and could be seen trickling in a
      thousand threads down the hunchback’s black shoulders; and the
      slender thongs, in their rotatory motion which rent the air,
      sprinkled drops of it upon the crowd.

      Quasimodo had resumed, to all appearance, his first
      imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and
      without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had
      been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to
      concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort
      was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost’s seasoned
      bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell
      back exhausted. Amazement gave way, on his features, to a
      sentiment of profound and bitter discouragement. He closed his
      single eye, allowed his head to droop upon his breast, and
      feigned death.

      From that moment forth, he stirred no more. Nothing could force a
      movement from him. Neither his blood, which did not cease to
      flow, nor the blows which redoubled in fury, nor the wrath of the
      torturer, who grew excited himself and intoxicated with the
      execution, nor the sound of the horrible thongs, more sharp and
      whistling than the claws of scorpions.

      At length a bailiff from the Châtelet clad in black, mounted on a
      black horse, who had been stationed beside the ladder since the
      beginning of the execution, extended his ebony wand towards the
      hour-glass. The torturer stopped. The wheel stopped. Quasimodo’s
      eye opened slowly.

      The scourging was finished. Two lackeys of the official torturer
      bathed the bleeding shoulders of the patient, anointed them with
      some unguent which immediately closed all the wounds, and threw
      upon his back a sort of yellow vestment, in cut like a chasuble.
      In the meanwhile, Pierrat Torterue allowed the thongs, red and
      gorged with blood, to drip upon the pavement.

      All was not over for Quasimodo. He had still to undergo that hour
      of pillory which Master Florian Barbedienne had so judiciously
      added to the sentence of Messire Robert d’Estouteville; all to
      the greater glory of the old physiological and psychological play
      upon words of Jean de Cumène, _Surdus absurdus_: a deaf man is
      absurd.

      So the hour-glass was turned over once more, and they left the
      hunchback fastened to the plank, in order that justice might be
      accomplished to the very end.

      The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, is in society what
      the child is in the family. As long as it remains in its state of
      primitive ignorance, of moral and intellectual minority, it can
      be said of it as of the child,—

   ’Tis the pitiless age.

      We have already shown that Quasimodo was generally hated, for
      more than one good reason, it is true. There was hardly a
      spectator in that crowd who had not or who did not believe that
      he had reason to complain of the malevolent hunchback of
      Notre-Dame. The joy at seeing him appear thus in the pillory had
      been universal; and the harsh punishment which he had just
      suffered, and the pitiful condition in which it had left him, far
      from softening the populace had rendered its hatred more
      malicious by arming it with a touch of mirth.

      Hence, the “public prosecution” satisfied, as the bigwigs of the
      law still express it in their jargon, the turn came of a thousand
      private vengeances. Here, as in the Grand Hall, the women
      rendered themselves particularly prominent. All cherished some
      rancor against him, some for his malice, others for his ugliness.
      The latter were the most furious.

      “Oh! mask of Antichrist!” said one.

      “Rider on a broom handle!” cried another.

      “What a fine tragic grimace,” howled a third, “and who would make
      him Pope of the Fools if to-day were yesterday?”

      “’Tis well,” struck in an old woman. “This is the grimace of the
      pillory. When shall we have that of the gibbet?”

      “When will you be coiffed with your big bell a hundred feet under
      ground, cursed bellringer?”

      “But ’tis the devil who rings the Angelus!”

      “Oh! the deaf man! the one-eyed creature! the hunch-back! the
      monster!”

      “A face to make a woman miscarry better than all the drugs and
      medicines!”

      And the two scholars, Jehan du Moulin, and Robin Poussepain, sang
      at the top of their lungs, the ancient refrain,—

   “Une hart
   Pour le pendard!
   Un fagot
   Pour le magot!”[33]

      A thousand other insults rained down upon him, and hoots and
      imprecations, and laughter, and now and then, stones.

      Quasimodo was deaf but his sight was clear, and the public fury
      was no less energetically depicted on their visages than in their
      words. Moreover, the blows from the stones explained the bursts
      of laughter.

      At first he held his ground. But little by little that patience
      which had borne up under the lash of the torturer, yielded and
      gave way before all these stings of insects. The bull of the
      Asturias who has been but little moved by the attacks of the
      picador grows irritated with the dogs and banderilleras.

      He first cast around a slow glance of hatred upon the crowd. But
      bound as he was, his glance was powerless to drive away those
      flies which were stinging his wound. Then he moved in his bonds,
      and his furious exertions made the ancient wheel of the pillory
      shriek on its axle. All this only increased the derision and
      hooting.

      Then the wretched man, unable to break his collar, like that of a
      chained wild beast, became tranquil once more; only at intervals
      a sigh of rage heaved the hollows of his chest. There was neither
      shame nor redness on his face. He was too far from the state of
      society, and too near the state of nature to know what shame was.
      Moreover, with such a degree of deformity, is infamy a thing that
      can be felt? But wrath, hatred, despair, slowly lowered over that
      hideous visage a cloud which grew ever more and more sombre, ever
      more and more charged with electricity, which burst forth in a
      thousand lightning flashes from the eye of the cyclops.

      Nevertheless, that cloud cleared away for a moment, at the
      passage of a mule which traversed the crowd, bearing a priest. As
      far away as he could see that mule and that priest, the poor
      victim’s visage grew gentler. The fury which had contracted it
      was followed by a strange smile full of ineffable sweetness,
      gentleness, and tenderness. In proportion as the priest
      approached, that smile became more clear, more distinct, more
      radiant. It was like the arrival of a Saviour, which the unhappy
      man was greeting. But as soon as the mule was near enough to the
      pillory to allow of its rider recognizing the victim, the priest
      dropped his eyes, beat a hasty retreat, spurred on rigorously, as
      though in haste to rid himself of humiliating appeals, and not at
      all desirous of being saluted and recognized by a poor fellow in
      such a predicament.

      This priest was Archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo.

      The cloud descended more blackly than ever upon Quasimodo’s brow.
      The smile was still mingled with it for a time, but was bitter,
      discouraged, profoundly sad.

      Time passed on. He had been there at least an hour and a half,
      lacerated, maltreated, mocked incessantly, and almost stoned.

      All at once he moved again in his chains with redoubled despair,
      which made the whole framework that bore him tremble, and,
      breaking the silence which he had obstinately preserved hitherto,
      he cried in a hoarse and furious voice, which resembled a bark
      rather than a human cry, and which was drowned in the noise of
      the hoots—“Drink!”

      This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only
      added amusement to the good Parisian populace who surrounded the
      ladder, and who, it must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a
      multitude, was then no less cruel and brutal than that horrible
      tribe of robbers among whom we have already conducted the reader,
      and which was simply the lower stratum of the populace. Not a
      voice was raised around the unhappy victim, except to jeer at his
      thirst. It is certain that at that moment he was more grotesque
      and repulsive than pitiable, with his face purple and dripping,
      his eye wild, his mouth foaming with rage and pain, and his
      tongue lolling half out. It must also be stated that if a
      charitable soul of a _bourgeois_ or _bourgeoise_, in the rabble,
      had attempted to carry a glass of water to that wretched creature
      in torment, there reigned around the infamous steps of the
      pillory such a prejudice of shame and ignominy, that it would
      have sufficed to repulse the good Samaritan.

      At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a desperate
      glance upon the crowd, and repeated in a voice still more
      heartrending: “Drink!”

      And all began to laugh.

      “Drink this!” cried Robin Poussepain, throwing in his face a
      sponge which had been soaked in the gutter. “There, you deaf
      villain, I’m your debtor.”

      A woman hurled a stone at his head,—

      “That will teach you to wake us up at night with your peal of a
      dammed soul.”

      “He, good, my son!” howled a cripple, making an effort to reach
      him with his crutch, “will you cast any more spells on us from
      the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?”

      “Here’s a drinking cup!” chimed in a man, flinging a broken jug
      at his breast. “’Twas you that made my wife, simply because she
      passed near you, give birth to a child with two heads!”

      “And my cat bring forth a kitten with six paws!” yelped an old
      crone, launching a brick at him.

      “Drink!” repeated Quasimodo panting, and for the third time.

      At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young girl,
      fantastically dressed, emerged from the throng. She was
      accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and carried
      a tambourine in her hand.

      Quasimodo’s eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had attempted
      to carry off on the preceding night, a misdeed for which he was
      dimly conscious that he was being punished at that very moment;
      which was not in the least the case, since he was being chastised
      only for the misfortune of being deaf, and of having been judged
      by a deaf man. He doubted not that she had come to wreak her
      vengeance also, and to deal her blow like the rest.

      He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite
      suffocate him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble
      into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt
      death, the gypsy would have been reduced to powder before she
      reached the platform.

      She approached, without uttering a syllable, the victim who
      writhed in a vain effort to escape her, and detaching a gourd
      from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the
      miserable man.

      Then, from that eye which had been, up to that moment, so dry and
      burning, a big tear was seen to fall, and roll slowly down that
      deformed visage so long contracted with despair. It was the
      first, in all probability, that the unfortunate man had ever
      shed.

      Meanwhile, he had forgotten to drink. The gypsy made her little
      pout, from impatience, and pressed the spout to the tusked month
      of Quasimodo, with a smile.

      He drank with deep draughts. His thirst was burning.

      When he had finished, the wretch protruded his black lips, no
      doubt, with the object of kissing the beautiful hand which had
      just succoured him. But the young girl, who was, perhaps,
      somewhat distrustful, and who remembered the violent attempt of
      the night, withdrew her hand with the frightened gesture of a
      child who is afraid of being bitten by a beast.

      Then the poor deaf man fixed on her a look full of reproach and
      inexpressible sadness.

      It would have been a touching spectacle anywhere,—this beautiful,
      fresh, pure, and charming girl, who was at the same time so weak,
      thus hastening to the relief of so much misery, deformity, and
      malevolence. On the pillory, the spectacle was sublime.

      The very populace were captivated by it, and began to clap their
      hands, crying,—

      “Noël! Noël!”

      It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight, from the
      window of her bole, of the gypsy on the pillory, and hurled at
      her her sinister imprecation,—

      “Accursed be thou, daughter of Egypt! Accursed! accursed!”



      CHAPTER V. END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.

      La Esmeralda turned pale and descended from the pillory,
      staggering as she went. The voice of the recluse still pursued
      her,—

      “Descend! descend! Thief of Egypt! thou shalt ascend it once
      more!”

      “The sacked nun is in one of her tantrums,” muttered the
      populace; and that was the end of it. For that sort of woman was
      feared; which rendered them sacred. People did not then willingly
      attack one who prayed day and night.

      The hour had arrived for removing Quasimodo. He was unbound, the
      crowd dispersed.

      Near the Grand Pont, Mahiette, who was returning with her two
      companions, suddenly halted,—

      “By the way, Eustache! what did you do with that cake?”

      “Mother,” said the child, “while you were talking with that lady
      in the bole, a big dog took a bite of my cake, and then I bit it
      also.”

      “What, sir, did you eat the whole of it?” she went on.

      “Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not listen to
      me. Then I bit into it, also.”

      “’Tis a terrible child!” said the mother, smiling and scolding at
      one and the same time. “Do you see, Oudarde? He already eats all
      the fruit from the cherry-tree in our orchard of Charlerange. So
      his grandfather says that he will be a captain. Just let me catch
      you at it again, Master Eustache. Come along, you greedy fellow!”



      VOLUME II.



      BOOK SEVENTH.



      CHAPTER I. THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’S SECRET TO A GOAT.

      Many weeks had elapsed.

      The first of March had arrived. The sun, which Dubartas, that
      classic ancestor of periphrase, had not yet dubbed the
      “Grand-duke of Candles,” was none the less radiant and joyous on
      that account. It was one of those spring days which possesses so
      much sweetness and beauty, that all Paris turns out into the
      squares and promenades and celebrates them as though they were
      Sundays. In those days of brilliancy, warmth, and serenity, there
      is a certain hour above all others, when the façade of Notre-Dame
      should be admired. It is the moment when the sun, already
      declining towards the west, looks the cathedral almost full in
      the face. Its rays, growing more and more horizontal, withdraw
      slowly from the pavement of the square, and mount up the
      perpendicular façade, whose thousand bosses in high relief they
      cause to start out from the shadows, while the great central rose
      window flames like the eye of a cyclops, inflamed with the
      reflections of the forge.

      This was the hour.

      Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, on the
      stone balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic house, which
      formed the angle of the square and the Rue du Parvis, several
      young girls were laughing and chatting with every sort of grace
      and mirth. From the length of the veil which fell from their
      pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their heels, from the
      fineness of the embroidered chemisette which covered their
      shoulders and allowed a glimpse, according to the pleasing custom
      of the time, of the swell of their fair virgin bosoms, from the
      opulence of their under-petticoats still more precious than their
      overdress (marvellous refinement), from the gauze, the silk, the
      velvet, with which all this was composed, and, above all, from
      the whiteness of their hands, which certified to their leisure
      and idleness, it was easy to divine they were noble and wealthy
      heiresses. They were, in fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de
      Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de
      Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little de
      Champchevrier maiden; all damsels of good birth, assembled at
      that moment at the house of the dame widow de Gondelaurier, on
      account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and Madame his wife, who were
      to come to Paris in the month of April, there to choose maids of
      honor for the Dauphiness Marguerite, who was to be received in
      Picardy from the hands of the Flemings. Now, all the squires for
      twenty leagues around were intriguing for this favor for their
      daughters, and a goodly number of the latter had been already
      brought or sent to Paris. These four maidens had been confided to
      the discreet and venerable charge of Madame Aloïse de
      Gondelaurier, widow of a former commander of the king’s
      cross-bowmen, who had retired with her only daughter to her house
      in the Place du Parvis, Notre-Dame, in Paris.

      The balcony on which these young girls stood opened from a
      chamber richly tapestried in fawn-colored Flanders leather,
      stamped with golden foliage. The beams, which cut the ceiling in
      parallel lines, diverted the eye with a thousand eccentric
      painted and gilded carvings. Splendid enamels gleamed here and
      there on carved chests; a boar’s head in faïence crowned a
      magnificent dresser, whose two shelves announced that the
      mistress of the house was the wife or widow of a knight banneret.
      At the end of the room, by the side of a lofty chimney blazoned
      with arms from top to bottom, in a rich red velvet arm-chair, sat
      Dame de Gondelaurier, whose five and fifty years were written
      upon her garments no less distinctly than upon her face.

      Beside her stood a young man of imposing mien, although partaking
      somewhat of vanity and bravado—one of those handsome fellows whom
      all women agree to admire, although grave men learned in
      physiognomy shrug their shoulders at them. This young man wore
      the garb of a captain of the king’s unattached archers, which
      bears far too much resemblance to the costume of Jupiter, which
      the reader has already been enabled to admire in the first book
      of this history, for us to inflict upon him a second description.

      The damoiselles were seated, a part in the chamber, a part in the
      balcony, some on square cushions of Utrecht velvet with golden
      corners, others on stools of oak carved in flowers and figures.
      Each of them held on her knee a section of a great needlework
      tapestry, on which they were working in company, while one end of
      it lay upon the rush mat which covered the floor.

      They were chatting together in that whispering tone and with the
      half-stifled laughs peculiar to an assembly of young girls in
      whose midst there is a young man. The young man whose presence
      served to set in play all these feminine self-conceits, appeared
      to pay very little heed to the matter, and, while these pretty
      damsels were vying with one another to attract his attention, he
      seemed to be chiefly absorbed in polishing the buckle of his
      sword belt with his doeskin glove. From time to time, the old
      lady addressed him in a very low tone, and he replied as well as
      he was able, with a sort of awkward and constrained politeness.

      From the smiles and significant gestures of Dame Aloïse, from the
      glances which she threw towards her daughter, Fleur-de-Lys, as
      she spoke low to the captain, it was easy to see that there was
      here a question of some betrothal concluded, some marriage near
      at hand no doubt, between the young man and Fleur-de-Lys. From
      the embarrassed coldness of the officer, it was easy to see that
      on his side, at least, love had no longer any part in the matter.
      His whole air was expressive of constraint and weariness, which
      our lieutenants of the garrison would to-day translate admirably
      as, “What a beastly bore!”

      The poor dame, very much infatuated with her daughter, like any
      other silly mother, did not perceive the officer’s lack of
      enthusiasm, and strove in low tones to call his attention to the
      infinite grace with which Fleur-de-Lys used her needle or wound
      her skein.

      “Come, little cousin,” she said to him, plucking him by the
      sleeve, in order to speak in his ear, “Look at her, do! see her
      stoop.”

      “Yes, truly,” replied the young man, and fell back into his
      glacial and absent-minded silence.

      A moment later, he was obliged to bend down again, and Dame
      Aloïse said to him,—

      “Have you ever beheld a more gay and charming face than that of
      your betrothed? Can one be more white and blonde? are not her
      hands perfect? and that neck—does it not assume all the curves of
      the swan in ravishing fashion? How I envy you at times! and how
      happy you are to be a man, naughty libertine that you are! Is not
      my Fleur-de-Lys adorably beautiful, and are you not desperately
      in love with her?”

      “Of course,” he replied, still thinking of something else.

      “But do say something,” said Madame Aloïse, suddenly giving his
      shoulder a push; “you have grown very timid.”

      We can assure our readers that timidity was neither the captain’s
      virtue nor his defect. But he made an effort to do what was
      demanded of him.

      “Fair cousin,” he said, approaching Fleur-de-Lys, “what is the
      subject of this tapestry work which you are fashioning?”

      “Fair cousin,” responded Fleur-de-Lys, in an offended tone, “I
      have already told you three times. ’Tis the grotto of Neptune.”

      It was evident that Fleur-de-Lys saw much more clearly than her
      mother through the captain’s cold and absent-minded manner. He
      felt the necessity of making some conversation.

      “And for whom is this Neptunerie destined?”

      “For the Abbey of Saint-Antoine des Champs,” answered
      Fleur-de-Lys, without raising her eyes.

      The captain took up a corner of the tapestry.

      “Who, my fair cousin, is this big gendarme, who is puffing out
      his cheeks to their full extent and blowing a trumpet?”

      “’Tis Triton,” she replied.

      There was a rather pettish intonation in Fleur-de-Lys’s laconic
      words. The young man understood that it was indispensable that he
      should whisper something in her ear, a commonplace, a gallant
      compliment, no matter what. Accordingly he bent down, but he
      could find nothing in his imagination more tender and personal
      than this,—

      “Why does your mother always wear that surcoat with armorial
      designs, like our grandmothers of the time of Charles VII.? Tell
      her, fair cousin, that ’tis no longer the fashion, and that the
      hinge (_gond_) and the laurel (_laurier_) embroidered on her robe
      give her the air of a walking mantlepiece. In truth, people no
      longer sit thus on their banners, I assure you.”

      Fleur-de-Lys raised her beautiful eyes, full of reproach, “Is
      that all of which you can assure me?” she said, in a low voice.

      In the meantime, Dame Aloïse, delighted to see them thus bending
      towards each other and whispering, said as she toyed with the
      clasps of her prayer-book,—

      “Touching picture of love!”

      The captain, more and more embarrassed, fell back upon the
      subject of the tapestry,—“’Tis, in sooth, a charming work!” he
      exclaimed.

      Whereupon Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another beautiful blonde,
      with a white skin, dressed to the neck in blue damask, ventured a
      timid remark which she addressed to Fleur-de-Lys, in the hope
      that the handsome captain would reply to it, “My dear
      Gondelaurier, have you seen the tapestries of the Hôtel de la
      Roche-Guyon?”

      “Is not that the hôtel in which is enclosed the garden of the
      Lingère du Louvre?” asked Diane de Christeuil with a laugh; for
      she had handsome teeth, and consequently laughed on every
      occasion.

      “And where there is that big, old tower of the ancient wall of
      Paris,” added Amelotte de Montmichel, a pretty fresh and
      curly-headed brunette, who had a habit of sighing just as the
      other laughed, without knowing why.

      “My dear Colombe,” interpolated Dame Aloïse, “do you not mean the
      hôtel which belonged to Monsieur de Bacqueville, in the reign of
      King Charles VI.? there are indeed many superb high warp
      tapestries there.”

      “Charles VI.! Charles VI.!” muttered the young captain, twirling
      his moustache. “Good heavens! what old things the good dame does
      remember!”

      Madame de Gondelaurier continued, “Fine tapestries, in truth. A
      work so esteemed that it passes as unrivalled.”

      At that moment Bérangère de Champchevrier, a slender little maid
      of seven years, who was peering into the square through the
      trefoils of the balcony, exclaimed, “Oh! look, fair Godmother
      Fleur-de-Lys, at that pretty dancer who is dancing on the
      pavement and playing the tambourine in the midst of the loutish
      _bourgeois!_”

      The sonorous vibration of a tambourine was, in fact, audible.
      “Some gypsy from Bohemia,” said Fleur-de-Lys, turning carelessly
      toward the square.

      “Look! look!” exclaimed her lively companions; and they all ran
      to the edge of the balcony, while Fleur-de-Lys, rendered
      thoughtful by the coldness of her betrothed, followed them
      slowly, and the latter, relieved by this incident, which put an
      end to an embarrassing conversation, retreated to the farther end
      of the room, with the satisfied air of a soldier released from
      duty. Nevertheless, the fair Fleur-de-Lys’s was a charming and
      noble service, and such it had formerly appeared to him; but the
      captain had gradually become _blasé;_ the prospect of a speedy
      marriage cooled him more every day. Moreover, he was of a fickle
      disposition, and, must we say it, rather vulgar in taste.
      Although of very noble birth, he had contracted in his official
      harness more than one habit of the common trooper. The tavern and
      its accompaniments pleased him. He was only at his ease amid
      gross language, military gallantries, facile beauties, and
      successes yet more easy. He had, nevertheless, received from his
      family some education and some politeness of manner; but he had
      been thrown on the world too young, he had been in garrison at
      too early an age, and every day the polish of a gentleman became
      more and more effaced by the rough friction of his gendarme’s
      cross-belt. While still continuing to visit her from time to
      time, from a remnant of common respect, he felt doubly
      embarrassed with Fleur-de-Lys; in the first place, because, in
      consequence of having scattered his love in all sorts of places,
      he had reserved very little for her; in the next place, because,
      amid so many stiff, formal, and decent ladies, he was in constant
      fear lest his mouth, habituated to oaths, should suddenly take
      the bit in its teeth, and break out into the language of the
      tavern. The effect can be imagined!

      Moreover, all this was mingled in him, with great pretentions to
      elegance, toilet, and a fine appearance. Let the reader reconcile
      these things as best he can. I am simply the historian.

      He had remained, therefore, for several minutes, leaning in
      silence against the carved jamb of the chimney, and thinking or
      not thinking, when Fleur-de-Lys suddenly turned and addressed
      him. After all, the poor young girl was pouting against the
      dictates of her heart.

      “Fair cousin, did you not speak to us of a little Bohemian whom
      you saved a couple of months ago, while making the patrol with
      the watch at night, from the hands of a dozen robbers?”

      “I believe so, fair cousin,” said the captain.

      “Well,” she resumed, “perchance ’tis that same gypsy girl who is
      dancing yonder, on the church square. Come and see if you
      recognize her, fair Cousin Phœbus.”

      A secret desire for reconciliation was apparent in this gentle
      invitation which she gave him to approach her, and in the care
      which she took to call him by name. Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers
      (for it is he whom the reader has had before his eyes since the
      beginning of this chapter) slowly approached the balcony. “Stay,”
      said Fleur-de-Lys, laying her hand tenderly on Phœbus’s arm;
      “look at that little girl yonder, dancing in that circle. Is she
      your Bohemian?”

      Phœbus looked, and said,—

      “Yes, I recognize her by her goat.”

      “Oh! in fact, what a pretty little goat!” said Amelotte, clasping
      her hands in admiration.

      “Are his horns of real gold?” inquired Bérangère.

      Without moving from her arm-chair, Dame Aloïse interposed, “Is
      she not one of those gypsy girls who arrived last year by the
      Gibard gate?”

      “Madame my mother,” said Fleur-de-Lys gently, “that gate is now
      called the Porte d’Enfer.”

      Mademoiselle de Gondelaurier knew how her mother’s antiquated
      mode of speech shocked the captain. In fact, he began to sneer,
      and muttered between his teeth: “Porte Gibard! Porte Gibard! ’Tis
      enough to make King Charles VI. pass by.”

      “Godmother!” exclaimed Bérangère, whose eyes, incessantly in
      motion, had suddenly been raised to the summit of the towers of
      Notre-Dame, “who is that black man up yonder?”

      All the young girls raised their eyes. A man was, in truth,
      leaning on the balustrade which surmounted the northern tower,
      looking on the Grève. He was a priest. His costume could be
      plainly discerned, and his face resting on both his hands. But he
      stirred no more than if he had been a statue. His eyes, intently
      fixed, gazed into the Place.

      It was something like the immobility of a bird of prey, who has
      just discovered a nest of sparrows, and is gazing at it.

      “’Tis monsieur the archdeacon of Josas,” said Fleur-de-Lys.

      “You have good eyes if you can recognize him from here,” said the
      Gaillefontaine.

      “How he is staring at the little dancer!” went on Diane de
      Christeuil.

      “Let the gypsy beware!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “for he loves not
      Egypt.”

      “’Tis a great shame for that man to look upon her thus,” added
      Amelotte de Montmichel, “for she dances delightfully.”

      “Fair cousin Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, “Since you know
      this little gypsy, make her a sign to come up here. It will amuse
      us.”

      “Oh, yes!” exclaimed all the young girls, clapping their hands.

      “Why! ’tis not worth while,” replied Phœbus. “She has forgotten
      me, no doubt, and I know not so much as her name. Nevertheless,
      as you wish it, young ladies, I will make the trial.” And leaning
      over the balustrade of the balcony, he began to shout, “Little
      one!”

      The dancer was not beating her tambourine at the moment. She
      turned her head towards the point whence this call proceeded, her
      brilliant eyes rested on Phœbus, and she stopped short.

      “Little one!” repeated the captain; and he beckoned her to
      approach.

      The young girl looked at him again, then she blushed as though a
      flame had mounted into her cheeks, and, taking her tambourine
      under her arm, she made her way through the astonished spectators
      towards the door of the house where Phœbus was calling her, with
      slow, tottering steps, and with the troubled look of a bird which
      is yielding to the fascination of a serpent.

      A moment later, the tapestry portière was raised, and the gypsy
      appeared on the threshold of the chamber, blushing, confused,
      breathless, her large eyes drooping, and not daring to advance
      another step.

      Bérangère clapped her hands.

      Meanwhile, the dancer remained motionless upon the threshold. Her
      appearance had produced a singular effect upon these young girls.
      It is certain that a vague and indistinct desire to please the
      handsome officer animated them all, that his splendid uniform was
      the target of all their coquetries, and that from the moment he
      presented himself, there existed among them a secret, suppressed
      rivalry, which they hardly acknowledged even to themselves, but
      which broke forth, none the less, every instant, in their
      gestures and remarks. Nevertheless, as they were all very nearly
      equal in beauty, they contended with equal arms, and each could
      hope for the victory. The arrival of the gypsy suddenly destroyed
      this equilibrium. Her beauty was so rare, that, at the moment
      when she appeared at the entrance of the apartment, it seemed as
      though she diffused a sort of light which was peculiar to
      herself. In that narrow chamber, surrounded by that sombre frame
      of hangings and woodwork, she was incomparably more beautiful and
      more radiant than on the public square. She was like a torch
      which has suddenly been brought from broad daylight into the
      dark. The noble damsels were dazzled by her in spite of
      themselves. Each one felt herself, in some sort, wounded in her
      beauty. Hence, their battle front (may we be allowed the
      expression,) was immediately altered, although they exchanged not
      a single word. But they understood each other perfectly. Women’s
      instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than
      the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt
      it—all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge
      a glass of water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper
      throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a
      prettier woman suffices, especially when there is but one man
      present.

      Hence the welcome accorded to the gypsy was marvellously glacial.
      They surveyed her from head to foot, then exchanged glances, and
      all was said; they understood each other. Meanwhile, the young
      girl was waiting to be spoken to, in such emotion that she dared
      not raise her eyelids.

      The captain was the first to break the silence. “Upon my word,”
      said he, in his tone of intrepid fatuity, “here is a charming
      creature! What think you of her, fair cousin?”

      This remark, which a more delicate admirer would have uttered in
      a lower tone, at least was not of a nature to dissipate the
      feminine jealousies which were on the alert before the gypsy.

      Fleur-de-Lys replied to the captain with a bland affectation of
      disdain;—“Not bad.”

      The others whispered.

      At length, Madame Aloïse, who was not the less jealous because
      she was so for her daughter, addressed the dancer,—“Approach,
      little one.”

      “Approach, little one!” repeated, with comical dignity, little
      Bérangère, who would have reached about as high as her hips.

      The gypsy advanced towards the noble dame.

      “Fair child,” said Phœbus, with emphasis, taking several steps
      towards her, “I do not know whether I have the supreme honor of
      being recognized by you.”

      She interrupted him, with a smile and a look full of infinite
      sweetness,—

      “Oh! yes,” said she.

      “She has a good memory,” remarked Fleur-de-Lys.

      “Come, now,” resumed Phœbus, “you escaped nimbly the other
      evening. Did I frighten you!”

      “Oh! no,” said the gypsy.

      There was in the intonation of that “Oh! no,” uttered after that
      “Oh! yes,” an ineffable something which wounded Fleur-de-Lys.

      “You left me in your stead, my beauty,” pursued the captain,
      whose tongue was unloosed when speaking to a girl out of the
      street, “a crabbed knave, one-eyed and hunchbacked, the bishop’s
      bellringer, I believe. I have been told that by birth he is the
      bastard of an archdeacon and a devil. He has a pleasant name: he
      is called _Quatre-Temps_ (Ember Days), _Pâques-Fleuries_ (Palm
      Sunday), _Mardi-Gras_ (Shrove Tuesday), I know not what! The name
      of some festival when the bells are pealed! So he took the
      liberty of carrying you off, as though you were made for beadles!
      ’Tis too much. What the devil did that screech-owl want with you?
      Hey, tell me!”

      “I do not know,” she replied.

      “The inconceivable impudence! A bellringer carrying off a wench,
      like a vicomte! a lout poaching on the game of gentlemen! that is
      a rare piece of assurance. However, he paid dearly for it. Master
      Pierrat Torterue is the harshest groom that ever curried a knave;
      and I can tell you, if it will be agreeable to you, that your
      bellringer’s hide got a thorough dressing at his hands.”

      “Poor man!” said the gypsy, in whom these words revived the
      memory of the pillory.

      The captain burst out laughing.

      “Corne-de-bœuf! here’s pity as well placed as a feather in a
      pig’s tail! May I have as big a belly as a pope, if—”

      He stopped short. “Pardon me, ladies; I believe that I was on the
      point of saying something foolish.”

      “Fie, sir” said la Gaillefontaine.

      “He talks to that creature in her own tongue!” added
      Fleur-de-Lys, in a low tone, her irritation increasing every
      moment. This irritation was not diminished when she beheld the
      captain, enchanted with the gypsy, and, most of all, with
      himself, execute a pirouette on his heel, repeating with coarse,
      naïve, and soldierly gallantry,—

      “A handsome wench, upon my soul!”

      “Rather savagely dressed,” said Diane de Christeuil, laughing to
      show her fine teeth.

      This remark was a flash of light to the others. Not being able to
      impugn her beauty, they attacked her costume.

      “That is true,” said la Montmichel; “what makes you run about the
      streets thus, without guimpe or ruff?”

      “That petticoat is so short that it makes one tremble,” added la
      Gaillefontaine.

      “My dear,” continued Fleur-de-Lys, with decided sharpness, “You
      will get yourself taken up by the sumptuary police for your
      gilded girdle.”

      “Little one, little one;” resumed la Christeuil, with an
      implacable smile, “if you were to put respectable sleeves upon
      your arms they would get less sunburned.”

      It was, in truth, a spectacle worthy of a more intelligent
      spectator than Phœbus, to see how these beautiful maidens, with
      their envenomed and angry tongues, wound, serpent-like, and
      glided and writhed around the street dancer. They were cruel and
      graceful; they searched and rummaged maliciously in her poor and
      silly toilet of spangles and tinsel. There was no end to their
      laughter, irony, and humiliation. Sarcasms rained down upon the
      gypsy, and haughty condescension and malevolent looks. One would
      have thought they were young Roman dames thrusting golden pins
      into the breast of a beautiful slave. One would have pronounced
      them elegant grayhounds, circling, with inflated nostrils, round
      a poor woodland fawn, whom the glance of their master forbade
      them to devour.

      After all, what was a miserable dancer on the public squares in
      the presence of these high-born maidens? They seemed to take no
      heed of her presence, and talked of her aloud, to her face, as of
      something unclean, abject, and yet, at the same time, passably
      pretty.

      The gypsy was not insensible to these pin-pricks. From time to
      time a flush of shame, a flash of anger inflamed her eyes or her
      cheeks; with disdain she made that little grimace with which the
      reader is already familiar, but she remained motionless; she
      fixed on Phœbus a sad, sweet, resigned look. There was also
      happiness and tenderness in that gaze. One would have said that
      she endured for fear of being expelled.

      Phœbus laughed, and took the gypsy’s part with a mixture of
      impertinence and pity.

      “Let them talk, little one!” he repeated, jingling his golden
      spurs. “No doubt your toilet is a little extravagant and wild,
      but what difference does that make with such a charming damsel as
      yourself?”

      “Good gracious!” exclaimed the blonde Gaillefontaine, drawing up
      her swan-like throat, with a bitter smile. “I see that messieurs
      the archers of the king’s police easily take fire at the handsome
      eyes of gypsies!”

      “Why not?” said Phœbus.

      At this reply uttered carelessly by the captain, like a stray
      stone, whose fall one does not even watch, Colombe began to
      laugh, as well as Diane, Amelotte, and Fleur-de-Lys, into whose
      eyes at the same time a tear started.

      The gypsy, who had dropped her eyes on the floor at the words of
      Colombe de Gaillefontaine, raised them beaming with joy and pride
      and fixed them once more on Phœbus. She was very beautiful at
      that moment.

      The old dame, who was watching this scene, felt offended, without
      understanding why.

      “Holy Virgin!” she suddenly exclaimed, “what is it moving about
      my legs? Ah! the villanous beast!”

      It was the goat, who had just arrived, in search of his mistress,
      and who, in dashing towards the latter, had begun by entangling
      his horns in the pile of stuffs which the noble dame’s garments
      heaped up on her feet when she was seated.

      This created a diversion. The gypsy disentangled his horns
      without uttering a word.

      “Oh! here’s the little goat with golden hoofs!” exclaimed
      Bérangère, dancing with joy.

      The gypsy crouched down on her knees and leaned her cheek against
      the fondling head of the goat. One would have said that she was
      asking pardon for having quitted it thus.

      Meanwhile, Diane had bent down to Colombe’s ear.

      “Ah! good heavens! why did not I think of that sooner? ’Tis the
      gypsy with the goat. They say she is a sorceress, and that her
      goat executes very miraculous tricks.”

      “Well!” said Colombe, “the goat must now amuse us in its turn,
      and perform a miracle for us.”

      Diane and Colombe eagerly addressed the gypsy.

      “Little one, make your goat perform a miracle.”

      “I do not know what you mean,” replied the dancer.

      “A miracle, a piece of magic, a bit of sorcery, in short.”

      “I do not understand.” And she fell to caressing the pretty
      animal, repeating, “Djali! Djali!”

      At that moment Fleur-de-Lys noticed a little bag of embroidered
      leather suspended from the neck of the goat,—

      “What is that?” she asked of the gypsy.

      The gypsy raised her large eyes upon her and replied gravely,—

      “That is my secret.”

      “I should really like to know what your secret is,” thought
      Fleur-de-Lys.

      Meanwhile, the good dame had risen angrily,—“Come now, gypsy, if
      neither you nor your goat can dance for us, what are you doing
      here?”

      The gypsy walked slowly towards the door, without making any
      reply. But the nearer she approached it, the more her pace
      slackened. An irresistible magnet seemed to hold her. Suddenly
      she turned her eyes, wet with tears, towards Phœbus, and halted.

      “True God!” exclaimed the captain, “that’s not the way to depart.
      Come back and dance something for us. By the way, my sweet love,
      what is your name?”

      “La Esmeralda,” said the dancer, never taking her eyes from him.

      At this strange name, a burst of wild laughter broke from the
      young girls.

      “Here’s a terrible name for a young lady,” said Diane.

      “You see well enough,” retorted Amelotte, “that she is an
      enchantress.”

      “My dear,” exclaimed Dame Aloïse solemnly, “your parents did not
      commit the sin of giving you that name at the baptismal font.”

      In the meantime, several minutes previously, Bérangère had coaxed
      the goat into a corner of the room with a marchpane cake, without
      any one having noticed her. In an instant they had become good
      friends. The curious child had detached the bag from the goat’s
      neck, had opened it, and had emptied out its contents on the rush
      matting; it was an alphabet, each letter of which was separately
      inscribed on a tiny block of boxwood. Hardly had these playthings
      been spread out on the matting, when the child, with surprise,
      beheld the goat (one of whose “miracles” this was no doubt), draw
      out certain letters with its golden hoof, and arrange them, with
      gentle pushes, in a certain order. In a moment they constituted a
      word, which the goat seemed to have been trained to write, so
      little hesitation did it show in forming it, and Bérangère
      suddenly exclaimed, clasping her hands in admiration,—

      “Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, see what the goat has just done!”

      Fleur-de-Lys ran up and trembled. The letters arranged upon the
      floor formed this word,—

         PHŒBUS.

      “Was it the goat who wrote that?” she inquired in a changed
      voice.

      “Yes, godmother,” replied Bérangêre.

      It was impossible to doubt it; the child did not know how to
      write.

      “This is the secret!” thought Fleur-de-Lys.

      Meanwhile, at the child’s exclamation, all had hastened up, the
      mother, the young girls, the gypsy, and the officer.

      The gypsy beheld the piece of folly which the goat had committed.
      She turned red, then pale, and began to tremble like a culprit
      before the captain, who gazed at her with a smile of satisfaction
      and amazement.

      “Phœbus!” whispered the young girls, stupefied: “’tis the
      captain’s name!”

      “You have a marvellous memory!” said Fleur-de-Lys, to the
      petrified gypsy. Then, bursting into sobs: “Oh!” she stammered
      mournfully, hiding her face in both her beautiful hands, “she is
      a magician!” And she heard another and a still more bitter voice
      at the bottom of her heart, saying,—“She is a rival!”

      She fell fainting.

      “My daughter! my daughter!” cried the terrified mother. “Begone,
      you gypsy of hell!”

      In a twinkling, La Esmeralda gathered up the unlucky letters,
      made a sign to Djali, and went out through one door, while
      Fleur-de-Lys was being carried out through the other.

      Captain Phœbus, on being left alone, hesitated for a moment
      between the two doors, then he followed the gypsy.



      CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

      The priest whom the young girls had observed at the top of the
      North tower, leaning over the Place and so attentive to the dance
      of the gypsy, was, in fact, Archdeacon Claude Frollo.

      Our readers have not forgotten the mysterious cell which the
      archdeacon had reserved for himself in that tower. (I do not
      know, by the way be it said, whether it be not the same, the
      interior of which can be seen to-day through a little square
      window, opening to the east at the height of a man above the
      platform from which the towers spring; a bare and dilapidated
      den, whose badly plastered walls are ornamented here and there,
      at the present day, with some wretched yellow engravings
      representing the façades of cathedrals. I presume that this hole
      is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and that, consequently,
      it wages a double war of extermination on the flies).

      Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon ascended the
      staircase to the tower, and shut himself up in this cell, where
      he sometimes passed whole nights. That day, at the moment when,
      standing before the low door of his retreat, he was fitting into
      the lock the complicated little key which he always carried about
      him in the purse suspended to his side, a sound of tambourine and
      castanets had reached his ear. These sounds came from the Place
      du Parvis. The cell, as we have already said, had only one window
      opening upon the rear of the church. Claude Frollo had hastily
      withdrawn the key, and an instant later, he was on the top of the
      tower, in the gloomy and pensive attitude in which the maidens
      had seen him.

      There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and one
      thought. All Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires of
      its edifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills—with its
      river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to and fro
      through its streets,—with the clouds of its smoke,—with the
      mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in its
      doubled folds; but out of all the city, the archdeacon gazed at
      one corner only of the pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that
      throng at but one figure,—the gypsy.

      It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this
      look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was
      a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and
      tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body,
      barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree
      is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more
      marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of
      the petrified smile which contracted his face,—one would have
      said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his
      eyes.

      The gypsy was dancing; she was twirling her tambourine on the tip
      of her finger, and tossing it into the air as she danced
      Provençal sarabands; agile, light, joyous, and unconscious of the
      formidable gaze which descended perpendicularly upon her head.

      The crowd was swarming around her; from time to time, a man
      accoutred in red and yellow made them form into a circle, and
      then returned, seated himself on a chair a few paces from the
      dancer, and took the goat’s head on his knees. This man seemed to
      be the gypsy’s companion. Claude Frollo could not distinguish his
      features from his elevated post.

      From the moment when the archdeacon caught sight of this
      stranger, his attention seemed divided between him and the
      dancer, and his face became more and more gloomy. All at once he
      rose upright, and a quiver ran through his whole body: “Who is
      that man?” he muttered between his teeth: “I have always seen her
      alone before!”

      Then he plunged down beneath the tortuous vault of the spiral
      staircase, and once more descended. As he passed the door of the
      bell chamber, which was ajar, he saw something which struck him;
      he beheld Quasimodo, who, leaning through an opening of one of
      those slate penthouses which resemble enormous blinds, appeared
      also to be gazing at the Place. He was engaged in so profound a
      contemplation, that he did not notice the passage of his adopted
      father. His savage eye had a singular expression; it was a
      charmed, tender look. “This is strange!” murmured Claude. “Is it
      the gypsy at whom he is thus gazing?” He continued his descent.
      At the end of a few minutes, the anxious archdeacon entered upon
      the Place from the door at the base of the tower.

      “What has become of the gypsy girl?” he said, mingling with the
      group of spectators which the sound of the tambourine had
      collected.

      “I know not,” replied one of his neighbors, “I think that she has
      gone to make some of her fandangoes in the house opposite,
      whither they have called her.”

      In the place of the gypsy, on the carpet, whose arabesques had
      seemed to vanish but a moment previously by the capricious
      figures of her dance, the archdeacon no longer beheld any one but
      the red and yellow man, who, in order to earn a few testers in
      his turn, was walking round the circle, with his elbows on his
      hips, his head thrown back, his face red, his neck outstretched,
      with a chair between his teeth. To the chair he had fastened a
      cat, which a neighbor had lent, and which was spitting in great
      affright.

      “Notre-Dame!” exclaimed the archdeacon, at the moment when the
      juggler, perspiring heavily, passed in front of him with his
      pyramid of chair and his cat, “What is Master Pierre Gringoire
      doing here?”

      The harsh voice of the archdeacon threw the poor fellow into such
      a commotion that he lost his equilibrium, together with his whole
      edifice, and the chair and the cat tumbled pell-mell upon the
      heads of the spectators, in the midst of inextinguishable
      hootings.

      It is probable that Master Pierre Gringoire (for it was indeed
      he) would have had a sorry account to settle with the neighbor
      who owned the cat, and all the bruised and scratched faces which
      surrounded him, if he had not hastened to profit by the tumult to
      take refuge in the church, whither Claude Frollo had made him a
      sign to follow him.

      The cathedral was already dark and deserted; the side-aisles were
      full of shadows, and the lamps of the chapels began to shine out
      like stars, so black had the vaulted ceiling become. Only the
      great rose window of the façade, whose thousand colors were
      steeped in a ray of horizontal sunlight, glittered in the gloom
      like a mass of diamonds, and threw its dazzling reflection to the
      other end of the nave.

      When they had advanced a few paces, Dom Claude placed his back
      against a pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire. The gaze was
      not the one which Gringoire feared, ashamed as he was of having
      been caught by a grave and learned person in the costume of a
      buffoon. There was nothing mocking or ironical in the priest’s
      glance, it was serious, tranquil, piercing. The archdeacon was
      the first to break the silence.

      “Come now, Master Pierre. You are to explain many things to me.
      And first of all, how comes it that you have not been seen for
      two months, and that now one finds you in the public squares, in
      a fine equipment in truth! Motley red and yellow, like a Caudebec
      apple?”

      “Messire,” said Gringoire, piteously, “it is, in fact, an amazing
      accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it than a cat
      coiffed with a calabash. ’Tis very ill done, I am conscious, to
      expose messieurs the sergeants of the watch to the liability of
      cudgelling beneath this cassock the humerus of a Pythagorean
      philosopher. But what would you have, my reverend master? ’tis
      the fault of my ancient jerkin, which abandoned me in cowardly
      wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the pretext that it
      was falling into tatters, and that it required repose in the
      basket of a rag-picker. What is one to do? Civilization has not
      yet arrived at the point where one can go stark naked, as ancient
      Diogenes wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and ’tis
      not in the month of January that one can successfully attempt to
      make humanity take this new step. This garment presented itself,
      I took it, and I left my ancient black smock, which, for a
      hermetic like myself, was far from being hermetically closed.
      Behold me then, in the garments of a stage-player, like Saint
      Genest. What would you have? ’tis an eclipse. Apollo himself
      tended the flocks of Admetus.”

      “’Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in!” replied the
      archdeacon.

      “I agree, my master, that ’tis better to philosophize and
      poetize, to blow the flame in the furnace, or to receive it from
      carry cats on a shield. So, when you addressed me, I was as
      foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But what would you have,
      messire? One must eat every day, and the finest Alexandrine
      verses are not worth a bit of Brie cheese. Now, I made for Madame
      Marguerite of Flanders, that famous epithalamium, as you know,
      and the city will not pay me, under the pretext that it was not
      excellent; as though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for
      four crowns! Hence, I was on the point of dying with hunger.
      Happily, I found that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said
      to this jaw,—perform some feats of strength and of equilibrium:
      nourish thyself. _Ale te ipsam_. A pack of beggars who have
      become my good friends, have taught me twenty sorts of herculean
      feats, and now I give to my teeth every evening the bread which
      they have earned during the day by the sweat of my brow. After
      all, _concedo_, I grant that it is a sad employment for my
      intellectual faculties, and that man is not made to pass his life
      in beating the tambourine and biting chairs. But, reverend
      master, it is not sufficient to pass one’s life, one must earn
      the means for life.”

      Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his deep-set eye
      assumed so sagacious and penetrating an expression, that
      Gringoire felt himself, so to speak, searched to the bottom of
      the soul by that glance.

      “Very good, Master Pierre; but how comes it that you are now in
      company with that gypsy dancer?”

      “In faith!” said Gringoire, “’tis because she is my wife and I am
      her husband.”

      The priest’s gloomy eyes flashed into flame.

      “Have you done that, you wretch!” he cried, seizing Gringoire’s
      arm with fury; “have you been so abandoned by God as to raise
      your hand against that girl?”

      “On my chance of paradise, monseigneur,” replied Gringoire,
      trembling in every limb, “I swear to you that I have never
      touched her, if that is what disturbs you.”

      “Then why do you talk of husband and wife?” said the priest.
      Gringoire made haste to relate to him as succinctly as possible,
      all that the reader already knows, his adventure in the Court of
      Miracles and the broken-crock marriage. It appeared, moreover,
      that this marriage had led to no results whatever, and that each
      evening the gypsy girl cheated him of his nuptial right as on the
      first day. “’Tis a mortification,” he said in conclusion, “but
      that is because I have had the misfortune to wed a virgin.”

      “What do you mean?” demanded the archdeacon, who had been
      gradually appeased by this recital.

      “’Tis very difficult to explain,” replied the poet. “It is a
      superstition. My wife is, according to what an old thief, who is
      called among us the Duke of Egypt, has told me, a foundling or a
      lost child, which is the same thing. She wears on her neck an
      amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to meet her parents
      some day, but which will lose its virtue if the young girl loses
      hers. Hence it follows that both of us remain very virtuous.”

      “So,” resumed Claude, whose brow cleared more and more, “you
      believe, Master Pierre, that this creature has not been
      approached by any man?”

      “What would you have a man do, Dom Claude, as against a
      superstition? She has got that in her head. I assuredly esteem as
      a rarity this nunlike prudery which is preserved untamed amid
      those Bohemian girls who are so easily brought into subjection.
      But she has three things to protect her: the Duke of Egypt, who
      has taken her under his safeguard, reckoning, perchance, on
      selling her to some gay abbé; all his tribe, who hold her in
      singular veneration, like a Notre-Dame; and a certain tiny
      poignard, which the buxom dame always wears about her, in some
      nook, in spite of the ordinances of the provost, and which one
      causes to fly out into her hands by squeezing her waist. ’Tis a
      proud wasp, I can tell you!”

      The archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions.

      La Esmeralda, in the judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffensive
      and charming creature, pretty, with the exception of a pout which
      was peculiar to her; a naïve and passionate damsel, ignorant of
      everything and enthusiastic about everything; not yet aware of
      the difference between a man and a woman, even in her dreams;
      made like that; wild especially over dancing, noise, the open
      air; a sort of woman bee, with invisible wings on her feet, and
      living in a whirlwind. She owed this nature to the wandering life
      which she had always led. Gringoire had succeeded in learning
      that, while a mere child, she had traversed Spain and Catalonia,
      even to Sicily; he believed that she had even been taken by the
      caravan of Zingari, of which she formed a part, to the kingdom of
      Algiers, a country situated in Achaia, which country adjoins, on
      one side Albania and Greece; on the other, the Sicilian Sea,
      which is the road to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said
      Gringoire, were vassals of the King of Algiers, in his quality of
      chief of the White Moors. One thing is certain, that la Esmeralda
      had come to France while still very young, by way of Hungary.
      From all these countries the young girl had brought back
      fragments of queer jargons, songs, and strange ideas, which made
      her language as motley as her costume, half Parisian, half
      African. However, the people of the quarters which she frequented
      loved her for her gayety, her daintiness, her lively manners, her
      dances, and her songs. She believed herself to be hated, in all
      the city, by but two persons, of whom she often spoke in terror:
      the sacked nun of the Tour-Roland, a villanous recluse who
      cherished some secret grudge against these gypsies, and who
      cursed the poor dancer every time that the latter passed before
      her window; and a priest, who never met her without casting at
      her looks and words which frightened her.

      The mention of this last circumstance disturbed the archdeacon
      greatly, though Gringoire paid no attention to his perturbation;
      to such an extent had two months sufficed to cause the heedless
      poet to forget the singular details of the evening on which he
      had met the gypsy, and the presence of the archdeacon in it all.
      Otherwise, the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell
      fortunes, which protected her against those trials for magic
      which were so frequently instituted against gypsy women. And
      then, Gringoire held the position of her brother, if not of her
      husband. After all, the philosopher endured this sort of platonic
      marriage very patiently. It meant a shelter and bread at least.
      Every morning, he set out from the lair of the thieves, generally
      with the gypsy; he helped her make her collections of targes[34]
      and little blanks[35] in the squares; each evening he returned to
      the same roof with her, allowed her to bolt herself into her
      little chamber, and slept the sleep of the just. A very sweet
      existence, taking it all in all, he said, and well adapted to
      revery. And then, on his soul and conscience, the philosopher was
      not very sure that he was madly in love with the gypsy. He loved
      her goat almost as dearly. It was a charming animal, gentle,
      intelligent, clever; a learned goat. Nothing was more common in
      the Middle Ages than these learned animals, which amazed people
      greatly, and often led their instructors to the stake. But the
      witchcraft of the goat with the golden hoofs was a very innocent
      species of magic. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon,
      whom these details seemed to interest deeply. In the majority of
      cases, it was sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in
      such or such a manner, in order to obtain from him the trick
      desired. He had been trained to this by the gypsy, who possessed,
      in these delicate arts, so rare a talent that two months had
      sufficed to teach the goat to write, with movable letters, the
      word “Phœbus.”

      “‘Phœbus!’” said the priest; “why ‘Phœbus’?”

      “I know not,” replied Gringoire. “Perhaps it is a word which she
      believes to be endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She
      often repeats it in a low tone when she thinks that she is
      alone.”

      “Are you sure,” persisted Claude, with his penetrating glance,
      “that it is only a word and not a name?”

      “The name of whom?” said the poet.

      “How should I know?” said the priest.

      “This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are something
      like Guebrs, and adore the sun. Hence, Phœbus.”

      “That does not seem so clear to me as to you, Master Pierre.”

      “After all, that does not concern me. Let her mumble her Phœbus
      at her pleasure. One thing is certain, that Djali loves me almost
      as much as he does her.”

      “Who is Djali?”

      “The goat.”

      The archdeacon dropped his chin into his hand, and appeared to
      reflect for a moment. All at once he turned abruptly to Gringoire
      once more.

      “And do you swear to me that you have not touched her?”

      “Whom?” said Gringoire; “the goat?”

      “No, that woman.”

      “My wife? I swear to you that I have not.”

      “You are often alone with her?”

      “A good hour every evening.”

      Dom Claude frowned.

      “Oh! oh! _Solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster_.”

      “Upon my soul, I could say the _Pater_, and the _Ave Maria_, and
      the _Credo in Deum patrem omnipotentem_ without her paying any
      more attention to me than a chicken to a church.”

      “Swear to me, by the body of your mother,” repeated the
      archdeacon violently, “that you have not touched that creature
      with even the tip of your finger.”

      “I will also swear it by the head of my father, for the two
      things have more affinity between them. But, my reverend master,
      permit me a question in my turn.”

      “Speak, sir.”

      “What concern is it of yours?”

      The archdeacon’s pale face became as crimson as the cheek of a
      young girl. He remained for a moment without answering; then,
      with visible embarrassment,—

      “Listen, Master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, so far
      as I know. I take an interest in you, and wish you well. Now the
      least contact with that Egyptian of the demon would make you the
      vassal of Satan. You know that ’tis always the body which ruins
      the soul. Woe to you if you approach that woman! That is all.”

      “I tried once,” said Gringoire, scratching his ear; “it was the
      first day: but I got stung.”

      “You were so audacious, Master Pierre?” and the priest’s brow
      clouded over again.

      “On another occasion,” continued the poet, with a smile, “I
      peeped through the keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld the
      most delicious dame in her shift that ever made a bed creak under
      her bare foot.”

      “Go to the devil!” cried the priest, with a terrible look; and,
      giving the amazed Gringoire a push on the shoulders, he plunged,
      with long strides, under the gloomiest arcades of the cathedral.



      CHAPTER III. THE BELLS.

      After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre-Dame
      thought they noticed that Quasimodo’s ardor for ringing had grown
      cool. Formerly, there had been peals for every occasion, long
      morning serenades, which lasted from prime to compline; peals
      from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the
      smaller bells for a wedding, for a christening, and mingling in
      the air like a rich embroidery of all sorts of charming sounds.
      The old church, all vibrating and sonorous, was in a perpetual
      joy of bells. One was constantly conscious of the presence of a
      spirit of noise and caprice, who sang through all those mouths of
      brass. Now that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral
      seemed gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals
      had the simple peal, dry and bare, demanded by the ritual,
      nothing more. Of the double noise which constitutes a church, the
      organ within, the bell without, the organ alone remained. One
      would have said that there was no longer a musician in the
      belfry. Quasimodo was always there, nevertheless; what, then, had
      happened to him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory
      still lingered in the bottom of his heart, that the lashes of his
      tormentor’s whip reverberated unendingly in his soul, and that
      the sadness of such treatment had wholly extinguished in him even
      his passion for the bells? or was it that Marie had a rival in
      the heart of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great
      bell and her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more
      amiable and more beautiful?

      It chanced that, in the year of grace 1482, Annunciation Day fell
      on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of March. That day the air was so
      pure and light that Quasimodo felt some returning affection for
      his bells. He therefore ascended the northern tower while the
      beadle below was opening wide the doors of the church, which were
      then enormous panels of stout wood, covered with leather,
      bordered with nails of gilded iron, and framed in carvings “very
      artistically elaborated.”

      On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for some
      time at the six bells and shook his head sadly, as though
      groaning over some foreign element which had interposed itself in
      his heart between them and him. But when he had set them to
      swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells moving under his
      hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the palpitating octave
      ascend and descend that sonorous scale, like a bird hopping from
      branch to branch; when the demon Music, that demon who shakes a
      sparkling bundle of strette, trills and arpeggios, had taken
      possession of the poor deaf man, he became happy once more, he
      forgot everything, and his heart expanding, made his face beam.

      He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from rope to
      rope, he animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like
      the leader of an orchestra who is urging on intelligent
      musicians.

      “Go on,” said he, “go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out all thy
      noise into the Place, ’tis a festival to-day. No laziness,
      Thibauld; thou art relaxing; go on, go on, then, art thou rusted,
      thou sluggard? That is well! quick! quick! let not thy clapper be
      seen! Make them all deaf like me. That’s it, Thibauld, bravely
      done! Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art the largest, and Pasquier is
      the smallest, and Pasquier does best. Let us wager that those who
      hear him will understand him better than they understand thee.
      Good! good! my Gabrielle, stoutly, more stoutly! Eli! what are
      you doing up aloft there, you two Moineaux (sparrows)? I do not
      see you making the least little shred of noise. What is the
      meaning of those beaks of copper which seem to be gaping when
      they should sing? Come, work now, ’tis the Feast of the
      Annunciation. The sun is fine, the chime must be fine also. Poor
      Guillaume! thou art all out of breath, my big fellow!”

      He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of which
      vied with each other in leaping and shaking their shining
      haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked on here and
      there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.

      All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large slate
      scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower at a
      certain height, he beheld on the square a young girl,
      fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a carpet,
      on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of spectators
      collect around her. This sight suddenly changed the course of his
      ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals
      melted rosin. He halted, turned his back to the bells, and
      crouched down behind the projecting roof of slate, fixing upon
      the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and tender look which had already
      astonished the archdeacon on one occasion. Meanwhile, the
      forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the great
      disappointment of the lovers of bell ringing, who were listening
      in good faith to the peal from above the Pont du Change, and who
      went away dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and
      given a stone.



      CHAPTER IV. ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

      It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of March,
      I think it was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache’s day, our
      young friend the student, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, perceived, as
      he was dressing himself, that his breeches, which contained his
      purse, gave out no metallic ring. “Poor purse,” he said, drawing
      it from his fob, “what! not the smallest parisis! how cruelly the
      dice, beer-pots, and Venus have depleted thee! How empty,
      wrinkled, limp, thou art! Thou resemblest the throat of a fury! I
      ask you, Messer Cicero, and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, all
      dog’s-eared, I behold scattered on the floor, what profits it me
      to know, better than any governor of the mint, or any Jew on the
      Pont aux Changeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is
      worth thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers
      parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is worth
      thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers tournois
      apiece, if I have not a single wretched black liard to risk on
      the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no calamity from which
      one extricates one’s self with periphrases, _quemadmodum_, and
      _verum enim vero!_”

      He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as he laced
      his boots, but he rejected it at first; nevertheless, it
      returned, and he put on his waistcoat wrong side out, an evident
      sign of violent internal combat. At last he dashed his cap
      roughly on the floor, and exclaimed: “So much the worse! Let come
      of it what may. I am going to my brother! I shall catch a sermon,
      but I shall catch a crown.”

      Then he hastily donned his long jacket with furred half-sleeves,
      picked up his cap, and went out like a man driven to desperation.

      He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he passed
      the Rue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable spits, which
      were incessantly turning, tickled his olfactory apparatus, and he
      bestowed a loving glance toward the Cyclopean roast, which one
      day drew from the Franciscan friar, Calatagirone, this pathetic
      exclamation: _Veramente, queste rotisserie sono cosa
      stupenda!_[36] But Jehan had not the wherewithal to buy a
      breakfast, and he plunged, with a profound sigh, under the
      gateway of the Petit-Châtelet, that enormous double trefoil of
      massive towers which guarded the entrance to the City.

      He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, as
      was the usage, at the miserable statue of that Périnet Leclerc
      who had delivered up the Paris of Charles VI. to the English, a
      crime which his effigy, its face battered with stones and soiled
      with mud, expiated for three centuries at the corner of the Rue
      de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, as in an eternal pillory.

      The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève crossed,
      Jehan de Molendino found himself in front of Notre-Dame. Then
      indecision seized upon him once more, and he paced for several
      minutes round the statue of M. Legris, repeating to himself with
      anguish: “The sermon is sure, the crown is doubtful.”

      He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,—“Where is
      monsieur the archdeacon of Josas?”

      “I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower,” said the
      beadle; “I should advise you not to disturb him there, unless you
      come from some one like the pope or monsieur the king.”

      Jehan clapped his hands.

      “_Bédiable!_ here’s a magnificent chance to see the famous
      sorcery cell!”

      This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged
      resolutely into the small black doorway, and began the ascent of
      the spiral of Saint-Gilles, which leads to the upper stories of
      the tower. “I am going to see,” he said to himself on the way.
      “By the ravens of the Holy Virgin! it must needs be a curious
      thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides so secretly!
      ’Tis said that he lights up the kitchens of hell there, and that
      he cooks the philosopher’s stone there over a hot fire. _Bédieu!_
      I care no more for the philosopher’s stone than for a pebble, and
      I would rather find over his furnace an omelette of Easter eggs
      and bacon, than the biggest philosopher’s stone in the world.”’

      On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took breath for
      a moment, and swore against the interminable staircase by I know
      not how many million cartloads of devils; then he resumed his
      ascent through the narrow door of the north tower, now closed to
      the public. Several moments after passing the bell chamber, he
      came upon a little landing-place, built in a lateral niche, and
      under the vault of a low, pointed door, whose enormous lock and
      strong iron bars he was enabled to see through a loophole pierced
      in the opposite circular wall of the staircase. Persons desirous
      of visiting this door at the present day will recognize it by
      this inscription engraved in white letters on the black wall:
      “J’ADORE CORALIE, 1823. SIGNÉ UGÈNE.” “Signé” stands in the text.

      “Ugh!” said the scholar; “’tis here, no doubt.”

      The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him; he gave
      it a gentle push and thrust his head through the opening.

      The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable works of
      Rembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so many marvellous
      engravings, there is one etching in particular, which is supposed
      to represent Doctor Faust, and which it is impossible to
      contemplate without being dazzled. It represents a gloomy cell;
      in the centre is a table loaded with hideous objects; skulls,
      spheres, alembics, compasses, hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor
      is before this table clad in his large coat and covered to the
      very eyebrows with his furred cap. He is visible only to his
      waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched
      fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and
      terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which
      gleams from the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark
      chamber. This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and
      fills the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible
      and it is beautiful.

      Something very similar to Faust’s cell presented itself to
      Jehan’s view, when he ventured his head through the half-open
      door. It also was a gloomy and sparsely lighted retreat. There
      also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses,
      alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a
      globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously
      with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls
      placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge
      manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking
      corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science,
      and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders’ webs; but
      there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy
      contemplating the flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the
      sun.

      Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in the
      arm-chair, and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom his back
      was turned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his
      skull; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that bald head,
      which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure, as though
      desirous of marking, by this external symbol, the archdeacon’s
      irresistible clerical vocation.

      Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had been
      opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence.
      The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this circumstance to
      examine the cell for a few moments at his leisure. A large
      furnace, which he had not at first observed, stood to the left of
      the arm-chair, beneath the window. The ray of light which
      penetrated through this aperture made its way through a spider’s
      circular web, which tastefully inscribed its delicate rose in the
      arch of the window, and in the centre of which the insect
      architect hung motionless, like the hub of this wheel of lace.
      Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of
      vases, earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and mattresses of
      charcoal. Jehan observed, with a sigh, that there was no
      frying-pan. “How cold the kitchen utensils are!” he said to
      himself.

      In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as
      though none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which
      Jehan noticed among the utensils of alchemy, and which served no
      doubt, to protect the archdeacon’s face when he was working over
      some substance to be dreaded, lay in one corner covered with dust
      and apparently forgotten. Beside it lay a pair of bellows no less
      dusty, the upper side of which bore this inscription incrusted in
      copper letters: SPIRA SPERA.

      Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the fashion
      of the hermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some traced with
      ink, others engraved with a metal point. There were, moreover,
      Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters,
      pell-mell; the inscriptions overflowed at haphazard, on top of
      each other, the more recent effacing the more ancient, and all
      entangled with each other, like the branches in a thicket, like
      pikes in an affray. It was, in fact, a strangely confused
      mingling of all human philosophies, all reveries, all human
      wisdom. Here and there one shone out from among the rest like a
      banner among lance heads. Generally, it was a brief Greek or
      Roman device, such as the Middle Ages knew so well how to
      formulate.—_Unde? Inde?—Homo homini monstrum—Astra, castra,
      nomen, numen._—Μέγα βιβλίον, μέγα κακόν.—_Sapere aude. Fiat ubi
      vult_—etc.; sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense,
      Ἀναγκοφαγία, which possibly contained a bitter allusion to the
      regime of the cloister; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical
      discipline formulated in a regular hexameter _Cœlestem dominum
      terrestrem dicite dominum_. There was also Hebrew jargon, of
      which Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood
      nothing; and all were traversed in every direction by stars, by
      figures of men or animals, and by intersecting triangles; and
      this contributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the
      cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back
      and forth a pen filled with ink.

      The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect of
      abandonment and dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils
      induced the supposition that their owner had long been distracted
      from his labors by other preoccupations. Meanwhile, this master,
      bent over a vast manuscript, ornamented with fantastical
      illustrations, appeared to be tormented by an idea which
      incessantly mingled with his meditations. That at least was
      Jehan’s idea, when he heard him exclaim, with the thoughtful
      breaks of a dreamer thinking aloud,—

      “Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is born
      from fire, the moon from the sun; fire is the soul of the
      universe; its elementary atoms pour forth and flow incessantly
      upon the world through infinite channels! At the point where
      these currents intersect each other in the heavens, they produce
      light; at their points of intersection on earth, they produce
      gold. Light, gold; the same thing! From fire to the concrete
      state. The difference between the visible and the palpable,
      between the fluid and the solid in the same substance, between
      water and ice, nothing more. These are no dreams; it is the
      general law of nature. But what is one to do in order to extract
      from science the secret of this general law? What! this light
      which inundates my hand is gold! These same atoms dilated in
      accordance with a certain law need only be condensed in
      accordance with another law. How is it to be done? Some have
      fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroës,—yes, ’tis
      Averroës,—Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left
      of the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of
      Cordova; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of
      ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after the
      lapse of eight thousand years.

      “The devil!” said Jehan, to himself, “’tis a long while to wait
      for a crown!”

      “Others have thought,” continued the dreamy archdeacon, “that it
      would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But
      ’tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the
      simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it.
      Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire.
      Flamel! there’s predestination in the name! _Flamma!_ yes, fire.
      All lies there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is
      in the fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there
      are certain feminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and
      mysterious, that it suffices to pronounce them during the
      operation. Let us read what Manon says on the matter: ‘Where
      women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; where they are
      despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman is
      constantly pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of sunlight.
      The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it
      should end in long vowels, and resemble words of benediction.’
      Yes, the sage is right; in truth, Maria, Sophia, la
      Esmeral—Damnation! always that thought!”

      And he closed the book violently.

      He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away the
      idea which assailed him; then he took from the table a nail and a
      small hammer, whose handle was curiously painted with cabalistic
      letters.

      “For some time,” he said with a bitter smile, “I have failed in
      all my experiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears my
      brain like fire. I have not even been able to discover the secret
      of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick and without oil. A
      simple matter, nevertheless—”

      “The deuce!” muttered Jehan in his beard.

      “Hence,” continued the priest, “one wretched thought is
      sufficient to render a man weak and beside himself! Oh! how
      Claude Pernelle would laugh at me. She who could not turn
      Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pursuit of the
      great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Zéchiélé!
      at every blow dealt by the formidable rabbi, from the depths of
      his cell, upon this nail, that one of his enemies whom he had
      condemned, were he a thousand leagues away, was buried a cubit
      deep in the earth which swallowed him. The King of France
      himself, in consequence of once having inconsiderately knocked at
      the door of the thermaturgist, sank to the knees through the
      pavement of his own Paris. This took place three centuries ago.
      Well! I possess the hammer and the nail, and in my hands they are
      utensils no more formidable than a club in the hands of a maker
      of edge tools. And yet all that is required is to find the magic
      word which Zéchiélé pronounced when he struck his nail.”

      “What nonsense!” thought Jehan.

      “Let us see, let us try!” resumed the archdeacon briskly. “Were I
      to succeed, I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of
      the nail. Emen-Hétan! Emen-Hétan! That’s not it. Sigéani!
      Sigéani! May this nail open the tomb to any one who bears the
      name of Phœbus! A curse upon it! Always and eternally the same
      idea!”

      And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so
      deeply on the arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from
      view behind the great pile of manuscripts. For the space of
      several minutes, all that he saw was his fist convulsively
      clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang up, seized a
      compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in capital letters,
      this Greek word

         ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

      “My brother is mad,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been
      far more simple to write _Fatum_, every one is not obliged to
      know Greek.”

      The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and
      placed his head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head
      is heavy and burning.

      The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not know,
      he who wore his heart on his sleeve, he who observed only the
      good old law of Nature in the world, he who allowed his passions
      to follow their inclinations, and in whom the lake of great
      emotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off each day by
      fresh drains,—he did not know with what fury the sea of human
      passions ferments and boils when all egress is denied to it, how
      it accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows
      out the heart; how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull
      convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The
      austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface
      of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The
      merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava,
      furious and profound, beneath the snowy brow of Ætna.

      We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these
      things; but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what
      he ought not to have seen, that he had just surprised the soul of
      his elder brother in one of its most secret altitudes, and that
      Claude must not be allowed to know it. Seeing that the archdeacon
      had fallen back into his former immobility, he withdrew his head
      very softly, and made some noise with his feet outside the door,
      like a person who has just arrived and is giving warning of his
      approach.

      “Enter!” cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his cell; “I
      was expecting you. I left the door unlocked expressly; enter
      Master Jacques!”

      The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very much
      embarrassed by such a visit in such a place, trembled in his
      arm-chair. “What! ’tis you, Jehan?”

      “’Tis a J, all the same,” said the scholar, with his ruddy,
      merry, and audacious face.

      Dom Claude’s visage had resumed its severe expression.

      “What are you come for?”

      “Brother,” replied the scholar, making an effort to assume a
      decent, pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his
      hands with an innocent air; “I am come to ask of you—”

      “What?”

      “A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in need,”
      Jehan did not dare to add aloud,—“and a little money of which I
      am in still greater need.” This last member of his phrase
      remained unuttered.

      “Monsieur,” said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, “I am greatly
      displeased with you.”

      “Alas!” sighed the scholar.

      Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, and
      gazed intently at Jehan.

      “I am very glad to see you.”

      This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself for a rough
      encounter.

      “Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. What
      affray was that in which you bruised with a cudgel a little
      vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?”

      “Oh!” said Jehan, “a vast thing that! A malicious page amused
      himself by splashing the scholars, by making his horse gallop
      through the mire!”

      “Who,” pursued the archdeacon, “is that Mahiet Fargel, whose gown
      you have torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_, saith the complaint.”

      “Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn’t that it?”

      “The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know
      Latin?”

      Jehan did not reply.

      “Yes,” pursued the priest shaking his head, “that is the state of
      learning and letters at the present day. The Latin tongue is
      hardly understood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so odious that ’tis
      accounted no ignorance in the most learned to skip a Greek word
      without reading it, and to say, ‘_Græcum est non legitur_.’”

      The scholar raised his eyes boldly. “Monsieur my brother, doth it
      please you that I shall explain in good French vernacular that
      Greek word which is written yonder on the wall?”

      “What word?”

      “ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.”

      A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their
      high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside
      the secret commotions of a volcano. The student hardly noticed
      it.

      “Well, Jehan,” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “What
      is the meaning of yonder word?”

      “FATE.”

      Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.

      “And that word below it, graved by the same hand, _Ἀνάγνεία_,
      signifies ‘impurity.’ You see that people do know their Greek.”

      And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had
      rendered him thoughtful.

      Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled
      child, judged that the moment was a favorable one in which to
      risk his request. Accordingly, he assumed an extremely soft tone
      and began,—

      “My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to look
      savagely upon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and blows
      distributed in a fair war to a pack of lads and brats, _quibusdam
      marmosetis_? You see, good Brother Claude, that people know their
      Latin.”

      But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on
      the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey
      cake. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.

      “What are you driving at?” he said dryly.

      “Well, in point of fact, this!” replied Jehan bravely, “I stand
      in need of money.”

      At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon’s visage assumed a
      thoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression.

      “You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe, putting
      the direct taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty houses in a
      block, yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven sous, six
      deniers, Parisian. It is one half more than in the time of the
      brothers Paclet, but it is not much.”

      “I need money,” said Jehan stoically.

      “You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one
      houses should be moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, and
      that we could redeem this homage only by paying the reverend
      bishop two marks of silver gilt of the price of six livres
      parisis. Now, these two marks I have not yet been able to get
      together. You know it.”

      “I know that I stand in need of money,” repeated Jehan for the
      third time.

      “And what are you going to do with it?”

      This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan’s
      eyes. He resumed his dainty, caressing air.

      “Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with any
      evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in the
      taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the streets of
      Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey, _cum meo
      laquasio_. No, brother, ’tis for a good work.”

      “What good work?” demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.

      “Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the infant of a
      poor Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three
      florins, and I should like to contribute to it.”

      “What are names of your two friends?”

      “Pierre l’Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison.”[37]

      “Hum,” said the archdeacon; “those are names as fit for a good
      work as a catapult for the chief altar.”

      It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of names for
      his two friends. He realized it too late.

      “And then,” pursued the sagacious Claude, “what sort of an
      infant’s outfit is it that is to cost three florins, and that for
      the child of a Haudriette? Since when have the Haudriette widows
      taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes?”

      Jehan broke the ice once more.

      “Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see Isabeau la
      Thierrye to-night; in the Val-d’ Amour!”

      “Impure wretch!” exclaimed the priest.

      “Ἀναγνεία!” said Jehan.

      This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice,
      perchance, from the wall of the cell, produced a singular effect
      on the archdeacon. He bit his lips and his wrath was drowned in a
      crimson flush.

      “Begone,” he said to Jehan. “I am expecting some one.”

      The scholar made one more effort.

      “Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy
      something to eat.”

      “How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?” demanded Dom
      Claude.

      “I have lost my copy books.

      “Where are you in your Latin humanities?”

      “My copy of Horace has been stolen.”

      “Where are you in Aristotle?”

      “I’ faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that
      the errors of heretics have always had for their lurking place
      the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I
      care not to tear my religion on his metaphysics.”

      “Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, “at the king’s last entry,
      there was a young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore
      embroidered on the housings of his horse this device, upon which
      I counsel you to meditate: _Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”

      The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his
      ear, his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien.

      All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of
      a wagtail.

      “So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to
      buy a crust at a baker’s shop?”

      “_Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”

      At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head
      in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an
      expression of despair: “Ὀτοτοτοτοτοῖ.”

      “What is the meaning of this, sir?” demanded Claude, surprised at
      this freak.

      “What indeed!” said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his
      impudent eyes into which he had just thrust his fists in order to
      communicate to them the redness of tears; “’tis Greek! ’tis an
      anapæst of Æschylus which expresses grief perfectly.”

      And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made
      the archdeacon smile. It was Claude’s fault, in fact: why had he
      so spoiled that child?

      “Oh! good Brother Claude,” resumed Jehan, emboldened by this
      smile, “look at my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the
      world more tragic than these boots, whose soles are hanging out
      their tongues?”

      The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.

      “I will send you some new boots, but no money.”

      “Only a poor little parisis, brother,” continued the suppliant
      Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in
      God, I will be a regular Pythagoras of science and virtue. But
      one little parisis, in mercy! Would you have famine bite me with
      its jaws which are gaping in front of me, blacker, deeper, and
      more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose of a monk?”

      Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: “_Qui non laborat_—”

      Jehan did not allow him to finish.

      “Well,” he exclaimed, “to the devil then! Long live joy! I will
      live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go
      and see the wenches.” And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the
      wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets.

      The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.

      “Jehan, you have no soul.”

      “In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of
      another something which has no name.”

      “Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways.”

      “Oh, come now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother
      and the alembics on the furnace, “everything is preposterous
      here, both ideas and bottles!”

      “Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know
      whither you are going?”

      “To the wine-shop,” said Jehan.

      “The wine-shop leads to the pillory.”

      “’Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that
      one, Diogenes would have found his man.”

      “The pillory leads to the gallows.”

      “The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the
      whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.”

      “The gallows leads to hell.”

      “’Tis a big fire.”

      “Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.”

      “The beginning will have been good.”

      At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the
      staircase.

      “Silence!” said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth,
      “here is Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added, in a low
      voice; “have a care never to speak of what you shall have seen or
      heard here. Hide yourself quickly under the furnace, and do not
      breathe.”

      The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to
      him.

      “By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing.”

      “Silence! I promise.”

      “You must give it to me.”

      “Take it, then!” said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse
      at him.

      Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.



      CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

      The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien.
      The first point which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the
      reader will readily surmise, had ensconced himself in his nook in
      such a manner as to enable him to see and hear everything at his
      good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garments and the
      visage of this new-corner. There was, nevertheless, some
      sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a
      cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness. He was very
      gray and wrinkled, and not far from his sixtieth year, his eyes
      blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip pendulous, and his
      hands large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is to
      say, no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had
      a nose very far from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled
      down in his hole, in despair at being obliged to pass an
      indefinite time in such an uncomfortable attitude, and in such
      bad company.

      The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive
      this personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on
      a stool near the door, and, after several moments of a silence
      which appeared to be a continuation of a preceding meditation, he
      said to him in a rather patronizing way, “Good day, Master
      Jacques.”

      “Greeting, master,” replied the man in black.

      There was in the two ways in which “Master Jacques” was
      pronounced on the one hand, and the “master” by preeminence on
      the other, the difference between monseigneur and monsieur,
      between _domine_ and _domne_. It was evidently the meeting of a
      teacher and a disciple.

      “Well!” resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence which
      Master Jacques took good care not to disturb, “how are you
      succeeding?”

      “Alas! master,” said the other, with a sad smile, “I am still
      seeking the stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of gold.”

      Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. “I am not talking to you
      of that, Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your
      magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you call him? the butler of
      the Court of Accounts? Does he confess his witchcraft? Have you
      been successful with the torture?”

      “Alas! no,” replied Master Jacques, still with his sad smile; “we
      have not that consolation. That man is a stone. We might have him
      boiled in the Marché aux Pourceaux, before he would say anything.
      Nevertheless, we are sparing nothing for the sake of getting at
      the truth; he is already thoroughly dislocated, we are applying
      all the herbs of Saint John’s day; as saith the old comedian
      Plautus,—

        ‘Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque,
        Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.’

      Nothing answers; that man is terrible. I am at my wit’s end over
      him.”

      “You have found nothing new in his house?”

      “I’ faith, yes,” said Master Jacques, fumbling in his pouch;
      “this parchment. There are words in it which we cannot
      comprehend. The criminal advocate, Monsieur Philippe Lheulier,
      nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he learned in that
      matter of the Jews of the Rue Kantersten, at Brussels.”

      So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. “Give it here,”
      said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this writing:
      “Pure magic, Master Jacques!” he exclaimed. “‘Emen-Hétan!’ ’Tis
      the cry of the vampires when they arrive at the witches’ sabbath.
      _Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!_ ’Tis the command which
      chains the devil in hell. _Hax, pax, max!_ that refers to
      medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques!
      you are procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts: this
      parchment is abominable.”

      “We will put the man to the torture once more. Here again,” added
      Master Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, “is something that
      we have found at Marc Cenaine’s house.”

      It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which
      covered Dom Claude’s furnace.

      “Ah!” said the archdeacon, “a crucible for alchemy.”

      “I will confess to you,” continued Master Jacques, with his timid
      and awkward smile, “that I have tried it over the furnace, but I
      have succeeded no better than with my own.”

      The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. “What has he
      engraved on his crucible? _Och! och!_ the word which expels
      fleas! That Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I verily believe that
      you will never make gold with this! ’Tis good to set in your
      bedroom in summer and that is all!”

      “Since we are talking about errors,” said the king’s procurator,
      “I have just been studying the figures on the portal below before
      ascending hither; is your reverence quite sure that the opening
      of the work of physics is there portrayed on the side towards the
      Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven nude figures which stand at
      the feet of Notre-Dame, that which has wings on his heels is
      Mercurius?”

      “Yes,” replied the priest; “’tis Augustin Nypho who writes it,
      that Italian doctor who had a bearded demon who acquainted him
      with all things. However, we will descend, and I will explain it
      to you with the text before us.”

      “Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, bowing to the earth. “By the
      way, I was on the point of forgetting. When doth it please you
      that I shall apprehend the little sorceress?”

      “What sorceress?”

      “That gypsy girl you know, who comes every day to dance on the
      church square, in spite of the official’s prohibition! She hath a
      demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which reads, which writes,
      which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to
      hang all Bohemia. The prosecution is all ready; ’twill soon be
      finished, I assure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that
      dancer! The handsomest black eyes! Two Egyptian carbuncles! When
      shall we begin?”

      The archdeacon was excessively pale.

      “I will tell you that hereafter,” he stammered, in a voice that
      was barely articulate; then he resumed with an effort, “Busy
      yourself with Marc Cenaine.”

      “Be at ease,” said Charmolue with a smile; “I’ll buckle him down
      again for you on the leather bed when I get home. But ’tis a
      devil of a man; he wearies even Pierrat Torterue himself, who
      hath hands larger than my own. As that good Plautus saith,—

         ‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’

      The torture of the wheel and axle! ’Tis the most effectual! He
      shall taste it!”

      Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to
      Charmolue,—

      “Master Pierrat—Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc
      Cenaine.”

      “Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like
      Mummol. What an idea to go to the witches’ sabbath! a butler of
      the Court of Accounts, who ought to know Charlemagne’s text;
      _Stryga vel masca!_—In the matter of the little girl,—Smelarda,
      as they call her,—I will await your orders. Ah! as we pass
      through the portal, you will explain to me also the meaning of
      the gardener painted in relief, which one sees as one enters the
      church. Is it not the Sower? Hé! master, of what are you
      thinking, pray?”

      Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to
      him. Charmolue, following the direction of his glance, perceived
      that it was fixed mechanically on the great spider’s web which
      draped the window. At that moment, a bewildered fly which was
      seeking the March sun, flung itself through the net and became
      entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous spider
      made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound,
      rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore
      antennæ, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head.
      “Poor fly!” said the king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical
      court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as
      though roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive
      violence.

      “Master Jacques,” he cried, “let fate take its course!” The
      procurator wheeled round in affright; it seemed to him that
      pincers of iron had clutched his arm. The priest’s eye was
      staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the horrible
      little group of the spider and the fly.

      “Oh, yes!” continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to
      proceed from the depths of his being, “behold here a symbol of
      all. She flies, she is joyous, she is just born; she seeks the
      spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but let her come in
      contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it,
      the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let
      things take their course, Master Jacques, ’tis fate! Alas!
      Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also! Thou
      wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other
      care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal
      truth; but in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window
      which opens upon the other world,—upon the world of brightness,
      intelligence, and science—blind fly! senseless, learned man! thou
      hast not perceived that subtle spider’s web, stretched by destiny
      betwixt the light and thee—thou hast flung thyself headlong into
      it, and now thou art struggling with head broken and mangled
      wings between the iron antennæ of fate! Master Jacques! Master
      Jacques! let the spider work its will!”

      “I assure you,” said Charmolue, who was gazing at him without
      comprehending him, “that I will not touch it. But release my arm,
      master, for pity’s sake! You have a hand like a pair of pincers.”

      The archdeacon did not hear him. “Oh, madman!” he went on,
      without removing his gaze from the window. “And even couldst thou
      have broken through that formidable web, with thy gnat’s wings,
      thou believest that thou couldst have reached the light? Alas!
      that pane of glass which is further on, that transparent
      obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, which
      separates all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have
      overcome it? Oh, vanity of science! how many wise men come flying
      from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems
      vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!”

      He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him
      back from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him.
      Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of reality by
      addressing to him this question: “Come, now, master, when will
      you come to aid me in making gold? I am impatient to succeed.”

      The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. “Master
      Jacques read Michel Psellus’ ‘_Dialogus de Energia et Operatione
      Dæmonum_.’ What we are doing is not wholly innocent.”

      “Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it,” said Jacques
      Charmolue. “But one must practise a bit of hermetic science when
      one is only procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court,
      at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only speak low.”

      At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication, which
      proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue’s uneasy
      ear.

      “What’s that?” he inquired.

      It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his
      hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust
      and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the
      whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast. As
      he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, and he
      accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and alarmed the
      procurator.

      “’Tis a cat of mine,” said the archdeacon, quickly, “who is
      regaling herself under there with a mouse.”

      This explanation satisfied Charmolue.

      “In fact, master,” he replied, with a respectful smile, “all
      great philosophers have their familiar animal. You know what
      Servius saith: ‘_Nullus enim locus sine genio est_,—for there is
      no place that hath not its spirit.’”

      But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on the part
      of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had some figures
      on the façade to study together, and the two quitted the cell, to
      the accompaniment of a great “ouf!” from the scholar, who began
      to seriously fear that his knee would acquire the imprint of his
      chin.



      CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN
      PRODUCE.

      “_Te Deum laudamus_!” exclaimed Master Jehan, creeping out from
      his hole, “the screech-owls have departed. Och! och! Hax! pax!
      max! fleas! mad dogs! the devil! I have had enough of their
      conversation! My head is humming like a bell tower. And mouldy
      cheese to boot! Come on! Let us descend, take the big brother’s
      purse and convert all these coins into bottles!”

      He cast a glance of tenderness and admiration into the interior
      of the precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed up his
      boots, dusted his poor half sleeves, all gray with ashes,
      whistled an air, indulged in a sportive pirouette, looked about
      to see whether there were not something more in the cell to take,
      gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet in glass
      which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, on
      Isabeau la Thierrye, finally pushed open the door which his
      brother had left unfastened, as a last indulgence, and which he,
      in his turn, left open as a last piece of malice, and descended
      the circular staircase, skipping like a bird.

      In the midst of the gloom of the spiral staircase, he elbowed
      something which drew aside with a growl; he took it for granted
      that it was Quasimodo, and it struck him as so droll that he
      descended the remainder of the staircase holding his sides with
      laughter. On emerging upon the Place, he laughed yet more
      heartily.

      He stamped his foot when he found himself on the ground once
      again. “Oh!” said he, “good and honorable pavement of Paris,
      cursed staircase, fit to put the angels of Jacob’s ladder out of
      breath! What was I thinking of to thrust myself into that stone
      gimlet which pierces the sky; all for the sake of eating bearded
      cheese, and looking at the bell-towers of Paris through a hole in
      the wall!”

      He advanced a few paces, and caught sight of the two screech
      owls, that is to say, Dom Claude and Master Jacques Charmolue,
      absorbed in contemplation before a carving on the façade. He
      approached them on tiptoe, and heard the archdeacon say in a low
      tone to Charmolue: “’Twas Guillaume de Paris who caused a Job to
      be carved upon this stone of the hue of lapis-lazuli, gilded on
      the edges. Job represents the philosopher’s stone, which must
      also be tried and martyrized in order to become perfect, as saith
      Raymond Lulle: _Sub conservatione formæ specificæ salva anima_.”

      “That makes no difference to me,” said Jehan, “’tis I who have
      the purse.”

      At that moment he heard a powerful and sonorous voice articulate
      behind him a formidable series of oaths. “_Sang Dieu!
      Ventre-Dieu! Bédieu! Corps de Dieu! Nombril de Belzébuth! Nom
      d’un pape! Corne et tonnerre_.”

      “Upon my soul!” exclaimed Jehan, “that can only be my friend,
      Captain Phœbus!”

      This name of Phœbus reached the ears of the archdeacon at the
      moment when he was explaining to the king’s procurator the dragon
      which is hiding its tail in a bath, from which issue smoke and
      the head of a king. Dom Claude started, interrupted himself and,
      to the great amazement of Charmolue, turned round and beheld his
      brother Jehan accosting a tall officer at the door of the
      Gondelaurier mansion.

      It was, in fact, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers. He was backed up
      against a corner of the house of his betrothed and swearing like
      a heathen.

      “By my faith! Captain Phœbus,” said Jehan, taking him by the
      hand, “you are cursing with admirable vigor.”

      “Horns and thunder!” replied the captain.

      “Horns and thunder yourself!” replied the student. “Come now,
      fair captain, whence comes this overflow of fine words?”

      “Pardon me, good comrade Jehan,” exclaimed Phœbus, shaking his
      hand, “a horse going at a gallop cannot halt short. Now, I was
      swearing at a hard gallop. I have just been with those prudes,
      and when I come forth, I always find my throat full of curses, I
      must spit them out or strangle, _ventre et tonnerre!_”

      “Will you come and drink?” asked the scholar.

      This proposition calmed the captain.

      “I’m willing, but I have no money.”

      “But I have!”

      “Bah! let’s see it!”

      Jehan spread out the purse before the captain’s eyes, with
      dignity and simplicity. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, who had
      abandoned the dumbfounded Charmolue where he stood, had
      approached them and halted a few paces distant, watching them
      without their noticing him, so deeply were they absorbed in
      contemplation of the purse.

      Phœbus exclaimed: “A purse in your pocket, Jehan! ’tis the moon
      in a bucket of water, one sees it there but ’tis not there. There
      is nothing but its shadow. Pardieu! let us wager that these are
      pebbles!”

      Jehan replied coldly: “Here are the pebbles wherewith I pave my
      fob!”

      And without adding another word, he emptied the purse on a
      neighboring post, with the air of a Roman saving his country.

      “True God!” muttered Phœbus, “targes, big-blanks, little blanks,
      mailles,[38] every two worth one of Tournay, farthings of Paris,
      real eagle liards! ’Tis dazzling!”

      Jehan remained dignified and immovable. Several liards had rolled
      into the mud; the captain in his enthusiasm stooped to pick them
      up. Jehan restrained him.

      “Fye, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!”

      Phœbus counted the coins, and turning towards Jehan with
      solemnity, “Do you know, Jehan, that there are three and twenty
      sous parisis! whom have you plundered to-night, in the Street
      Cut-Weazand?”

      Jehan flung back his blonde and curly head, and said,
      half-closing his eyes disdainfully,—

      “We have a brother who is an archdeacon and a fool.”

      “_Corne de Dieu!_” exclaimed Phœbus, “the worthy man!”

      “Let us go and drink,” said Jehan.

      “Where shall we go?” said Phœbus; “‘To Eve’s Apple.’”

      “No, captain, to ‘Ancient Science.’ An old woman sawing a basket
      handle;[39] ’tis a rebus, and I like that.”

      “A plague on rebuses, Jehan! the wine is better at ‘Eve’s Apple’;
      and then, beside the door there is a vine in the sun which cheers
      me while I am drinking.”

      “Well! here goes for Eve and her apple,” said the student, and
      taking Phœbus’s arm. “By the way, my dear captain, you just
      mentioned the Rue Coupe-Gueule[40] That is a very bad form of
      speech; people are no longer so barbarous. They say,
      Coupe-Gorge[41].”

      The two friends set out towards “Eve’s Apple.” It is unnecessary
      to mention that they had first gathered up the money, and that
      the archdeacon followed them.

      The archdeacon followed them, gloomy and haggard. Was this the
      Phœbus whose accursed name had been mingled with all his thoughts
      ever since his interview with Gringoire? He did not know it, but
      it was at least a Phœbus, and that magic name sufficed to make
      the archdeacon follow the two heedless comrades with the stealthy
      tread of a wolf, listening to their words and observing their
      slightest gestures with anxious attention. Moreover, nothing was
      easier than to hear everything they said, as they talked loudly,
      not in the least concerned that the passers-by were taken into
      their confidence. They talked of duels, wenches, wine pots, and
      folly.

      At the turning of a street, the sound of a tambourine reached
      them from a neighboring square. Dom Claude heard the officer say
      to the scholar,—

      “Thunder! Let us hasten our steps!”

      “Why, Phœbus?”

      “I’m afraid lest the Bohemian should see me.”

      “What Bohemian?”

      “The little girl with the goat.”

      “La Smeralda?”

      “That’s it, Jehan. I always forget her devil of a name. Let us
      make haste, she will recognize me. I don’t want to have that girl
      accost me in the street.”

      “Do you know her, Phœbus?”

      Here the archdeacon saw Phœbus sneer, bend down to Jehan’s ear,
      and say a few words to him in a low voice; then Phœbus burst into
      a laugh, and shook his head with a triumphant air.

      “Truly?” said Jehan.

      “Upon my soul!” said Phœbus.

      “This evening?”

      “This evening.”

      “Are you sure that she will come?”

      “Are you a fool, Jehan? Does one doubt such things?”

      “Captain Phœbus, you are a happy gendarme!”

      The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His teeth
      chattered; a visible shiver ran through his whole body. He halted
      for a moment, leaned against a post like a drunken man, then
      followed the two merry knaves.

      At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed
      their conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their
      lungs the ancient refrain,—

         Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux
         Se font pendre comme des veaux[42].




      CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.

      The illustrious wine shop of “Eve’s Apple” was situated in the
      University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue
      de la Bâtonnier. It was a very spacious and very low hall on the
      ground floor, with a vaulted ceiling whose central spring rested
      upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow; tables everywhere,
      shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, always a large number
      of drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a window on the street, a vine
      at the door, and over the door a flaring piece of sheet-iron,
      painted with an apple and a woman, rusted by the rain and turning
      with the wind on an iron pin. This species of weather-vane which
      looked upon the pavement was the signboard.

      Night was falling; the square was dark; the wine-shop, full of
      candles, flamed afar like a forge in the gloom; the noise of
      glasses and feasting, of oaths and quarrels, which escaped
      through the broken panes, was audible. Through the mist which the
      warmth of the room spread over the window in front, a hundred
      confused figures could be seen swarming, and from time to time a
      burst of noisy laughter broke forth from it. The passers-by who
      were going about their business, slipped past this tumultuous
      window without glancing at it. Only at intervals did some little
      ragged boy raise himself on tiptoe as far as the ledge, and hurl
      into the drinking-shop, that ancient, jeering hoot, with which
      drunken men were then pursued: “Aux Houls, saouls, saouls,
      saouls!”

      Nevertheless, one man paced imperturbably back and forth in front
      of the tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no further
      from it than a pikeman from his sentry-box. He was enveloped in a
      mantle to his very nose. This mantle he had just purchased of the
      old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the “Eve’s Apple,” no doubt
      to protect himself from the cold of the March evening, possibly
      also, to conceal his costume. From time to time he paused in
      front of the dim window with its leaden lattice, listened,
      looked, and stamped his foot.

      At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was what he
      appeared to be waiting for. Two boon companions came forth. The
      ray of light which escaped from the door crimsoned for a moment
      their jovial faces.

      The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the watch
      under a porch on the other side of the street.

      “_Corne et tonnerre!_” said one of the comrades. “Seven o’clock
      is on the point of striking. ’Tis the hour of my appointed
      meeting.”

      “I tell you,” repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, “that
      I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, _indignus qui
      inter mala verba habitat_. I have a lodging in the Rue
      Jean-Pain-Mollet, _in vico Johannis Pain-Mollet_. You are more
      horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. Every one knows
      that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but
      you have a nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the
      hospital.”

      “Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other.

      The other replied staggering, “It pleases you to say so, Phœbus;
      but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.”

      The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave
      friends, the captain and the scholar. It appears that the man who
      was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, for he
      slowly followed all the zigzags that the scholar caused the
      captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had retained
      all his self-possession. By listening to them attentively, the
      man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the following
      interesting conversation,—

      “_Corbacque!_ Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know
      that I must leave you. Here it is seven o’clock. I have an
      appointment with a woman.”

      “Leave me then! I see stars and lances of fire. You are like the
      Château de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter.”

      “By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too
      much rabidness. By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?”

      “Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher’s shop,
      _parva boucheria_.”

      “Jehan! my friend Jehan! You know that I made an appointment with
      that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can
      only take her to the Falourdel’s, the old crone of the bridge,
      and that I must pay for a chamber. The old witch with a white
      moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity’s sake! Have we
      drunk up the whole of the curé’s purse? Have you not a single
      parisis left?”

      “The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just
      and savory condiment for the table.”

      “Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense! Tell me,
      Jehan of the devil! have you any money left? Give it to me,
      _bédieu!_ or I will search you, were you as leprous as Job, and
      as scabby as Cæsar!”

      “Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the
      Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie.”

      “Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue
      Galiache is good, very good. But in the name of heaven collect
      your wits. I must have a sou parisis, and the appointment is for
      seven o’clock.”

      “Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain,—

         “Quand les rats mangeront les cas,
         Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras;
         Quand la mer, qui est grande et lée
         Sera à la Saint-Jean gelée,
         On verra, par-dessus la glace,
         Sortir ceux d’Arras de leur place.”[43]

      “Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the
      entrails of your mother!” exclaimed Phœbus, and he gave the
      drunken scholar a rough push; the latter slipped against the
      wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Augustus. A
      remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a
      drinker, prompted Phœbus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of
      those pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at
      the corner of all the street posts of Paris, and which the rich
      blight with the name of “a rubbish-heap.” The captain adjusted
      Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the
      very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass.
      Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain’s
      heart. “So much the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its
      passage!” he said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off.

      The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted
      for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by
      indecision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he also strode off in
      pursuit of the captain.

      We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky,
      and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader.

      On emerging into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phœbus
      perceived that some one was following him. On glancing sideways
      by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow crawling after him along
      the walls. He halted, it halted; he resumed his march, it resumed
      its march. This disturbed him not overmuch. “Ah, bah!” he said to
      himself, “I have not a sou.”

      He paused in front of the College d’Autun. It was at this college
      that he had sketched out what he called his studies, and, through
      a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never
      passed the façade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal
      Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the
      affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of
      Horace, _Olim truncus eram ficulnus_. He had done this with so
      much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, _Eduensis
      episcopus_, had become almost effaced. Therefore, he halted
      before the statue according to his wont. The street was utterly
      deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder
      knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching
      him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe
      that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it
      halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal
      Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phœbus two intent eyes, full
      of that vague light which issues in the night time from the
      pupils of a cat.

      The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a
      highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue,
      this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in
      circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler
      about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his
      memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and
      finally broke the silence with a forced laugh.

      “Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce
      upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son
      of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your hand near by here.
      In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true
      cross set in silver.”

      The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and
      descended upon the arm of Phœbus with the grip of an eagle’s
      talon; at the same time the shadow spoke,—

      “Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!”

      “What, the devil!” said Phœbus, “you know my name!”

      “I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle,
      with his sepulchral voice. “You have a _rendezvous_ this
      evening.”

      “Yes,” replied Phœbus in amazement.

      “At seven o’clock.”

      “In a quarter of an hour.”

      “At la Falourdel’s.”

      “Precisely.”

      “The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”

      “Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.”

      “Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”

      “_Confiteor_,—I confess—.”

      “Who is called—?”

      “La Smeralda,” said Phœbus, gayly. All his heedlessness had
      gradually returned.

      At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phœbus in a
      fury.

      “Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, thou liest!”

      Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s
      inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he
      disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air
      with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the
      presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the
      cloak,—any one who could have beheld this would have been
      frightened. There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and
      the statue.

      “Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which
      rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers! Thou wilt not dare
      repeat it.”

      “Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly.

      The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom,
      superstitions,—he had forgotten all at that moment. He no longer
      beheld anything but a man, and an insult.

      “Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage.
      He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear
      makes a man tremble: “Here! On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords!
      Blood on the pavement!”

      But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary on
      guard and ready to parry,—

      “Captain Phœbus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness,
      “you forget your appointment.”

      The rages of men like Phœbus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is
      calmed by a drop of cold water. This simple remark caused the
      sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.

      “Captain,” pursued the man, “to-morrow, the day after to-morrow,
      a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut
      your throat; but go first to your rendezvous.”

      “In sooth,” said Phœbus, as though seeking to capitulate with
      himself, “these are two charming things to be encountered in a
      rendezvous,—a sword and a wench; but I do not see why I should
      miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have both.”

      He replaced his sword in its scabbard.

      “Go to your rendezvous,” said the man.

      “Monsieur,” replied Phœbus with some embarrassment, “many thanks
      for your courtesy. In fact, there will be ample time to-morrow
      for us to chop up father Adam’s doublet into slashes and
      buttonholes. I am obliged to you for allowing me to pass one more
      agreeable quarter of an hour. I certainly did hope to put you in
      the gutter, and still arrive in time for the fair one, especially
      as it has a better appearance to make the women wait a little in
      such cases. But you strike me as having the air of a gallant man,
      and it is safer to defer our affair until to-morrow. So I will
      betake myself to my rendezvous; it is for seven o’clock, as you
      know.” Here Phœbus scratched his ear. “Ah. _Corne Dieu!_ I had
      forgotten! I haven’t a sou to discharge the price of the garret,
      and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She
      distrusts me.”

      “Here is the wherewithal to pay.”

      Phœbus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip into his a large piece
      of money. He could not refrain from taking the money and pressing
      the hand.

      “_Vrai Dieu!_” he exclaimed, “you are a good fellow!”

      “One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I have been
      wrong and that you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some
      corner whence I can see whether this woman is really the one
      whose name you uttered.”

      “Oh!” replied Phœbus, “’tis all one to me. We will take, the
      Sainte-Marthe chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel
      hard by.”

      “Come then,” said the shadow.

      “At your service,” said the captain, “I know not whether you are
      Messer Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this
      evening; to-morrow I will repay you all my debts, both of purse
      and sword.”

      They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few
      minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that they were
      on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses.

      “I will first show you the way,” said Phœbus to his companion, “I
      will then go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near
      the Petit-Châtelet.”

      His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they
      had been walking side by side. Phœbus halted before a low door,
      and knocked roughly; a light made its appearance through the
      cracks of the door.

      “Who is there?” cried a toothless voice.

      “_Corps-Dieu! Tête-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu!_” replied the captain.

      The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-comers to see an
      old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman
      was bent double, clad in tatters, with a shaking head, pierced
      with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish clout; wrinkled
      everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips retreated under
      her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which
      gave her the whiskered look of a cat.

      The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there
      were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled
      chimney-piece, spiders’ webs in all the corners, in the middle a
      staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty child among
      the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, a wooden
      ladder, which ended in a trapdoor in the ceiling.

      On entering this lair, Phœbus’s mysterious companion raised his
      mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a
      Saracen, hastened to “make the sun shine in a crown” as saith our
      admirable Régnier.

      “The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he.

      The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown
      in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the black mantle
      had given to Phœbus. While her back was turned, the bushy-headed
      and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes, adroitly
      approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in its place
      a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.

      The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called
      them, to follow her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them.
      On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on a coffer,
      and, Phœbus, like a frequent visitor of the house, opened a door
      which opened on a dark hole. “Enter here, my dear fellow,” he
      said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a
      word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phœbus bolt it,
      and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag.
      The light had disappeared.



      CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.

      Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent
      than Phœbus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk
      than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several
      moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him.
      It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at
      the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A
      vertical section of this kennel, as Phœbus had so justly styled
      it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither
      window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from
      standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust,
      and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire;
      rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit
      of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose coolness
      afforded him some relief.

      What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the
      archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.

      In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phœbus,
      Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by
      him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps
      dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these
      images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed
      in his mind a horrible group.

      He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that
      he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking
      of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The
      trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a
      tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put
      his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in
      the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to
      emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phœbus, twirling
      his moustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful
      figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld her rise from below like
      a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his
      eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled and whirled
      around him; he no longer saw nor heard anything.

      When he recovered himself, Phœbus and Esmeralda were alone seated
      on the wooden coffer beside the lamp which made these two
      youthful figures and a miserable pallet at the end of the attic
      stand out plainly before the archdeacon’s eyes.

      Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a
      spider’s web upon which rain has fallen, allowed a view, through
      its rent meshes, of a corner of the sky, and the moon lying far
      away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds.

      The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her long,
      drooping lashes shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, to whom
      she dared not lift her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with
      a charmingly unconscious gesture, she traced with the tip of her
      finger incoherent lines on the bench, and watched her finger. Her
      foot was not visible. The little goat was nestling upon it.

      The captain was very gallantly clad; he had tufts of embroidery
      at his neck and wrists; a great elegance at that day.

      It was not without difficulty that Dom Claude managed to hear
      what they were saying, through the humming of the blood, which
      was boiling in his temples.

      (A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace affair. It
      is a perpetual “I love you.” A musical phrase which is very
      insipid and very bald for indifferent listeners, when it is not
      ornamented with some _fioriture;_ but Claude was not an
      indifferent listener.)

      “Oh!” said the young girl, without raising her eyes, “do not
      despise me, monseigneur Phœbus. I feel that what I am doing is
      not right.”

      “Despise you, my pretty child!” replied the officer with an air
      of superior and distinguished gallantry, “despise you,
      _tête-Dieu!_ and why?”

      “For having followed you!”

      “On that point, my beauty, we don’t agree. I ought not to despise
      you, but to hate you.”

      The young girl looked at him in affright: “Hate me! what have I
      done?”

      “For having required so much urging.”

      “Alas!” said she, “’tis because I am breaking a vow. I shall not
      find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue. But what
      matters it? What need have I of father or mother now?”

      So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, moist
      with joy and tenderness.

      “Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phœbus. La
      Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear dropped from
      her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said,—“Oh! monseigneur, I
      love you.”

      Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue surrounded the
      young girl, that Phœbus did not feel completely at his ease
      beside her. But this remark emboldened him: “You love me!” he
      said with rapture, and he threw his arm round the gypsy’s waist.
      He had only been waiting for this opportunity.

      The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the
      point of a poniard which he wore concealed in his breast.

      “Phœbus,” continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her waist from
      the captain’s tenacious hands, “You are good, you are generous,
      you are handsome; you saved me, me who am only a poor child lost
      in Bohemia. I had long been dreaming of an officer who should
      save my life. ’Twas of you that I was dreaming, before I knew
      you, my Phœbus; the officer of my dream had a beautiful uniform
      like yours, a grand look, a sword; your name is Phœbus; ’tis a
      beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your
      sword, Phœbus, that I may see it.”

      “Child!” said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword with a
      smile.

      The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade; examined the cipher on
      the guard with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, saying,—

      “You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.” Phœbus
      again profited by the opportunity to impress upon her beautiful
      bent neck a kiss which made the young girl straighten herself up
      as scarlet as a poppy. The priest gnashed his teeth over it in
      the dark.

      “Phœbus,” resumed the gypsy, “let me talk to you. Pray walk a
      little, that I may see you at full height, and that I may hear
      your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”

      The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of
      satisfaction,—

      “What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, have you seen me
      in my archer’s ceremonial doublet?”

      “Alas! no,” she replied.

      “It is very handsome!”

      Phœbus returned and seated himself beside her, but much closer
      than before.

      “Listen, my dear—”

      The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty hand on
      his mouth, with a childish mirth and grace and gayety.

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

      “Do I love thee, angel of my life!” exclaimed the captain, half
      kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for
      thee. I love thee, and I have never loved any one but thee.”

      The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many
      similar conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath,
      without committing a single mistake. At this passionate
      declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served
      for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.

      “Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment when one should die!”

      Phœbus found “the moment” favorable for robbing her of another
      kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook.
      “Die!” exclaimed the amorous captain, “What are you saying, my
      lovely angel? ’Tis a time for living, or Jupiter is only a scamp!
      Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing! _Corne-de-bœuf_, what a
      jest! It is not that. Listen, my dear Similar, Esmenarda—Pardon!
      you have so prodigiously Saracen a name that I never can get it
      straight. ’Tis a thicket which stops me short.”

      “Good heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought my name pretty
      because of its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would
      that I were called Goton.”

      “Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! ’tis a name
      to which one must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know
      it by heart, all will go smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar;
      I adore you passionately. I love you so that ’tis simply
      miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over it—”

      The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who?”

      “What matters that to us?” said Phœbus; “do you love me?”

      “Oh!”—said she.

      “Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the
      great devil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest
      woman in the world. We will have a pretty little house somewhere.
      I will make my archers parade before your windows. They are all
      mounted, and set at defiance those of Captain Mignon. There are
      _voulgiers, cranequiniers_ and hand _couleveiniers_[44]. I will
      take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the storehouse
      of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white
      harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners
      of the trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber
      of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aides of the
      mint; a devilish fine array, in short! I will conduct you to see
      the lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. All women
      love that.”

      For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming
      thoughts, was dreaming to the sound of his voice, without
      listening to the sense of his words.

      “Oh! how happy you will be!” continued the captain, and at the
      same time he gently unbuckled the gypsy’s girdle.

      “What are you doing?” she said quickly. This “act of violence”
      had roused her from her revery.

      “Nothing,” replied Phœbus, “I was only saying that you must
      abandon all this garb of folly, and the street corner when you
      are with me.”

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

      She became pensive and silent once more.

      The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist
      without resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child’s
      corsage, and disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the
      panting priest beheld the gypsy’s beautiful shoulder emerge from
      the gauze, as round and brown as the moon rising through the
      mists of the horizon.

      The young girl allowed Phœbus to have his way. She did not appear
      to perceive it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.

      Suddenly she turned towards him,—

      “Phœbus,” she said, with an expression of infinite love,
      “instruct me in thy religion.”

      “My religion!” exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, “I
      instruct you in my religion! _Corne et tonnerre!_ What do you
      want with my religion?”

      “In order that we may be married,” she replied.

      The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and
      disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.

      “Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”

      The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her
      breast.

      “My beautiful love,” resumed Phœbus, tenderly, “what nonsense is
      this? A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less
      loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!”

      While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely
      near the gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around
      her supple and delicate waist, his eye flashed more and more, and
      everything announced that Monsieur Phœbus was on the verge of one
      of those moments when Jupiter himself commits so many follies
      that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.

      But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly
      rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for the passage of
      his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest,
      hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was
      quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love
      and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given over in
      disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in
      his-veins; his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all
      those loosened pins. Any one who could, at that moment, have seen
      the face of the unhappy man glued to the wormeaten bars, would
      have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the
      depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye
      shone like a candle through the cracks of the door.

      All at once, Phœbus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy’s
      gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy,
      awoke with a start; she recoiled hastily from the enterprising
      officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck and shoulders,
      red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful
      arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame
      which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and
      motionless, one would have declared her a statue of Modesty. Her
      eyes were lowered.

      But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet
      which she wore about her neck.

      “What is that?” he said, seizing this pretext to approach once
      more the beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.

      “Don’t touch it!” she replied, quickly, “’tis my guardian. It
      will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so.
      Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine! My mother! My poor mother!
      My mother! Where art thou? Come to my rescue! Have pity, Monsieur
      Phœbus, give me back my gorgerette!”

      Phœbus retreated amid said in a cold tone,—

      “Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!”

      “I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same
      time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside
      her. “I do not love thee, my Phœbus? What art thou saying, wicked
      man, to break my heart? Oh, take me! take all! do what you will
      with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet! What matters
      to me my mother! ’Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee!
      Phœbus, my beloved Phœbus, dost thou see me? ’Tis I. Look at me;
      ’tis the little one whom thou wilt surely not repulse, who comes,
      who comes herself to seek thee. My soul, my life, my body, my
      person, all is one thing—which is thine, my captain. Well, no! We
      will not marry, since that displeases thee; and then, what am I?
      a miserable girl of the gutters; whilst thou, my Phœbus, art a
      gentleman. A fine thing, truly! A dancer wed an officer! I was
      mad. No, Phœbus, no; I will be thy mistress, thy amusement, thy
      pleasure, when thou wilt; a girl who shall belong to thee. I was
      only made for that, soiled, despised, dishonored, but what
      matters it?—beloved. I shall be the proudest and the most joyous
      of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phœbus, when I am no
      longer good to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still.
      Others will embroider scarfs for you; ’tis I, the servant, who
      will care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your
      doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will have that pity, will
      you not, Phœbus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phœbus, all this
      belongs to thee, only love me! We gypsies need only air and
      love.”

      So saying, she threw her arms round the officer’s neck; she
      looked up at him, supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and all
      in tears. Her delicate neck rubbed against his cloth doublet with
      its rough embroideries. She writhed on her knees, her beautiful
      body half naked. The intoxicated captain pressed his ardent lips
      to those lovely African shoulders. The young girl, her eyes bent
      on the ceiling, as she leaned backwards, quivered, all
      palpitating, beneath this kiss.

      All at once, above Phœbus’s head she beheld another head; a
      green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near
      this face was a hand grasping a poniard. It was the face and hand
      of the priest; he had broken the door and he was there. Phœbus
      could not see him. The young girl remained motionless, frozen
      with terror, dumb, beneath that terrible apparition, like a dove
      which should raise its head at the moment when the hawk is gazing
      into her nest with its round eyes.

      She could not even utter a cry. She saw the poniard descend upon
      Phœbus, and rise again, reeking.

      “Maledictions!” said the captain, and fell.

      She fainted.

      At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in
      her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted upon her
      lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the
      executioner.

      When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of
      the watch they were carrying away the captain, bathed in his
      blood the priest had disappeared; the window at the back of the
      room which opened on the river was wide open; they picked up a
      cloak which they supposed to belong to the officer and she heard
      them saying around her,

      “’Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”



      BOOK EIGHTH.



      CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

      Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering mortal
      anxiety. For a whole month they had not known what had become of
      la Esmeralda, which greatly pained the Duke of Egypt and his
      friends the vagabonds, nor what had become of the goat, which
      redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One evening the gypsy had
      disappeared, and since that time had given no signs of life. All
      search had proved fruitless. Some tormenting bootblacks had told
      Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont
      Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after
      the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and
      besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his
      wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the
      unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the
      amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the
      resistance of that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he
      was at ease on that score.

      Still he could not understand this disappearance. It was a
      profound sorrow. He would have grown thin over it, had that been
      possible. He had forgotten everything, even his literary tastes,
      even his great work, _De figuris regularibus et irregularibus_,
      which it was his intention to have printed with the first money
      which he should procure (for he had raved over printing, ever
      since he had seen the “Didascalon” of Hugues de Saint Victor,
      printed with the celebrated characters of Vindelin de Spire).

      One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle,
      he perceived a considerable crowd at one of the gates of the
      Palais de Justice.

      “What is this?” he inquired of a young man who was coming out.

      “I know not, sir,” replied the young man. “’Tis said that they
      are trying a woman who hath assassinated a gendarme. It appears
      that there is sorcery at the bottom of it, the archbishop and the
      official have intervened in the case, and my brother, who is the
      archdeacon of Josas, can think of nothing else. Now, I wished to
      speak with him, but I have not been able to reach him because of
      the throng, which vexes me greatly, as I stand in need of money.”

      “Alas! sir,” said Gringoire, “I would that I could lend you some,
      but, my breeches are worn to holes, and ’tis not crowns which
      have done it.”

      He dared not tell the young man that he was acquainted with his
      brother the archdeacon, to whom he had not returned after the
      scene in the church; a negligence which embarrassed him.

      The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow the
      crowd which was mounting the staircase of the great chamber. In
      his opinion, there was nothing like the spectacle of a criminal
      process for dissipating melancholy, so exhilaratingly stupid are
      judges as a rule. The populace which he had joined walked and
      elbowed in silence. After a slow and tiresome march through a
      long, gloomy corridor, which wound through the court-house like
      the intestinal canal of the ancient edifice, he arrived near a
      low door, opening upon a hall which his lofty stature permitted
      him to survey with a glance over the waving heads of the rabble.

      The hall was vast and gloomy, which latter fact made it appear
      still more spacious. The day was declining; the long, pointed
      windows permitted only a pale ray of light to enter, which was
      extinguished before it reached the vaulted ceiling, an enormous
      trellis-work of sculptured beams, whose thousand figures seemed
      to move confusedly in the shadows, many candles were already
      lighted here and there on tables, and beaming on the heads of
      clerks buried in masses of documents. The anterior portion of the
      hall was occupied by the crowd; on the right and left were
      magistrates and tables; at the end, upon a platform, a number of
      judges, whose rear rank sank into the shadows, sinister and
      motionless faces. The walls were sown with innumerable
      fleurs-de-lis. A large figure of Christ might be vaguely descried
      above the judges, and everywhere there were pikes and halberds,
      upon whose points the reflection of the candles placed tips of
      fire.

      “Monsieur,” Gringoire inquired of one of his neighbors, “who are
      all those persons ranged yonder, like prelates in council?”

      “Monsieur,” replied the neighbor, “those on the right are the
      counsellors of the grand chamber; those on the left, the
      councillors of inquiry; the masters in black gowns, the messires
      in red.”

      “Who is that big red fellow, yonder above them, who is sweating?”
      pursued Gringoire.

      “It is monsieur the president.”

      “And those sheep behind him?” continued Gringoire, who as we have
      seen, did not love the magistracy, which arose, possibly, from
      the grudge which he cherished against the Palais de Justice since
      his dramatic misadventure.

      “They are messieurs the masters of requests of the king’s
      household.”

      “And that boar in front of him?”

      “He is monsieur the clerk of the Court of Parliament.”

      “And that crocodile on the right?”

      “Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king.”

      “And that big, black tom-cat on the left?”

      “Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator of the king in the
      Ecclesiastical Court, with the gentlemen of the officialty.”

      “Come now, monsieur,” said Gringoire, “pray what are all those
      fine fellows doing yonder?”

      “They are judging.”

      “Judging whom? I do not see the accused.”

      “’Tis a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She has her back turned
      to us, and she is hidden from us by the crowd. Stay, yonder she
      is, where you see a group of partisans.”

      “Who is the woman?” asked Gringoire. “Do you know her name?”

      “No, monsieur, I have but just arrived. I merely assume that
      there is some sorcery about it, since the official is present at
      the trial.”

      “Come!” said our philosopher, “we are going to see all these
      magistrates devour human flesh. ’Tis as good a spectacle as any
      other.”

      “Monsieur,” remarked his neighbor, “think you not, that Master
      Jacques Charmolue has a very sweet air?”

      “Hum!” replied Gringoire. “I distrust a sweetness which hath
      pinched nostrils and thin lips.”

      Here the bystanders imposed silence upon the two chatterers. They
      were listening to an important deposition.

      “Messeigneurs,” said an old woman in the middle of the hall,
      whose form was so concealed beneath her garments that one would
      have pronounced her a walking heap of rags; “Messeigneurs, the
      thing is as true as that I am la Falourdel, established these
      forty years at the Pont Saint Michel, and paying regularly my
      rents, lord’s dues, and quit rents; at the gate opposite the
      house of Tassin-Caillart, the dyer, which is on the side up the
      river—a poor old woman now, but a pretty maid in former days, my
      lords. Some one said to me lately, ‘La Falourdel, don’t use your
      spinning-wheel too much in the evening; the devil is fond of
      combing the distaffs of old women with his horns. ’Tis certain
      that the surly monk who was round about the temple last year, now
      prowls in the City. Take care, La Falourdel, that he doth not
      knock at your door.’ One evening I was spinning on my wheel,
      there comes a knock at my door; I ask who it is. They swear. I
      open. Two men enter. A man in black and a handsome officer. Of
      the black man nothing could be seen but his eyes, two coals of
      fire. All the rest was hat and cloak. They say to me,—‘The
      Sainte-Marthe chamber.’—’Tis my upper chamber, my lords, my
      cleanest. They give me a crown. I put the crown in my drawer, and
      I say: ‘This shall go to buy tripe at the slaughter-house of la
      Gloriette to-morrow.’ We go up stairs. On arriving at the upper
      chamber, and while my back is turned, the black man disappears.
      That dazed me a bit. The officer, who was as handsome as a great
      lord, goes down stairs again with me. He goes out. In about the
      time it takes to spin a quarter of a handful of flax, he returns
      with a beautiful young girl, a doll who would have shone like the
      sun had she been coiffed. She had with her a goat; a big
      billy-goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That
      set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the goat! I
      love not those beasts, they have a beard and horns. They are so
      like a man. And then, they smack of the witches, sabbath.
      However, I say nothing. I had the crown. That is right, is it
      not, Monsieur Judge? I show the captain and the wench to the
      upper chamber, and I leave them alone; that is to say, with the
      goat. I go down and set to spinning again—I must inform you that
      my house has a ground floor and story above. I know not why I
      fell to thinking of the surly monk whom the goat had put into my
      head again, and then the beautiful girl was rather strangely
      decked out. All at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something
      falls on the floor and the window opens. I run to mine which is
      beneath it, and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and
      fall into the water. It was a phantom clad like a priest. It was
      a moonlight night. I saw him quite plainly. He was swimming in
      the direction of the city. Then, all of a tremble, I call the
      watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not knowing just at
      the first moment what the matter was, and being merry, they beat
      me. I explain to them. We go up stairs, and what do we find? my
      poor chamber all blood, the captain stretched out at full length
      with a dagger in his neck, the girl pretending to be dead, and
      the goat all in a fright. ‘Pretty work!’ I say, ‘I shall have to
      wash that floor for more than a fortnight. It will have to be
      scraped; it will be a terrible job.’ They carried off the
      officer, poor young man, and the wench with her bosom all bare.
      But wait, the worst is that on the next day, when I wanted to
      take the crown to buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in its place.”

      The old woman ceased. A murmur of horror ran through the
      audience.

      “That phantom, that goat,—all smacks of magic,” said one of
      Gringoire’s neighbors.

      “And that dry leaf!” added another.

      “No doubt about it,” joined in a third, “she is a witch who has
      dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering
      officers.”

      Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as
      altogether alarming and probable.

      “Goody Falourdel,” said the president majestically, “have you
      nothing more to communicate to the court?”

      “No, monseigneur,” replied the crone, “except that the report has
      described my house as a hovel and stinking; which is an
      outrageous fashion of speaking. The houses on the bridge are not
      imposing, because there are such multitudes of people; but,
      nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are
      wealthy folk, and married to very proper and handsome women.”

      The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile rose,—

      “Silence!” said he. “I pray the gentlemen not to lose sight of
      the fact that a dagger was found on the person of the accused.
      Goody Falourdel, have you brought that leaf into which the crown
      which the demon gave you was transformed?

      “Yes, monseigneur,” she replied; “I found it again. Here it is.”

      A bailiff handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a
      doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, who
      gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical
      court, and thus it made the circuit of the hall.

      “It is a birch leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmolue. “A fresh
      proof of magic.”

      A counsellor took up the word.

      “Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black
      man, whom you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the
      Seine, with his priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the
      two handed you the crown?” The old woman pondered for a moment
      and then said,—

      “The officer.”

      A murmur ran through the crowd.

      “Ah!” thought Gringoire, “this makes some doubt in my mind.”

      But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king,
      interposed once more.

      “I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken
      at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he
      had a vague idea when the black man accosted him that the latter
      might be the surly monk, added that the phantom had pressed him
      eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the accused; and upon
      his, the captain’s, remarking that he had no money, he had given
      him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence,
      that crown is the money of hell.”

      This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts
      of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience.

      “You have the documents, gentlemen,” added the king’s advocate,
      as he took his seat; “you can consult the testimony of Phœbus de
      Châteaupers.”

      At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the
      throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda.

      She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and
      spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her
      hollow eyes were terrible. Alas!

      “Phœbus!” she said, in bewilderment; “where is he? O
      messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether
      he still lives?”

      “Hold your tongue, woman,” replied the president, “that is no
      affair of ours.”

      “Oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me if he is alive!” she repeated,
      clasping her beautiful emaciated hands; and the sound of her
      chains in contact with her dress, was heard.

      “Well!” said the king’s advocate roughly, “he is dying. Are you
      satisfied?”

      The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal’s seat, speechless,
      tearless, white as a wax figure.

      The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap
      and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand.

      “Bailiff, bring in the second accused.”

      All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the
      great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with
      horns and hoofs of gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on
      the threshold, stretching out its neck as though, perched on the
      summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an immense horizon.
      Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over the
      table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees;
      then it rolled gracefully on its mistress’s feet, soliciting a
      word or a caress; but the accused remained motionless, and poor
      Djali himself obtained not a glance.

      “Eh, why—’tis my villanous beast,” said old Falourdel, “I
      recognize the two perfectly!”

      Jacques Charmolue interfered.

      “If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of
      the goat.” He was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more
      simple in those days than a suit of sorcery instituted against an
      animal. We find, among others in the accounts of the provost’s
      office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the expenses of the
      trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, “executed for their
      demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens
      in which to place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood
      purchased at the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the
      bread, the last repast of the victim fraternally shared by the
      executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and food for the
      sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even
      further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of
      Louis le Débonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms
      which presume to appear in the air.

      Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: “If the demon which
      possesses this goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms,
      persists in its deeds of witchcraft, if it alarms the court with
      them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in requisition
      against it the gallows or the stake. Gringoire broke out into a
      cold perspiration. Charmolue took from the table the gypsy’s
      tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner,
      asked the latter,—

      “What o’clock is it?”

      The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded
      hoof, and struck seven blows.

      It was, in fact, seven o’clock. A movement of terror ran through
      the crowd.

      Gringoire could not endure it.

      “He is destroying himself!” he cried aloud; “You see well that he
      does not know what he is doing.”

      “Silence among the louts at the end of the hall!” said the
      bailiff sharply.

      Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manœuvres of the
      tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks connected
      with the date of the day, the month of the year, etc., which the
      reader has already witnessed. And, by virtue of an optical
      illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same spectators
      who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square
      Djali’s innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of
      the Palais de Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil.

      It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied
      upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, which
      Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract with his
      hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of _Phœbus_. The
      witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared
      irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy,
      that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by
      with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire.

      However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali’s graceful
      evolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed
      imprecations of the spectators any longer reached her mind.

      In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her
      unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice,—

      “Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of
      witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat implicated
      in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth of March last,
      murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness, by
      the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the
      king’s arches of the watch, Phœbus de Châteaupers. Do you persist
      in denying it?”

      “Horror!” exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands.
      “My Phœbus! Oh, this is hell!”

      “Do you persist in your denial?” demanded the president coldly.

      “Do I deny it?” she said with terrible accents; and she rose with
      flashing eyes.

      The president continued squarely,—

      “Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge?”

      She replied in a broken voice,—

      “I have already told you. I do not know. ’Twas a priest, a priest
      whom I do not know; an infernal priest who pursues me!”

      “That is it,” retorted the judge; “the surly monk.”

      “Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl—”

      “Of Egypt,” said the judge.

      Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly,—

      “In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the
      application of the torture.”

      “Granted,” said the president.

      The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the
      command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably
      firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the
      officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized
      door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which
      produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a
      horrible mouth which had just devoured her.

      When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the
      little goat mourning.

      The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having
      remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a
      long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president
      replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to
      his duty.

      “What an annoying and vexatious hussy,” said an aged judge, “to
      get herself put to the question when one has not supped!”



      CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A
      DRY LEAF.

      After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors,
      which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at midday, La
      Esmeralda, still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust
      by the police into a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in
      form, occupied the ground floor of one of those great towers,
      which, even in our own century, still pierce through the layer of
      modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient
      Paris. There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening
      than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an enormous iron
      door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had been
      constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was
      lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson
      reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one
      corner, of all radiance. The iron grating which served to close
      the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the
      mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower
      extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set
      flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths
      of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the
      light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the
      room, frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In
      the centre lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the
      ground, over which hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached
      to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in
      the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares,
      filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap
      on the coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in
      the chamber only a confused mass of horrible things.

      This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.

      On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the
      official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces,
      leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the iron
      instruments on the coals.

      In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this
      chamber she was stricken with horror.

      The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one
      side, the priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk,
      inkhorn, and a table were in one corner.

      Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a very sweet
      smile.

      “My dear child,” said he, “do you still persist in your denial?”

      “Yes,” she replied, in a dying voice.

      “In that case,” replied Charmolue, “it will be very painful for
      us to have to question you more urgently than we should like.
      Pray take the trouble to seat yourself on this bed. Master
      Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close the door.”

      Pierrat rose with a growl.

      “If I shut the door,” he muttered, “my fire will go out.”

      “Well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue, “leave it open then.”

      Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That leather bed
      on which so many unhappy wretches had writhed, frightened her.
      Terror chilled the very marrow of her bones; she stood there
      bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from Charmolue, the two
      assistants took her and placed her in a sitting posture on the
      bed. They did her no harm; but when these men touched her, when
      that leather touched her, she felt all her blood retreat to her
      heart. She cast a frightened look around the chamber. It seemed
      to her as though she beheld advancing from all quarters towards
      her, with the intention of crawling up her body and biting and
      pinching her, all those hideous implements of torture, which as
      compared to the instruments of all sorts she had hitherto seen,
      were like what bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects
      and birds.

      “Where is the physician?” asked Charmolue.

      “Here,” replied a black gown whom she had not before noticed.

      She shuddered.

      “Mademoiselle,” resumed the caressing voice of the procucrator of
      the Ecclesiastical court, “for the third time, do you persist in
      denying the deeds of which you are accused?”

      This time she could only make a sign with her head.

      “You persist?” said Jacques Charmolue. “Then it grieves me
      deeply, but I must fulfil my office.”

      “Monsieur le Procureur du Roi,” said Pierrat abruptly, “How shall
      we begin?”

      Charmolue hesitated for a moment with the ambiguous grimace of a
      poet in search of a rhyme.

      “With the boot,” he said at last.

      The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and
      men, that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which
      has no power in itself.

      The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At
      the same time, the two assistants began to fumble among their
      hideous arsenal.

      At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child
      quivered like a dead frog which is being galvanized. “Oh!” she
      murmured, so low that no one heard her; “Oh, my Phœbus!” Then she
      fell back once more into her immobility and her marble silence.
      This spectacle would have rent any other heart than those of her
      judges. One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being
      tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell. The
      miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and
      racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being who was
      about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners and
      pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain
      of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible
      mills of torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of
      Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had bared that charming leg, that
      tiny foot, which had so often amazed the passers-by with their
      delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.

      “’Tis a shame!” muttered the tormentor, glancing at these
      graceful and delicate forms.

      Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled
      at that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the
      unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes,
      beheld the boot approach; she soon beheld her foot encased
      between iron plates disappear in the frightful apparatus. Then
      terror restored her strength.

      “Take that off!” she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with
      her hair all dishevelled: “Mercy!”

      She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the
      king’s procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak
      and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a
      bee with a lump of lead on its wing.

      At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two
      coarse hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung
      from the ceiling.

      “For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?”
      demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.

      “I am innocent.”

      “Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to
      your charge?”

      “Alas, monseigneur, I do not know.”

      “So you deny them?”

      “All!”

      “Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.

      Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was
      contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible
      cries which have no orthography in any human language.

      “Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” he said to
      the gypsy.

      “All!” cried the wretched girl. “I confess! I confess! Mercy!”

      She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture.
      Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so
      pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!

      “Humanity forces me to tell you,” remarked the king’s procurator,
      “that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.”

      “I certainly hope so!” said she. And she fell back upon the
      leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang
      suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.

      “Come, fair one, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, raising
      her. “You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which
      hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne’s neck.”

      Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,

      “Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your
      participation in the feasts, witches’ sabbaths, and witchcrafts
      of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer.”

      “Yes,” she said, so low that her words were lost in her
      breathing.

      “You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to
      appear in the clouds to call together the witches’ sabbath, and
      which is beheld by socerers alone?”

      “Yes.”

      “You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those
      abominable idols of the Templars?”

      “Yes.”

      “To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of
      a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit?”

      “Yes.”

      “Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the
      demon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on
      the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and
      assassinated a captain named Phœbus de Châteaupers?”

      She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and
      replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or
      agitation,—

      “Yes.”

      It was evident that everything within her was broken.

      “Write, clerk,” said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers,
      “Release the prisoner, and take her back to the court.”

      When the prisoner had been “unbooted,” the procurator of the
      ecclesiastical court examined her foot, which was still swollen
      with pain. “Come,” said he, “there’s no great harm done. You
      shrieked in good season. You could still dance, my beauty!”

      Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality,—

      “Behold justice enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen!
      Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we have acted with all
      possible gentleness.”



      CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.

      When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was
      received with a general murmur of pleasure. On the part of the
      audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified which one
      experiences at the theatre at the end of the last entr’acte of
      the comedy, when the curtain rises and the conclusion is about to
      begin. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting
      their suppers sooner.

      The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards
      his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench.

      Night was fully set in. The candles, whose number had not been
      increased, cast so little light, that the walls of the hall could
      not be seen. The shadows there enveloped all objects in a sort of
      mist. A few apathetic faces of judges alone could be dimly
      discerned. Opposite them, at the extremity of the long hall, they
      could see a vaguely white point standing out against the sombre
      background. This was the accused.

      She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue had
      installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he seated
      himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too much
      self-complacency at his success,—“The accused has confessed all.”

      “Bohemian girl,” the president continued, “have you avowed all
      your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phœbus de
      Châteaupers.”

      Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.

      “Anything you like,” she replied feebly, “but kill me quickly!”

      “Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts,”
      said the president, “the chamber is ready to hear you in your
      charge.”

      Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to
      read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the
      pleader, an oration in Latin, wherein all the proofs of the suit
      were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations
      from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are
      not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The
      orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had
      finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his
      brow, and his eyes from his head.

      All at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted
      himself, and his glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid,
      became menacing.

      “Gentlemen,” he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was not in
      his copy book), “Satan is so mixed up in this affair, that here
      he is present at our debates, and making sport of their majesty.
      Behold!”

      So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing
      Charmolue gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it
      appropriate to do the same, and had seated himself on his
      haunches, reproducing to the best of his ability, with his
      forepaws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the
      king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the
      reader remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This
      incident, this last proof, produced a great effect. The goat’s
      hoofs were tied, and the king’s procurator resumed the thread of
      his eloquence.

      It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here is the
      concluding phrase; let the reader add the hoarse voice and the
      breathless gestures of Master Charmolue,

      “_Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente,
      intentione criminis existente, in nomine sanctæ ecclesiæ
      Nostræ-Dominæ Parisiensis quæ est in saisina habendi omnimodam
      altam et bassam justitiam in illa hac intemerata Civitatis
      insula, tenore præsentium declaremus nos requirere, primo,
      aliquamdam pecuniariam indemnitatem; secundo, amendationem
      honorabilem ante portalium maximum Nostræ-Dominæ, ecclesiæ
      cathedralis; tertio, sententiam in virtute cujus ista styrga cum
      sua capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto_ la Grève, _seu in
      insula exeunte in fluvio Secanæ, juxta pointam juardini regalis,
      executatæ sint!_”[45]

      He put on his cap again and seated himself.

      “_Eheu!_” sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, “_bassa
      latinitas_—bastard latin!”

      Another man in a black gown rose near the accused; he was her
      lawyer. The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble.

      “Advocate, be brief,” said the president.

      “Monsieur the President,” replied the advocate, “since the
      defendant has confessed the crime, I have only one word to say to
      these gentlemen. Here is a text from the Salic law; ‘If a witch
      hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted of it, she shall pay a
      fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount to two hundred sous
      of gold.’ May it please the chamber to condemn my client to the
      fine?”

      “An abrogated text,” said the advocate extraordinary of the king.

      “_Nego_, I deny it,” replied the advocate.

      “Put it to the vote!” said one of the councillors; “the crime is
      manifest, and it is late.”

      They proceeded to take a vote without leaving the room. The
      judges signified their assent without giving their reasons, they
      were in a hurry. Their capped heads were seen uncovering one
      after the other, in the gloom, at the lugubrious question
      addressed to them by the president in a low voice. The poor
      accused had the appearance of looking at them, but her troubled
      eye no longer saw.

      Then the clerk began to write; then he handed a long parchment to
      the president.

      Then the unhappy girl heard the people moving, the pikes
      clashing, and a freezing voice saying to her,—

      “Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem good to our lord
      the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a tumbrel, in
      your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your neck, before
      the grand portal of Notre-Dame, and you will there make an
      apology with a wax torch of the weight of two pounds in your
      hand, and thence you will be conducted to the Place de Grève,
      where you will be hanged and strangled on the town gibbet; and
      likewise your goat; and you will pay to the official three lions
      of gold, in reparation of the crimes by you committed and by you
      confessed, of sorcery and magic, debauchery and murder, upon the
      person of the Sieur Phœbus de Châteaupers. May God have mercy on
      your soul!”

      “Oh! ’tis a dream!” she murmured; and she felt rough hands
      bearing her away.



      CHAPTER IV. _LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA_—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE
      WHO ENTER HERE.

      In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was
      almost as much of it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon
      piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had
      always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it was, in some sort,
      another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind, and
      mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and
      reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it
      was a sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison,
      sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. These mighty
      buildings, whose mode of formation and _vegetation_ we have
      elsewhere explained, had not simply _foundations_, but, so to
      speak, roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers,
      galleries, and staircases, like the construction above. Thus
      churches, palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their
      bodies. The cellars of an edifice formed another edifice, into
      which one descended instead of ascending, and which extended its
      subterranean grounds under the external piles of the monument,
      like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the
      mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains
      of the banks.

      At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of
      Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons.
      The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew
      constantly narrower and more gloomy. They were so many zones,
      where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante could never
      imagine anything better for his hell. These tunnels of cells
      usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like
      bottom, where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those
      condemned to death. A miserable human existence, once interred
      there; farewell light, air, life, _ogni speranza_—every hope; it
      only came forth to the scaffold or the stake. Sometimes it rotted
      there; human justice called this _forgetting_. Between men and
      himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers
      weighing down upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive
      bastille was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock,
      which barred him off from the rest of the world.

      It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the
      _oubliettes_ excavated by Saint-Louis, in the _inpace_ of the
      Tournelle, that la Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned
      to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colossal
      court-house over her head. Poor fly, who could not have lifted
      even one of its blocks of stone!

      Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such
      an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to
      break so frail a creature.

      There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any
      one who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen
      her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as
      night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a
      human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes;
      snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and
      a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed
      under her by the sweating of the prison walls; without motion,
      almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer;
      Phœbus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of Paris, the
      dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the
      officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood,
      the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her
      mind, sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a
      hideous nightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and
      horrible struggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up
      above ground, and which was no longer audible at the depth where
      the unhappy girl had fallen.

      Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In
      that misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish
      her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than
      day from night. All this was mixed, broken, floating,
      disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she
      no longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only
      dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into
      nothingness.

      Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two
      or three occasions, the sound of a trapdoor opening somewhere
      above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light,
      and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.
      Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer was the sole
      communication which was left her with mankind.

      A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her
      head, the dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the
      vault, and a drop of water dropped from them at regular
      intervals. She listened stupidly to the noise made by this drop
      of water as it fell into the pool beside her.

      This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was
      the only movement which still went on around her, the only clock
      which marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all
      the noise made on the surface of the earth.

      To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in
      that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over
      her foot or her arm, and she shuddered.

      How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a
      recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against
      some one, then of having been herself carried away, and of waking
      up in darkness and silence, chilled to the heart. She had dragged
      herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles,
      and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all
      around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered
      with moisture and a truss of straw; but neither lamp nor
      air-hole. Then she had seated herself on that straw and,
      sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude, on the last
      stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the
      black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that
      melancholy labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in
      her head, and had left her in stupor.

      At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were
      of the same color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a
      louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he brought
      her bread and jug of water. She raised her head, and beheld a ray
      of reddish light passing through the crevices in the sort of
      trapdoor contrived in the roof of the _inpace_.

      At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its
      rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the
      lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door being too low
      to admit of her seeing their heads. The light pained her so
      acutely that she shut her eyes.

      When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was
      deposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood
      before her. A monk’s black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the
      same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person,
      neither face nor hands. It was a long, black shroud standing
      erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving. She
      gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre. But
      neither he nor she spoke. One would have pronounced them two
      statues confronting each other. Two things only seemed alive in
      that cavern; the wick of the lantern, which sputtered on account
      of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of water from the
      roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous
      splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric
      waves on the oily water of the pool.

      At last the prisoner broke the silence.

      “Who are you?”

      “A priest.”

      The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.

      The priest continued, in a hollow voice,—

      “Are you prepared?”

      “For what?”

      “To die.”

      “Oh!” said she, “will it be soon?”

      “To-morrow.”

      Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her
      breast.

      “’Tis very far away yet!” she murmured; “why could they not have
      done it to-day?”

      “Then you are very unhappy?” asked the priest, after a silence.

      “I am very cold,” she replied.

      She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy
      wretches who are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the
      recluse of the Tour-Roland, and her teeth chattered.

      The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from
      beneath his cowl.

      “Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!”

      “Yes,” she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had
      given her. “The day belongs to every one, why do they give me
      only night?”

      “Do you know,” resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, “why
      you are here?”

      “I thought I knew once,” she said, passing her thin fingers over
      her eyelids, as though to aid her memory, “but I know no longer.”

      All at once she began to weep like a child.

      “I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am
      afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body.”

      “Well, follow me.”

      So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen
      to her very soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold
      upon her.

      “Oh!” she murmured, “’tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?”

      The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the sinister
      visage which had so long pursued her; that demon’s head which had
      appeared at la Falourdel’s, above the head of her adored Phœbus;
      that eye which she last had seen glittering beside a dagger.

      This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus
      driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture,
      roused her from her stupor. It seemed to her that the sort of
      veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. All the
      details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal scene at
      la Falourdel’s to her condemnation to the Tournelle, recurred to
      her memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but
      distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs,
      half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering, were
      revived by the sombre figure which stood before her, as the
      approach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with
      invisible ink, to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her
      that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously.

      “Hah!” she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive
      trembling, “’tis the priest!”

      Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated,
      with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still
      trembling.

      The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long
      been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor
      lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently
      contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has
      suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning,
      and holds it panting in his talons.

      She began to murmur in a low voice,—

      “Finish! finish! the last blow!” and she drew her head down in
      terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of
      the butcher’s axe.

      “So I inspire you with horror?” he said at length.

      She made no reply.

      “Do I inspire you with horror?” he repeated.

      Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.

      “Yes,” said she, “the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he
      has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months!
      Had it not been for him, my God, how happy it should have been!
      It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who
      killed him! my Phœbus!”

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

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

      “I love thee!” cried the priest.

      Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an
      idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes
      of flame.

      “Dost thou understand? I love thee!” he cried again.

      “What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.

      He resumed,—

      “The love of a damned soul.”

      Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the
      weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.

      “Listen,” said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come
      over him; “you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I
      have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively
      interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night when
      it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us.
      Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.”

      “So was I!” she sighed feebly.

      “Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed
      myself to be so. I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid
      light. No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than
      mine. Priests consulted me on chastity; doctors, on doctrines.
      Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister to me, and a
      sister sufficed. Not but that with age other ideas came to me.
      More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman’s form passed
      by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I
      had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once,
      convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a
      miserable wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting,
      prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my
      soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women.
      Moreover, I had but to open a book, and all the impure mists of
      my brain vanished before the splendors of science. In a few
      moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I
      found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence
      of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon
      sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed
      occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the
      fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished
      him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with me, it is the
      fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal
      force. Listen. One day—”

      Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish
      break from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.

      He resumed,—

      “One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I
      reading then? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was
      reading. The window opened upon a Square. I heard a sound of
      tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my
      revery, I glanced into the Square. What I beheld, others saw
      beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human
      eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was midday, the
      sun was shining brightly,—a creature was dancing. A creature so
      beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and
      have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her
      if she had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were
      black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs
      through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her
      feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly
      turning wheel. Around her head, in her black tresses, there were
      disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and formed a coronet
      of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with spangles, blue,
      and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night.
      Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like
      two scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh!
      what a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even
      in the sunlight! Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised,
      intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I
      looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that
      fate was seizing hold of me.”

      The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he
      continued,—

      “Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and
      hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan
      had already set for me. The creature before my eyes possessed
      that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell.
      It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly
      lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman’s soul. It was
      an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light. At the
      moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a
      beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun
      gave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon,
      and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you
      had come thence for my perdition. I believed it.”

      Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added,
      coldly,—

      “I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by
      little; your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the
      mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened
      was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt
      pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once, you
      began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was
      still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee.
      Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemed to me
      that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I was
      forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head
      was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you
      disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the
      reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from
      my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the
      window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base.
      The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas!
      something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had
      come upon me from which I could not flee.”

      He made another pause and went on,—

      “Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did
      not know. I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister,
      the altar, work, books,—follies! Oh, how hollow does science
      sound when one in despair dashes against it a head full of
      passions! Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth between
      my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous
      apparition which had one day crossed the space before me. But
      this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre, funereal,
      gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the
      imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.

      “Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever
      in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt
      even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I
      desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to
      see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I
      had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with
      reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would
      efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I
      sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you
      twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you
      always. Then—how stop myself on that slope of hell?—then I no
      longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the
      demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I
      became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you
      under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street
      corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every
      evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more
      bewitched, more lost!

      “I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy,
      zingara. How could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a
      trial would free me from the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno
      d’Ast; he had her burned, and was cured. I knew it. I wanted to
      try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in
      front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no
      more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of
      abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There
      were two of us. We already had you in our power, when that
      miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin
      your unhappiness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing
      what to do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the
      official.

      “I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d’Ast. I also had a
      confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that,
      as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there
      you could not escape from me; that you had already possessed me a
      sufficiently long time to give me the right to possess you in my
      turn. When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. ’Tis
      madness to halt midway in the monstrous! The extreme of crime has
      its deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight
      upon the truss of straw in a dungeon!

      “Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you
      when we met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm
      which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats
      and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its
      terrible sides which made me shrink back.

      “Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought
      would have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought
      that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue
      this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and
      insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all
      powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! ’tis fate which
      has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the
      machine which I had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the
      end.

      “One day,—again the sun was shining brilliantly—I behold a man
      pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality
      in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest.”

      He ceased.

      The young girl could find but one word:

      “Oh, my Phœbus!”

      “Not that name!” said the priest, grasping her arm violently.
      “Utter not that name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, ’tis
      that name which has ruined us! or, rather we have ruined each
      other by the inexplicable play of fate! you are suffering, are
      you not? you are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon
      envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom
      of your soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man
      who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeon within me;
      within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in my soul.

      “Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I
      was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of the
      priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When
      you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was
      there.—Den of wolves!—It was my crime, it was my gallows that I
      beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for every
      witness, every proof, every plea; I could count each of your
      steps in the painful path; I was still there when that ferocious
      beast—oh! I had not foreseen torture! Listen. I followed you to
      that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped and handled, half
      naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your
      foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and
      die, that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I
      should have felt such rapture,—I beheld it encased in that
      horrible boot, which converts the limbs of a living being into
      one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! while I looked on at that, I held
      beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast.
      When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a
      second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that
      it still bleeds.”

      He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the
      claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed
      wound.

      The prisoner recoiled with horror.

      “Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think
      yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is.
      Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with
      all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the
      least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s
      salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the
      other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God,
      in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet;
      to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams and one’s thoughts,
      and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to
      have nothing to offer her but a priest’s dirty cassock, which
      will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s
      jealousy and one’s rage, while she lavishes on a miserable,
      blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that
      body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much
      sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of
      another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to
      think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for
      whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to
      behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in
      torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the
      leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the
      fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks,
      or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture
      is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning
      arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your
      teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors which turn you incessantly, as
      upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love, of jealousy, and
      of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few ashes
      on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration
      which trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me
      with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young
      girl! Have pity upon me!”

      The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against
      the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and
      listened to him.

      When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low
      voice,—

      “Oh my Phœbus!”

      The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.

      “I beseech you,” he cried, “if you have any heart, do not repulse
      me! Oh! I love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name,
      unhappy girl, it is as though you crushed all the fibres of my
      heart between your teeth. Mercy! If you come from hell I will go
      thither with you. I have done everything to that end. The hell
      where you are, shall be paradise; the sight of you is more
      charming than that of God! Oh! speak! you will have none of me? I
      should have thought the mountains would be shaken in their
      foundations on the day when a woman would repulse such a love.
      Oh! if you only would! Oh! how happy we might be. We would flee—I
      would help you to flee,—we would go somewhere, we would seek that
      spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest,
      where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we
      would pour our two souls into each other, and we would have a
      thirst for ourselves which we would quench in common and
      incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustible love.”

      She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.

      “Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!”

      The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with
      his eyes fixed upon his hand.

      “Well, yes!” he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, “insult
      me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us
      make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the
      Grève, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to
      see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never
      felt the power of my love for you.—Oh! follow me. You shall take
      your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as
      long as you will. But come. To-morrow! to-morrow! the gallows!
      your execution! Oh! save yourself! spare me!”

      He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag her
      away.

      She fixed her eye intently on him.

      “What has become of my Phœbus?”

      “Ah!” said the priest, releasing her arm, “you are pitiless.”

      “What has become of Phœbus?” she repeated coldly.

      “He is dead!” cried the priest.

      “Dead!” said she, still icy and motionless “then why do you talk
      to me of living?”

      He was not listening to her.

      “Oh! yes,” said he, as though speaking to himself, “he certainly
      must be dead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his
      heart with the point. Oh! my very soul was at the end of the
      dagger!”

      The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and
      pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural
      force.

      “Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the
      blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be
      thine, priest! Never! never! Nothing shall unite us! not hell
      itself! Go, accursed man! Never!”

      The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled
      his feet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again,
      and slowly began the ascent of the steps which led to the door;
      he opened the door and passed through it.

      All at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear; it wore a
      frightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and
      despair,—

      “I tell you he is dead!”

      She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer
      any sound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water
      which made the pool palpitate amid the darkness.



      CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.

      I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than
      the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her
      child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for
      Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a
      shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has
      so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk,
      that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She
      smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself
      whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be
      absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile
      creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see
      it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round
      head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it
      is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is
      laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles
      lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls
      about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the
      paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses,
      without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes
      the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and
      earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays
      around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun
      which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets
      of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her
      heart melt as fire melts wax.

      But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of
      charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe,
      become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe is no
      longer anything but an instrument of torture which eternally
      crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fibre
      which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of
      an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it.

      One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark
      blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents
      from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of
      wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Grève. She was
      somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her ears in order
      to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation, on her knees,
      of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years.
      This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already
      said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more
      to quit it except at death. The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland
      alone knew how many bitter imprecations, touching complaints,
      prayers and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that
      charming bauble of rose-colored satin. Never was more despair
      bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful thing.

      It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently
      than usual; and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud
      and monotonous voice which rent the heart.

      “Oh my daughter!” she said, “my daughter, my poor, dear little
      child, so I shall never see thee more! It is over! It always
      seems to me that it happened yesterday! My God! my God! it would
      have been better not to give her to me than to take her away so
      soon. Did you not know that our children are part of ourselves,
      and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in
      God? Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord!
      to have taken her from me thus; you could never have looked at me
      with her, when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she
      laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my
      breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you
      would have taken pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me
      the only love which lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so
      miserable a creature, that you could not look at me before
      condemning me?—Alas! Alas! here is the shoe; where is the foot?
      where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter! my daughter!
      what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees
      have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is
      not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one
      minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for all
      eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your garment
      trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you would be
      obliged to give me back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty
      little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for
      fifteen years? Good Virgin! good Virgin of heaven! my infant
      Jesus has been taken from me, has been stolen from me; they
      devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her
      bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my
      daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want
      your angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh!
      I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my
      forehead, and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if
      you keep my child from me! you see plainly that my arms are all
      bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?—Oh! give me only salt
      and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a
      sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God, I am only a vile
      sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion for
      the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as through an
      opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once, just once more, a
      single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I
      would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will
      be grown up now!—Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I
      shall never see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go
      there myself. Oh! what misery to think that here is her shoe, and
      that that is all!”

      The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation
      and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with
      sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother who has lost her
      child, it is always the first day. That grief never grows old.
      The mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart
      remains dark.

      At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in
      front of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or
      struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest
      corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said, that she sought
      to plunge her head into the stone in order not to hear them. This
      time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start, and
      listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said,—

      “They are going to hang a gypsy to-day.”

      With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling
      itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her
      air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the Place de
      Grève. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against the
      permanent gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busying himself
      with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain.
      There were some people standing about.

      The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked
      nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question.
      All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a
      pretext of reading the public breviary, but who was much less
      occupied with the “lectern of latticed iron,” than with the
      gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from
      time to time. She recognized monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a
      holy man.

      “Father,” she inquired, “whom are they about to hang yonder?”

      The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her
      question. Then he said,—

      “I know not.”

      “Some children said that it was a gypsy,” went on the recluse.

      “I believe so,” said the priest.

      Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.

      “Sister,” said the archdeacon, “do you then hate the gypsies
      heartily?”

      “Do I hate them!” exclaimed the recluse, “they are vampires,
      stealers of children! They devoured my little daughter, my child,
      my only child! I have no longer any heart, they devoured it!”

      She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.

      “There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have cursed,”
      she resumed; “it is a young one, of the age which my daughter
      would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter. Every time that
      that young viper passes in front of my cell, she sets my blood in
      a ferment.”

      “Well, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, icy as a sepulchral
      statue; “that is the one whom you are about to see die.”

      His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.

      The recluse writhed her arms with joy.

      “I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! Thanks,
      priest!” she cried.

      And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the
      grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flashing,
      with her shoulder striking against the wall, with the wild air of
      a female wolf in a cage, who has long been famished, and who
      feels the hour for her repast drawing near.



      CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.

      Phœbus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When
      Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king, had
      said to poor Esmeralda; “He is dying,” it was an error or a jest.
      When the archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl; “He is
      dead,” the fact is that he knew nothing about it, but that he
      believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not doubt it,
      that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to
      give favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any
      man would have done the same in his place.

      It was not that Phœbus’s wound had not been serious, but it had
      not been as much so as the archdeacon believed. The physician, to
      whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him at the first
      moment, had feared for his life during the space of a week, and
      had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the upper
      hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications
      and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man
      under the physician’s very nose. It was while he was still lying
      on the leech’s pallet that he had submitted to the interrogations
      of Philippe Lheulier and the official inquisitors, which had
      annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself
      better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment,
      and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the
      progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself
      very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal
      suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was
      necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against la
      Esmeralda. They had supposed Phœbus to be dead, and that was the
      end of the matter.

      Phœbus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his
      company in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Isle-de-France, a
      few stages from Paris.

      After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this
      suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous
      figure in it. On the whole, he did not know what to think of the
      whole affair. Superstitious, and not given to devoutness, like
      every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to question
      himself about this adventure, he did not feel assured as to the
      goat, as to the singular fashion in which he had met La
      Esmeralda, as to the no less strange manner in which she had
      allowed him to divine her love, as to her character as a gypsy,
      and lastly, as to the surly monk. He perceived in all these
      incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress,
      perhaps the devil; a comedy, in short, or to speak in the
      language of that day, a very disagreeable mystery, in which he
      played a very awkward part, the role of blows and derision. The
      captain was quite put out of countenance about it; he experienced
      that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably
      defined,—

        Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl.

      Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised abroad,
      that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any
      case it would not go beyond the courts of the Tournelle. In this
      he was not mistaken, there was then no _Gazette des Tribunaux;_
      and as not a week passed which had not its counterfeiter to boil,
      or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some one of the
      innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to
      seeing in all the squares the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed,
      with sleeves stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the
      ladders, and the pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it.
      Fashionable society of that day hardly knew the name of the
      victim who passed by at the corner of the street, and it was the
      populace at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse
      fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public
      highways, like the braising-pan of the baker or the
      slaughter-house of the knacker. The executioner was only a sort
      of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.

      Hence Phœbus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the
      enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning
      the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it
      mattered little which to him), and as to the issue of the trial.
      But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction,
      Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phœbus’s heart, like the
      physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.

      Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village
      of farriers, and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long line of
      poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders the grand
      road on both sides for half a league; a tail (queue), in short,
      as its name imports.

      Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a
      charming dowry; accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and
      assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohemian affair
      must be completely finished and forgotten, the amorous cavalier
      arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the Gondelaurier
      mansion.

      He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had
      assembled in the Place du Parvis, before the portal of
      Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was the month of May; he
      supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some
      festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly
      ascended the stairs to his beautiful betrothed.

      She was alone with her mother.

      The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and
      Phœbus’s long absences, still weighed on Fleur-de-Lys’s heart.
      Nevertheless, when she beheld her captain enter, she thought him
      so handsome, his doublet so new, his baldrick so shining, and his
      air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble
      damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blond
      hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed entirely
      in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of
      coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were
      swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better.

      Phœbus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left
      the village maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated with
      Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to our officer so eager and gallant
      an air, that his peace was immediately made. Madame de
      Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big
      arm-chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s
      reproaches, they expired in tender cooings.

      The young girl was seated near the window still embroidering her
      grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her
      chair, and she was addressing her caressing reproaches to him in
      a low voice.

      “What has become of you these two long months, wicked man?”

      “I swear to you,” replied Phœbus, somewhat embarrassed by the
      question, “that you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to
      dreaming.”

      She could not repress a smile.

      “Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A
      fine beauty, in sooth!”

      “Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.

      “And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to
      say farewell?”

      “At Queue-en-Brie.”

      Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to
      avoid the second.

      “But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to
      see me a single time?”

      Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed.

      “Because—the service—and then, charming cousin, I have been ill.”

      “Ill!” she repeated in alarm.

      “Yes, wounded!”

      “Wounded!”

      The poor child was completely upset.

      “Oh! do not be frightened at that,” said Phœbus, carelessly, “it
      was nothing. A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?”

      “What is that to me?” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her
      beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Oh! you do not say what you
      think when you speak thus. What sword cut was that? I wish to
      know all.”

      “Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fédy, you
      know? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open
      a few inches of skin for each other. That is all.”

      The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of
      honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In
      fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with
      fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely
      reassured.

      “Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phœbus!” said she. “I do
      not know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a villanous man. And whence
      arose this quarrel?”

      Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre
      power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a
      means of extricating himself for his prowess.

      “Oh! how do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair
      cousin,” he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation,
      “what noise is this in the Cathedral Square?”

      He approached the window.

      “Oh! _Mon Dieu_, fair cousin, how many people there are on the
      Place!”

      “I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys; “it appears that a witch is to
      do penance this morning before the church, and thereafter to be
      hung.”

      The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda’s
      affair was concluded, that he was but little disturbed by
      Fleur-de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions.

      “What is the name of this witch?”

      “I do not know,” she replied.

      “And what is she said to have done?”

      She shrugged her white shoulders.

      “I know not.”

      “Oh, _mon Dieu Jésus!_” said her mother; “there are so many
      witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing
      their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in
      the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his
      register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window.
      “Good Lord! you are right, Phœbus,” said she. “The rabble is
      indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!
      Do you know, Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The
      entrance of King Charles VII., when, also, there were many
      people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak
      of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,—does it not?—the
      effect of something very old, and upon me of something very
      young. Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They
      even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
      The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses
      came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that
      they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was
      very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier
      of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very
      fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their
      oriflammes waving red before the eye. There were some with
      pennons and some with banners. How can I tell? the Sire de Calan
      with a pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant with a banner; the Sire de
      Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
      except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ’tis a sad thing to think that
      all that has existed and exists no longer!”

      The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager.
      Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of his
      betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance
      plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This
      gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
      exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phœbus, dazzled
      by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can
      any one love anything but a fair skin?”

      Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to
      him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring
      sunshine.

      “Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, “we are to
      be married three months hence; swear to me that you have never
      loved any other woman than myself.”

      “I swear it, fair angel!” replied Phœbus, and his passionate
      glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing
      Fleur-de-Lys.

      Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on
      terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the
      apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus observed it,
      and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange
      ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her
      betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had
      re-awakened, not with all its freshness but with all its ardor;
      after all, there is no great harm in tasting one’s wheat while it
      is still in the blade; I do not know whether these ideas passed
      through his mind, but one thing is certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was
      suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked
      round and saw that her mother was no longer there.

      “Good heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “how very warm I
      am!”

      “I think, in fact,” replied Phœbus, “that it cannot be far from
      midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains.”

      “No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, I
      need air.”

      And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she
      rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.

      Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her.

      The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as
      the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and
      sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the timid
      Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.

      An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring
      streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little
      wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would not have
      sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a thick hedge
      of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this
      thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
      entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial
      bearings of the bishop. The large doors of the church were
      closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the
      Place, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of
      thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in
      a park of artillery.

      The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The
      spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort
      which possess the privilege of bringing out and calling together
      the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise
      which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In
      that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than
      men.

      From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the
      general clamor.

      “Ohé! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?”

      “Fool! ’tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift!
      the good God is going to cough Latin in her face! That is always
      done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that you wish, go to
      the Grève.”

      “I will go there, afterwards.”

      “Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a
      confessor?”

      “It appears so, La Bechaigne.”

      “You see what a pagan she is!”

      “’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to
      deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a
      layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of
      the bishopric.”

      “Thank you, sir.”

      “Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!”

      This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon
      the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with
      that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle
      behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling.

      “Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she
      would see your hand!”

      At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of
      Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The
      last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when
      all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense
      shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs,

      “There she is!”

      Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not
      see.

      “Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?”

      “No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes
      which she had closed through fear.

      A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by
      cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched
      upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The
      sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the
      crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode
      several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their
      black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques
      Charmolue paraded at their head.

      In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her
      back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her
      long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the
      foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat
      and shoulders.

      Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a
      raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and
      knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the
      charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower.
      Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of
      green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
      is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the
      windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which
      she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.
      At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held
      together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would
      have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being
      thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is
      not made for such shocks.

      “Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair
      cousin, ’tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.”

      So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on the
      tumbrel. He was very pale.

      “What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered.

      “What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?”

      Phœbus interrupted her.

      “I do not know what you mean.”

      He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose
      jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had
      just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of
      penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment
      having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch.

      “What is the matter with you?” she said to Phœbus, “one would
      say, that this woman had disturbed you.”

      Phœbus forced a sneer,—

      “Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!”

      “Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the
      end.”

      The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat
      reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her
      eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely la
      Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she
      was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger,
      because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was
      pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same
      degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of
      Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate.

      Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some
      sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not
      let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and
      despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a
      dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was
      still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to
      speak.

      Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid
      cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian,
      we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed,
      many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them.

      The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.

      It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves
      in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst
      of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of
      the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges,
      which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became
      visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in
      black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on
      the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was
      dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very
      extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was
      visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the
      pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests
      could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and,
      at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the
      church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over
      the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy
      psalms,—

      “_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine;
      salvum me fac, Deus!_”

      “_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad animam
      meam_.

      “_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_.”

      At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned
      upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,—

      “_Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam
      æternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in
      vitam._”[46]

      This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from
      afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life,
      caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was
      the mass for the dead.

      The people listened devoutly.

      The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness
      in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as
      though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to
      assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word
      in a low tone,—“Phœbus.”

      They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat,
      which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at
      finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard
      pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope
      about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a
      serpent following her.

      Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and
      a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The
      halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later,
      a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in
      dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they
      drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the
      crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head,
      immediately after the cross-bearer.

      “Oh!” she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, “’tis he
      again! the priest!”

      It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the
      sub-chanter, on his right, the chanter, armed with his official
      wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide
      open, intoning in a strong voice,—

      “_De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam_.

      “_Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris, et flumem
      circumdedit me._”[47]

      At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight
      beneath the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of
      silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale that more than
      one person in the crowd thought that one of the marble bishops
      who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had risen and was
      come to receive upon the brink of the tomb, the woman who was
      about to die.

      She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that
      they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow
      wax; she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the
      fatal contents of the apology; when they told her to respond with
      _Amen_, she responded _Amen_. She only recovered life and force
      when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw,
      and himself advance alone towards her.

      Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of
      indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold.

      The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she
      beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and
      desire, over her exposed form. Then he said aloud,—

      “Young girl, have you asked God’s pardon for your faults and
      shortcomings?”

      He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that
      he was receiving her last confession): “Will you have me? I can
      still save you!”

      She looked intently at him: “Begone, demon, or I will denounce
      you!”

      He gave vent to a horrible smile: “You will not be believed. You
      will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have
      me?”

      “What have you done with my Phœbus?”

      “He is dead!” said the priest.

      At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head
      mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the
      balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside
      Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes,
      looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were
      violently contorted.

      “Well, die then!” he hissed between his teeth. “No one shall have
      you.” Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a
      funereal voice:—“_I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus
      misericors!_”[48]

      This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to
      conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon
      between the priest and the executioner.

      The crowd knelt.

      “_Kyrie eleison_,”[49] said the priests, who had remained beneath
      the arch of the portal.

      “_Kyrie eleison_,” repeated the throng in that murmur which runs
      over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.

      “_Amen_,” said the archdeacon.

      He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his
      breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of
      priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the
      cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of
      the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees
      in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,—

      “_Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt_.”[50]

      At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the
      beadles’ halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the
      nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last
      hour of the condemned.

      The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the
      empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles, and
      without voices.

      The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to
      be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to
      notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, during this
      entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the
      grand portal which represents, according to some, the sacrifice
      of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher’s alchemical
      operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by
      the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.

      There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that
      contemplation, but at length he turned round; and, at a signal
      which he gave, two men clad in yellow, the executioner’s
      assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more.

      The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the
      fatal cart, and proceeding to her last halting-place, was seized,
      possibly, with some poignant clinging to life. She raised her
      dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut
      here and there by a blue trapezium or triangle; then she lowered
      them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses;
      all at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she
      uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at
      the corner of the Place, she had just caught sight of him, of her
      friend, her lord, Phœbus, the other apparition of her life!

      The judge had lied! the priest had lied! it was certainly he, she
      could not doubt it; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his
      brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by his side!

      “Phœbus!” she cried, “my Phœbus!”

      And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with love and
      rapture, but they were bound.

      Then she saw the captain frown, a beautiful young girl who was
      leaning against him gazed at him with disdainful lips and
      irritated eyes; then Phœbus uttered some words which did not
      reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the window
      opening upon the balcony, which closed after them.

      “Phœbus!” she cried wildly, “can it be you believe it?” A
      monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She
      remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder
      committed on the person of Phœbus de Châteaupers.

      She had borne up until that moment. But this last blow was too
      harsh. She fell lifeless on the pavement.

      “Come,” said Charmolue, “carry her to the cart, and make an end
      of it.”

      No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the
      kings, carved directly above the arches of the portal, a strange
      spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with
      such impassiveness, with a neck so strained, a visage so hideous
      that, in his motley accoutrement of red and violet, he might have
      been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths
      the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters
      for six hundred years. This spectator had missed nothing that had
      taken place since midday in front of the portal of Notre-Dame.
      And at the very beginning he had securely fastened to one of the
      small columns a large knotted rope, one end of which trailed on
      the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look on
      tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted
      past. Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent’s
      assistants were preparing to execute Charmolue’s phlegmatic
      order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery,
      seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands; then he
      was seen to glide down the façade, as a drop of rain slips down a
      window-pane, rush to the two executioners with the swiftness of a
      cat which has fallen from a roof, knock them down with two
      enormous fists, pick up the gypsy with one hand, as a child would
      her doll, and dash back into the church with a single bound,
      lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a formidable
      voice,—

      “Sanctuary!”

      This was done with such rapidity, that had it taken place at
      night, the whole of it could have been seen in the space of a
      single flash of lightning.

      “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” repeated the crowd; and the clapping of
      ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s single eye sparkle with joy
      and pride.

      This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She raised
      her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them again
      suddenly, as though terrified by her deliverer.

      Charmolue was stupefied, as well as the executioners and the
      entire escort. In fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the
      condemned girl could not be touched. The cathedral was a place of
      refuge. All temporal jurisdiction expired upon its threshold.

      Quasimodo had halted beneath the great portal, his huge feet
      seemed as solid on the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman
      pillars. His great, bushy head sat low between his shoulders,
      like the heads of lions, who also have a mane and no neck. He
      held the young girl, who was quivering all over, suspended from
      his horny hands like a white drapery; but he carried her with as
      much care as though he feared to break her or blight her. One
      would have said that he felt that she was a delicate, exquisite,
      precious thing, made for other hands than his. There were moments
      when he looked as if not daring to touch her, even with his
      breath. Then, all at once, he would press her forcibly in his
      arms, against his angular bosom, like his own possession, his
      treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His
      gnome’s eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness,
      sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with
      lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the crowd stamped
      with enthusiasm, for, at that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of
      his own. He was handsome; he, that orphan, that foundling, that
      outcast, he felt himself august and strong, he gazed in the face
      of that society from which he was banished, and in which he had
      so powerfully intervened, of that human justice from which he had
      wrenched its prey, of all those tigers whose jaws were forced to
      remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, those
      executioners, of all that force of the king which he, the meanest
      of creatures, had just broken, with the force of God.

      And then, it was touching to behold this protection which had
      fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a
      creature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. They were two
      extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact
      and aiding each other.

      Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had
      plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The populace,
      fond of all prowess, sought him with their eyes, beneath the
      gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily disappeared from
      their acclamations. All at once, he was seen to re-appear at one
      of the extremities of the gallery of the kings of France; he
      traversed it, running like a madman, raising his conquest high in
      his arms and shouting: “Sanctuary!” The crowd broke forth into
      fresh applause. The gallery passed, he plunged once more into the
      interior of the church. A moment later, he re-appeared upon the
      upper platform, with the gypsy still in his arms, still running
      madly, still crying, “Sanctuary!” and the throng applauded.
      Finally, he made his appearance for the third time upon the
      summit of the tower where hung the great bell; from that point he
      seemed to be showing to the entire city the girl whom he had
      saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice which was so rarely
      heard, and which he never heard himself, repeated thrice with
      frenzy, even to the clouds: “Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

      “Noël! Noël!” shouted the populace in its turn; and that immense
      acclamation flew to astonish the crowd assembled at the Grève on
      the other bank, and the recluse who was still waiting with her
      eyes riveted on the gibbet.



      BOOK NINTH.



      CHAPTER I. DELIRIUM.

      Claude Frollo was no longer in Notre-Dame when his adopted son so
      abruptly cut the fatal web in which the archdeacon and the gypsy
      were entangled. On returning to the sacristy he had torn off his
      alb, cope, and stole, had flung all into the hands of the
      stupefied beadle, had made his escape through the private door of
      the cloister, had ordered a boatman of the Terrain to transport
      him to the left bank of the Seine, and had plunged into the hilly
      streets of the University, not knowing whither he was going,
      encountering at every step groups of men and women who were
      hurrying joyously towards the Pont Saint-Michel, in the hope of
      still arriving in time to see the witch hung there,—pale, wild,
      more troubled, more blind and more fierce than a night bird let
      loose and pursued by a troop of children in broad daylight. He no
      longer knew where he was, what he thought, or whether he were
      dreaming. He went forward, walking, running, taking any street at
      haphazard, making no choice, only urged ever onward away from the
      Grève, the horrible Grève, which he felt confusedly, to be behind
      him.

      In this manner he skirted Mount Sainte-Geneviève, and finally
      emerged from the town by the Porte Saint-Victor. He continued his
      flight as long as he could see, when he turned round, the
      turreted enclosure of the University, and the rare houses of the
      suburb; but, when, at length, a rise of ground had completely
      concealed from him that odious Paris, when he could believe
      himself to be a hundred leagues distant from it, in the fields,
      in the desert, he halted, and it seemed to him that he breathed
      more freely.

      Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see
      clearly into his soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that
      unhappy girl who had destroyed him, and whom he had destroyed. He
      cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had
      caused their two destinies to pursue up to their point of
      intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without
      mercy. He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity
      of chastity, of science, of religion, of virtue, on the
      uselessness of God. He plunged to his heart’s content in evil
      thoughts, and in proportion as he sank deeper, he felt a Satanic
      laugh burst forth within him.

      And as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived
      how large a space nature had prepared there for the passions, he
      sneered still more bitterly. He stirred up in the depths of his
      heart all his hatred, all his malevolence; and, with the cold
      glance of a physician who examines a patient, he recognized the
      fact that this malevolence was nothing but vitiated love; that
      love, that source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible
      things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted like
      himself, in making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then
      he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, when he
      considered the most sinister side of his fatal passion, of that
      corrosive, venomous malignant, implacable love, which had ended
      only in the gibbet for one of them and in hell for the other;
      condemnation for her, damnation for him.

      And then his laughter came again, when he reflected that Phœbus
      was alive; that after all, the captain lived, was gay and happy,
      had handsomer doublets than ever, and a new mistress whom he was
      conducting to see the old one hanged. His sneer redoubled its
      bitterness when he reflected that out of the living beings whose
      death he had desired, the gypsy, the only creature whom he did
      not hate, was the only one who had not escaped him.

      Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, and
      there came to him a jealousy of an unprecedented sort. He
      reflected that the people also, the entire populace, had had
      before their eyes the woman whom he loved exposed almost naked.
      He writhed his arms with agony as he thought that the woman whose
      form, caught by him alone in the darkness would have been supreme
      happiness, had been delivered up in broad daylight at full
      noonday, to a whole people, clad as for a night of
      voluptuousness. He wept with rage over all these mysteries of
      love, profaned, soiled, laid bare, withered forever. He wept with
      rage as he pictured to himself how many impure looks had been
      gratified at the sight of that badly fastened shift, and that
      this beautiful girl, this virgin lily, this cup of modesty and
      delight, to which he would have dared to place his lips only
      trembling, had just been transformed into a sort of public bowl,
      whereat the vilest populace of Paris, thieves, beggars, lackeys,
      had come to quaff in common an audacious, impure, and depraved
      pleasure.

      And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness which he
      might have found upon earth, if she had not been a gypsy, and if
      he had not been a priest, if Phœbus had not existed and if she
      had loved him; when he pictured to himself that a life of
      serenity and love would have been possible to him also, even to
      him; that there were at that very moment, here and there upon the
      earth, happy couples spending the hours in sweet converse beneath
      orange trees, on the banks of brooks, in the presence of a
      setting sun, of a starry night; and that if God had so willed, he
      might have formed with her one of those blessed couples,—his
      heart melted in tenderness and despair.

      Oh! she! still she! It was this fixed idea which returned
      incessantly, which tortured him, which ate into his brain, and
      rent his vitals. He did not regret, he did not repent; all that
      he had done he was ready to do again; he preferred to behold her
      in the hands of the executioner rather than in the arms of the
      captain. But he suffered; he suffered so that at intervals he
      tore out handfuls of his hair to see whether it were not turning
      white.

      Among other moments there came one, when it occurred to him that
      it was perhaps the very minute when the hideous chain which he
      had seen that morning, was pressing its iron noose closer about
      that frail and graceful neck. This thought caused the
      perspiration to start from every pore.

      There was another moment when, while laughing diabolically at
      himself, he represented to himself la Esmeralda as he had seen
      her on that first day, lively, careless, joyous, gayly attired,
      dancing, winged, harmonious, and la Esmeralda of the last day, in
      her scanty shift, with a rope about her neck, mounting slowly
      with her bare feet, the angular ladder of the gallows; he figured
      to himself this double picture in such a manner that he gave vent
      to a terrible cry.

      While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, bent,
      uprooted everything in his soul, he gazed at nature around him.
      At his feet, some chickens were searching the thickets and
      pecking, enamelled beetles ran about in the sun; overhead, some
      groups of dappled gray clouds were floating across the blue sky;
      on the horizon, the spire of the Abbey Saint-Victor pierced the
      ridge of the hill with its slate obelisk; and the miller of the
      Copeaue hillock was whistling as he watched the laborious wings
      of his mill turning. All this active, organized, tranquil life,
      recurring around him under a thousand forms, hurt him. He resumed
      his flight.

      He sped thus across the fields until evening. This flight from
      nature, life, himself, man, God, everything, lasted all day long.
      Sometimes he flung himself face downward on the earth, and tore
      up the young blades of wheat with his nails. Sometimes he halted
      in the deserted street of a village, and his thoughts were so
      intolerable that he grasped his head in both hands and tried to
      tear it from his shoulders in order to dash it upon the pavement.

      Towards the hour of sunset, he examined himself again, and found
      himself nearly mad. The tempest which had raged within him ever
      since the instant when he had lost the hope and the will to save
      the gypsy,—that tempest had not left in his conscience a single
      healthy idea, a single thought which maintained its upright
      position. His reason lay there almost entirely destroyed. There
      remained but two distinct images in his mind, la Esmeralda and
      the gallows; all the rest was blank. Those two images united,
      presented to him a frightful group; and the more he concentrated
      what attention and thought was left to him, the more he beheld
      them grow, in accordance with a fantastic progression, the one in
      grace, in charm, in beauty, in light, the other in deformity and
      horror; so that at last la Esmeralda appeared to him like a star,
      the gibbet like an enormous, fleshless arm.

      One remarkable fact is, that during the whole of this torture,
      the idea of dying did not seriously occur to him. The wretch was
      made so. He clung to life. Perhaps he really saw hell beyond it.

      Meanwhile, the day continued to decline. The living being which
      still existed in him reflected vaguely on retracing its steps. He
      believed himself to be far away from Paris; on taking his
      bearings, he perceived that he had only circled the enclosure of
      the University. The spire of Saint-Sulpice, and the three lofty
      needles of Saint Germain-des-Prés, rose above the horizon on his
      right. He turned his steps in that direction. When he heard the
      brisk challenge of the men-at-arms of the abbey, around the
      crenelated, circumscribing wall of Saint-Germain, he turned
      aside, took a path which presented itself between the abbey and
      the lazar-house of the bourg, and at the expiration of a few
      minutes found himself on the verge of the Pré-aux-Clercs. This
      meadow was celebrated by reason of the brawls which went on there
      night and day; it was the hydra of the poor monks of
      Saint-Germain: _quod monachis Sancti-Germaini pratensis hydra
      fuit, clericis nova semper dissidiorum capita suscitantibus_. The
      archdeacon was afraid of meeting some one there; he feared every
      human countenance; he had just avoided the University and the
      Bourg Saint-Germain; he wished to re-enter the streets as late as
      possible. He skirted the Pré-aux-Clercs, took the deserted path
      which separated it from the Dieu-Neuf, and at last reached the
      water’s edge. There Dom Claude found a boatman, who, for a few
      farthings in Parisian coinage, rowed him up the Seine as far as
      the point of the city, and landed him on that tongue of abandoned
      land where the reader has already beheld Gringoire dreaming, and
      which was prolonged beyond the king’s gardens, parallel to the
      Ile du Passeur-aux-Vaches.

      The monotonous rocking of the boat and the ripple of the water
      had, in some sort, quieted the unhappy Claude. When the boatman
      had taken his departure, he remained standing stupidly on the
      strand, staring straight before him and perceiving objects only
      through magnifying oscillations which rendered everything a sort
      of phantasmagoria to him. The fatigue of a great grief not
      infrequently produces this effect on the mind.

      The sun had set behind the lofty Tour-de-Nesle. It was the
      twilight hour. The sky was white, the water of the river was
      white. Between these two white expanses, the left bank of the
      Seine, on which his eyes were fixed, projected its gloomy mass
      and, rendered ever thinner and thinner by perspective, it plunged
      into the gloom of the horizon like a black spire. It was loaded
      with houses, of which only the obscure outline could be
      distinguished, sharply brought out in shadows against the light
      background of the sky and the water. Here and there windows began
      to gleam, like the holes in a brazier. That immense black obelisk
      thus isolated between the two white expanses of the sky and the
      river, which was very broad at this point, produced upon Dom
      Claude a singular effect, comparable to that which would be
      experienced by a man who, reclining on his back at the foot of
      the tower of Strasbourg, should gaze at the enormous spire
      plunging into the shadows of the twilight above his head. Only,
      in this case, it was Claude who was erect and the obelisk which
      was lying down; but, as the river, reflecting the sky, prolonged
      the abyss below him, the immense promontory seemed to be as
      boldly launched into space as any cathedral spire; and the
      impression was the same. This impression had even one stronger
      and more profound point about it, that it was indeed the tower of
      Strasbourg, but the tower of Strasbourg two leagues in height;
      something unheard of, gigantic, immeasurable; an edifice such as
      no human eye has ever seen; a tower of Babel. The chimneys of the
      houses, the battlements of the walls, the faceted gables of the
      roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the tower of Nesle, all these
      projections which broke the profile of the colossal obelisk added
      to the illusion by displaying in eccentric fashion to the eye the
      indentations of a luxuriant and fantastic sculpture.

      Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he found himself,
      believed that he saw, that he saw with his actual eyes, the bell
      tower of hell; the thousand lights scattered over the whole
      height of the terrible tower seemed to him so many porches of the
      immense interior furnace; the voices and noises which escaped
      from it seemed so many shrieks, so many death groans. Then he
      became alarmed, he put his hands on his ears that he might no
      longer hear, turned his back that he might no longer see, and
      fled from the frightful vision with hasty strides.

      But the vision was in himself.

      When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each
      other by the light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the
      effect of a constant going and coming of spectres about him.
      There were strange noises in his ears; extraordinary fancies
      disturbed his brain. He saw neither houses, nor pavements, nor
      chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of indeterminate objects
      whose edges melted into each other. At the corner of the Rue de
      la Barillerie, there was a grocer’s shop whose porch was
      garnished all about, according to immemorial custom, with hoops
      of tin from which hung a circle of wooden candles, which came in
      contact with each other in the wind, and rattled like castanets.
      He thought he heard a cluster of skeletons at Montfaucon clashing
      together in the gloom.

      “Oh!” he muttered, “the night breeze dashes them against each
      other, and mingles the noise of their chains with the rattle of
      their bones! Perhaps she is there among them!”

      In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. After a
      few strides he found himself on the Pont Saint-Michel. There was
      a light in the window of a ground-floor room; he approached.
      Through a cracked window he beheld a mean chamber which recalled
      some confused memory to his mind. In that room, badly lighted by
      a meagre lamp, there was a fresh, light-haired young man, with a
      merry face, who amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very
      audaciously attired young girl; and near the lamp sat an old
      crone spinning and singing in a quavering voice. As the young man
      did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman’s ditty
      reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet
      frightful,—

         “Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!
         File, file, ma quenouille,
         File sa corde au bourreau,
         Qui siffle dans le préau,
         Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!

        “La belle corde de chanvre!
        Semez d’Issy jusqu’à Vanvre
        Du chanvre et non pas du blé.
        Le voleur n’a pas volé
        La belle corde de chanvre.

        “Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!
        Pour voir la fille de joie,
        Prendre au gibet chassieux,
        Les fenêtres sont des yeux.
        Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!”[51]

      Thereupon the young man laughed and caressed the wench. The crone
      was la Falourdel; the girl was a courtesan; the young man was his
      brother Jehan.

      He continued to gaze. That spectacle was as good as any other.

      He saw Jehan go to a window at the end of the room, open it, cast
      a glance on the quay, where in the distance blazed a thousand
      lighted casements, and he heard him say as he closed the sash,—

      “’Pon my soul! How dark it is; the people are lighting their
      candles, and the good God his stars.”

      Then Jehan came back to the hag, smashed a bottle standing on the
      table, exclaiming,—

      “Already empty, _cor-bœuf!_ and I have no more money! Isabeau, my
      dear, I shall not be satisfied with Jupiter until he has changed
      your two white nipples into two black bottles, where I may suck
      wine of Beaune day and night.”

      This fine pleasantry made the courtesan laugh, and Jehan left the
      room.

      Dom Claude had barely time to fling himself on the ground in
      order that he might not be met, stared in the face and recognized
      by his brother. Luckily, the street was dark, and the scholar was
      tipsy. Nevertheless, he caught sight of the archdeacon prone upon
      the earth in the mud.

      “Oh! oh!” said he; “here’s a fellow who has been leading a jolly
      life, to-day.”

      He stirred up Dom Claude with his foot, and the latter held his
      breath.

      “Dead drunk,” resumed Jehan. “Come, he’s full. A regular leech
      detached from a hogshead. He’s bald,” he added, bending down,
      “’tis an old man! _Fortunate senex!_”

      Then Dom Claude heard him retreat, saying,—

      “’Tis all the same, reason is a fine thing, and my brother the
      archdeacon is very happy in that he is wise and has money.”

      Then the archdeacon rose to his feet, and ran without halting,
      towards Notre-Dame, whose enormous towers he beheld rising above
      the houses through the gloom.

      At the instant when he arrived, panting, on the Place du Parvis,
      he shrank back and dared not raise his eyes to the fatal edifice.

      “Oh!” he said, in a low voice, “is it really true that such a
      thing took place here, to-day, this very morning?”

      Still, he ventured to glance at the church. The front was sombre;
      the sky behind was glittering with stars. The crescent of the
      moon, in her flight upward from the horizon, had paused at the
      moment, on the summit of the light hand tower, and seemed to have
      perched itself, like a luminous bird, on the edge of the
      balustrade, cut out in black trefoils.

      The cloister door was shut; but the archdeacon always carried
      with him the key of the tower in which his laboratory was
      situated. He made use of it to enter the church.

      In the church he found the gloom and silence of a cavern. By the
      deep shadows which fell in broad sheets from all directions, he
      recognized the fact that the hangings for the ceremony of the
      morning had not yet been removed. The great silver cross shone
      from the depths of the gloom, powdered with some sparkling
      points, like the milky way of that sepulchral night. The long
      windows of the choir showed the upper extremities of their arches
      above the black draperies, and their painted panes, traversed by
      a ray of moonlight had no longer any hues but the doubtful colors
      of night, a sort of violet, white and blue, whose tint is found
      only on the faces of the dead. The archdeacon, on perceiving
      these wan spots all around the choir, thought he beheld the
      mitres of damned bishops. He shut his eyes, and when he opened
      them again, he thought they were a circle of pale visages gazing
      at him.

      He started to flee across the church. Then it seemed to him that
      the church also was shaking, moving, becoming endued with
      animation, that it was alive; that each of the great columns was
      turning into an enormous paw, which was beating the earth with
      its big stone spatula, and that the gigantic cathedral was no
      longer anything but a sort of prodigious elephant, which was
      breathing and marching with its pillars for feet, its two towers
      for trunks and the immense black cloth for its housings.

      This fever or madness had reached such a degree of intensity that
      the external world was no longer anything more for the unhappy
      man than a sort of Apocalypse,—visible, palpable, terrible.

      For one moment, he was relieved. As he plunged into the side
      aisles, he perceived a reddish light behind a cluster of pillars.
      He ran towards it as to a star. It was the poor lamp which
      lighted the public breviary of Notre-Dame night and day, beneath
      its iron grating. He flung himself eagerly upon the holy book in
      the hope of finding some consolation, or some encouragement
      there. The hook lay open at this passage of Job, over which his
      staring eye glanced,—

      “And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice,
      and the hair of my flesh stood up.”

      On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind man
      feels when he feels himself pricked by the staff which he has
      picked up. His knees gave way beneath him, and he sank upon the
      pavement, thinking of her who had died that day. He felt so many
      monstrous vapors pass and discharge themselves in his brain, that
      it seemed to him that his head had become one of the chimneys of
      hell.

      It would appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no
      longer thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the
      demon. At length some strength returned to him; it occurred to
      him to take refuge in his tower beside his faithful Quasimodo. He
      rose; and, as he was afraid, he took the lamp from the breviary
      to light his way. It was a sacrilege; but he had got beyond
      heeding such a trifle now.

      He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a secret
      fright which must have been communicated to the rare passers-by
      in the Place du Parvis by the mysterious light of his lamp,
      mounting so late from loophole to loophole of the bell tower.

      All at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found himself
      at the door of the highest gallery. The air was cold; the sky was
      filled with hurrying clouds, whose large, white flakes drifted
      one upon another like the breaking up of river ice after the
      winter. The crescent of the moon, stranded in the midst of the
      clouds, seemed a celestial vessel caught in the ice-cakes of the
      air.

      He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, through the
      railing of slender columns which unites the two towers, far away,
      through a gauze of mists and smoke, the silent throng of the
      roofs of Paris, pointed, innumerable, crowded and small like the
      waves of a tranquil sea on a sum-mer night.

      The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted to earth and heaven an
      ashy hue.

      At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice.
      Midnight rang out. The priest thought of midday; twelve o’clock
      had come back again.

      “Oh!” he said in a very low tone, “she must be cold now.”

      All at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at
      the same instant, he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a form, a
      woman, appear from the opposite angle of the tower. He started.
      Beside this woman was a little goat, which mingled its bleat with
      the last bleat of the clock.

      He had strength enough to look. It was she.

      She was pale, she was gloomy. Her hair fell over her shoulders as
      in the morning; but there was no longer a rope on her neck, her
      hands were no longer bound; she was free, she was dead.

      She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her head.

      She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the sky. The
      supernatural goat followed her. He felt as though made of stone
      and too heavy to flee. At every step which she took in advance,
      he took one backwards, and that was all. In this way he retreated
      once more beneath the gloomy arch of the stairway. He was chilled
      by the thought that she might enter there also; had she done so,
      he would have died of terror.

      She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway,
      and paused there for several minutes, stared intently into the
      darkness, but without appearing to see the priest, and passed on.
      She seemed taller to him than when she had been alive; he saw the
      moon through her white robe; he heard her breath.

      When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase again,
      with the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing
      himself to be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his
      extinguished lamp still in his hand; and as he descended the
      spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear a voice laughing and
      repeating,—

      “A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and
      the hair of my flesh stood up.”



      CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

      Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down
      to the time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. These
      sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and barbarous
      jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a species of islands
      which rose above the level of human justice. Every criminal who
      landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many
      places of asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of impunity by the
      side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which strove to
      correct each other. The palaces of the king, the hôtels of the
      princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum.
      Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was
      temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a
      refuge in 1467.

      His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he
      must beware of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he
      fell back into the flood. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado,
      kept good guard around the place of refuge, and lay in watch
      incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a vessel. Hence,
      condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a
      cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey,
      beneath the porch of a church; in this manner the asylum was a
      prison as much as any other. It sometimes happened that a solemn
      decree of parliament violated the asylum and restored the
      condemned man to the executioner; but this was of rare
      occurrence. Parliaments were afraid of the bishops, and when
      there was friction between these two robes, the gown had but a
      poor chance against the cassock. Sometimes, however, as in the
      affair of the assassins of Petit-Jean, the headsman of Paris, and
      in that of Emery Rousseau, the murderer of Jean Valleret, justice
      overleaped the church and passed on to the execution of its
      sentences; but unless by virtue of a decree of Parliament, woe to
      him who violated a place of asylum with armed force! The reader
      knows the manner of death of Robert de Clermont, Marshal of
      France, and of Jean de Châlons, Marshal of Champagne; and yet the
      question was only of a certain Perrin Marc, the clerk of a
      money-changer, a miserable assassin; but the two marshals had
      broken the doors of St. Méry. Therein lay the enormity.

      Such respect was cherished for places of refuge that, according
      to tradition, animals even felt it at times. Aymoire relates that
      a stag, being chased by Dagobert, having taken refuge near the
      tomb of Saint-Denis, the pack of hounds stopped short and barked.

      Churches generally had a small apartment prepared for the
      reception of supplicants. In 1407, Nicolas Flamel caused to be
      built on the vaults of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, a chamber
      which cost him four livres six sous, sixteen farthings, parisis.

      At Notre-Dame it was a tiny cell situated on the roof of the side
      aisle, beneath the flying buttresses, precisely at the spot where
      the wife of the present janitor of the towers has made for
      herself a garden, which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon what
      a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a porter’s wife is to a
      Semiramis.

      It was here that Quasimodo had deposited la Esmeralda, after his
      wild and triumphant course. As long as that course lasted, the
      young girl had been unable to recover her senses, half
      unconscious, half awake, no longer feeling anything, except that
      she was mounting through the air, floating in it, flying in it,
      that something was raising her above the earth. From time to time
      she heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice of Quasimodo in her
      ear; she half opened her eyes; then below her she confusedly
      beheld Paris checkered with its thousand roofs of slate and
      tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, above her head the frightful
      and joyous face of Quasimodo. Then her eyelids drooped again; she
      thought that all was over, that they had executed her during her
      swoon, and that the misshapen spirit which had presided over her
      destiny, had laid hold of her and was bearing her away. She dared
      not look at him, and she surrendered herself to her fate. But
      when the bellringer, dishevelled and panting, had deposited her
      in the cell of refuge, when she felt his huge hands gently
      detaching the cord which bruised her arms, she felt that sort of
      shock which awakens with a start the passengers of a vessel which
      runs aground in the middle of a dark night. Her thoughts awoke
      also, and returned to her one by one. She saw that she was in
      Notre-Dame; she remembered having been torn from the hands of the
      executioner; that Phœbus was alive, that Phœbus loved her no
      longer; and as these two ideas, one of which shed so much
      bitterness over the other, presented themselves simultaneously to
      the poor condemned girl; she turned to Quasimodo, who was
      standing in front of her, and who terrified her; she said to
      him,—

      “Why have you saved me?”

      He gazed at her with anxiety, as though seeking to divine what
      she was saying to him. She repeated her question. Then he gave
      her a profoundly sorrowful glance and fled. She was astonished.

      A few moments later he returned, bearing a package which he cast
      at her feet. It was clothing which some charitable women had left
      on the threshold of the church for her.

      Then she dropped her eyes upon herself and saw that she was
      almost naked, and blushed. Life had returned.

      Quasimodo appeared to experience something of this modesty. He
      covered his eyes with his large hand and retired once more, but
      slowly.

      She made haste to dress herself. The robe was a white one with a
      white veil,—the garb of a novice of the Hôtel-Dieu.

      She had barely finished when she beheld Quasimodo returning. He
      carried a basket under one arm and a mattress under the other. In
      the basket there was a bottle, bread, and some provisions. He set
      the basket on the floor and said, “Eat!” He spread the mattress
      on the flagging and said, “Sleep.”

      It was his own repast, it was his own bed, which the bellringer
      had gone in search of.

      The gypsy raised her eyes to thank him, but she could not
      articulate a word. She dropped her head with a quiver of terror.

      Then he said to her.—

      “I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not? Do not look at me;
      only listen to me. During the day you will remain here; at night
      you can walk all over the church. But do not leave the church
      either by day or by night. You would be lost. They would kill
      you, and I should die.”

      She was touched and raised her head to answer him. He had
      disappeared. She found herself alone once more, meditating upon
      the singular words of this almost monstrous being, and struck by
      the sound of his voice, which was so hoarse yet so gentle.

      Then she examined her cell. It was a chamber about six feet
      square, with a small window and a door on the slightly sloping
      plane of the roof formed of flat stones. Many gutters with the
      figures of animals seemed to be bending down around her, and
      stretching their necks in order to stare at her through the
      window. Over the edge of her roof she perceived the tops of
      thousands of chimneys which caused the smoke of all the fires in
      Paris to rise beneath her eyes. A sad sight for the poor gypsy, a
      foundling, condemned to death, an unhappy creature, without
      country, without family, without a hearthstone.

      At the moment when the thought of her isolation thus appeared to
      her more poignant than ever, she felt a bearded and hairy head
      glide between her hands, upon her knees. She started (everything
      alarmed her now) and looked. It was the poor goat, the agile
      Djali, which had made its escape after her, at the moment when
      Quasimodo had put to flight Charmolue’s brigade, and which had
      been lavishing caresses on her feet for nearly an hour past,
      without being able to win a glance. The gypsy covered him with
      kisses.

      “Oh! Djali!” she said, “how I have forgotten thee! And so thou
      still thinkest of me! Oh! thou art not an ingrate!”

      At the same time, as though an invisible hand had lifted the
      weight which had repressed her tears in her heart for so long,
      she began to weep, and, in proportion as her tears flowed, she
      felt all that was most acrid and bitter in her grief depart with
      them.

      Evening came, she thought the night so beautiful that she made
      the circuit of the elevated gallery which surrounds the church.
      It afforded her some relief, so calm did the earth appear when
      viewed from that height.



      CHAPTER III. DEAF.

      On the following morning, she perceived on awaking, that she had
      been asleep. This singular thing astonished her. She had been so
      long unaccustomed to sleep! A joyous ray of the rising sun
      entered through her window and touched her face. At the same time
      with the sun, she beheld at that window an object which
      frightened her, the unfortunate face of Quasimodo. She
      involuntarily closed her eyes again, but in vain; she fancied
      that she still saw through the rosy lids that gnome’s mask,
      one-eyed and gap-toothed. Then, while she still kept her eyes
      closed, she heard a rough voice saying, very gently,—

      “Be not afraid. I am your friend. I came to watch you sleep. It
      does not hurt you if I come to see you sleep, does it? What
      difference does it make to you if I am here when your eyes are
      closed! Now I am going. Stay, I have placed myself behind the
      wall. You can open your eyes again.”

      There was something more plaintive than these words, and that was
      the accent in which they were uttered. The gypsy, much touched,
      opened her eyes. He was, in fact, no longer at the window. She
      approached the opening, and beheld the poor hunchback crouching
      in an angle of the wall, in a sad and resigned attitude. She made
      an effort to surmount the repugnance with which he inspired her.
      “Come,” she said to him gently. From the movement of the gypsy’s
      lips, Quasimodo thought that she was driving him away; then he
      rose and retired limping, slowly, with drooping head, without
      even daring to raise to the young girl his gaze full of despair.
      “Do come,” she cried, but he continued to retreat. Then she
      darted from her cell, ran to him, and grasped his arm. On feeling
      her touch him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb. He raised his
      suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading him back to her
      quarters, his whole face beamed with joy and tenderness. She
      tried to make him enter the cell; but he persisted in remaining
      on the threshold. “No, no,” said he; “the owl enters not the nest
      of the lark.”

      Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her goat
      asleep at her feet. Both remained motionless for several moments,
      considering in silence, she so much grace, he so much ugliness.
      Every moment she discovered some fresh deformity in Quasimodo.
      Her glance travelled from his knock knees to his humped back,
      from his humped back to his only eye. She could not comprehend
      the existence of a being so awkwardly fashioned. Yet there was so
      much sadness and so much gentleness spread over all this, that
      she began to become reconciled to it.

      He was the first to break the silence. “So you were telling me to
      return?”

      She made an affirmative sign of the head, and said, “Yes.”

      He understood the motion of the head. “Alas!” he said, as though
      hesitating whether to finish, “I am—I am deaf.”

      “Poor man!” exclaimed the Bohemian, with an expression of kindly
      pity.

      He began to smile sadly.

      “You think that that was all that I lacked, do you not? Yes, I am
      deaf, that is the way I am made. ’Tis horrible, is it not? You
      are so beautiful!”

      There lay in the accents of the wretched man so profound a
      consciousness of his misery, that she had not the strength to say
      a word. Besides, he would not have heard her. He went on,—

      “Never have I seen my ugliness as at the present moment. When I
      compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor
      unhappy monster that I am! Tell me, I must look to you like a
      beast. You, you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of
      a bird! I am something frightful, neither man nor animal, I know
      not what, harder, more trampled under foot, and more unshapely
      than a pebble stone!”

      Then he began to laugh, and that laugh was the most heartbreaking
      thing in the world. He continued,—

      “Yes, I am deaf; but you shall talk to me by gestures, by signs.
      I have a master who talks with me in that way. And then, I shall
      very soon know your wish from the movement of your lips, from
      your look.”

      “Well!” she interposed with a smile, “tell me why you saved me.”

      He watched her attentively while she was speaking.

      “I understand,” he replied. “You ask me why I saved you. You have
      forgotten a wretch who tried to abduct you one night, a wretch to
      whom you rendered succor on the following day on their infamous
      pillory. A drop of water and a little pity,—that is more than I
      can repay with my life. You have forgotten that wretch; but he
      remembers it.”

      She listened to him with profound tenderness. A tear swam in the
      eye of the bellringer, but did not fall. He seemed to make it a
      sort of point of honor to retain it.

      “Listen,” he resumed, when he was no longer afraid that the tear
      would escape; “our towers here are very high, a man who should
      fall from them would be dead before touching the pavement; when
      it shall please you to have me fall, you will not have to utter
      even a word, a glance will suffice.”

      Then he rose. Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccentric being
      still aroused some compassion in her. She made him a sign to
      remain.

      “No, no,” said he; “I must not remain too long. I am not at my
      ease. It is out of pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I
      shall go to some place where I can see you without your seeing
      me: it will be better so.”

      He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.

      “Here,” said he, “when you have need of me, when you wish me to
      come, when you will not feel too much horror at the sight of me,
      use this whistle. I can hear this sound.”

      He laid the whistle on the floor and fled.



      CHAPTER IV. EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.

      Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la
      Esmeralda. Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing
      which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long
      in one extremity. The gypsy had suffered so much, that nothing
      was left her but astonishment. With security, hope had returned
      to her. She was outside the pale of society, outside the pale of
      life, but she had a vague feeling that it might not be impossible
      to return to it. She was like a dead person, who should hold in
      reserve the key to her tomb.

      She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted her,
      gradually departing. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue,
      Jacques Charmolue, were effaced from her mind, all, even the
      priest.

      And then, Phœbus was alive; she was sure of it, she had seen him.
      To her the fact of Phœbus being alive was everything. After the
      series of fatal shocks which had overturned everything within
      her, she had found but one thing intact in her soul, one
      sentiment,—her love for the captain. Love is like a tree; it
      sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through our
      whole being, and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart
      in ruins.

      And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is
      this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid
      than when it has no reason in it.

      La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no
      doubt. No doubt it was terrible that he also should have been
      deceived; that he should have believed that impossible thing,
      that he could have conceived of a stab dealt by her who would
      have given a thousand lives for him. But, after all, she must not
      be too angry with him for it; had she not confessed her crime?
      had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to torture? The
      fault was entirely hers. She should have allowed her finger nails
      to be torn out rather than such a word to be wrenched from her.
      In short, if she could but see Phœbus once more, for a single
      minute, only one word would be required, one look, in order to
      undeceive him, to bring him back. She did not doubt it. She was
      astonished also at many singular things, at the accident of
      Phœbus’s presence on the day of the penance, at the young girl
      with whom he had been. She was his sister, no doubt. An
      unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it,
      because she needed to believe that Phœbus still loved her, and
      loved her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was
      needed, simple and credulous as she was? And then, in this
      matter, were not appearances much more against her than against
      him? Accordingly, she waited. She hoped.

      Let us add that the church, that vast church, which surrounded
      her on every side, which guarded her, which saved her, was itself
      a sovereign tranquillizer. The solemn lines of that architecture,
      the religious attitude of all the objects which surrounded the
      young girl, the serene and pious thoughts which emanated, so to
      speak, from all the pores of that stone, acted upon her without
      her being aware of it. The edifice had also sounds fraught with
      such benediction and such majesty, that they soothed this ailing
      soul. The monotonous chanting of the celebrants, the responses of
      the people to the priest, sometimes inarticulate, sometimes
      thunderous, the harmonious trembling of the painted windows, the
      organ, bursting forth like a hundred trumpets, the three
      belfries, humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra
      on which bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending
      incessantly from the voice of a throng to that of one bell,
      dulled her memory, her imagination, her grief. The bells, in
      particular, lulled her. It was something like a powerful
      magnetism which those vast instruments shed over her in great
      waves.

      Thus every sunrise found her more calm, breathing better, less
      pale. In proportion as her inward wounds closed, her grace and
      beauty blossomed once more on her countenance, but more
      thoughtful, more reposeful. Her former character also returned to
      her, somewhat even of her gayety, her pretty pout, her love for
      her goat, her love for singing, her modesty. She took care to
      dress herself in the morning in the corner of her cell for fear
      some inhabitants of the neighboring attics might see her through
      the window.

      When the thought of Phœbus left her time, the gypsy sometimes
      thought of Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole connection,
      the sole communication which remained to her with men, with the
      living. Unfortunate girl! she was more outside the world than
      Quasimodo. She understood not in the least the strange friend
      whom chance had given her. She often reproached herself for not
      feeling a gratitude which should close her eyes, but decidedly,
      she could not accustom herself to the poor bellringer. He was too
      ugly.

      She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the
      ground. This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance
      from time to time during the first few days. She did her best not
      to turn aside with too much repugnance when he came to bring her
      her basket of provisions or her jug of water, but he always
      perceived the slightest movement of this sort, and then he
      withdrew sadly.

      Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood
      pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the
      goat and the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and
      ill-formed head,—

      “My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should
      like to be wholly a beast like that goat.”

      She gazed at him in amazement.

      He replied to the glance,—

      “Oh! I well know why,” and he went away.

      On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell
      (which he never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was
      singing an old Spanish ballad, the words of which she did not
      understand, but which had lingered in her ear because the gypsy
      women had lulled her to sleep with it when she was a little
      child. At the sight of that villanous form which made its
      appearance so abruptly in the middle of her song, the young girl
      paused with an involuntary gesture of alarm. The unhappy
      bellringer fell upon his knees on the threshold, and clasped his
      large, misshapen hands with a suppliant air. “Oh!” he said,
      sorrowfully, “continue, I implore you, and do not drive me away.”
      She did not wish to pain him, and resumed her lay, trembling all
      over. By degrees, however, her terror disappeared, and she
      yielded herself wholly to the slow and melancholy air which she
      was singing. He remained on his knees with hands clasped, as in
      prayer, attentive, hardly breathing, his gaze riveted upon the
      gypsy’s brilliant eyes.

      On another occasion, he came to her with an awkward and timid
      air. “Listen,” he said, with an effort; “I have something to say
      to you.” She made him a sign that she was listening. Then he
      began to sigh, half opened his lips, appeared for a moment to be
      on the point of speaking, then he looked at her again, shook his
      head, and withdrew slowly, with his brow in his hand, leaving the
      gypsy stupefied. Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the
      wall, there was one to whom he was particularly attached, and
      with which he often seemed to exchange fraternal glances. Once
      the gypsy heard him saying to it,—

      “Oh! why am not I of stone, like you!”

      At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had advanced to the edge of
      the roof, and was looking into the Place over the pointed roof of
      Saint-Jean le Rond. Quasimodo was standing behind her. He had
      placed himself in that position in order to spare the young girl,
      as far as possible, the displeasure of seeing him. All at once
      the gypsy started, a tear and a flash of joy gleamed
      simultaneously in her eyes, she knelt on the brink of the roof
      and extended her arms towards the Place with anguish, exclaiming:
      “Phœbus! come! come! a word, a single word in the name of heaven!
      Phœbus! Phœbus!” Her voice, her face, her gesture, her whole
      person bore the heartrending expression of a shipwrecked man who
      is making a signal of distress to the joyous vessel which is
      passing afar off in a ray of sunlight on the horizon.

      Quasimodo leaned over the Place, and saw that the object of this
      tender and agonizing prayer was a young man, a captain, a
      handsome cavalier all glittering with arms and decorations,
      prancing across the end of the Place, and saluting with his plume
      a beautiful lady who was smiling at him from her balcony.
      However, the officer did not hear the unhappy girl calling him;
      he was too far away.

      But the poor deaf man heard. A profound sigh heaved his breast;
      he turned round; his heart was swollen with all the tears which
      he was swallowing; his convulsively-clenched fists struck against
      his head, and when he withdrew them there was a bunch of red hair
      in each hand.

      The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as he
      gnashed his teeth,—

      “Damnation! That is what one should be like! ’Tis only necessary
      to be handsome on the outside!”

      Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraordinary
      agitation,—

      “Oh! there he is alighting from his horse! He is about to enter
      that house!—Phœbus!—He does not hear me! Phœbus!—How wicked that
      woman is to speak to him at the same time with me! Phœbus!
      Phœbus!”

      The deaf man gazed at her. He understood this pantomime. The poor
      bellringer’s eye filled with tears, but he let none fall. All at
      once he pulled her gently by the border of her sleeve. She turned
      round. He had assumed a tranquil air; he said to her,—

      “Would you like to have me bring him to you?”

      She uttered a cry of joy.

      “Oh! go! hasten! run! quick! that captain! that captain! bring
      him to me! I will love you for it!”

      She clasped his knees. He could not refrain from shaking his head
      sadly.

      “I will bring him to you,” he said, in a weak voice. Then he
      turned his head and plunged down the staircase with great
      strides, stifling with sobs.

      When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything except the
      handsome horse hitched at the door of the Gondelaurier house; the
      captain had just entered there.

      He raised his eyes to the roof of the church. La Esmeralda was
      there in the same spot, in the same attitude. He made her a sad
      sign with his head; then he planted his back against one of the
      stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch, determined to wait until
      the captain should come forth.

      In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days which
      precede a wedding. Quasimodo beheld many people enter, but no one
      come out. He cast a glance towards the roof from time to time;
      the gypsy did not stir any more than himself. A groom came and
      unhitched the horse and led it to the stable of the house.

      The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la Esmeralda
      on the roof, Phœbus, no doubt, at the feet of Fleur-de-Lys.

      At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night. Quasimodo
      fixed his gaze in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon she was no more
      than a whiteness amid the twilight; then nothing. All was
      effaced, all was black.

      Quasimodo beheld the front windows from top to bottom of the
      Gondelaurier mansion illuminated; he saw the other casements in
      the Place lighted one by one, he also saw them extinguished to
      the very last, for he remained the whole evening at his post. The
      officer did not come forth. When the last passers-by had returned
      home, when the windows of all the other houses were extinguished,
      Quasimodo was left entirely alone, entirely in the dark. There
      were at that time no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame.

      Meanwhile, the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion remained
      lighted, even after midnight. Quasimodo, motionless and
      attentive, beheld a throng of lively, dancing shadows pass
      athwart the many-colored painted panes. Had he not been deaf, he
      would have heard more and more distinctly, in proportion as the
      noise of sleeping Paris died away, a sound of feasting, laughter,
      and music in the Gondelaurier mansion.

      Towards one o’clock in the morning, the guests began to take
      their leave. Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched them all
      pass out through the porch illuminated with torches. None of them
      was the captain.

      He was filled with sad thoughts; at times he looked upwards into
      the air, like a person who is weary of waiting. Great black
      clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks beneath the
      starry dome of night. One would have pronounced them spiders’
      webs of the vault of heaven.

      In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long window on the
      balcony, whose stone balustrade projected above his head, open
      mysteriously. The frail glass door gave passage to two persons,
      and closed noiselessly behind them; it was a man and a woman.

      It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in
      recognizing in the man the handsome captain, in the woman the
      young lady whom he had seen welcome the officer in the morning
      from that very balcony. The place was perfectly dark, and a
      double crimson curtain which had fallen across the door the very
      moment it closed again, allowed no light to reach the balcony
      from the apartment.

      The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man could
      judge, without hearing a single one of their words, appeared to
      abandon themselves to a very tender tête-à-tête. The young girl
      seemed to have allowed the officer to make a girdle for her of
      his arm, and gently repulsed a kiss.

      Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was all the
      more pleasing to witness because it was not meant to be seen. He
      contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that happiness. After
      all, nature was not dumb in the poor fellow, and his human
      sensibility, all maliciously contorted as it was, quivered no
      less than any other. He thought of the miserable portion which
      Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of
      love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that he should
      never do anything but behold the felicity of others. But that
      which rent his heart most in this sight, that which mingled
      indignation with his anger, was the thought of what the gypsy
      would suffer could she behold it. It is true that the night was
      very dark, that la Esmeralda, if she had remained at her post
      (and he had no doubt of this), was very far away, and that it was
      all that he himself could do to distinguish the lovers on the
      balcony. This consoled him.

      Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and more animated. The
      young lady appeared to be entreating the officer to ask nothing
      more of her. Of all this Quasimodo could distinguish only the
      beautiful clasped hands, the smiles mingled with tears, the young
      girl’s glances directed to the stars, the eyes of the captain
      lowered ardently upon her.

      Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but
      feebly, the door of the balcony suddenly opened once more and an
      old dame appeared; the beauty seemed confused, the officer
      assumed an air of displeasure, and all three withdrew.

      A moment later, a horse was champing his bit under the porch, and
      the brilliant officer, enveloped in his night cloak, passed
      rapidly before Quasimodo.

      The bellringer allowed him to turn the corner of the street, then
      he ran after him with his ape-like agility, shouting: “Hey there!
      captain!”

      The captain halted.

      “What wants this knave with me?” he said, catching sight through
      the gloom of that hipshot form which ran limping after him.

      Meanwhile, Quasimodo had caught up with him, and had boldly
      grasped his horse’s bridle: “Follow me, captain; there is one
      here who desires to speak with you!

      “_Cornemahom_!” grumbled Phœbus, “here’s a villanous; ruffled
      bird which I fancy I have seen somewhere. Holà master, will you
      let my horse’s bridle alone?”

      “Captain,” replied the deaf man, “do you not ask me who it is?”

      “I tell you to release my horse,” retorted Phœbus, impatiently.
      “What means the knave by clinging to the bridle of my steed? Do
      you take my horse for a gallows?”

      Quasimodo, far from releasing the bridle, prepared to force him
      to retrace his steps. Unable to comprehend the captain’s
      resistance, he hastened to say to him,—

      “Come, captain, ’tis a woman who is waiting for you.” He added
      with an effort: “A woman who loves you.”

      “A rare rascal!” said the captain, “who thinks me obliged to go
      to all the women who love me! or who say they do. And what if, by
      chance, she should resemble you, you face of a screech-owl? Tell
      the woman who has sent you that I am about to marry, and that she
      may go to the devil!”

      “Listen,” exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking to overcome his
      hesitation with a word, “come, monseigneur! ’tis the gypsy whom
      you know!”

      This word did, indeed, produce a great effect on Phœbus, but not
      of the kind which the deaf man expected. It will be remembered
      that our gallant officer had retired with Fleur-de-Lys several
      moments before Quasimodo had rescued the condemned girl from the
      hands of Charmolue. Afterwards, in all his visits to the
      Gondelaurier mansion he had taken care not to mention that woman,
      the memory of whom was, after all, painful to him; and on her
      side, Fleur-de-Lys had not deemed it politic to tell him that the
      gypsy was alive. Hence Phœbus believed poor “Similar” to be dead,
      and that a month or two had elapsed since her death. Let us add
      that for the last few moments the captain had been reflecting on
      the profound darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness,
      the sepulchral voice of the strange messenger; that it was past
      midnight; that the street was deserted, as on the evening when
      the surly monk had accosted him; and that his horse snorted as it
      looked at Quasimodo.

      “The gypsy!” he exclaimed, almost frightened. “Look here, do you
      come from the other world?”

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

      “Quick, quick,” said the deaf man, endeavoring to drag the horse
      along; “this way!”

      Phœbus dealt him a vigorous kick in the breast.

      Quasimodo’s eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himself on the
      captain. Then he drew himself up stiffly and said,—

      “Oh! how happy you are to have some one who loves you!”

      He emphasized the words “some one,” and loosing the horse’s
      bridle,—

      “Begone!”

      Phœbus spurred on in all haste, swearing. Quasimodo watched him
      disappear in the shades of the street.

      “Oh!” said the poor deaf man, in a very low voice; “to refuse
      that!”

      He re-entered Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp and climbed to the
      tower again. The gypsy was still in the same place, as he had
      supposed.

      She flew to meet him as far off as she could see him. “Alone!”
      she cried, clasping her beautiful hands sorrowfully.

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

      “You should have waited all night,” she said angrily.

      He saw her gesture of wrath, and understood the reproach.

      “I will lie in wait for him better another time,” he said,
      dropping his head.

      “Begone!” she said to him.

      He left her. She was displeased with him. He preferred to have
      her abuse him rather than to have afflicted her. He had kept all
      the pain to himself.

      From that day forth, the gypsy no longer saw him. He ceased to
      come to her cell. At the most she occasionally caught a glimpse
      at the summit of the towers, of the bellringer’s face turned
      sadly to her. But as soon as she perceived him, he disappeared.

      We must admit that she was not much grieved by this voluntary
      absence on the part of the poor hunchback. At the bottom of her
      heart she was grateful to him for it. Moreover, Quasimodo did not
      deceive himself on this point.

      She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius
      about her. Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand
      during her slumbers. One morning she found a cage of birds on her
      window. There was a piece of sculpture above her window which
      frightened her. She had shown this more than once in Quasimodo’s
      presence. One morning, for all these things happened at night,
      she no longer saw it, it had been broken. The person who had
      climbed up to that carving must have risked his life.

      Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath
      the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song,
      as though to lull her to sleep. The lines were unrhymed, such as
      a deaf person can make.

         Ne regarde pas la figure,
         Jeune fille, regarde le cœur.
         Le cœur d’un beau jeune homme est souvent difforme.
         Il y a des cœurs où l’amour ne se conserve pas.

         Jeune fille, le sapin n’est pas beau,
         N’est pas beau comme le peuplier,
         Mais il garde son feuillage l’hiver.

         Hélas! à quoi bon dire cela?
         Ce qui n’est pas beau a tort d’être;
         La beauté n’aime que la beauté,
         Avril tourne le dos à janvier.

         La beauté est parfaite,
         La beauté peut tout,
         La beauté est la seule chose qui n’existe pas à demi.

         Le corbeau ne vole que le jour,
         Le hibou ne vole que la nuit,
         Le cygne vole la nuit et le jour.[52]

      One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled
      with flowers. One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but
      cracked vase of glass. It had allowed the water with which it had
      been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were
      withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common,
      but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained
      fresh and crimson.

      I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda
      took the faded nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.

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

      She troubled herself very little about it. She passed her days in
      caressing Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house,
      in talking to herself about Phœbus, and in crumbling up her bread
      for the swallows.

      She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo. The poor
      bellringer seemed to have disappeared from the church. One night,
      nevertheless, when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her
      handsome captain, she heard something breathing near her cell.
      She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon, a shapeless
      mass lying across her door on the outside. It was Quasimodo
      asleep there upon the stones.



      CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

      In the meantime, public rumor had informed the archdeacon of the
      miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he
      learned it, he knew not what his sensations were. He had
      reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. In that matter he was
      tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering. The
      human heart (Dom Claude had meditated upon these matters) can
      contain only a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is
      saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop
      more to enter it.

      Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an
      end on this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive,
      and Phœbus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life,
      were beginning again. And Claude was weary of all this.

      When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the
      cloister. He appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor
      at the services. He closed his door against all, even against the
      bishop. He remained thus immured for several weeks. He was
      believed to be ill. And so he was, in fact.

      What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the
      unfortunate man contending? Was he giving final battle to his
      formidable passion? Was he concocting a final plan of death for
      her and of perdition for himself?

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

      He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his
      window. From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see
      la Esmeralda’s chamber. He often saw herself with her goat,
      sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the little attentions of
      the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate and submissive
      ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and
      memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled the singular
      look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain
      evening. He asked himself what motive could have impelled
      Quasimodo to save her. He was the witness of a thousand little
      scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of
      which, viewed from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared
      very tender to him. He distrusted the capriciousness of women.
      Then he felt a jealousy which he could never have believed
      possible awakening within him, a jealousy which made him redden
      with shame and indignation: “One might condone the captain, but
      this one!” This thought upset him.

      His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the gypsy
      was alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb which had
      persecuted him for a whole day vanished, and the flesh returned
      to goad him. He turned and twisted on his couch at the thought
      that the dark-skinned maiden was so near him.

      Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to
      him in all the attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most.
      He beheld her outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes
      closed, her beautiful bare throat covered with Phœbus’s blood, at
      that moment of bliss when the archdeacon had imprinted on her
      pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy girl, though half
      dead, had felt. He beheld her, again, stripped by the savage
      hands of the torturers, allowing them to bare and to enclose in
      the boot with its iron screw, her tiny foot, her delicate rounded
      leg, her white and supple knee. Again he beheld that ivory knee
      which alone remained outside of Torterue’s horrible apparatus.
      Lastly, he pictured the young girl in her shift, with the rope
      about her neck, shoulders bare, feet bare, almost nude, as he had
      seen her on that last day. These images of voluptuousness made
      him clench his fists, and a shiver run along his spine.

      One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin and
      priestly blood, that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed,
      flung on a surplice over his shirt, and left his cell, lamp in
      hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.

      He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected
      the cloister with the church, and he always had about him, as the
      reader knows, the key of the staircase leading to the towers.



      CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

      That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell, full of
      oblivion, of hope, and of sweet thoughts. She had already been
      asleep for some time, dreaming as always, of Phœbus, when it
      seemed to her that she heard a noise near her. She slept lightly
      and uneasily, the sleep of a bird; a mere nothing waked her. She
      opened her eyes. The night was very dark. Nevertheless, she saw a
      figure gazing at her through the window; a lamp lighted up this
      apparition. The moment that the figure saw that la Esmeralda had
      perceived it, it blew out the lamp. But the young girl had had
      time to catch a glimpse of it; her eyes closed again with terror.

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

      All her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of
      lightning. She fell back on her bed, chilled.

      A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her
      shudder so that she straightened herself up in a sitting posture,
      wide awake and furious.

      The priest had just slipped in beside her. He encircled her with
      both arms.

      She tried to scream and could not.

      “Begone, monster! begone assassin!” she said, in a voice which
      was low and trembling with wrath and terror.

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

      She seized his bald head by its remnant of hair and tried to
      thrust aside his kisses as though they had been bites.

      “Mercy!” repeated the unfortunate man. “If you but knew what my
      love for you is! ’Tis fire, melted lead, a thousand daggers in my
      heart.”

      She stopped his two arms with superhuman force.

      “Let me go,” she said, “or I will spit in your face!”

      He released her. “Vilify me, strike me, be malicious! Do what you
      will! But have mercy! love me!”

      Then she struck him with the fury of a child. She made her
      beautiful hands stiff to bruise his face. “Begone, demon!”

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

      All at once she felt him stronger than herself.

      “There must be an end to this!” he said, gnashing his teeth.

      She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his power. She
      felt a wanton hand straying over her. She made a last effort, and
      began to cry: “Help! Help! A vampire! a vampire!”

      Nothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with anguish.

      “Hush!” said the panting priest.

      All at once, as she struggled and crawled on the floor, the
      gypsy’s hand came in contact with something cold and metallic—it
      was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsive hope,
      raised it to her lips and blew with all the strength that she had
      left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.

      “What is that?” said the priest.

      Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous
      arm. The cell was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it
      was that held him thus; but he heard teeth chattering with rage,
      and there was just sufficient light scattered among the gloom to
      allow him to see above his head the blade of a large knife.

      The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo. He
      assumed that it could be no one but he. He remembered to have
      stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle which was stretched across
      the door on the outside. But, as the newcomer did not utter a
      word, he knew not what to think. He flung himself on the arm
      which held the knife, crying: “Quasimodo!” He forgot, at that
      moment of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.

      In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee
      rested on his breast.

      From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo;
      but what was to be done? how could he make the other recognize
      him? the darkness rendered the deaf man blind.

      He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did
      not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching his head;
      the moment was critical. All at once, his adversary seemed
      stricken with hesitation.

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

      It was, in fact, Quasimodo’s voice.

      Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of
      the cell; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him,
      the moon had risen a few moments before.

      When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays
      fell upon the priest’s countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in
      the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the priest and
      shrank back.

      The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld
      with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest
      who menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.

      The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of
      wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.

      The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the
      gypsy’s door,—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned
      voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me
      first.”

      So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest,
      beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was
      quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands
      and burst into a frantic laugh,—“Approach,” she said to the
      priest.

      She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.

      She would certainly have struck him.

      Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she
      was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot
      irons,—

      “Ah! I know that Phœbus is not dead!”

      The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and,
      quivering with rage, darted back under the vault of the
      staircase.

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

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

      The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back
      exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was
      becoming gloomy once more.

      The priest had groped his way back to his cell.

      It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!

      He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: “No one shall
      have her.”



      BOOK TENTH.



      CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE DES
      BERNARDINS.

      As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was
      turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and
      other disagreeable things for the principal personages in this
      comedy, he had not cared to identify himself with the matter
      further. The outcasts with whom he had remained, reflecting that,
      after all, it was the best company in Paris,—the outcasts had
      continued to interest themselves in behalf of the gypsy. He had
      thought it very simple on the part of people who had, like
      herself, nothing else in prospect but Charmolue and Torterue, and
      who, unlike himself, did not gallop through the regions of
      imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their remarks, he
      had learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge in
      Notre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation
      to go and see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little
      goat, and that was all. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of
      strength during the day for his living, and at night he was
      engaged in composing a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for
      he remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills,
      and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occupied
      himself with annotating the fine work of Baudry-le-Rouge, Bishop
      of Noyon and Tournay, _De Cupa Petrarum_, which had given him a
      violent passion for architecture, an inclination which had
      replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it
      was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an
      intimate relation between hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had
      passed from the love of an idea to the love of the form of that
      idea.

      One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the
      corner of a mansion called “For-l’Évêque” (the Bishop’s
      Tribunal), which stood opposite another called “For-le-Roi” (the
      King’s Tribunal). At this For-l’Évêque, there was a charming
      chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on the street.
      Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior sculptures. He was
      in one of those moments of egotistical, exclusive, supreme,
      enjoyment when the artist beholds nothing in the world but art,
      and the world in art. All at once he feels a hand laid gravely on
      his shoulder. He turns round. It was his old friend, his former
      master, monsieur the archdeacon.

      He was stupefied. It was a long time since he had seen the
      archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of those solemn and
      impassioned men, a meeting with whom always upsets the
      equilibrium of a sceptical philosopher.

      The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, during
      which Gringoire had time to observe him. He found Dom Claude
      greatly changed; pale as a winter’s morning, with hollow eyes,
      and hair almost white. The priest broke the silence at length, by
      saying, in a tranquil but glacial tone,—

      “How do you do, Master Pierre?”

      “My health?” replied Gringoire. “Eh! eh! one can say both one
      thing and another on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole.
      I take not too much of anything. You know, master, that the
      secret of keeping well, according to Hippocrates; _id est: cibi,
      potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint_.”

      “So you have no care, Master Pierre?” resumed the archdeacon,
      gazing intently at Gringoire.

      “None, i’ faith!”

      “And what are you doing now?”

      “You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones,
      and the manner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out.”

      The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises
      only one corner of the mouth.

      “And that amuses you?”

      “’Tis paradise!” exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the
      sculptures with the fascinated air of a demonstrator of living
      phenomena: “Do you not think, for instance, that yon
      metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much adroitness,
      delicacy and patience? Observe that slender column. Around what
      capital have you seen foliage more tender and better caressed by
      the chisel. Here are three raised bosses of Jean Maillevin. They
      are not the finest works of this great master. Nevertheless, the
      naïvete, the sweetness of the faces, the gayety of the attitudes
      and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which is mingled with
      all the defects, render the little figures very diverting and
      delicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is not
      diverting?”

      “Yes, certainly!” said the priest.

      “And if you were to see the interior of the chapel!” resumed the
      poet, with his garrulous enthusiasm. “Carvings everywhere. ’Tis
      as thickly clustered as the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a
      very devout, and so peculiar a fashion that I have never beheld
      anything like it elsewhere!”

      Dom Claude interrupted him,—

      “You are happy, then?”

      Gringoire replied warmly;—

      “On my honor, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love
      stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less
      treacherous.”

      The priest laid his hand on his brow. It was his habitual
      gesture.

      “Really?”

      “Stay!” said Gringoire, “one has one’s pleasures!” He took the
      arm of the priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter
      the staircase turret of For-l’Évêque. “Here is a staircase! every
      time that I see it I am happy. It is of the simplest and rarest
      manner of steps in Paris. All the steps are bevelled underneath.
      Its beauty and simplicity consist in the interspacing of both,
      being a foot or more wide, which are interlaced, interlocked,
      fitted together, enchained enchased, interlined one upon another,
      and bite into each other in a manner that is truly firm and
      graceful.”

      “And you desire nothing?”

      “No.”

      “And you regret nothing?”

      “Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life.”

      “What men arrange,” said Claude, “things disarrange.”

      “I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “and I hold
      all things in equilibrium.”

      “And how do you earn your living?”

      “I still make epics and tragedies now and then; but that which
      brings me in most is the industry with which you are acquainted,
      master; carrying pyramids of chairs in my teeth.”

      “The trade is but a rough one for a philosopher.”

      “’Tis still equilibrium,” said Gringoire. “When one has an idea,
      one encounters it in everything.”

      “I know that,” replied the archdeacon.

      After a silence, the priest resumed,—

      “You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?”

      “Poor, yes; unhappy, no.”

      At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two
      interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company
      of the king’s unattached archers, their lances borne high, an
      officer at their head. The cavalcade was brilliant, and its march
      resounded on the pavement.

      “How you gaze at that officer!” said Gringoire, to the
      archdeacon.

      “Because I think I recognize him.”

      “What do you call him?”

      “I think,” said Claude, “that his name is Phœbus de Châteaupers.”

      “Phœbus! A curious name! There is also a Phœbus, Comte de Foix. I
      remember having known a wench who swore only by the name of
      Phœbus.”

      “Come away from here,” said the priest. “I have something to say
      to you.”

      From the moment of that troop’s passing, some agitation had
      pierced through the archdeacon’s glacial envelope. He walked on.
      Gringoire followed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all
      who had once approached that man so full of ascendency. They
      reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly
      deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.

      “What have you to say to me, master?” Gringoire asked him.

      “Do you not think that the dress of those cavaliers whom we have
      just seen is far handsomer than yours and mine?”

      Gringoire tossed his head.

      “I’ faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those
      scales of iron and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you
      walk, the same noise as the Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!”

      “So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome
      fellows in their military doublets?”

      “Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their
      armor, their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in
      rags. I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a
      lion.”

      “That is singular,” said the priest dreamily. “Yet a handsome
      uniform is a beautiful thing.”

      Gringoire, perceiving that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him
      to go and admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back
      clapping his hands.

      “If you were less engrossed with the fine clothes of men of war,
      monsieur the archdeacon, I would entreat you to come and see this
      door. I have always said that the house of the Sieur Aubry had
      the most superb entrance in the world.”

      “Pierre Gringoire,” said the archdeacon, “What have you done with
      that little gypsy dancer?”

      “La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly.”

      “Was she not your wife?”

      “Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of
      it. By the way,” added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a
      half bantering way, “are you still thinking of her?”

      “And you think of her no longer?”

      “Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty
      that little goat was!”

      “Had she not saved your life?”

      “’Tis true, pardieu!”

      “Well, what has become of her? What have you done with her?”

      “I cannot tell you. I believe that they have hanged her.”

      “You believe so?”

      “I am not sure. When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I
      retired from the game.”

      “That is all you know of it?”

      “Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame,
      and that she was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I
      have not been able to discover whether the goat was saved with
      her, and that is all I know.”

      “I will tell you more,” cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto
      low, slow, and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. “She has in
      fact, taken refuge in Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will
      reclaim her, and she will be hanged on the Grève. There is a
      decree of parliament.”

      “That’s annoying,” said Gringoire.

      The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.

      “And who the devil,” resumed the poet, “has amused himself with
      soliciting a decree of reintegration? Why couldn’t they leave
      parliament in peace? What harm does it do if a poor girl takes
      shelter under the flying buttresses of Notre-Dame, beside the
      swallows’ nests?”

      “There are satans in this world,” remarked the archdeacon.

      “’Tis devilish badly done,” observed Gringoire.

      The archdeacon resumed after a silence,—

      “So, she saved your life?”

      “Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little
      less and I should have been hanged. They would have been sorry
      for it to-day.”

      “Would not you like to do something for her?”

      “I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself
      in some villanous affair?”

      “What matters it?”

      “Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have
      two great works already begun.”

      The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he
      affected, a violent gesture betrayed his internal convulsions
      from time to time.

      “How is she to be saved?”

      Gringoire said to him; “Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_,
      which means in Turkish, ‘God is our hope.’”

      “How is she to be saved?” repeated Claude dreamily.

      Gringoire smote his brow in his turn.

      “Listen, master. I have imagination; I will devise expedients for
      you. What if one were to ask her pardon from the king?”

      “Of Louis XI.! A pardon!”

      “Why not?”

      “To take the tiger’s bone from him!”

      Gringoire began to seek fresh expedients.

      “Well, stay! Shall I address to the midwives a request
      accompanied by the declaration that the girl is with child!”

      This made the priest’s hollow eye flash.

      “With child! knave! do you know anything of this?”

      Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say, “Oh, no,
      not I! Our marriage was a real _forismaritagium_. I stayed
      outside. But one might obtain a respite, all the same.”

      “Madness! Infamy! Hold your tongue!”

      “You do wrong to get angry,” muttered Gringoire. “One obtains a
      respite; that does no harm to any one, and allows the midwives,
      who are poor women, to earn forty deniers parisis.”

      The priest was not listening to him!

      “But she must leave that place, nevertheless!” he murmured, “the
      decree is to be executed within three days. Moreover, there will
      be no decree; that Quasimodo! Women have very depraved tastes!”
      He raised his voice: “Master Pierre, I have reflected well; there
      is but one means of safety for her.”

      “What? I see none myself.”

      “Listen, Master Pierre, remember that you owe your life to her. I
      will tell you my idea frankly. The church is watched night and
      day; only those are allowed to come out, who have been seen to
      enter. Hence you can enter. You will come. I will lead you to
      her. You will change clothes with her. She will take your
      doublet; you will take her petticoat.”

      “So far, it goes well,” remarked the philosopher, “and then?”

      “And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain
      with hers. You will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved.”

      Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. “Stay!”
      said he, “that is an idea which would never have occurred to me
      unaided.”

      At Dom Claude’s proposition, the open and benign face of the poet
      had abruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when
      an unlucky squall comes up and dashes a cloud across the sun.

      “Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?”

      “I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I
      shall be hanged indubitably.

      “That concerns us not.”

      “The deuce!” said Gringoire.

      “She has saved your life. ’Tis a debt that you are discharging.”

      “There are a great many others which I do not discharge.”

      “Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary.”

      The archdeacon spoke imperiously.

      “Listen, Dom Claude,” replied the poet in utter consternation.
      “You cling to that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I
      should get myself hanged in some one else’s place.”

      “What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?”

      “Oh! a thousand reasons!”

      “What reasons, if you please?”

      “What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight,
      my good friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of
      go-betweens, the fine architecture of Paris to study, three great
      books to make, one of them being against the bishops and his
      mills; and how can I tell all? Anaxagoras said that he was in the
      world to admire the sun. And then, from morning till night, I
      have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius,
      who is myself, which is very agreeable.”

      “A head fit for a mule bell!” muttered the archdeacon. “Oh! tell
      me who preserved for you that life which you render so charming
      to yourself? To whom do you owe it that you breathe that air,
      behold that sky, and can still amuse your lark’s mind with your
      whimsical nonsense and madness? Where would you be, had it not
      been for her? Do you then desire that she through whom you are
      alive, should die? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet,
      adorable creature, who is necessary to the light of the world and
      more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool, a vain
      sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that it
      walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to live with
      the life which you have stolen from her, as useless as a candle
      in broad daylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be
      generous in your turn; it was she who set the example.”

      The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with
      an undecided air, then he became touched, and wound up with a
      grimace which made his pallid face resemble that of a new-born
      infant with an attack of the colic.

      “You are pathetic!” said he, wiping away a tear. “Well! I will
      think about it. That’s a queer idea of yours.—After all,” he
      continued after a pause, “who knows? perhaps they will not hang
      me. He who becomes betrothed does not always marry. When they
      find me in that little lodging so grotesquely muffled in
      petticoat and coif, perchance they will burst with laughter. And
      then, if they do hang me,—well! the halter is as good a death as
      any. ’Tis a death worthy of a sage who has wavered all his life;
      a death which is neither flesh nor fish, like the mind of a
      veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism and
      hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and
      earth, which leaves you in suspense. ’Tis a philosopher’s death,
      and I was destined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die
      as one has lived.”

      The priest interrupted him: “Is it agreed.”

      “What is death, after all?” pursued Gringoire with exaltation. “A
      disagreeable moment, a toll-gate, the passage of little to
      nothingness. Some one having asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan,
      if he were willing to die: ‘Why not?’ he replied; ‘for after my
      death I shall see those great men, Pythagoras among the
      philosophers, Hecatæus among historians, Homer among poets,
      Olympus among musicians.’”

      The archdeacon gave him his hand: “It is settled, then? You will
      come to-morrow?”

      This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.

      “Ah! i’ faith no!” he said in the tone of a man just waking up.
      “Be hanged! ’tis too absurd. I will not.”

      “Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his teeth:
      “I’ll find you again!”

      “I do not want that devil of a man to find me,” thought
      Gringoire; and he ran after Dom Claude. “Stay, monsieur the
      archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old friends! You take an
      interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and ’tis well. You have
      devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your way is
      extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had only another
      one myself! I beg to say that a luminous inspiration has just
      occurred to me. If I possessed an expedient for extricating her
      from a dilemma, without compromising my own neck to the extent of
      a single running knot, what would you say to it? Will not that
      suffice you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged,
      in order that you may be content?”

      The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience:
      “Stream of words! What is your plan?”

      “Yes,” resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his
      nose with his forefinger in sign of meditation,—“that’s it!—The
      thieves are brave fellows!—The tribe of Egypt love her!—They will
      rise at the first word!—Nothing easier!—A sudden stroke.—Under
      cover of the disorder, they will easily carry her off!—Beginning
      to-morrow evening. They will ask nothing better.

      “The plan! speak,” cried the archdeacon shaking him.

      Gringoire turned majestically towards him: “Leave me! You see
      that I am composing.” He meditated for a few moments more, then
      began to clap his hands over his thought, crying: “Admirable!
      success is sure!”

      “The plan!” repeated Claude in wrath.

      Gringoire was radiant.

      “Come, that I may tell you that very softly. ’Tis a truly gallant
      counter-plot, which will extricate us all from the matter.
      Pardieu, it must be admitted that I am no fool.”

      He broke off.

      “Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?”

      “Yes. The devil take you!”

      “They would have hanged it also, would they not?”

      “What is that to me?”

      “Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month.
      The headsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my
      pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”

      “Malediction!” exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the executioner.
      What means of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be
      extracted with the forceps?”

      “Very fine, master, this is it.”

      Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke to him
      in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one
      end to the other of the street, though no one was passing. When
      he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: “’Tis
      well. Farewell until to-morrow.”

      “Until to-morrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon
      was disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other,
      saying to himself in a low voice: “Here’s a grand affair,
      Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! ’Tis not written that
      because one is of small account one should take fright at a great
      enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the
      water-wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the
      ocean.”



      CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.

      On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the door of
      his cell his brother Jehan du Moulin, who was waiting for him,
      and who had beguiled the tedium of waiting by drawing on the wall
      with a bit of charcoal, a profile of his elder brother, enriched
      with a monstrous nose.

      Dom Claude hardly looked at his brother; his thoughts were
      elsewhere. That merry scamp’s face whose beaming had so often
      restored serenity to the priest’s sombre physiognomy, was now
      powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense every day over
      that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soul.

      “Brother,” said Jehan timidly, “I am come to see you.”

      The archdeacon did not even raise his eyes.

      “What then?”

      “Brother,” resumed the hypocrite, “you are so good to me, and you
      give me such wise counsels that I always return to you.”

      “What next?”

      “Alas! brother, you were perfectly right when you said to
      me,—“Jehan! Jehan! _cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum
      disciplina_. Jehan, be wise, Jehan, be learned, Jehan, pass not
      the night outside of the college without lawful occasion and due
      leave of the master. Cudgel not the Picards: _noli, Joannes,
      verberare Picardos_. Rot not like an unlettered ass, _quasi
      asinus illitteratus_, on the straw seats of the school. Jehan,
      allow yourself to be punished at the discretion of the master.
      Jehan go every evening to chapel, and sing there an anthem with
      verse and orison to Madame the glorious Virgin Mary.”—Alas! what
      excellent advice was that!”

      “And then?”

      “Brother, you behold a culprit, a criminal, a wretch, a
      libertine, a man of enormities! My dear brother, Jehan hath made
      of your counsels straw and dung to trample under foot. I have
      been well chastised for it, and God is extraordinarily just. As
      long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and joyous life. Oh!
      how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is so charming in
      front! Now I have no longer a blank; I have sold my napery, my
      shirt and my towels; no more merry life! The beautiful candle is
      extinguished and I have henceforth, only a wretched tallow dip
      which smokes in my nose. The wenches jeer at me. I drink water. I
      am overwhelmed with remorse and with creditors.”

      “The rest?” said the archdeacon.

      “Alas! my very dear brother, I should like to settle down to a
      better life. I come to you full of contrition, I am penitent. I
      make my confession. I beat my breast violently. You are quite
      right in wishing that I should some day become a licentiate and
      sub-monitor in the college of Torchi. At the present moment I
      feel a magnificent vocation for that profession. But I have no
      more ink and I must buy some; I have no more paper, I have no
      more books, and I must buy some. For this purpose, I am greatly
      in need of a little money, and I come to you, brother, with my
      heart full of contrition.”

      “Is that all?”

      “Yes,” said the scholar. “A little money.”

      “I have none.”

      Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and
      resolute: “Well, brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you
      that very fine offers and propositions are being made to me in
      another quarter. You will not give me any money? No. In that case
      I shall become a professional vagabond.”

      As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien of Ajax,
      expecting to see the lightnings descend upon his head.

      The archdeacon said coldly to him,—

      “Become a vagabond.”

      Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister stairs,
      whistling.

      At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard of the
      cloister, beneath his brother’s window, he heard that window
      open, raised his eyes and beheld the archdeacon’s severe head
      emerge.

      “Go to the devil!” said Dom Claude; “here is the last money which
      you will get from me?”

      At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which gave the
      scholar a big bump on the forehead, and with which Jehan
      retreated, both vexed and content, like a dog who had been stoned
      with marrow bones.



      CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.

      The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the Cour de
      Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall which surrounded the
      city, a goodly number of whose towers had begun, even at that
      epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these towers had been converted
      into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There was a dram-shop in
      the underground story, and the rest in the upper stories. This
      was the most lively, and consequently the most hideous, point of
      the whole outcast den. It was a sort of monstrous hive, which
      buzzed there night and day. At night, when the remainder of the
      beggar horde slept, when there was no longer a window lighted in
      the dingy façades of the Place, when not a cry was any longer to
      be heard proceeding from those innumerable families, those
      ant-hills of thieves, of wenches, and stolen or bastard children,
      the merry tower was still recognizable by the noise which it
      made, by the scarlet light which, flashing simultaneously from
      the air-holes, the windows, the fissures in the cracked walls,
      escaped, so to speak, from its every pore.

      The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through
      a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine.
      Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub,
      representing new sous and dead chickens,[53] with this, pun
      below: _Aux sonneurs pour les trépassés_,—The ringers for the
      dead.

      One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the belfries in
      Paris, the sergeants of the watch might have observed, had it
      been granted to them to enter the formidable Court of Miracles,
      that more tumult than usual was in progress in the vagabonds’
      tavern, that more drinking was being done, and louder swearing.
      Outside in the Place, there, were many groups conversing in low
      tones, as when some great plan is being framed, and here and
      there a knave crouching down engaged in sharpening a villanous
      iron blade on a paving-stone.

      Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered such a
      powerful diversion to the ideas which occupied the vagabonds’
      lair that evening, that it would have been difficult to divine
      from the remarks of the drinkers, what was the matter in hand.
      They merely wore a gayer air than was their wont, and some weapon
      could be seen glittering between the legs of each of them,—a
      sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword or the hook of an old
      hackbut.

      The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables
      were so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that all that
      the tavern contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs, all that
      were drinking, all that were sleeping, all that were playing, the
      well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as much order and
      harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There were a few tallow dips
      lighted on the tables; but the real luminary of this tavern, that
      which played the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an
      opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire
      was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense
      chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron
      andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of
      mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the
      reflection of forge windows stand out so red on the opposite
      walls. A big dog gravely seated in the ashes was turning a spit
      loaded with meat before the coals.

      Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could
      distinguish in that multitude, three principal groups which
      thronged around three personages already known to the reader. One
      of these personages, fantastically accoutred in many an oriental
      rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and Bohemia. The
      knave was seated on a table with his legs crossed, and in a loud
      voice was bestowing his knowledge of magic, both black and white,
      on many a gaping face which surrounded him. Another rabble
      pressed close around our old friend, the valiant King of Thunes,
      armed to the teeth. Clopin Trouillefou, with a very serious air
      and in a low voice, was regulating the distribution of an
      enormous cask of arms, which stood wide open in front of him and
      from whence poured out in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets,
      coats of mail, broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and
      viretons,[54] like apples and grapes from a horn of plenty. Every
      one took something from the cask, one a morion, another a long,
      straight sword, another a dagger with a cross-shaped hilt. The
      very children were arming themselves, and there were even
      cripples in bowls who, in armor and cuirass, made their way
      between the legs of the drinkers, like great beetles.

      Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial, and
      the most numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the midst of
      which harangued and swore a flute-like voice, which escaped from
      beneath a heavy armor, complete from casque to spurs. The
      individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit upon his body, was
      so hidden by his warlike accoutrements that nothing was to be
      seen of his person save an impertinent, red, snub nose, a rosy
      mouth, and bold eyes. His belt was full of daggers and poniards,
      a huge sword on his hip, a rusted cross-bow at his left, and a
      vast jug of wine in front of him, without reckoning on his right,
      a fat wench with her bosom uncovered. All mouths around him were
      laughing, cursing, and drinking.

      Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female,
      running with jugs on their heads, gamblers squatting over taws,
      merelles,[55] dice, vachettes, the ardent game of tringlet,
      quarrels in one corner, kisses in another, and the reader will
      have some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the
      light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and
      grotesque shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop.

      As for the noise, it was like the inside of a bell at full peal.

      The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled with
      its continual sputtering the intervals of these thousand
      dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment to
      the other.

      In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern, on
      the bench inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating with
      his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the brands. It was Pierre
      Gringoire.

      “Be quick! make haste, arm yourselves! we set out on the march in
      an hour!” said Clopin Trouillefou to his thieves.

      A wench was humming,—

         “Bonsoir mon père et ma mère,
         Les derniers couvrent le feu.”[56]

      Two card players were disputing,—

      “Knave!” cried the reddest faced of the two, shaking his fist at
      the other; “I’ll mark you with the club. You can take the place
      of Mistigri in the pack of cards of monseigneur the king.”

      “Ugh!” roared a Norman, recognizable by his nasal accent; “we are
      packed in here like the saints of Caillouville!”

      “My sons,” the Duke of Egypt was saying to his audience, in a
      falsetto voice, “sorceresses in France go to the witches’ sabbath
      without broomsticks, or grease, or steed, merely by means of some
      magic words. The witches of Italy always have a buck waiting for
      them at their door. All are bound to go out through the chimney.”

      The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot, dominated
      the uproar.

      “Hurrah! hurrah!” he was shouting. “My first day in armor!
      Outcast! I am an outcast. Give me something to drink. My friends,
      my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and I am a gentleman. My
      opinion is that if God were a _gendarme_, he would turn robber.
      Brothers, we are about to set out on a fine expedition. Lay siege
      to the church, burst in the doors, drag out the beautiful girl,
      save her from the judges, save her from the priests, dismantle
      the cloister, burn the bishop in his palace—all this we will do
      in less time than it takes for a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of
      soup. Our cause is just, we will plunder Notre-Dame and that will
      be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do you know Quasimodo,
      ladies? Have you seen him make himself breathless on the big bell
      on a grand Pentecost festival! _Corne du Père!_ ’tis very fine!
      One would say he was a devil mounted on a man. Listen to me, my
      friends; I am a vagabond to the bottom of my heart, I am a member
      of the slang thief gang in my soul, I was born an independent
      thief. I have been rich, and I have devoured all my property. My
      mother wanted to make an officer of me; my father, a sub-deacon;
      my aunt, a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary
      to the king; my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe,—and I
      have made myself an outcast. I said this to my father, who spit
      his curse in my face; to my mother, who set to weeping and
      chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the and-irons.
      Long live mirth! I am a real Bicêtre. Waitress, my dear, more
      wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I want no more Surène
      wine. It distresses my throat. I’d as lief, _corbœuf!_ gargle my
      throat with a basket.”

      Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter; and
      seeing that the tumult was increasing around him, the scholar
      cried,—.

      “Oh! what a fine noise! _Populi debacchantis populosa
      debacchatio!_” Then he began to sing, his eye swimming in
      ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning vespers, _Quæ cantica!
      quæ organa! quæ cantilenæ! quæ melodiæ hic sine fine decantantur!
      Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angelorum melodia,
      cantica canticorum mira!_ He broke off: “Tavern-keeper of the
      devil, give me some supper!”

      There was a moment of partial silence, during which the sharp
      voice of the Duke of Egypt rose, as he gave instructions to his
      Bohemians.

      “The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of
      the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old
      Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and
      causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is
      baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck,
      a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother
      its hinder parts. ’Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to
      make wenches dance stark naked.”

      “By the mass!” interrupted Jehan, “I should like to be the demon
      Sidragasum.”

      Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and whisper
      at the other end of the dram-shop.

      “That poor Esmeralda!” said a Bohemian. “She is our sister. She
      must be taken away from there.”

      “Is she still at Notre-Dame?” went on a merchant with the
      appearance of a Jew.

      “Yes, pardieu!”

      “Well! comrades!” exclaimed the merchant, “to Notre-Dame! So much
      the better, since there are in the chapel of Saints Féréol and
      Ferrution two statues, the one of John the Baptist, the other of
      Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing together seven marks of
      gold and fifteen estellins; and the pedestals are of silver-gilt,
      of seventeen marks, five ounces. I know that; I am a goldsmith.”

      Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw himself back
      on the bosom of the wench beside him, he exclaimed,—

      “By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint Goguelu, I am
      perfectly happy. I have before me a fool who gazes at me with the
      smooth face of an archduke. Here is one on my left whose teeth
      are so long that they hide his chin. And then, I am like the
      Marshal de Gié at the siege of Pontoise, I have my right resting
      on a hillock. _Ventre-Mahom!_ Comrade! you have the air of a
      merchant of tennis-balls; and you come and sit yourself beside
      me! I am a nobleman, my friend! Trade is incompatible with
      nobility. Get out of that! Holà hé! You others, don’t fight!
      What, Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have such a fine nose are
      going to risk it against the big fists of that lout! Fool! _Non
      cuiquam datum est habere nasum_—not every one is favored with a
      nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! ’tis a
      pity that you have no hair! Holà! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my
      brother is an archdeacon. May the devil fly off with him! All
      that I tell you is the truth. In turning vagabond, I have gladly
      renounced the half of a house situated in paradise, which my
      brother had promised me. _Dimidiam domum in paradiso_. I quote
      the text. I have a fief in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women
      are in love with me, as true as Saint Éloy was an excellent
      goldsmith, and that the five trades of the good city of Paris are
      the tanners, the tawers, the makers of cross-belts, the
      purse-makers, and the sweaters, and that Saint Laurent was burnt
      with eggshells. I swear to you, comrades.

         “Que je ne beuvrai de piment,
         Devant un an, si je cy ment![57]

      “’Tis moonlight, my charmer; see yonder through the window how
      the wind is tearing the clouds to tatters! Even thus will I do to
      your gorget.—Wenches, wipe the children’s noses and snuff the
      candles.—Christ and Mahom! What am I eating here, Jupiter? Ohé!
      innkeeper! the hair which is not on the heads of your hussies one
      finds in your omelettes. Old woman! I like bald omelettes. May
      the devil confound you!—A fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where the
      hussies comb their heads with the forks!

         “Et je n’ai moi,
         Par la sang-Dieu!
         Ni foi, ni loi,
         Ni feu, ni lieu,
             Ni roi,
             Ni Dieu.”[58]

      In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the distribution
      of arms. He approached Gringoire, who appeared to be plunged in a
      profound revery, with his feet on an andiron.

      “Friend Pierre,” said the King of Thunes, “what the devil are you
      thinking about?”

      Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile.

      “I love the fire, my dear lord. Not for the trivial reason that
      fire warms the feet or cooks our soup, but because it has sparks.
      Sometimes I pass whole hours in watching the sparks. I discover a
      thousand things in those stars which are sprinkled over the black
      background of the hearth. Those stars are also worlds.”

      “Thunder, if I understand you!” said the outcast. “Do you know
      what o’clock it is?”

      “I do not know,” replied Gringoire.

      Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt.

      “Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good one. King
      Louis XI. is said to be in Paris.”

      “Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws,” replied
      the old Bohemian.

      “You speak like a man, Mathias,” said the King of Thunes.
      “Moreover, we will act promptly. No resistance is to be feared in
      the church. The canons are hares, and we are in force. The people
      of the parliament will be well balked to-morrow when they come to
      seek her! Guts of the pope I don’t want them to hang the pretty
      girl!”

      Clopin quitted the dram-shop.

      Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice:

      “I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre, the
      Slaughterer, if you look at me like that again, I’ll fillip the
      dust off your nose for you.”

      Gringoire, torn from his meditations, began to watch the wild and
      noisy scene which surrounded him, muttering between his teeth:
      “_Luxuriosa res vinum et tumultuosa ebrietas_. Alas! what good
      reason I have not to drink, and how excellently spoke
      Saint-Benoît: ‘_Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!_’”

      At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of
      thunder: “Midnight!”

      At this word, which produced the effect of the call to boot and
      saddle on a regiment at a halt, all the outcasts, men, women,
      children, rushed in a mass from the tavern, with great noise of
      arms and old iron implements.

      The moon was obscured.

      The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a single
      light. One could make out there a throng of men and women
      conversing in low tones. They could be heard buzzing, and a gleam
      of all sorts of weapons was visible in the darkness. Clopin
      mounted a large stone.

      “To your ranks, Argot!”[59] he cried. “Fall into line, Egypt!
      Form ranks, Galilee!”

      A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude appeared
      to form in a column. After a few minutes, the King of Thunes
      raised his voice once more,—

      “Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is, ‘Little
      sword in pocket!’ The torches will not be lighted till we reach
      Notre-Dame! Forward, march!”

      Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror
      before a long procession of black and silent men which was
      descending towards the Pont au Change, through the tortuous
      streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the markets
      in every direction.



      CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.

      That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made his last
      round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when
      he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him
      and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring
      with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large
      leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude’s air was even more
      preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure
      in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did
      he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed
      the submission, patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful
      bellringer. He endured everything on the part of the archdeacon,
      insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the
      most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended
      the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained from
      presenting himself again before the gypsy’s eyes.

      On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance
      at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie,
      and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and
      there setting his dark lanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he
      began to gaze at Paris. The night, as we have already said, was
      very dark. Paris which, so to speak was not lighted at that
      epoch, presented to the eye a confused collection of black
      masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve of the Seine.
      Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of one
      window in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was
      outlined well above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte
      Sainte-Antoine. There also, there was some one awake.

      As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of
      mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness.
      For several days he had been upon his guard. He had perceived men
      of sinister mien, who never took their eyes from the young girl’s
      asylum, prowling constantly about the church. He fancied that
      some plot might be in process of formation against the unhappy
      refugee. He imagined that there existed a popular hatred against
      her, as against himself, and that it was very possible that
      something might happen soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on
      the watch, “dreaming in his dream-place,” as Rabelais says, with
      his eye directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping
      faithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in
      his mind.

      All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that
      eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing
      that it could almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo
      lacked, it seemed to him that there was something singular about
      the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there was a movement at
      that point, that the line of the parapet, standing out blackly
      against the whiteness of the water was not straight and tranquil,
      like that of the other quays, but that it undulated to the eye,
      like the waves of a river, or like the heads of a crowd in
      motion.

      This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention. The
      movement seemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no
      light. It lasted for some time on the quay; then it gradually
      ceased, as though that which was passing were entering the
      interior of the island; then it stopped altogether, and the line
      of the quay became straight and motionless again.

      At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed
      to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis,
      which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the façade of
      Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the
      head of a column debouch from that street, and in an instant a
      crowd—of which nothing could be distinguished in the gloom except
      that it was a crowd—spread over the Place.

      This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that this
      singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing
      itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence no less
      profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped it, were it
      only a trampling. But this noise did not even reach our deaf man,
      and this great multitude, of which he saw hardly anything, and of
      which he heard nothing, though it was marching and moving so near
      him, produced upon him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute,
      impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld
      advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows
      moving in the shadow.

      Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against
      the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. He was
      conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was
      approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel with
      himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would have
      expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awaken the
      gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested,
      the church backed on the river. No boat, no issue!—There was but
      one thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the
      threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived,
      if it should arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda’s sleep.
      This resolution once taken, he set to examining the enemy with
      more tranquillity.

      The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square.
      Only, he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since
      the windows on the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame
      flashed up, and in an instant seven or eight lighted torches
      passed over the heads of the crowd, shaking their tufts of flame
      in the deep shade. Quasimodo then beheld distinctly surging in
      the Parvis a frightful herd of men and women in rags, armed with
      scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose thousand points
      glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed horns to the
      hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought
      that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of
      the Fools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one
      hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to
      be haranguing them. At the same time the strange army executed
      several evolutions, as though it were taking up its post around
      the church. Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the
      platform between the towers, in order to get a nearer view, and
      to spy out a means of defence.

      Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of
      Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle.
      Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent
      general, to preserve an order which would permit him to face, at
      need, a sudden attack of the watch or the police. He had
      accordingly stationed his brigade in such a manner that, viewed
      from above and from a distance, one would have pronounced it the
      Roman triangle of the battle of Ecnomus, the boar’s head of
      Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of
      this triangle rested on the back of the Place in such a manner as
      to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced
      Hôtel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. Clopin
      Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of
      Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.

      An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking
      against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the
      Middle Ages. What we now call the “police” did not exist then. In
      populous cities, especially in capitals, there existed no single,
      central, regulating power. Feudalism had constructed these great
      communities in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a
      thousand seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all
      shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of
      police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,
      independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid claim
      to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to a manor
      and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who had
      five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who
      had four. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain
      authority of the king only in name. All possessed the right of
      control over the roads. All were at home. Louis XI., that
      indefatigable worker, who so largely began the demolition of the
      feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the
      profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the benefit of
      the people,—Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break this
      network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violently
      across them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in
      1465, an order to the inhabitants to light candles in their
      windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of
      death; in the same year, an order to close the streets in the
      evening with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or
      weapons of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short
      time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into
      abeyance. The _bourgeois_ permitted the wind to blow out their
      candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains
      were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear
      daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue
      Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge[60] which is an
      evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions
      remained standing; an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and
      seignories crossing each other all over the city, interfering
      with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing each other,
      trespassing on each other; a useless thicket of watches,
      sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with armed force,
      passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in this disorder,
      deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against a
      palace, a hôtel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters,
      were not unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases,
      the neighbors did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging
      extended to themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket
      shots, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the
      matter to be concluded with or without the watch, and the next
      day it was said in Paris, “Étienne Barbette was broken open last
      night. The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc.”
      Hence, not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace,
      the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,
      the Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’Angoulême,
      etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over
      their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, among
      the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey of
      Saint-Germain-des-Prés was castellated like a baronial mansion,
      and more brass expended about it in bombards than in bells. Its
      fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day, barely its church
      remains.

      Let us return to Notre-Dame.

      When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to
      the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin’s orders were
      executed in silence, and with admirable precision, the worthy
      chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the church square,
      and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning towards
      Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, tossed by the
      wind, and veiled every moment by its own smoke, made the reddish
      façade of the church appear and disappear before the eye.

      “To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in the
      Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand
      Coësre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister,
      falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in your church,
      you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court of Parliament wishes
      to seize her once more there, and you consent to it; so that she
      would be hanged to-morrow in the Grève, if God and the outcasts
      were not here. If your church is sacred, so is our sister; if our
      sister is not sacred, neither is your church. That is why we call
      upon you to return the girl if you wish to save your church, or
      we will take possession of the girl again and pillage the church,
      which will be a good thing. In token of which I here plant my
      banner, and may God preserve you, bishop of Paris.”

      Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with
      a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his
      banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two
      paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a
      bleeding quarter of carrion meat.

      That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over
      his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally
      with their pikes. After a momentary pause,—“Forward, my Sons!” he
      cried; “to work, locksmiths!”

      Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces,
      stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron
      on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the principal door
      of the church, ascended the steps, and were soon to be seen
      squatting under the arch, working at the door with pincers and
      levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them to help or look on.
      The eleven steps before the portal were covered with them.

      But the door stood firm. “The devil! ’tis hard and obstinate!”
      said one. “It is old, and its gristles have become bony,” said
      another. “Courage, comrades!” resumed Clopin. “I wager my head
      against a dipper that you will have opened the door, rescued the
      girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single beadle is
      awake. Stay! I think I hear the lock breaking up.”

      Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-sounded
      behind him at that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had
      just fallen from above; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the
      pavement with the sound of a cannon, breaking in addition, legs
      here and there in the crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with
      cries of terror. In a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the
      church parvis were cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by
      the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin
      himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.

      “I had a narrow escape!” cried Jehan. “I felt the wind, of it,
      _tête-de-bœuf!_ but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!”

      It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright
      which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.

      They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air,
      more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king’s twenty
      thousand archers.

      “Satan!” muttered the Duke of Egypt, “this smacks of magic!”

      “’Tis the moon which threw this log at us,” said Andry the Red.

      “Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!” went on
      François Chanteprune.

      “A thousand popes!” exclaimed Clopin, “you are all fools!” But he
      did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.

      Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to whose
      summit the light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay
      in the middle of the enclosure, and groans were heard from the
      poor wretches who had received its first shock, and who had been
      almost cut in twain, on the angle of the stone steps.

      The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an
      explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.

      “Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack,
      then! to the sack!”

      “To the sack!” repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A
      discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the
      church followed.

      At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding
      houses woke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and
      hands holding candles appeared at the casements.

      “Fire at the windows,” shouted Clopin. The windows were
      immediately closed, and the poor _bourgeois_, who had hardly had
      time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of gleams and
      tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their wives, asking
      themselves whether the witches’ sabbath was now being held in the
      parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there was an assault of
      Burgundians, as in ’64. Then the husbands thought of theft; the
      wives, of rape; and all trembled.

      “To the sack!” repeated the thieves’ crew; but they dared not
      approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the church. The
      beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm and deserted
      air; but something chilled the outcasts.

      “To work, locksmiths!” shouted Trouillefou. “Let the door be
      forced!”

      No one took a step.

      “Beard and belly!” said Clopin, “here be men afraid of a beam.”

      An old locksmith addressed him—

      “Captain, ’tis not the beam which bothers us, ’tis the door,
      which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless
      against it.”

      “What more do you want to break it in?” demanded Clopin.

      “Ah! we ought to have a battering ram.”

      The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed
      his foot upon it: “Here is one!” he exclaimed; “’tis the canons
      who send it to you.” And, making a mocking salute in the
      direction of the church, “Thanks, canons!”

      This piece of bravado produced its effects,—the spell of the beam
      was broken. The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy
      joist, raised like a feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was
      flung with fury against the great door which they had tried to
      batter down. At the sight of that long beam, in the half-light
      which the infrequent torches of the brigands spread over the
      Place, thus borne by that crowd of men who dashed it at a run
      against the church, one would have thought that he beheld a
      monstrous beast with a thousand feet attacking with lowered head
      the giant of stone.

      At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an
      immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral
      trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice were heard to
      echo.

      At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from
      the top of the façade on the assailants.

      “The devil!” cried Jehan, “are the towers shaking their
      balustrades down on our heads?”

      But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the
      example. Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they
      only battered the door with the more rage, in spite of the stones
      which cracked skulls right and left.

      It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but they
      followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two at a
      time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There were few
      which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of dead and
      wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet of the
      assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other without
      intermission. The long beam continued to belabor the door, at
      regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the stones to rain
      down, the door to groan.

      The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance
      which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.

      Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.

      When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his
      ideas were all in confusion. He had run up and down along the
      gallery for several minutes like a madman, surveying from above,
      the compact mass of vagabonds ready to hurl itself on the church,
      demanding the safety of the gypsy from the devil or from God. The
      thought had occurred to him of ascending to the southern belfry
      and sounding the alarm, but before he could have set the bell in
      motion, before Marie’s voice could have uttered a single clamor,
      was there not time to burst in the door of the church ten times
      over? It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were
      advancing upon it with their tools. What was to be done?

      All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at work all
      day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof of the
      south tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was of stone,
      the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That prodigious
      timber-work, so dense that it was called “the forest.”)

      Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers were, in
      fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough blocks of
      stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy beams
      already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.

      Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work below. With
      a strength which the sense of danger increased tenfold, he seized
      one of the beams—the longest and heaviest; he pushed it out
      through a loophole, then, grasping it again outside of the tower,
      he made it slide along the angle of the balustrade which
      surrounds the platform, and let it fly into the abyss. The
      enormous timber, during that fall of a hundred and sixty feet,
      scraping the wall, breaking the carvings, turned many times on
      its centre, like the arm of a windmill flying off alone through
      space. At last it reached the ground, the horrible cry arose, and
      the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement, resembled a
      serpent leaping.

      Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam,
      like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage of their
      fright, and while they were fixing a superstitious glance on the
      club which had fallen from heaven, and while they were putting
      out the eyes of the stone saints on the front with a discharge of
      arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster,
      stones, and rough blocks of stone, even the sacks of tools
      belonging to the masons, on the edge of the balustrade from which
      the beam had already been hurled.

      Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower
      of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them
      that the church itself was being demolished over their heads.

      Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have
      been frightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had
      piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on
      the platform itself. As fast as the blocks on the exterior edge
      were exhausted, he drew on the heap. Then he stooped and rose,
      stooped and rose again with incredible activity. His huge gnome’s
      head bent over the balustrade, then an enormous stone fell, then
      another, then another. From time to time, he followed a fine
      stone with his eye, and when it did good execution, he said,
      “Hum!”

      Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door
      on which they were venting their fury had already trembled more
      than twenty times beneath the weight of their oaken
      battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a hundred men. The
      panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters, the hinges,
      at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks yawned, the
      wood crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing.
      Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.

      Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although
      he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated
      simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it. From
      above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and rage,
      shaking their fists at the gloomy façade; and both on the gypsy’s
      account and his own he envied the wings of the owls which flitted
      away above his head in flocks.

      His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the
      assailants.

      At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than
      the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone
      gutters which discharged immediately over the great door; the
      internal orifice of these gutters terminated on the pavement of
      the platform. An idea occurred to him; he ran in search of a
      fagot in his bellringer’s den, placed on this fagot a great many
      bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, munitions which he had
      not employed so far, and having arranged this pile in front of
      the hole to the two gutters, he set it on fire with his lantern.

      During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts
      ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of
      hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously
      round the great door, all disfigured by the battering ram, but
      still standing. They were waiting with a quiver for the great
      blow which should split it open. They vied with each other in
      pressing as close as possible, in order to dash among the first,
      when it should open, into that opulent cathedral, a vast
      reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up.
      They reminded each other with roars of exultation and greedy
      lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade,
      the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of
      the choir, the dazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling
      with torches, the Easters sparkling with sunshine,—all those
      splendid solemneties wherein chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles,
      and reliquaries, studded the altars with a crust of gold and
      diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment, thieves and pseudo
      sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, were thinking much
      less of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We
      could even easily believe that for a goodly number among them la
      Esmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.

      All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves
      round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and
      stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all his force to
      the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than that which
      had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose among them.
      Those who did not cry out, those who were still alive, looked.
      Two streams of melted lead were falling from the summit of the
      edifice into the thickest of the rabble. That sea of men had just
      sunk down beneath the boiling metal, which had made, at the two
      points where it fell, two black and smoking holes in the crowd,
      such as hot water would make in snow. Dying men, half consumed
      and groaning with anguish, could be seen writhing there. Around
      these two principal streams there were drops of that horrible
      rain, which scattered over the assailants and entered their
      skulls like gimlets of fire. It was a heavy fire which
      overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand hailstones.

      The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling the
      beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most timid, and
      the parvis was cleared a second time.

      All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They beheld there
      an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the highest gallery,
      higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame
      rising between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast,
      disordered, and furious flame, a tongue of which was borne into
      the smoke by the wind, from time to time. Below that fire, below
      the gloomy balustrade with its trefoils showing darkly against
      its glare, two spouts with monster throats were vomiting forth
      unceasingly that burning rain, whose silvery stream stood out
      against the shadows of the lower façade. As they approached the
      earth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like
      water springing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above
      the flame, the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were
      visible in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly
      red, seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow
      which they cast even to the sky.

      Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a
      lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move
      to the eye. There were griffins which had the air of laughing,
      gargoyles which one fancied one heard yelping, salamanders which
      puffed at the fire, tarasques[61] which sneezed in the smoke. And
      among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
      flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was
      seen, from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the
      pile, like a bat in front of a candle.

      Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away,
      the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, terrified to behold the
      gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame quivering over his
      heaths.

      A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which
      nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut up
      in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning
      stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily opened and still
      more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses and
      of the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle
      of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead
      upon the pavement.

      In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the
      porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of
      war.

      The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated the
      phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet
      in the air, with religious terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his
      huge fists with rage.

      “Impossible to get in!” he muttered between his teeth.

      “An old, enchanted church!” grumbled the aged Bohemian, Mathias
      Hungadi Spicali.

      “By the Pope’s whiskers!” went on a sham soldier, who had once
      been in service, “here are church gutters spitting melted lead at
      you better than the machicolations of Lectoure.”

      “Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of the
      fire?” exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.

      “Pardieu, ’tis that damned bellringer, ’tis Quasimodo,” said
      Clopin.

      The Bohemian tossed his head. “I tell you, that ’tis the spirit
      Sabnac, the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications. He has
      the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion. Sometimes he
      rides a hideous horse. He changes men into stones, of which he
      builds towers. He commands fifty legions ’Tis he indeed; I
      recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a handsome golden robe,
      figured after the Turkish fashion.”

      “Where is Bellevigne de l’Étoile?” demanded Clopin.

      “He is dead.”

      Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: “Notre-Dame is making
      work for the hospital,” said he.

      “Is there, then, no way of forcing this door,” exclaimed the King
      of Thunes, stamping his foot.

      The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling
      lead which did not cease to streak the black façade, like two
      long distaffs of phosphorus.

      “Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all by
      themselves,” he remarked with a sigh. “Saint-Sophia at
      Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three times
      in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her domes, which
      are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this one was a
      magician.”

      “Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?” said
      Clopin. “Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves
      will hang to-morrow.”

      “And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!” added a
      vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.

      “Beard of Mahom!” cried Trouillefou.

      “Let us make another trial,” resumed the vagabond.

      Mathias Hungadi shook his head.

      “We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in
      the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint
      or other.”

      “Who will go with me?” said Clopin. “I shall go at it again. By
      the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in
      iron?”

      “He is dead, no doubt,” some one replied; “we no longer hear his
      laugh.”

      The King of Thunes frowned: “So much the worse. There was a brave
      heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?”

      “Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, “he slipped away before we
      reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs.”

      Clopin stamped his foot. “_Gueule-Dieu!_ ’twas he who pushed us
      on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle of the job!
      Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!”

      “Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du
      Parvis, “yonder is the little scholar.”

      “Praised be Pluto!” said Clopin. “But what the devil is he
      dragging after him?”

      It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy
      outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the
      pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed to
      a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.

      “Victory! _Te Deum!_” cried the scholar. “Here is the ladder of
      the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry.”

      Clopin approached him.

      “Child, what do you mean to do, _corne-dieu!_ with this ladder?”

      “I have it,” replied Jehan, panting. “I knew where it was under
      the shed of the lieutenant’s house. There’s a wench there whom I
      know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to
      get the ladder, and I have the ladder, _Pasque-Mahom!_ The poor
      girl came to open the door to me in her shift.”

      “Yes,” said Clopin, “but what are you going to do with that
      ladder?”

      Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked
      his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his
      head he wore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth
      century, which frightened the enemy with their fanciful crests.
      His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan could have
      disputed with Nestor’s Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of
      δεκέμβολος.

      “What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see
      that row of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder,
      above the three portals?”

      “Yes. Well?”

      “’Tis the gallery of the kings of France.”

      “What is that to me?” said Clopin.

      “Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is never
      fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this ladder I
      ascend, and I am in the church.”

      “Child let me be the first to ascend.”

      “No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the second.”

      “May Beelzebub strangle you!” said surly Clopin, “I won’t be
      second to anybody.”

      “Then find a ladder, Clopin!”

      Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder and
      shouting: “Follow me, lads!”

      In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against the
      balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the lateral doors.
      The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations, crowded to
      its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his right, and was the
      first to set foot on the rungs. The passage was tolerably long.
      The gallery of the kings of France is to-day about sixty feet
      above the pavement. The eleven steps of the flight before the
      door, made it still higher. Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal
      incommoded by his heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand,
      and clinging to a rung with the other. When he reached the middle
      of the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead
      outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. “Alas!” said he,
      “here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!”
      Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds followed him. There
      was one on every rung. At the sight of this line of cuirassed
      backs, undulating as they rose through the gloom, one would have
      pronounced it a serpent with steel scales, which was raising
      itself erect in front of the church. Jehan who formed the head,
      and who was whistling, completed the illusion.

      The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and
      climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond
      tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and
      suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of Quasimodo
      concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind one of the
      statues of the kings.

      Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery,
      the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder,
      without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with
      his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall,
      balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from
      top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish,
      then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men
      backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the most
      resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect
      and standing for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then
      wavered, then suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle
      eighty feet in radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of
      ruffians, more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break.
      There arose an immense imprecation, then all was still, and a few
      mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the heap of dead.

      A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of triumph
      among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both elbows
      propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had the air of an old,
      bushy-headed king at his window.

      As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He found
      himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer, alone,
      separated from his companions by a vertical wall eighty feet
      high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the ladder, the scholar
      had run to the postern which he believed to be open. It was not.
      The deaf man had closed it behind him when he entered the
      gallery. Jehan had then concealed himself behind a stone king,
      not daring to breathe, and fixing upon the monstrous hunchback a
      frightened gaze, like the man, who, when courting the wife of the
      guardian of a menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous,
      mistook the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found
      himself face to face with a white bear.

      For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to him; but
      at last he turned his head, and suddenly straightened up. He had
      just caught sight of the scholar.

      Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf man
      remained motionless; only he had turned towards the scholar and
      was looking at him.

      “Ho ho!” said Jehan, “what do you mean by staring at me with that
      solitary and melancholy eye?”

      As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his
      crossbow.

      “Quasimodo!” he cried, “I am going to change your surname: you
      shall be called the blind man.”

      The shot sped. The feathered vireton[62] whizzed and entered the
      hunchback’s left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more moved by it than
      by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his hand on the arrow,
      tore it from his arm, and tranquilly broke it across his big
      knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor, rather than
      threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity to fire a second
      time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing heavily, bounded like
      a grasshopper, and he fell upon the scholar, whose armor was
      flattened against the wall by the blow.

      Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a
      terrible thing was seen.

      Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of Jehan,
      who did not offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he feel that
      he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf man detached one by
      one, in silence, with sinister slowness, all the pieces of his
      armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the cuirass, the leg
      pieces. One would have said that it was a monkey taking the shell
      from a nut. Quasimodo flung the scholar’s iron shell at his feet,
      piece by piece. When the scholar beheld himself disarmed,
      stripped, weak, and naked in those terrible hands, he made no
      attempt to speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously
      in his face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a
      child of sixteen, the then popular ditty:—

         “Elle est bien habillée,
         La ville de Cambrai;
         Marafin l’a pillée....”[63]

      He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of the
      gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand and
      whirling him over the abyss like a sling; then a sound like that
      of a bony structure in contact with a wall was heard, and
      something was seen to fall which halted a third of the way down
      in its fall, on a projection in the architecture. It was a dead
      body which remained hanging there, bent double, its loins broken,
      its skull empty.

      A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.

      “Vengeance!” shouted Clopin. “To the sack!” replied the
      multitude. “Assault! assault!”

      There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled all tongues,
      all dialects, all accents. The death of the poor scholar imparted
      a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized with shame, and the
      wrath of having been held so long in check before a church by a
      hunchback. Rage found ladders, multiplied the torches, and, at
      the expiration of a few minutes, Quasimodo, in despair, beheld
      that terrible ant heap mount on all sides to the assault of
      Notre-Dame. Those who had no ladders had knotted ropes; those who
      had no ropes climbed by the projections of the carvings. They
      hung from each other’s rags. There were no means of resisting
      that rising tide of frightful faces; rage made these fierce
      countenances ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat;
      their eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these
      horrors laid siege to Quasimodo. One would have said that some
      other church had despatched to the assault of Notre-Dame its
      gorgons, its dogs, its drées, its demons, its most fantastic
      sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the stone
      monsters of the façade.

      Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. This
      scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was suddenly
      flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and cast a
      radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on the lofty platform
      was still burning, and illuminated the city far away. The
      enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on the
      roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this light.
      The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in the
      distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed; and
      Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering for the
      gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching ever nearer and
      nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven for a miracle, and wrung
      his arms in despair.



      CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS
      PRAYERS.

      The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment before
      catching sight of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, Quasimodo, as
      he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell tower, perceived
      only one light burning, which gleamed like a star from a window
      on the topmost story of a lofty edifice beside the Porte
      Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille. That star was the
      candle of Louis XI. King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in
      Paris. He was to take his departure on the next day but one for
      his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but seldom and brief
      appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not feel
      about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.

      He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great
      chamber five toises[64] square, which he had at the Louvre, with
      its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and
      thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by
      twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid all
      this grandeur. This good _bourgeois_ king preferred the Bastille
      with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was
      stronger than the Louvre.

      This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the
      famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the
      topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep. It was
      circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining straw, ceiled
      with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal with
      interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods sown with
      rosettes of white metal, and with others painted a fine, bright
      green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.

      There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with
      brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored
      panes with the arms of the king and of the queen, each pane being
      worth two and twenty sols.

      There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a flat arch,
      garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the
      outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices of
      cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which were still to be
      seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they
      disfigure and embarrass the places,” says Sauvel in despair, “our
      old people are still unwilling to get rid of them, and keep them
      in spite of everybody.”

      In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes
      ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms,
      nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools
      sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece.
      Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen; the
      wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of ruby
      Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, and
      studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of this
      chair made it apparent that only one person had a right to sit
      down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite close to the
      window, there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of
      birds. On this table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some
      parchments, several pens, and a large goblet of chased silver. A
      little further on was a brazier, a praying stool in crimson
      velvet, relieved with small bosses of gold. Finally, at the
      extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and yellow
      damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary
      fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the
      sleeplessness of Louis XI., was still to be seen two hundred
      years ago, at the house of a councillor of state, where it was
      seen by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name
      _Arricidie_ and of _la Morale Vivante_.

      Such was the chamber which was called “the retreat where Monsieur
      Louis de France says his prayers.”

      At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this
      retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour
      before; night was come, and there was only one flickering wax
      candle set on the table to light five persons variously grouped
      in the chamber.

      The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in
      breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose
      coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures. This
      splendid costume, on which the light played, seemed glazed with
      flame on every fold. The man who wore it had his armorial
      bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid colors; a chevron
      accompanied by a deer passant. The shield was flanked, on the
      right by an olive branch, on the left by a deer’s antlers. This
      man wore in his girdle a rich dagger whose hilt, of silver gilt,
      was chased in the form of a helmet, and surmounted by a count’s
      coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien, and a head held
      high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at
      the second, craft.

      He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand,
      behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully
      doubled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a very
      badly accoutred personage. Let the reader imagine in fact, on the
      rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked knees, two thin thighs,
      poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a body enveloped in a cloak
      of fustian, with fur trimming of which more leather than hair was
      visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort
      of black cloth, bordered with a circular string of leaden
      figures. This, in company with a dirty skull-cap, which hardly
      allowed a hair to escape, was all that distinguished the seated
      personage. He held his head so bent upon his breast, that nothing
      was to be seen of his face thus thrown into shadow, except the
      tip of his nose, upon which fell a ray of light, and which must
      have been long. From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one
      divined that he was an old man. It was Louis XI. At some distance
      behind them, two men dressed in garments of Flemish style were
      conversing, who were not sufficiently lost in the shadow to
      prevent any one who had been present at the performance of
      Gringoire’s mystery from recognizing in them two of the principal
      Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the sagacious pensioner of Ghent,
      and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. The reader will
      remember that these men were mixed up in the secret politics of
      Louis XI. Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door,
      in the dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with
      thickset limbs, a military harness, with a surcoat of armorial
      bearings, whose square face pierced with staring eyes, slit with
      an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large screens of flat
      hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.

      All were uncovered except the king.

      The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a sort of
      long memorial to which his majesty seemed to be listening
      attentively. The two Flemings were whispering together.

      “Cross of God!” grumbled Coppenole, “I am tired of standing; is
      there no chair here?”

      Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet
      smile.

      “Croix-Dieu!” resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at being
      obliged to lower his voice thus, “I should like to sit down on
      the floor, with my legs crossed, like a hosier, as I do in my
      shop.”

      “Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques.”

      “Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?”

      “Or on his knees,” said Rym.

      At that moment the king’s voice was uplifted. They held their
      peace.

      “Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for
      the mantles of the clerks of our crown! That’s it! Pour out gold
      by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?”

      As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden shells
      of the collar of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on his
      neck. The candle fully illuminated his gaunt and morose profile.
      He tore the papers from the other’s hand.

      “You are ruining us!” he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the
      scroll. “What is all this? What need have we of so prodigious a
      household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month each, and, a
      chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-chambre at ninety
      livres a year. Four head cooks at six score livres a year each! A
      spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a butler, two
      sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month each! Two scullions
      at eight livres! A groom of the stables and his two aids at four
      and twenty livres a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two
      carters, each sixty livres a year! And the farrier six score
      livres! And the master of the chamber of our funds, twelve
      hundred livres! And the comptroller five hundred. And how do I
      know what else? ’Tis ruinous. The wages of our servants are
      putting France to the pillage! All the ingots of the Louvre will
      melt before such a fire of expenses! We shall have to sell our
      plate! And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his
      hat) lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!”

      So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which gleamed
      upon the table. He coughed and continued,—

      “Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, like
      kings and emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in their
      houses; for the fire spreads thence through the province. Hence,
      Master Olivier, consider this said once for all. Our expenditure
      increases every year. The thing displease us. How, _pasque-Dieu!_
      when in ’79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres, did
      it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen
      livres? I have the figures in my head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand
      six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, by the faith of my
      body, it will reach eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four
      years! Monstrous!”

      He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,—

      “I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you
      suck crowns from me at every pore.”

      All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath which
      are allowed to take their course. He continued,—

      “’Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of France,
      that we should re-establish what they call the grand charges of
      the Crown! Charges in very deed! Charges which crush! Ah!
      gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to reign _dapifero
      nullo, buticulario nullo!_ We will let you see, _pasque-Dieu!_
      whether we are not a king!”

      Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this softened
      his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,—

      “Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the keys, the
      grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the grand seneschal are not
      worth the smallest valet. Remember this, Gossip Coppenole. They
      serve no purpose, as they stand thus useless round the king; they
      produce upon me the effect of the four Evangelists who surround
      the face of the big clock of the palace, and which Philippe
      Brille has just set in order afresh. They are gilt, but they do
      not indicate the hour; and the hands can get on without them.”

      He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking his aged
      head,—

      “Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I shall not
      gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier.”

      The person whom he designated by this name, took the papers into
      his hands again, and began to read aloud,—

      “To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the
      provostship of Paris; for the silver, making, and engraving of
      said seals, which have been made new because the others
      preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn condition,
      could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis.

      “To Guillaume Frère, the sum of four livres, four sols parisis,
      for his trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed the
      doves in the two dove-cots of the Hôtel des Tournelles, during
      the months of January, February, and March of this year; and for
      this he hath given seven sextiers of barley.

      “To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols parisis.”

      The king listened in silence. From time to time he coughed; then
      he raised the goblet to his lips and drank a draught with a
      grimace.

      “During this year there have been made by the ordinance of
      justice, to the sound of the trumpet, through the squares of
      Paris, fifty-six proclamations. Account to be regulated.

      “For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in Paris as
      well as elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed; but
      nothing hath been found: forty-five livres parisis.”

      “Bury a crown to unearth a sou!” said the king.

      “For having set in the Hôtel des Tournelles six panes of white
      glass in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen sols; for
      having made and delivered by command of the king, on the day of
      the musters, four shields with the escutcheons of the said
      seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses all about, six livres;
      for two new sleeves to the king’s old doublet, twenty sols; for a
      box of grease to grease the boots of the king, fifteen deniers; a
      stable newly made to lodge the king’s black pigs, thirty livres
      parisis; many partitions, planks, and trap-doors, for the
      safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul, twenty-two livres.”

      “These be dear beasts,” said Louis XI. “It matters not; it is a
      fine magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion whom I
      love for his pleasant ways. Have you seen him, Master Guillaume?
      Princes must have these terrific animals; for we kings must have
      lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats. The great befits a
      crown. In the days of the pagans of Jupiter, when the people
      offered the temples a hundred oxen and a hundred sheep, the
      emperors gave a hundred lions and a hundred eagles. This was wild
      and very fine. The kings of France have always had roarings round
      their throne. Nevertheless, people must do me this justice, that
      I spend still less money on it than they did, and that I possess
      a greater modesty of lions, bears, elephants, and leopards.—Go
      on, Master Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish
      friends.”

      Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly mien,
      had the air of one of the bears of which his majesty was
      speaking. The king paid no heed. He had just dipped his lips into
      the goblet, and he spat out the beverage, saying: “Foh! what a
      disagreeable potion!” The man who was reading continued:—

      “For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months in
      the little cell of the flayer, until it should be determined what
      to do with him, six livres, four sols.”

      “What’s that?” interrupted the king; “feed what ought to be
      hanged! _Pasque-Dieu!_ I will give not a sou more for that
      nourishment. Olivier, come to an understanding about the matter
      with Monsieur d’Estouteville, and prepare me this very evening
      the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. Resume.”

      Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of the
      “rascally foot soldier,” and passed on.

      “To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of justice
      in Paris, the sum of sixty sols parisis, to him assessed and
      ordained by monseigneur the provost of Paris, for having bought,
      by order of the said sieur the provost, a great broad sword,
      serving to execute and decapitate persons who are by justice
      condemned for their demerits, and he hath caused the same to be
      garnished with a sheath and with all things thereto appertaining;
      and hath likewise caused to be repointed and set in order the old
      sword, which had become broken and notched in executing justice
      on Messire Louis de Luxembourg, as will more fully appear....”

      The king interrupted: “That suffices. I allow the sum with great
      good will. Those are expenses which I do not begrudge. I have
      never regretted that money. Continue.”

      “For having made over a great cage....”

      “Ah!” said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in both
      hands, “I knew well that I came hither to this Bastille for some
      purpose. Hold, Master Olivier; I desire to see that cage myself.
      You shall read me the cost while I am examining it. Messieurs
      Flemings, come and see this; ’tis curious.”

      Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a sign
      to the sort of mute who stood before the door to precede him, to
      the two Flemings to follow him, and quitted the room.

      The royal company was recruited, at the door of the retreat, by
      men of arms, all loaded down with iron, and by slender pages
      bearing flambeaux. It marched for some time through the interior
      of the gloomy donjon, pierced with staircases and corridors even
      in the very thickness of the walls. The captain of the Bastille
      marched at their head, and caused the wickets to be opened before
      the bent and aged king, who coughed as he walked.

      At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that of
      the old man bent double with age. “Hum,” said he between his
      gums, for he had no longer any teeth, “we are already quite
      prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a low door, a bent
      passer.”

      At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded with
      locks that a quarter of an hour was required to open it, they
      entered a vast and lofty vaulted hall, in the centre of which
      they could distinguish by the light of the torches, a huge cubic
      mass of masonry, iron, and wood. The interior was hollow. It was
      one of those famous cages of prisoners of state, which were
      called “the little daughters of the king.” In its walls there
      were two or three little windows so closely trellised with stout
      iron bars; that the glass was not visible. The door was a large
      flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the sort of door which serves
      for entrance only. Only here, the occupant was alive.

      The king began to walk slowly round the little edifice, examining
      it carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed him, read aloud
      the note.

      “For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams, timbers and
      wall-plates, measuring nine feet in length by eight in breadth,
      and of the height of seven feet between the partitions, smoothed
      and clamped with great bolts of iron, which has been placed in a
      chamber situated in one of the towers of the Bastille
      Saint-Antoine, in which cage is placed and detained, by command
      of the king our lord, a prisoner who formerly inhabited an old,
      decrepit, and ruined cage. There have been employed in making the
      said new cage, ninety-six horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright
      joists, ten wall plates three toises long; there have been
      occupied nineteen carpenters to hew, work, and fit all the said
      wood in the courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days.”

      “Very fine heart of oak,” said the king, striking the woodwork
      with his fist.

      “There have been used in this cage,” continued the other, “two
      hundred and twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet, and of
      eight, the rest of medium length, with the rowels, caps and
      counterbands appertaining to the said bolts; weighing, the said
      iron in all, three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-five
      pounds; beside eight great squares of iron, serving to attach the
      said cage in place with clamps and nails weighing in all two
      hundred and eighteen pounds, not reckoning the iron of the
      trellises for the windows of the chamber wherein the cage hath
      been placed, the bars of iron for the door of the cage and other
      things.”

      “’Tis a great deal of iron,” said the king, “to contain the light
      of a spirit.”

      “The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five
      sols, seven deniers.”

      “_Pasque-Dieu!_” exclaimed the king.

      At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one
      seemed to awaken in the interior of the cage; the sound of chains
      was heard, grating on the floor, and a feeble voice, which seemed
      to issue from the tomb was uplifted. “Sire! sire! mercy!” The one
      who spoke thus could not be seen.

      “Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers,”
      repeated Louis XI. The lamentable voice which had proceeded from
      the cage had frozen all present, even Master Olivier himself. The
      king alone wore the air of not having heard. At his order, Master
      Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly continued his
      inspection of the cage.

      “In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who hath
      made the holes wherein to place the gratings of the windows, and
      the floor of the chamber where the cage is, because that floor
      could not support this cage by reason of its weight, twenty-seven
      livres fourteen sols parisis.”

      The voice began to moan again.

      “Mercy, sire! I swear to you that ’twas Monsieur the Cardinal
      d’Angers and not I, who was guilty of treason.”

      “The mason is bold!” said the king. “Continue, Olivier.”

      Olivier continued,—

      “To a joiner for window frames, bedstead, hollow stool, and other
      things, twenty livres, two sols parisis.”

      The voice also continued.

      “Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you that
      ’twas not I who wrote the matter to Monseigneur de Guyenne, but
      Monsieur le Cardinal Balue.”

      “The joiner is dear,” quoth the king. “Is that all?”

      “No, sire. To a glazier, for the windows of the said chamber,
      forty-six sols, eight deniers parisis.”

      “Have mercy, sire! Is it not enough to have given all my goods to
      my judges, my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my library to Master
      Pierre Doriolle, my tapestry to the governor of the Roussillon? I
      am innocent. I have been shivering in an iron cage for fourteen
      years. Have mercy, sire! You will find your reward in heaven.”

      “Master Olivier,” said the king, “the total?”

      “Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers
      parisis.

      “Notre-Dame!” cried the king. “This is an outrageous cage!”

      He tore the book from Master Olivier’s hands, and set to
      reckoning it himself upon his fingers, examining the paper and
      the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the prisoner could be heard
      sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and their faces
      turned pale as they looked at each other.

      “Fourteen years, sire! Fourteen years now! since the month of
      April, 1469. In the name of the Holy Mother of God, sire, listen
      to me! During all this time you have enjoyed the heat of the sun.
      Shall I, frail creature, never more behold the day? Mercy, sire!
      Be pitiful! Clemency is a fine, royal virtue, which turns aside
      the currents of wrath. Does your majesty believe that in the hour
      of death it will be a great cause of content for a king never to
      have left any offence unpunished? Besides, sire, I did not betray
      your majesty, ’twas Monsieur d’Angers; and I have on my foot a
      very heavy chain, and a great ball of iron at the end, much
      heavier than it should be in reason. Eh! sire! Have pity on me!”

      “Olivier,” cried the king, throwing back his head, “I observe
      that they charge me twenty sols a hogshead for plaster, while it
      is worth but twelve. You will refer back this account.”

      He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the room.
      The miserable prisoner divined from the removal of the torches
      and the noise, that the king was taking his departure.

      “Sire! sire!” he cried in despair.

      The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and heard only
      the hoarse voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears this ditty,—

         “Maître Jean Balue,
         A perdu la vue
         De ses évêchés.
         Monsieur de Verdun.
         N’en a plus pas un;
         Tous sont dépêchés.”[65]

      The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite
      followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned man.
      All at once his majesty turned to the Governor of the Bastille,—

      “By the way,” said he, “was there not some one in that cage?”

      “Pardieu, yes sire!” replied the governor, astounded by the
      question.

      “And who was it?”

      “Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun.”

      The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a mania
      of his.

      “Ah!” said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for the
      first time, “Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Monsieur the
      Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop!”

      At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat had
      opened again, then closed upon the five personages whom the
      reader has seen at the beginning of this chapter, and who resumed
      their places, their whispered conversations, and their attitudes.

      During the king’s absence, several despatches had been placed on
      his table, and he broke the seals himself. Then he began to read
      them promptly, one after the other, made a sign to Master Olivier
      who appeared to exercise the office of minister, to take a pen,
      and without communicating to him the contents of the despatches,
      he began to dictate in a low voice, the replies which the latter
      wrote, on his knees, in an inconvenient attitude before the
      table.

      Guillaume Rym was on the watch.

      The king spoke so low that the Flemings heard nothing of his
      dictation, except some isolated and rather unintelligible scraps,
      such as,—

      “To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the sterile by
      manufactures....—To show the English lords our four bombards,
      London, Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-Omer....—Artillery is the
      cause of war being made more judiciously now....—To Monsieur de
      Bressuire, our friend....—Armies cannot be maintained without
      tribute, etc.”

      Once he raised his voice,—

      “_Pasque Dieu!_ Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his letters
      with yellow wax, like a king of France. Perhaps we are in the
      wrong to permit him so to do. My fair cousin of Burgundy granted
      no armorial bearings with a field of gules. The grandeur of
      houses is assured by the integrity of prerogatives. Note this,
      friend Olivier.”

      Again,—

      “Oh! oh!” said he, “What a long message! What doth our brother
      the emperor claim?” And running his eye over the missive and
      breaking his reading with interjection: “Surely! the Germans are
      so great and powerful, that it is hardly credible—But let us not
      forget the old proverb: ‘The finest county is Flanders; the
      finest duchy, Milan; the finest kingdom, France.’ Is it not so,
      Messieurs Flemings?”

      This time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume Rym. The
      hosier’s patriotism was tickled.

      The last despatch made Louis XI. frown.

      “What is this?” he said, “Complaints and fault finding against
      our garrisons in Picardy! Olivier, write with diligence to M. the
      Marshal de Rouault:—That discipline is relaxed. That the
      gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal nobles, the free
      archers, and the Swiss inflict infinite evils on the
      rustics.—That the military, not content with what they find in
      the houses of the rustics, constrain them with violent blows of
      cudgel or of lash to go and get wine, spices, and other
      unreasonable things in the town.—That monsieur the king knows
      this. That we undertake to guard our people against
      inconveniences, larcenies and pillage.—That such is our will, by
      our Lady!—That in addition, it suits us not that any fiddler,
      barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad like a prince, in
      velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold.—That these vanities are
      hateful to God.—That we, who are gentlemen, content ourselves
      with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the ell, of Paris.—That
      messieurs the camp-followers can very well come down to that,
      also.—Command and ordain.—To Monsieur de Rouault, our
      friend.—Good.”

      He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. At
      the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave passage
      to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the chamber,
      crying in affright,—

      “Sire! sire! there is a sedition of the populace in Paris!” Louis
      XI.’s grave face contracted; but all that was visible of his
      emotion passed away like a flash of lightning. He controlled
      himself and said with tranquil severity,—

      “Gossip Jacques, you enter very abruptly!”

      “Sire! sire! there is a revolt!” repeated Gossip Jacques
      breathlessly.

      The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm, and said
      in his ear, in such a manner as to be heard by him alone, with
      concentrated rage and a sidelong glance at the Flemings,—

      “Hold your tongue! or speak low!”

      The new comer understood, and began in a low tone to give a very
      terrified account, to which the king listened calmly, while
      Guillaume Rym called Coppenole’s attention to the face and dress
      of the new arrival, to his furred cowl, (_caputia fourrata_), his
      short cape, (_epitogia curta_), his robe of black velvet, which
      bespoke a president of the court of accounts.

      Hardly had this personage given the king some explanations, when
      Louis XI. exclaimed, bursting into a laugh,—

      “In truth? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier! What call is there for
      you to talk so low? Our Lady knoweth that we conceal nothing from
      our good friends the Flemings.”

      “But sire...”

      “Speak loud!”

      Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise.

      “So,” resumed the king,—“speak sir,—there is a commotion among
      the louts in our good city of Paris?”

      “Yes, sire.”

      “And which is moving you say, against monsieur the bailiff of the
      Palais-de-Justice?”

      “So it appears,” said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly
      astounded by the abrupt and inexplicable change which had just
      taken place in the king’s thoughts.

      Louis XI. continued: “Where did the watch meet the rabble?”

      “Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the
      Pont-aux-Changeurs. I met it myself as I was on my way hither to
      obey your majesty’s commands. I heard some of them shouting:
      ‘Down with the bailiff of the palace!’”

      “And what complaints have they against the bailiff?”

      “Ah!” said Gossip Jacques, “because he is their lord.”

      “Really?”

      “Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles. They have
      been complaining this long while, of the bailiff, whose vassals
      they are. They do not wish to recognize him either as judge or as
      voyer?”[66]

      “Yes, certainly!” retorted the king with a smile of satisfaction
      which he strove in vain to disguise.

      “In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have but
      two masters. Your majesty and their God, who is the devil, I
      believe.”

      “Eh! eh!” said the king.

      He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth which
      makes the countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate his joy,
      although he endeavored at moments to compose himself. No one
      understood it in the least, not even Master Olivier. He remained
      silent for a moment, with a thoughtful but contented air.

      “Are they in force?” he suddenly inquired.

      “Yes, assuredly, sire,” replied Gossip Jacques.

      “How many?”

      “Six thousand at the least.”

      The king could not refrain from saying: “Good!” he went on,—

      “Are they armed?”

      “With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very
      violent weapons.”

      The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list.
      Jacques considered it his duty to add,—

      “If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, he
      is lost.”

      “We will send,” said the king with an air of false seriousness.
      “It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff is our
      friend. Six thousand! They are desperate scamps! Their audacity
      is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it. But we have only
      a few people about us to-night. To-morrow morning will be time
      enough.”

      Gossip Jacques exclaimed, “Instantly, sire! there will be time to
      sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the seignory, to
      hang the bailiff. For God’s sake, sire! send before to-morrow
      morning.”

      The king looked him full in the face. “I have told you to-morrow
      morning.”

      It was one of those looks to which one does not reply. After a
      silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more,—

      “You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was—”

      He corrected himself. “What is the bailiff’s feudal
      jurisdiction?”

      “Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far as
      the Rue de l’Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the localities
      vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the church of
      Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised the brim of his
      hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the Cour des Miracles,
      plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, plus the whole highway
      which begins at that Maladerie and ends at the Porte
      Sainte-Jacques. Of these divers places he is voyer, high, middle,
      and low, justiciary, full seigneur.”

      “Bless me!” said the king, scratching his left ear with his right
      hand, “that makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur the
      bailiff was king of all that.”

      This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily, and
      as though speaking to himself,—

      “Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between your
      teeth a pretty slice of our Paris.”

      All at once he broke out explosively, “_Pasque-Dieu!_ What people
      are those who claim to be voyers, justiciaries, lords and masters
      in our domains? who have their tollgates at the end of every
      field? their gallows and their hangman at every cross-road among
      our people? So that as the Greek believed that he had as many
      gods as there were fountains, and the Persian as many as he
      beheld stars, the Frenchman counts as many kings as he sees
      gibbets! Pardieu! ’tis an evil thing, and the confusion of it
      displeases me. I should greatly like to know whether it be the
      mercy of God that there should be in Paris any other lord than
      the king, any other judge than our parliament, any other emperor
      than ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day
      must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one
      king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise
      but one God!”

      He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with the
      air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of hounds:
      “Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your
      duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack
      them!... Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs? On, my people
      on!”

      Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though to
      take back his thought which had already half escaped, bent his
      piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons who surrounded
      him, and suddenly grasping his hat with both hands and staring
      full at it, he said to it: “Oh! I would burn you if you knew what
      there was in my head.”

      Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy glance
      of the fox re-entering his hole,—

      “No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff. Unfortunately,
      we have but few troops here at the present moment, against so
      great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow. The order will be
      transmitted to the City and every one who is caught will be
      immediately hung.”

      “By the way, sire,” said Gossip Coictier, “I had forgotten that
      in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards of the
      band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they are here.”

      “If I desire to see them!” cried the king. “What! _Pasque-Dieu!_
      You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier! Go, seek
      them!”

      Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment later with
      the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first
      had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was
      clothed in rags, and walked with one knee bent and dragging his
      leg. The second had a pallid and smiling countenance, with which
      the reader is already acquainted.

      The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then
      addressing the first one abruptly,—

      “What’s your name?”

      “Gieffroy Pincebourde.”

      “Your trade.”

      “Outcast.”

      “What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?”

      The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid
      air.

      He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is
      about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.

      “I know not,” said he. “They went, I went.”

      “Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord,
      the bailiff of the palace?”

      “I know that they were going to take something from some one.
      That is all.”

      A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized
      on the person of the vagabond.

      “Do you recognize this weapon?” demanded the king.

      “Yes; ’tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser.”

      “And do you recognize this man as your companion?” added Louis
      XI., pointing to the other prisoner.

      “No, I do not know him.”

      “That will do,” said the king, making a sign with his finger to
      the silent personage who stood motionless beside the door, to
      whom we have already called the reader’s attention.

      “Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you.”

      Tristan l’Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice to two
      archers, who led away the poor vagabond.

      In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner, who
      was perspiring in great drops: “Your name?”

      “Sire, Pierre Gringoire.”

      “Your trade?”

      “Philosopher, sire.”

      “How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our friend,
      monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you to say
      concerning this popular agitation?”

      “Sire, I had nothing to do with it.”

      “Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended by the
      watch in that bad company?”

      “No, sire, there is a mistake. ’Tis a fatality. I make tragedies.
      Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I am a poet. ’Tis
      the melancholy way of men of my profession to roam the streets by
      night. I was passing there. It was mere chance. I was unjustly
      arrested; I am innocent of this civil tempest. Your majesty sees
      that the vagabond did not recognize me. I conjure your majesty—”

      “Hold your tongue!” said the king, between two swallows of his
      ptisan. “You split our head!”

      Tristan l’Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire,—

      “Sire, can this one be hanged also?”

      This was the first word that he had uttered.

      “Phew!” replied the king, “I see no objection.”

      “I see a great many!” said Gringoire.

      At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive. He
      perceived from the king’s cold and indifferent mien that there
      was no other resource than something very pathetic, and he flung
      himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming, with gestures of
      despair:—

      “Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break not in
      thunder over so small a thing as myself. God’s great lightning
      doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an august and, very
      puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man who is honest, and who
      would find it more difficult to stir up a revolt than a cake of
      ice would to give out a spark! Very gracious sire, kindness is
      the virtue of a lion and a king. Alas! rigor only frightens
      minds; the impetuous gusts of the north wind do not make the
      traveller lay aside his cloak; the sun, bestowing his rays little
      by little, warms him in such ways that it will make him strip to
      his shirt. Sire, you are the sun. I protest to you, my sovereign
      lord and master, that I am not an outcast, thief, and disorderly
      fellow. Revolt and brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo.
      I am not the man to fling myself into those clouds which break
      out into seditious clamor. I am your majesty’s faithful vassal.
      That same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of
      his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of his
      father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king; he
      should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the
      aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which should
      transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my maxims of
      state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and thieving rascal
      because my garment is worn at the elbows. If you will grant me
      mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees in praying to God
      for you night and morning! Alas! I am not extremely rich, ’tis
      true. I am even rather poor. But not vicious on that account. It
      is not my fault. Every one knoweth that great wealth is not to be
      drawn from literature, and that those who are best posted in good
      books do not always have a great fire in winter. The advocate’s
      trade taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other
      scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs
      anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire!
      clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of so
      great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other
      virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after God in
      the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as clemency,
      causeth the love of subjects, which is the most powerful
      bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your majesty, who
      dazzles all faces, if there is one poor man more on earth, a poor
      innocent philosopher spluttering amid the shadows of calamity,
      with an empty pocket which resounds against his hollow belly?
      Moreover, sire, I am a man of letters. Great kings make a pearl
      for their crowns by protecting letters. Hercules did not disdain
      the title of Musagetes. Mathias Corvin favored Jean de Monroyal,
      the ornament of mathematics. Now, ’tis an ill way to protect
      letters to hang men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he
      had hung Aristoteles! This act would not be a little patch on the
      face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant
      ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium
      for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august
      Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees
      that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied
      excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have
      mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed
      to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at
      the idea of being hanged!”

      So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, and
      Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: “He doth well to
      drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the Jupiter of Crete,
      they have ears only in their feet.” And without troubling himself
      about the Jupiter of Crete, the hosier replied with a heavy
      smile, and his eyes fixed on Gringoire: “Oh! that’s it exactly! I
      seem to hear Chancellor Hugonet craving mercy of me.”

      When Gringoire paused at last, quite out of breath, he raised his
      head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged in scratching
      a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger-nail; then his
      majesty began to drink from the goblet of ptisan. But he uttered
      not a word, and this silence tortured Gringoire. At last the king
      looked at him. “Here is a terrible bawler!” said, he. Then,
      turning to Tristan l’Hermite, “Bah! let him go!”

      Gringoire fell backwards, quite thunderstruck with joy.

      “At liberty!” growled Tristan “Doth not your majesty wish to have
      him detained a little while in a cage?”

      “Gossip,” retorted Louis XI., “think you that ’tis for birds of
      this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hundred and
      sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece? Release him
      at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this word which
      formed, with _Pasque-Dieu_, the foundation of his joviality), and
      put him out with a buffet.”

      “Ugh!” cried Gringoire, “what a great king is here!”

      And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door,
      which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grace. The soldiers
      left the room with him, pushing him before them with stout
      thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical philosopher.

      The king’s good humor since the revolt against the bailiff had
      been announced to him, made itself apparent in every way. This
      unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tristan l’Hermite in
      his corner wore the surly look of a dog who has had a bone
      snatched away from him.

      Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the arm of
      his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dissembling
      prince, but one who understood far better how to hide his
      troubles than his joys. These external manifestations of joy at
      any good news sometimes proceeded to very great lengths thus, on
      the death, of Charles the Bold, to the point of vowing silver
      balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours; on his advent to the
      throne, so far as forgetting to order his father’s obsequies.

      “Hé! sire!” suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, “what has become
      of the acute attack of illness for which your majesty had me
      summoned?”

      “Oh!” said the king, “I really suffer greatly, my gossip. There
      is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest.”

      Coictier took the king’s hand, and begun to feel of his pulse
      with a knowing air.

      “Look, Coppenole,” said Rym, in a low voice. “Behold him between
      Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court. A physician for
      himself, a headsman for others.”

      As he felt the king’s pulse, Coictier assumed an air of greater
      and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some anxiety.
      Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man had no other
      farm than the king’s bad health. He speculated on it to the best
      of his ability.

      “Oh! oh!” he murmured at length, “this is serious indeed.”

      “Is it not?” said the king, uneasily.

      “_Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis_,” continued
      the leech.

      “_Pasque-Dieu!_”

      “This may carry off its man in less than three days.”

      “Our Lady!” exclaimed the king. “And the remedy, gossip?”

      “I am meditating upon that, sire.”

      He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head, made a
      grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations,—

      “Pardieu, sire,” he suddenly said, “I must tell you that there is
      a receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and that I have
      a nephew.”

      “I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques,” replied
      the king; “but draw this fire from my breast.”

      “Since your majesty is so clement,” replied the leech, “you will
      not refuse to aid me a little in building my house, Rue
      Saint-André-des-Arcs.”

      “Heugh!” said the king.

      “I am at the end of my finances,” pursued the doctor; “and it
      would really be a pity that the house should not have a roof; not
      on account of the house, which is simple and thoroughly
      _bourgeois_, but because of the paintings of Jehan Fourbault,
      which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying in the air,
      but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so ingenuous an
      action, her hair so well coiffed and adorned with a crescent, her
      flesh so white, that she leads into temptation those who regard
      her too curiously. There is also a Ceres. She is another very
      fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves of wheat and crowned with
      a gallant garland of wheat ears interlaced with salsify and other
      flowers. Never were seen more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a
      nobler air, or a more gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the
      most innocent and most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever
      produced.”

      “Executioner!” grumbled Louis XI., “what are you driving at?”

      “I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although ’tis
      but a small matter, I have no more money.”

      “How much doth your roof cost?”

      “Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand livres
      at the most.”

      “Ah, assassin!” cried the king, “He never draws out one of my
      teeth which is not a diamond.”

      “Am I to have my roof?” said Coictier.

      “Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me.”

      Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,—

      “Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to
      your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole,
      white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and
      we will answer for your majesty.”

      A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master Olivier,
      perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the
      moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.

      “Sire—”

      “What is it now?” said Louis XI. “Sire, your majesty knoweth that
      Simon Radin is dead?”

      “Well?”

      “He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts of the
      treasury.”

      “Well?”

      “Sire, his place is vacant.”

      As he spoke thus, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its
      arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change which
      ever takes place in a courtier’s visage. The king looked him well
      in the face and said in a dry tone,—“I understand.”

      He resumed,—

      “Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say,
      ‘There’s no master save the king, there are no fishes save in the
      sea.’ I see that you agree with Monsieur de Boucicaut. Now listen
      to this; we have a good memory. In ’68 we made you valet of our
      chamber: in ’69, guardian of the fortress of the bridge of
      Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of Tournay in wages (you wanted
      them of Paris). In November, ’73, by letters given to Gergeole,
      we instituted you keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place
      of Gilbert Acle, equerry; in ’75, gruyer[67] of the forest of
      Rouvray-lez-Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in
      ’78, we graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed
      doubly with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you
      and your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the
      School Saint-Germain; in ’79, we made you gruyer of the forest of
      Senart, in place of that poor Jehan Daiz; then captain of the
      Château of Loches; then governor of Saint-Quentin; then captain
      of the bridge of Meulan, of which you cause yourself to be called
      comte. Out of the five sols fine paid by every barber who shaves
      on a festival day, there are three sols for you and we have the
      rest. We have been good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais
      (The Evil), which resembled your face too closely. In ’76, we
      granted you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial
      bearings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of a
      peacock. _Pasque-Dieu!_ Are not you surfeited? Is not the draught
      of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you not afraid
      that one salmon more will make your boat sink? Pride will be your
      ruin, gossip. Ruin and disgrace always press hard on the heels of
      pride. Consider this and hold your tongue.”

      These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier’s face
      revert to its insolence.

      “Good!” he muttered, almost aloud, “’tis easy to see that the
      king is ill to-day; he giveth all to the leech.”

      Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult,
      resumed with some gentleness, “Stay, I was forgetting that I made
      you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen,”
      added the king turning to the Flemings, “this man hath been an
      ambassador. There, my gossip,” he pursued, addressing Master
      Olivier, “let us not get angry; we are old friends. ’Tis very
      late. We have terminated our labors. Shave me.”

      Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the present
      moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible Figaro whom
      Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled so artistically in
      the long and bloody comedy of the reign of Louis XI. We will not
      here undertake to develop that singular figure. This barber of
      the king had three names. At court he was politely called Olivier
      le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real
      name was Olivier le Mauvais.

      Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking at
      the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.

      “Yes, yes, the physician!” he said between his teeth.

      “Ah, yes, the physician!” retorted Louis XI., with singular good
      humor; “the physician has more credit than you. ’Tis very simple;
      he has taken hold upon us by the whole body, and you hold us only
      by the chin. Come, my poor barber, all will come right. What
      would you say and what would become of your office if I were a
      king like Chilperic, whose gesture consisted in holding his beard
      in one hand? Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go
      get what you need therefor.”

      Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to laugh,
      and that there was no way of even annoying him, went off
      grumbling to execute his orders.

      The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it
      with extraordinary agitation,—

      “Oh! yes!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands, “yonder is a redness
      in the sky over the City. ’Tis the bailiff burning. It can be
      nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here you are aiding me
      at last in tearing down the rights of lordship!”

      Then turning towards the Flemings: “Come, look at this,
      gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?”

      The two men of Ghent drew near.

      “A great fire,” said Guillaume Rym.

      “Oh!” exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, “that
      reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur
      d’Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder.”

      “You think so, Master Coppenole?” And Louis XI.’s glance was
      almost as joyous as that of the hosier. “Will it not be difficult
      to resist?”

      “Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of
      men of war thereon.”

      “Ah! I! ’tis different,” returned the king. “If I willed.”

      The hosier replied hardily,—

      “If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain.”

      “Gossip,” said Louis XI., “with the two companies of my
      unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work
      is made of a populace of louts.”

      The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym,
      appeared determined to hold his own against the king.

      “Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy
      was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble
      rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried: ‘Men of the
      cannon! Fire on the villains!’ and he swore by Saint-George. But
      Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome duke with his
      battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian
      army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew
      in pieces like a pane of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many
      lords were then slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de
      Château-Guyon, the greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead,
      with his gray horse, in a little marsh meadow.”

      “Friend,” returned the king, “you are speaking of a battle. The
      question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper hand of
      it as soon as it shall please me to frown.”

      The other replied indifferently,—

      “That may be, sire; in that case, ’tis because the people’s hour
      hath not yet come.”

      Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,—

      “Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.”

      “I know it,” replied the hosier, gravely.

      “Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend,” said the king; “I love
      this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was
      accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead,
      and that she had found no confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth
      me.”

      Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole’s shoulder,—

      “You were saying, Master Jacques?”

      “I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the
      hour of the people may not yet have come with you.”

      Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,—

      “And when will that hour come, master?”

      “You will hear it strike.”

      “On what clock, if you please?”

      Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the
      king approach the window.

      “Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons,
      _bourgeois_, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the
      cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins amid
      great noise, when _bourgeois_ and soldiers shall howl and slay
      each other, the hour will strike.”

      Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a
      moment, then he gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the
      donjon, as one strokes the haunches of a steed.

      “Oh! no!” said he. “You will not crumble so easily, will you, my
      good Bastille?”

      And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,—

      “Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”

      “I have made them,” said the hosier.

      “How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.

      “Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a
      hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the
      city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the
      inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They
      always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. Well! One
      morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me:
      ‘Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the
      Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save her ministers, the grand
      bailiff is doubling the impost on shagreen, or something
      else,’—what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I come out of
      my hosier’s stall, and I shout: ‘To the sack?’ There is always
      some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the
      first words that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when
      one is of the people, sire, one always has something on the
      heart. Then people troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm
      bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the soldiers,
      the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always
      be thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories,
      _bourgeois_ in the bourgs, and peasants in the country.”

      “And against whom do you thus rebel?” inquired the king; “against
      your bailiffs? against your lords?”

      “Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes.”

      Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,—

      “Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs.”

      At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two
      pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles; but what struck Louis
      XI. was that he was also accompanied by the provost of Paris and
      the chevalier of the watch, who appeared to be in consternation.
      The spiteful barber also wore an air of consternation, which was
      one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who spoke first.

      “Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news which
      I bring.”

      The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the
      feet of his chair,—

      “What does this mean?”

      “Sire,” resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man
      who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, “’tis not
      against the bailiff of the courts that this popular sedition is
      directed.”

      “Against whom, then?”

      “Against you, sire?’

      The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,—

      “Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for
      I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if you lie to us at
      this hour, the sword which severed the head of Monsieur de
      Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot yet sever yours!”

      The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the
      course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.

      Olivier opened his mouth to reply.

      “Sire—”

      “On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tristan, have
      an eye to this man.”

      Olivier knelt down and said coldly,—

      “Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of
      parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying
      to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the provost and
      monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have just come from the
      riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the truth. The
      populace is besieging Notre-Dame.”

      “Yes, indeed!” said the king in a low voice, all pale and
      trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my
      good mistress in her cathedral!—Rise, Olivier. You are right. I
      give you Simon Radin’s charge. You are right. ’Tis I whom they
      are attacking. The witch is under the protection of this church,
      the church is under my protection. And I thought that they were
      acting against the bailiff! ’Tis against myself!”

      Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with
      long strides. He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and
      came; the fox was changed into a hyæna. He seemed suffocated to
      such a degree that he could not speak; his lips moved, and his
      fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised his head,
      his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth
      like a clarion: “Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these
      rascals! Go, Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!”

      This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said
      with cold and concentrated wrath,—

      “Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty
      lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse:
      you will take them. There is also the company of our unattached
      archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers: you will take it. You are
      provost of the marshals; you have the men of your provostship:
      you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty
      archers of monsieur the dauphin’s new guard: you will take them.
      And, with all these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah!
      messieurs, louts of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against
      the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of
      this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not
      a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.”

      Tristan bowed. “’Tis well, sire.”

      He added, after a silence, “And what shall I do with the
      sorceress?”

      This question caused the king to meditate.

      “Ah!” said he, “the sorceress! Monsieur d’Estouteville, what did
      the people wish to do with her?”

      “Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I imagine that since the
      populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-Dame, ’tis
      because that impunity wounds them, and they desire to hang her.”

      The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan
      l’Hermite, “Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the
      sorceress.”

      “That’s it,” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, “punish the
      people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish.”

      “Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. “If the sorceress is still in
      Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?”

      “_Pasque-Dieu!_ the sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his
      ear. “But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.”

      Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on
      his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the
      seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which
      loaded it down, “Oh!” said he, with clasped hands, “our Lady of
      Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it this
      once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the
      virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not
      worthy of your amiable protection. You know, madame, that many
      very pious princes have overstepped the privileges of the
      churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the State.
      Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a
      witch in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master,
      transgressed, with the same object, the church of Monsieur
      Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem,
      the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this
      once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will
      give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last
      year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.”

      He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more,
      and said to Tristan,—

      “Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with you. You
      will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace.
      You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. And I mean the business of
      the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of
      it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this night. Shave me.”

      Tristan l’Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing
      Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,—

      “God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take
      a little repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the
      morning than the evening.”

      Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of
      the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,—

      “Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen
      Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis
      XI. when ailing.”

      “Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “’tis because wine renders kings
      less cruel than does barley water.”



      CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.

      On emerging from the Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue
      Saint-Antoine with the swiftness of a runaway horse. On arriving
      at the Baudoyer gate, he walked straight to the stone cross which
      rose in the middle of that place, as though he were able to
      distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and cloaked
      in black, who was seated on the steps of the cross.

      “Is it you, master?” said Gringoire.

      The personage in black rose.

      “Death and passion! You make me boil, Gringoire. The man on the
      tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one o’clock in
      the morning.”

      “Oh,” retorted Gringoire, “’tis no fault of mine, but of the
      watch and the king. I have just had a narrow escape. I always
      just miss being hung. ’Tis my predestination.”

      “You lack everything,” said the other. “But come quickly. Have
      you the password?”

      “Fancy, master, I have seen the king. I come from him. He wears
      fustian breeches. ’Tis an adventure.”

      “Oh! distaff of words! what is your adventure to me! Have you the
      password of the outcasts?”

      “I have it. Be at ease. ‘Little sword in pocket.’”

      “Good. Otherwise, we could not make our way as far as the church.
      The outcasts bar the streets. Fortunately, it appears that they
      have encountered resistance. We may still arrive in time.”

      “Yes, master, but how are we to get into Notre-Dame?”

      “I have the key to the tower.”

      “And how are we to get out again?”

      “Behind the cloister there is a little door which opens on the
      Terrain and the water. I have taken the key to it, and I moored a
      boat there this morning.”

      “I have had a beautiful escape from being hung!” Gringoire
      repeated.

      “Eh, quick! come!” said the other.

      Both descended towards the city with long strides.



      CHAPTER VII. CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.

      The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in which
      we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on all sides, had
      lost, if not all courage, at least all hope of saving, not
      himself (he was not thinking of himself), but the gypsy. He ran
      distractedly along the gallery. Notre-Dame was on the point of
      being taken by storm by the outcasts. All at once, a great
      galloping of horses filled the neighboring streets, and, with a
      long file of torches and a thick column of cavaliers, with free
      reins and lances in rest, these furious sounds debouched on the
      Place like a hurricane,—

      “France! France! cut down the louts! Châteaupers to the rescue!
      Provostship! Provostship!”

      The frightened vagabonds wheeled round.

      Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the torches,
      the irons of the pikes, all that cavalry, at the head of which he
      recognized Captain Phœbus; he beheld the confusion of the
      outcasts, the terror of some, the disturbance among the bravest
      of them, and from this unexpected succor he recovered so much
      strength, that he hurled from the church the first assailants who
      were already climbing into the gallery.

      It was, in fact, the king’s troops who had arrived. The vagabonds
      behaved bravely. They defended themselves like desperate men.
      Caught on the flank, by the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, and in
      the rear through the Rue du Parvis, driven to bay against
      Notre-Dame, which they still assailed and Quasimodo defended, at
      the same time besiegers and besieged, they were in the singular
      situation in which Comte Henri Harcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem
      et obsessus_, as his epitaph says, found himself later on, at the
      famous siege of Turin, in 1640, between Prince Thomas of Savoy,
      whom he was besieging, and the Marquis de Leganez, who was
      blockading him.

      The battle was frightful. There was a dog’s tooth for wolf’s
      flesh, as P. Mathieu says. The king’s cavaliers, in whose midst
      Phœbus de Châteaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no quarter,
      and the slash of the sword disposed of those who escaped the
      thrust of the lance. The outcasts, badly armed foamed and bit
      with rage. Men, women, children, hurled themselves on the
      cruppers and the breasts of the horses, and hung there like cats,
      with teeth, finger nails and toe nails. Others struck the
      archers’ in the face with their torches. Others thrust iron hooks
      into the necks of the cavaliers and dragged them down. They
      slashed in pieces those who fell.

      One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for
      a long time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He
      was singing a ditty, with a nasal intonation, he swung and drew
      back his scythe incessantly. At every blow he traced around him a
      great circle of severed limbs. He advanced thus into the very
      thickest of the cavalry, with the tranquil slowness, the lolling
      of the head and the regular breathing of a harvester attacking a
      field of wheat. It was Clopin Trouillefou. A shot from an
      arquebus laid him low.

      In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The neighbors
      hearing the war cries of the king’s troops, had mingled in the
      affray, and bullets rained upon the outcasts from every story.
      The Parvis was filled with a thick smoke, which the musketry
      streaked with flame. Through it one could confusedly distinguish
      the front of Notre-Dame, and the decrepit Hôtel-Dieu with some
      wan invalids gazing down from the heights of its roof all
      checkered with dormer windows.

      At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of good
      weapons, the fright of this surprise, the musketry from the
      windows, the valiant attack of the king’s troops, all overwhelmed
      them. They forced the line of assailants, and fled in every
      direction, leaving the Parvis encumbered with dead.

      When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a moment, beheld
      this rout, he fell on his knees and raised his hands to heaven;
      then, intoxicated with joy, he ran, he ascended with the
      swiftness of a bird to that cell, the approaches to which he had
      so intrepidly defended. He had but one thought now; it was to
      kneel before her whom he had just saved for the second time.

      When he entered the cell, he found it empty.



      BOOK ELEVENTH.



      CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.

      La Esmeralda was sleeping at the moment when the outcasts
      assailed the church.

      Soon the ever-increasing uproar around the edifice, and the
      uneasy bleating of her goat which had been awakened, had roused
      her from her slumbers. She had sat up, she had listened, she had
      looked; then, terrified by the light and noise, she had rushed
      from her cell to see. The aspect of the Place, the vision which
      was moving in it, the disorder of that nocturnal assault, that
      hideous crowd, leaping like a cloud of frogs, half seen in the
      gloom, the croaking of that hoarse multitude, those few red
      torches running and crossing each other in the darkness like the
      meteors which streak the misty surfaces of marshes, this whole
      scene produced upon her the effect of a mysterious battle between
      the phantoms of the witches’ sabbath and the stone monsters of
      the church. Imbued from her very infancy with the superstitions
      of the Bohemian tribe, her first thought was that she had caught
      the strange beings peculiar to the night, in their deeds of
      witchcraft. Then she ran in terror to cower in her cell, asking
      of her pallet some less terrible nightmare.

      But little by little the first vapors of terror had been
      dissipated; from the constantly increasing noise, and from many
      other signs of reality, she felt herself besieged not by
      spectres, but by human beings. Then her fear, though it did not
      increase, changed its character. She had dreamed of the
      possibility of a popular mutiny to tear her from her asylum. The
      idea of once more recovering life, hope, Phœbus, who was ever
      present in her future, the extreme helplessness of her condition,
      flight cut off, no support, her abandonment, her isolation,—these
      thoughts and a thousand others overwhelmed her. She fell upon her
      knees, with her head on her bed, her hands clasped over her head,
      full of anxiety and tremors, and, although a gypsy, an idolater,
      and a pagan, she began to entreat with sobs, mercy from the good
      Christian God, and to pray to our Lady, her hostess. For even if
      one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one is
      always of the religion of the temple which is nearest at hand.

      She remained thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling in
      truth, more than praying, chilled by the ever-closer breath of
      that furious multitude, understanding nothing of this outburst,
      ignorant of what was being plotted, what was being done, what
      they wanted, but foreseeing a terrible issue.

      In the midst of this anguish, she heard some one walking near
      her. She turned round. Two men, one of whom carried a lantern,
      had just entered her cell. She uttered a feeble cry.

      “Fear nothing,” said a voice which was not unknown to her, “it is
      I.”

      “Who are you?” she asked.

      “Pierre Gringoire.”

      This name reassured her. She raised her eyes once more, and
      recognized the poet in very fact. But there stood beside him a
      black figure veiled from head to foot, which struck her by its
      silence.

      “Oh!” continued Gringoire in a tone of reproach, “Djali
      recognized me before you!”

      The little goat had not, in fact, waited for Gringoire to
      announce his name. No sooner had he entered than it rubbed itself
      gently against his knees, covering the poet with caresses and
      with white hairs, for it was shedding its hair. Gringoire
      returned the caresses.

      “Who is this with you?” said the gypsy, in a low voice.

      “Be at ease,” replied Gringoire. “’Tis one of my friends.” Then
      the philosopher setting his lantern on the ground, crouched upon
      the stones, and exclaimed enthusiastically, as he pressed Djali
      in his arms,—

      “Oh! ’tis a graceful beast, more considerable no doubt, for it’s
      neatness than for its size, but ingenious, subtle, and lettered
      as a grammarian! Let us see, my Djali, hast thou forgotten any of
      thy pretty tricks? How does Master Jacques Charmolue?...”

      The man in black did not allow him to finish. He approached
      Gringoire and shook him roughly by the shoulder.

      Gringoire rose.

      “’Tis true,” said he: “I forgot that we are in haste. But that is
      no reason master, for getting furious with people in this manner.
      My dear and lovely child, your life is in danger, and Djali’s
      also. They want to hang you again. We are your friends, and we
      have come to save you. Follow us.”

      “Is it true?” she exclaimed in dismay.

      “Yes, perfectly true. Come quickly!”

      “I am willing,” she stammered. “But why does not your friend
      speak?”

      “Ah!” said Gringoire, “’tis because his father and mother were
      fantastic people who made him of a taciturn temperament.”

      She was obliged to content herself with this explanation.
      Gringoire took her by the hand; his companion picked up the
      lantern and walked on in front. Fear stunned the young girl. She
      allowed herself to be led away. The goat followed them, frisking,
      so joyous at seeing Gringoire again that it made him stumble
      every moment by thrusting its horns between his legs.

      “Such is life,” said the philosopher, every time that he came
      near falling down; “’tis often our best friends who cause us to
      be overthrown.”

      They rapidly descended the staircase of the towers, crossed the
      church, full of shadows and solitude, and all reverberating with
      uproar, which formed a frightful contrast, and emerged into the
      courtyard of the cloister by the red door. The cloister was
      deserted; the canons had fled to the bishop’s palace in order to
      pray together; the courtyard was empty, a few frightened lackeys
      were crouching in dark corners. They directed their steps towards
      the door which opened from this court upon the Terrain. The man
      in black opened it with a key which he had about him. Our readers
      are aware that the Terrain was a tongue of land enclosed by walls
      on the side of the City and belonging to the chapter of
      Notre-Dame, which terminated the island on the east, behind the
      church. They found this enclosure perfectly deserted. There was
      here less tumult in the air. The roar of the outcasts’ assault
      reached them more confusedly and less clamorously. The fresh
      breeze which follows the current of a stream, rustled the leaves
      of the only tree planted on the point of the Terrain, with a
      noise that was already perceptible. But they were still very
      close to danger. The nearest edifices to them were the bishop’s
      palace and the church. It was plainly evident that there was
      great internal commotion in the bishop’s palace. Its shadowy mass
      was all furrowed with lights which flitted from window to window;
      as, when one has just burned paper, there remains a sombre
      edifice of ashes in which bright sparks run a thousand eccentric
      courses. Beside them, the enormous towers of Notre-Dame, thus
      viewed from behind, with the long nave above which they rise cut
      out in black against the red and vast light which filled the
      Parvis, resembled two gigantic andirons of some cyclopean
      fire-grate.

      What was to be seen of Paris on all sides wavered before the eye
      in a gloom mingled with light. Rembrandt has such backgrounds to
      his pictures.

      The man with the lantern walked straight to the point of the
      Terrain. There, at the very brink of the water, stood the
      wormeaten remains of a fence of posts latticed with laths,
      whereon a low vine spread out a few thin branches like the
      fingers of an outspread hand. Behind, in the shadow cast by this
      trellis, a little boat lay concealed. The man made a sign to
      Gringoire and his companion to enter. The goat followed them. The
      man was the last to step in. Then he cut the boat’s moorings,
      pushed it from the shore with a long boat-hook, and, seizing two
      oars, seated himself in the bow, rowing with all his might
      towards midstream. The Seine is very rapid at this point, and he
      had a good deal of trouble in leaving the point of the island.

      Gringoire’s first care on entering the boat was to place the goat
      on his knees. He took a position in the stern; and the young
      girl, whom the stranger inspired with an indefinable uneasiness,
      seated herself close to the poet.

      When our philosopher felt the boat sway, he clapped his hands and
      kissed Djali between the horns.

      “Oh!” said he, “now we are safe, all four of us.”

      He added with the air of a profound thinker, “One is indebted
      sometimes to fortune, sometimes to ruse, for the happy issue of
      great enterprises.”

      The boat made its way slowly towards the right shore. The young
      girl watched the unknown man with secret terror. He had carefully
      turned off the light of his dark lantern. A glimpse could be
      caught of him in the obscurity, in the bow of the boat, like a
      spectre. His cowl, which was still lowered, formed a sort of
      mask; and every time that he spread his arms, upon which hung
      large black sleeves, as he rowed, one would have said they were
      two huge bat’s wings. Moreover, he had not yet uttered a word or
      breathed a syllable. No other noise was heard in the boat than
      the splashing of the oars, mingled with the rippling of the water
      along her sides.

      “On my soul!” exclaimed Gringoire suddenly, “we are as cheerful
      and joyous as young owls! We preserve the silence of Pythagoreans
      or fishes! _Pasque-Dieu!_ my friends, I should greatly like to
      have some one speak to me. The human voice is music to the human
      ear. ’Tis not I who say that, but Didymus of Alexandria, and they
      are illustrious words. Assuredly, Didymus of Alexandria is no
      mediocre philosopher.—One word, my lovely child! say but one word
      to me, I entreat you. By the way, you had a droll and peculiar
      little pout; do you still make it? Do you know, my dear, that
      parliament hath full jurisdiction over all places of asylum, and
      that you were running a great risk in your little chamber at
      Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochylus maketh its nest in
      the jaws of the crocodile.—Master, here is the moon re-appearing.
      If only they do not perceive us. We are doing a laudable thing in
      saving mademoiselle, and yet we should be hung by order of the
      king if we were caught. Alas! human actions are taken by two
      handles. That is branded with disgrace in one which is crowned in
      another. He admires Cicero who blames Catiline. Is it not so,
      master? What say you to this philosophy? I possess philosophy by
      instinct, by nature, _ut apes geometriam_.—Come! no one answers
      me. What unpleasant moods you two are in! I must do all the
      talking alone. That is what we call a monologue in
      tragedy.—_Pasque-Dieu!_ I must inform you that I have just seen
      the king, Louis XI., and that I have caught this oath from
      him,—_Pasque-Dieu!_ They are still making a hearty howl in the
      city.—’Tis a villanous, malicious old king. He is all swathed in
      furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came
      within a nick of hanging me this evening, which would have been
      very inconvenient to me.—He is niggardly towards men of merit. He
      ought to read the four books of Salvien of Cologne, _Adversus
      Avaritiam_. In truth! ’Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of
      letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. He is a
      sponge, to soak money raised from the people. His saving is like
      the spleen which swelleth with the leanness of all the other
      members. Hence complaints against the hardness of the times
      become murmurs against the prince. Under this gentle and pious
      sire, the gallows crack with the hung, the blocks rot with blood,
      the prisons burst like over full bellies. This king hath one hand
      which grasps, and one which hangs. He is the procurator of Dame
      Tax and Monsieur Gibbet. The great are despoiled of their
      dignities, and the little incessantly overwhelmed with fresh
      oppressions. He is an exorbitant prince. I love not this monarch.
      And you, master?”

      The man in black let the garrulous poet chatter on. He continued
      to struggle against the violent and narrow current, which
      separates the prow of the City and the stem of the island of
      Notre-Dame, which we call to-day the Isle St. Louis.

      “By the way, master!” continued Gringoire suddenly. “At the
      moment when we arrived on the Parvis, through the enraged
      outcasts, did your reverence observe that poor little devil whose
      skull your deaf man was just cracking on the railing of the
      gallery of the kings? I am near sighted and I could not recognize
      him. Do you know who he could be?”

      The stranger answered not a word. But he suddenly ceased rowing,
      his arms fell as though broken, his head sank on his breast, and
      la Esmeralda heard him sigh convulsively. She shuddered. She had
      heard such sighs before.

      The boat, abandoned to itself, floated for several minutes with
      the stream. But the man in black finally recovered himself,
      seized the oars once more and began to row against the current.
      He doubled the point of the Isle of Notre Dame, and made for the
      landing-place of the Port au Foin.

      “Ah!” said Gringoire, “yonder is the Barbeau mansion.—Stay,
      master, look: that group of black roofs which make such singular
      angles yonder, above that heap of black, fibrous grimy, dirty
      clouds, where the moon is completely crushed and spread out like
      the yolk of an egg whose shell is broken.—’Tis a fine mansion.
      There is a chapel crowned with a small vault full of very well
      carved enrichments. Above, you can see the bell tower, very
      delicately pierced. There is also a pleasant garden, which
      consists of a pond, an aviary, an echo, a mall, a labyrinth, a
      house for wild beasts, and a quantity of leafy alleys very
      agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascal of a tree which is
      called ‘the lewd,’ because it favored the pleasures of a famous
      princess and a constable of France, who was a gallant and a
      wit.—Alas! we poor philosophers are to a constable as a plot of
      cabbages or a radish bed to the garden of the Louvre. What
      matters it, after all? human life, for the great as well as for
      us, is a mixture of good and evil. Pain is always by the side of
      joy, the spondee by the dactyl.—Master, I must relate to you the
      history of the Barbeau mansion. It ends in tragic fashion. It was
      in 1319, in the reign of Philippe V., the longest reign of the
      kings of France. The moral of the story is that the temptations
      of the flesh are pernicious and malignant. Let us not rest our
      glance too long on our neighbor’s wife, however gratified our
      senses may be by her beauty. Fornication is a very libertine
      thought. Adultery is a prying into the pleasures of others—Ohé!
      the noise yonder is redoubling!”

      The tumult around Notre-Dame was, in fact, increasing. They
      listened. Cries of victory were heard with tolerable
      distinctness. All at once, a hundred torches, the light of which
      glittered upon the helmets of men at arms, spread over the church
      at all heights, on the towers, on the galleries, on the flying
      buttresses. These torches seemed to be in search of something;
      and soon distant clamors reached the fugitives distinctly:—“The
      gypsy! the sorceress! death to the gypsy!”

      The unhappy girl dropped her head upon her hands, and the unknown
      began to row furiously towards the shore. Meanwhile our
      philosopher reflected. He clasped the goat in his arms, and
      gently drew away from the gypsy, who pressed closer and closer to
      him, as though to the only asylum which remained to her.

      It is certain that Gringoire was enduring cruel perplexity. He
      was thinking that the goat also, “according to existing law,”
      would be hung if recaptured; which would be a great pity, poor
      Djali! that he had thus two condemned creatures attached to him;
      that his companion asked no better than to take charge of the
      gypsy. A violent combat began between his thoughts, in which,
      like the Jupiter of the Iliad, he weighed in turn the gypsy and
      the goat; and he looked at them alternately with eyes moist with
      tears, saying between his teeth:

      “But I cannot save you both!”

      A shock informed them that the boat had reached the land at last.
      The uproar still filled the city. The unknown rose, approached
      the gypsy, and endeavored to take her arm to assist her to
      alight. She repulsed him and clung to the sleeve of Gringoire,
      who, in his turn, absorbed in the goat, almost repulsed her. Then
      she sprang alone from the boat. She was so troubled that she did
      not know what she did or whither she was going. Thus she remained
      for a moment, stunned, watching the water flow past; when she
      gradually returned to her senses, she found herself alone on the
      wharf with the unknown. It appears that Gringoire had taken
      advantage of the moment of debarcation to slip away with the goat
      into the block of houses of the Rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau.

      The poor gypsy shivered when she beheld herself alone with this
      man. She tried to speak, to cry out, to call Gringoire; her
      tongue was dumb in her mouth, and no sound left her lips. All at
      once she felt the stranger’s hand on hers. It was a strong, cold
      hand. Her teeth chattered, she turned paler than the ray of
      moonlight which illuminated her. The man spoke not a word. He
      began to ascend towards the Place de Grève, holding her by the
      hand.

      At that moment, she had a vague feeling that destiny is an
      irresistible force. She had no more resistance left in her, she
      allowed herself to be dragged along, running while he walked. At
      this spot the quay ascended. But it seemed to her as though she
      were descending a slope.

      She gazed about her on all sides. Not a single passer-by. The
      quay was absolutely deserted. She heard no sound, she felt no
      people moving save in the tumultuous and glowing city, from which
      she was separated only by an arm of the Seine, and whence her
      name reached her, mingled with cries of “Death!” The rest of
      Paris was spread around her in great blocks of shadows.

      Meanwhile, the stranger continued to drag her along with the same
      silence and the same rapidity. She had no recollection of any of
      the places where she was walking. As she passed before a lighted
      window, she made an effort, drew up suddenly, and cried out,
      “Help!”

      The _bourgeois_ who was standing at the window opened it,
      appeared there in his shirt with his lamp, stared at the quay
      with a stupid air, uttered some words which she did not
      understand, and closed his shutter again. It was her last gleam
      of hope extinguished.

      The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her firmly,
      and set out again at a quicker pace. She no longer resisted, but
      followed him, completely broken.

      From time to time she called together a little strength, and
      said, in a voice broken by the unevenness of the pavement and the
      breathlessness of their flight, “Who are you? Who are you?” He
      made no reply.

      They arrived thus, still keeping along the quay, at a tolerably
      spacious square. It was the Grève. In the middle, a sort of
      black, erect cross was visible; it was the gallows. She
      recognized all this, and saw where she was.

      The man halted, turned towards her and raised his cowl.

      “Oh!” she stammered, almost petrified, “I knew well that it was
      he again!”

      It was the priest. He looked like the ghost of himself; that is
      an effect of the moonlight, it seems as though one beheld only
      the spectres of things in that light.

      “Listen!” he said to her; and she shuddered at the sound of that
      fatal voice which she had not heard for a long time. He continued
      speaking with those brief and panting jerks, which betoken deep
      internal convulsions. “Listen! we are here. I am going to speak
      to you. This is the Grève. This is an extreme point. Destiny
      gives us to one another. I am going to decide as to your life;
      you will decide as to my soul. Here is a place, here is a night
      beyond which one sees nothing. Then listen to me. I am going to
      tell you.... In the first place, speak not to me of your Phœbus.
      (As he spoke thus he paced to and fro, like a man who cannot
      remain in one place, and dragged her after him.) Do not speak to
      me of him. Do you see? If you utter that name, I know not what I
      shall do, but it will be terrible.”

      Then, like a body which recovers its centre of gravity, he became
      motionless once more, but his words betrayed no less agitation.
      His voice grew lower and lower.

      “Do not turn your head aside thus. Listen to me. It is a serious
      matter. In the first place, here is what has happened.—All this
      will not be laughed at. I swear it to you.—What was I saying?
      Remind me! Oh!—There is a decree of Parliament which gives you
      back to the scaffold. I have just rescued you from their hands.
      But they are pursuing you. Look!”

      He extended his arm toward the City. The search seemed, in fact,
      to be still in progress there. The uproar drew nearer; the tower
      of the lieutenant’s house, situated opposite the Grève, was full
      of clamors and light, and soldiers could be seen running on the
      opposite quay with torches and these cries, “The gypsy! Where is
      the gypsy! Death! Death!”

      “You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I am not lying
      to you. I love you.—Do not open your mouth; refrain from speaking
      to me rather, if it be only to tell me that you hate me. I have
      made up my mind not to hear that again.—I have just saved
      you.—Let me finish first. I can save you wholly. I have prepared
      everything. It is yours at will. If you wish, I can do it.”

      He broke off violently. “No, that is not what I should say!”

      As he went with hurried step and made her hurry also, for he did
      not release her, he walked straight to the gallows, and pointed
      to it with his finger,—

      “Choose between us two,” he said, coldly.

      She tore herself from his hands and fell at the foot of the
      gibbet, embracing that funereal support, then she half turned her
      beautiful head, and looked at the priest over her shoulder. One
      would have said that she was a Holy Virgin at the foot of the
      cross. The priest remained motionless, his finger still raised
      toward the gibbet, preserving his attitude like a statue. At
      length the gypsy said to him,—

      “It causes me less horror than you do.”

      Then he allowed his arm to sink slowly, and gazed at the pavement
      in profound dejection.

      “If these stones could speak,” he murmured, “yes, they would say
      that a very unhappy man stands here.”

      He went on. The young girl, kneeling before the gallows,
      enveloped in her long flowing hair, let him speak on without
      interruption. He now had a gentle and plaintive accent which
      contrasted sadly with the haughty harshness of his features.

      “I love you. Oh! how true that is! So nothing comes of that fire
      which burns my heart! Alas! young girl, night and day—yes, night
      and day I tell you,—it is torture. Oh! I suffer too much, my poor
      child. ’Tis a thing deserving of compassion, I assure you. You
      see that I speak gently to you. I really wish that you should no
      longer cherish this horror of me.—After all, if a man loves a
      woman, ’tis not his fault!—Oh, my God!—What! So you will never
      pardon me? You will always hate me? All is over then. It is that
      which renders me evil, do you see? and horrible to myself.—You
      will not even look at me! You are thinking of something else,
      perchance, while I stand here and talk to you, shuddering on the
      brink of eternity for both of us! Above all things, do not speak
      to me of the officer!—I would cast myself at your knees, I would
      kiss not your feet, but the earth which is under your feet; I
      would sob like a child, I would tear from my breast not words,
      but my very heart and vitals, to tell you that I love you;—all
      would be useless, all!—And yet you have nothing in your heart but
      what is tender and merciful. You are radiant with the most
      beautiful mildness; you are wholly sweet, good, pitiful, and
      charming. Alas! You cherish no ill will for any one but me alone!
      Oh! what a fatality!”

      He hid his face in his hands. The young girl heard him weeping.
      It was for the first time. Thus erect and shaken by sobs, he was
      more miserable and more suppliant than when on his knees. He wept
      thus for a considerable time.

      “Come!” he said, these first tears passed, “I have no more words.
      I had, however, thought well as to what you would say. Now I
      tremble and shiver and break down at the decisive moment, I feel
      conscious of something supreme enveloping us, and I stammer. Oh!
      I shall fall upon the pavement if you do not take pity on me,
      pity on yourself. Do not condemn us both. If you only knew how
      much I love you! What a heart is mine! Oh! what desertion of all
      virtue! What desperate abandonment of myself! A doctor, I mock at
      science; a gentleman, I tarnish my own name; a priest, I make of
      the missal a pillow of sensuality, I spit in the face of my God!
      all this for thee, enchantress! to be more worthy of thy hell!
      And you will not have the apostate! Oh! let me tell you all! more
      still, something more horrible, oh! Yet more horrible!...”

      As he uttered these last words, his air became utterly
      distracted. He was silent for a moment, and resumed, as though
      speaking to himself, and in a strong voice,—

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

      There was another silence, and he went on—

      “What have I done with him, Lord? I received him, I reared him, I
      nourished him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I have slain him!
      Yes, Lord, they have just dashed his head before my eyes on the
      stone of thine house, and it is because of me, because of this
      woman, because of her.”

      His eye was wild. His voice grew ever weaker; he repeated many
      times, yet, mechanically, at tolerably long intervals, like a
      bell prolonging its last vibration: “Because of her.—Because of
      her.”

      Then his tongue no longer articulated any perceptible sound; but
      his lips still moved. All at once he sank together, like
      something crumbling, and lay motionless on the earth, with his
      head on his knees.

      A touch from the young girl, as she drew her foot from under him,
      brought him to himself. He passed his hand slowly over his hollow
      cheeks, and gazed for several moments at his fingers, which were
      wet, “What!” he murmured, “I have wept!”

      And turning suddenly to the gypsy with unspeakable anguish,—

      “Alas! you have looked coldly on at my tears! Child, do you know
      that those tears are of lava? Is it indeed true? Nothing touches
      when it comes from the man whom one does not love. If you were to
      see me die, you would laugh. Oh! I do not wish to see you die!
      One word! A single word of pardon! Say not that you love me, say
      only that you will do it; that will suffice; I will save you. If
      not—oh! the hour is passing. I entreat you by all that is sacred,
      do not wait until I shall have turned to stone again, like that
      gibbet which also claims you! Reflect that I hold the destinies
      of both of us in my hand, that I am mad,—it is terrible,—that I
      may let all go to destruction, and that there is beneath us a
      bottomless abyss, unhappy girl, whither my fall will follow yours
      to all eternity! One word of kindness! Say one word! only one
      word!”

      She opened her mouth to answer him. He flung himself on his knees
      to receive with adoration the word, possibly a tender one, which
      was on the point of issuing from her lips. She said to him, “You
      are an assassin!”

      The priest clasped her in his arms with fury, and began to laugh
      with an abominable laugh.

      “Well, yes, an assassin!” he said, “and I will have you. You will
      not have me for your slave, you shall have me for your master. I
      will have you! I have a den, whither I will drag you. You will
      follow me, you will be obliged to follow me, or I will deliver
      you up! You must die, my beauty, or be mine! belong to the
      priest! belong to the apostate! belong to the assassin! this very
      night, do you hear? Come! joy; kiss me, mad girl! The tomb or my
      bed!”

      His eyes sparkled with impurity and rage. His lewd lips reddened
      the young girl’s neck. She struggled in his arms. He covered her
      with furious kisses.

      “Do not bite me, monster!” she cried. “Oh! the foul, odious monk!
      leave me! I will tear out thy ugly gray hair and fling it in thy
      face by the handful!”

      He reddened, turned pale, then released her and gazed at her with
      a gloomy air. She thought herself victorious, and continued,—

      “I tell you that I belong to my Phœbus, that ’tis Phœbus whom I
      love, that ’tis Phœbus who is handsome! you are old, priest! you
      are ugly! Begone!”

      He gave vent to a horrible cry, like the wretch to whom a hot
      iron is applied. “Die, then!” he said, gnashing his teeth. She
      saw his terrible look and tried to fly. He caught her once more,
      he shook her, he flung her on the ground, and walked with rapid
      strides towards the corner of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after
      him along the pavement by her beautiful hands.

      On arriving there, he turned to her,—

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

      She replied with emphasis,—

      “No!”

      Then he cried in a loud voice,—

      “Gudule! Gudule! here is the gypsy! take your vengeance!”

      The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. She
      looked. A fleshless arm was stretched from an opening in the
      wall, and held her like a hand of iron.

      “Hold her well,” said the priest; “’tis the gypsy escaped.
      Release her not. I will go in search of the sergeants. You shall
      see her hanged.”

      A guttural laugh replied from the interior of the wall to these
      bloody words—“Hah! hah! hah!”—The gypsy watched the priest retire
      in the direction of the Pont Notre-Dame. A cavalcade was heard in
      that direction.

      The young girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with
      terror, she tried to disengage herself. She writhed, she made
      many starts of agony and despair, but the other held her with
      incredible strength. The lean and bony fingers which bruised her,
      clenched on her flesh and met around it. One would have said that
      this hand was riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain, more
      than a fetter, more than a ring of iron, it was a living pair of
      pincers endowed with intelligence, which emerged from the wall.

      She fell back against the wall exhausted, and then the fear of
      death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life,
      of youth, of the view of heaven, the aspects of nature, of her
      love for Phœbus, of all that was vanishing and all that was
      approaching, of the priest who was denouncing her, of the
      headsman who was to come, of the gallows which was there. Then
      she felt terror mount to the very roots of her hair and she heard
      the mocking laugh of the recluse, saying to her in a very low
      tone: “Hah! hah! hah! you are going to be hanged!”

      She turned a dying look towards the window, and she beheld the
      fierce face of the sacked nun through the bars.

      “What have I done to you?” she said, almost lifeless.

      The recluse did not reply, but began to mumble with a singsong
      irritated, mocking intonation: “Daughter of Egypt! daughter of
      Egypt! daughter of Egypt!”

      The unhappy Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her flowing hair,
      comprehending that it was no human being she had to deal with.

      All at once the recluse exclaimed, as though the gypsy’s question
      had taken all this time to reach her brain,—“‘What have you done
      to me?’ you say! Ah! what have you done to me, gypsy! Well!
      listen.—I had a child! you see! I had a child! a child, I tell
      you!—a pretty little girl!—my Agnès!” she went on wildly, kissing
      something in the dark.—“Well! do you see, daughter of Egypt? they
      took my child from me; they stole my child; they ate my child.
      That is what you have done to me.”

      The young girl replied like a lamb,—

      “Alas! perchance I was not born then!”

      “Oh! yes!” returned the recluse, “you must have been born. You
      were among them. She would be the same age as you! so!—I have
      been here fifteen years; fifteen years have I suffered; fifteen
      years have I prayed; fifteen years have I beat my head against
      these four walls—I tell you that ’twas the gypsies who stole her
      from me, do you hear that? and who ate her with their teeth.—Have
      you a heart? imagine a child playing, a child sucking; a child
      sleeping. It is so innocent a thing!—Well! that, that is what
      they took from me, what they killed. The good God knows it well!
      To-day, it is my turn; I am going to eat the gypsy.—Oh! I would
      bite you well, if the bars did not prevent me! My head is too
      large!—Poor little one! while she was asleep! And if they woke
      her up when they took her, in vain she might cry; I was not
      there!—Ah! gypsy mothers, you devoured my child! come see your
      own.”

      Then she began to laugh or to gnash her teeth, for the two things
      resembled each other in that furious face. The day was beginning
      to dawn. An ashy gleam dimly lighted this scene, and the gallows
      grew more and more distinct in the square. On the other side, in
      the direction of the bridge of Notre-Dame, the poor condemned
      girl fancied that she heard the sound of cavalry approaching.

      “Madam,” she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees,
      dishevelled, distracted, mad with fright; “madam! have pity! They
      are coming. I have done nothing to you. Would you wish to see me
      die in this horrible fashion before your very eyes? You are
      pitiful, I am sure. It is too frightful. Let me make my escape.
      Release me! Mercy. I do not wish to die like that!”

      “Give me back my child!” said the recluse.

      “Mercy! Mercy!”

      “Give me back my child!”

      “Release me, in the name of heaven!”

      “Give me back my child!”

      Again the young girl fell; exhausted, broken, and having already
      the glassy eye of a person in the grave.

      “Alas!” she faltered, “you seek your child, I seek my parents.”

      “Give me back my little Agnès!” pursued Gudule. “You do not know
      where she is? Then die!—I will tell you. I was a woman of the
      town, I had a child, they took my child. It was the gypsies. You
      see plainly that you must die. When your mother, the gypsy, comes
      to reclaim you, I shall say to her: ‘Mother, look at that
      gibbet!—Or, give me back my child. Do you know where she is, my
      little daughter? Stay! I will show you. Here is her shoe, all
      that is left me of her. Do you know where its mate is? If you
      know, tell me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I
      will crawl to it on my knees.”

      As she spoke thus, with her other arm extended through the
      window, she showed the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. It was
      already light enough to distinguish its shape and its colors.

      “Let me see that shoe,” said the gypsy, quivering. “God! God!”

      And at the same time, with her hand which was at liberty, she
      quickly opened the little bag ornamented with green glass, which
      she wore about her neck.

      “Go on, go on!” grumbled Gudule, “search your demon’s amulet!”

      All at once, she stopped short, trembled in every limb, and cried
      in a voice which proceeded from the very depths of her being: “My
      daughter!”

      The gypsy had just drawn from the bag a little shoe absolutely
      similar to the other. To this little shoe was attached a
      parchment on which was inscribed this charm,—

         Quand le pareil retrouveras
         Ta mère te tendras les bras.[68]

      Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the two
      shoes together, had read the parchment and had put close to the
      bars of the window her face beaming with celestial joy as she
      cried,—

      “My daughter! my daughter!”

      “My mother!” said the gypsy.

      Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene. The wall
      and the iron bars were between them. “Oh! the wall!” cried the
      recluse. “Oh! to see her and not to embrace her! Your hand! your
      hand!”

      The young girl passed her arm through the opening; the recluse
      threw herself on that hand, pressed her lips to it and there
      remained, buried in that kiss, giving no other sign of life than
      a sob which heaved her breast from time to time. In the
      meanwhile, she wept in torrents, in silence, in the dark, like a
      rain at night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that
      adored hand the dark and deep well of tears, which lay within
      her, and into which her grief had filtered, drop by drop, for
      fifteen years.

      All at once she rose, flung aside her long gray hair from her
      brow, and without uttering a word, began to shake the bars of her
      cage cell, with both hands, more furiously than a lioness. The
      bars held firm. Then she went to seek in the corner of her cell a
      huge paving stone, which served her as a pillow, and launched it
      against them with such violence that one of the bars broke,
      emitting thousands of sparks. A second blow completely shattered
      the old iron cross which barricaded the window. Then with her two
      hands, she finished breaking and removing the rusted stumps of
      the bars. There are moments when woman’s hands possess superhuman
      strength.

      A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her to
      seize her daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her into
      her cell. “Come let me draw you out of the abyss,” she murmured.

      When her daughter was inside the cell, she laid her gently on the
      ground, then raised her up again, and bearing her in her arms as
      though she were still only her little Agnès, she walked to and
      fro in her little room, intoxicated, frantic, joyous, crying out,
      singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her, bursting into
      laughter, melting into tears, all at once and with vehemence.

      “My daughter! my daughter!” she said. “I have my daughter! here
      she is! The good God has given her back to me! Ha you! come all
      of you! Is there any one there to see that I have my daughter?
      Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You have made me wait fifteen
      years, my good God, but it was in order to give her back to me
      beautiful.—Then the gypsies did not eat her! Who said so? My
      little daughter! my little daughter! Kiss me. Those good gypsies!
      I love the gypsies!—It is really you! That was what made my heart
      leap every time that you passed by. And I took that for hatred!
      Forgive me, my Agnès, forgive me. You thought me very malicious,
      did you not? I love you. Have you still the little mark on your
      neck? Let us see. She still has it. Oh! you are beautiful! It was
      I who gave you those big eyes, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you.
      It is nothing to me that other mothers have children; I scorn
      them now. They have only to come and see. Here is mine. See her
      neck, her eyes, her hair, her hands. Find me anything as
      beautiful as that! Oh! I promise you she will have lovers, that
      she will! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has
      departed and has fallen to her. Kiss me.”

      She addressed to her a thousand other extravagant remarks, whose
      accent constituted their sole beauty, disarranged the poor girl’s
      garments even to the point of making her blush, smoothed her
      silky hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her knee, her brow,
      her eyes, was in raptures over everything. The young girl let her
      have her way, repeating at intervals and very low and with
      infinite tenderness, “My mother!”

      “Do you see, my little girl,” resumed the recluse, interspersing
      her words with kisses, “I shall love you dearly? We will go away
      from here. We are going to be very happy. I have inherited
      something in Reims, in our country. You know Reims? Ah! no, you
      do not know it; you were too small! If you only knew how pretty
      you were at the age of four months! Tiny feet that people came
      even from Epernay, which is seven leagues away, to see! We shall
      have a field, a house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God!
      my God! who would believe this? I have my daughter!”

      “Oh, my mother!” said the young girl, at length finding strength
      to speak in her emotion, “the gypsy woman told me so. There was a
      good gypsy of our band who died last year, and who always cared
      for me like a nurse. It was she who placed this little bag about
      my neck. She always said to me: ‘Little one, guard this jewel
      well! ’Tis a treasure. It will cause thee to find thy mother once
      again. Thou wearest thy mother about thy neck.’—The gypsy
      predicted it!”

      The sacked nun again pressed her daughter in her arms.

      “Come, let me kiss you! You say that prettily. When we are in the
      country, we will place these little shoes on an infant Jesus in
      the church. We certainly owe that to the good, holy Virgin. What
      a pretty voice you have! When you spoke to me just now, it was
      music! Ah! my Lord God! I have found my child again! But is this
      story credible? Nothing will kill one—or I should have died of
      joy.”

      And then she began to clap her hands again and to laugh and to
      cry out: “We are going to be so happy!”

      At that moment, the cell resounded with the clang of arms and a
      galloping of horses which seemed to be coming from the Pont
      Notre-Dame, amid advancing farther and farther along the quay.
      The gypsy threw herself with anguish into the arms of the sacked
      nun.

      “Save me! save me! mother! they are coming!”

      “Oh, heaven! what are you saying? I had forgotten! They are in
      pursuit of you! What have you done?”

      “I know not,” replied the unhappy child; “but I am condemned to
      die.”

      “To die!” said Gudule, staggering as though struck by lightning;
      “to die!” she repeated slowly, gazing at her daughter with
      staring eyes.

      “Yes, mother,” replied the frightened young girl, “they want to
      kill me. They are coming to seize me. That gallows is for me!
      Save me! save me! They are coming! Save me!”

      The recluse remained for several moments motionless and
      petrified, then she moved her head in sign of doubt, and suddenly
      giving vent to a burst of laughter, but with that terrible laugh
      which had come back to her,—

      “Ho! ho! no! ’tis a dream of which you are telling me. Ah, yes! I
      lost her, that lasted fifteen years, and then I found her again,
      and that lasted a minute! And they would take her from me again!
      And now, when she is beautiful, when she is grown up, when she
      speaks to me, when she loves me; it is now that they would come
      to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother! Oh! no!
      these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such
      things as that.”

      Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say
      in the distance,—

      “This way, Messire Tristan! The priest says that we shall find
      her at the Rat-Hole.” The noise of the horses began again.

      The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. “Fly!
      fly! my child! All comes back to me. You are right. It is your
      death! Horror! Maledictions! Fly!”

      She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again
      hastily.

      “Remain,” she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she
      pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive.
      “Remain! Do not breathe! There are soldiers everywhere. You
      cannot get out. It is too light.”

      Her eyes were dry and burning. She remained silent for a moment;
      but she paced the cell hurriedly, and halted now and then to
      pluck out handfuls of her gray hairs, which she afterwards tore
      with her teeth.

      Suddenly she said: “They draw near. I will speak with them. Hide
      yourself in this corner. They will not see you. I will tell them
      that you have made your escape. That I released you, i’ faith!”

      She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in
      one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. She
      made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that neither foot
      nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her black hair which
      she spread over her white robe to conceal it, placed in front of
      her her jug and her paving stone, the only articles of furniture
      which she possessed, imagining that this jug and stone would hide
      her. And when this was finished she became more tranquil, and
      knelt down to pray. The day, which was only dawning, still left
      many shadows in the Rat-Hole.

      At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice,
      passed very close to the cell, crying,—

      “This way, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers.”

      At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her
      corner, made a movement.

      “Do not stir!” said Gudule.

      She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and horses
      halted around the cell. The mother rose quickly and went to post
      herself before her window, in order to stop it up. She beheld a
      large troop of armed men, both horse and foot, drawn up on the
      Grève.

      The commander dismounted, and came toward her.

      “Old woman!” said this man, who had an atrocious face, “we are in
      search of a witch to hang her; we were told that you had her.”

      The poor mother assumed as indifferent an air as she could, and
      replied,—

      “I know not what you mean.”

      The other resumed, “_Tête Dieu!_ What was it that frightened
      archdeacon said? Where is he?”

      “Monseigneur,” said a soldier, “he has disappeared.”

      “Come, now, old madwoman,” began the commander again, “do not
      lie. A sorceress was given in charge to you. What have you done
      with her?”

      The recluse did not wish to deny all, for fear of awakening
      suspicion, and replied in a sincere and surly tone,—

      “If you are speaking of a big young girl who was put into my
      hands a while ago, I will tell you that she bit me, and that I
      released her. There! Leave me in peace.”

      The commander made a grimace of disappointment. “Don’t lie to me,
      old spectre!” said he. “My name is Tristan l’Hermite, and I am
      the king’s gossip. Tristan the Hermit, do you hear?” He added, as
      he glanced at the Place de Grève around him, “’Tis a name which
      has an echo here.”

      “You might be Satan the Hermit,” replied Gudule, who was
      regaining hope, “but I should have nothing else to say to you,
      and I should never be afraid of you.”

      “_Tête-Dieu_,” said Tristan, “here is a crone! Ah! So the witch
      girl hath fled! And in which direction did she go?” Gudule
      replied in a careless tone,—

      “Through the Rue du Mouton, I believe.”

      Tristan turned his head and made a sign to his troop to prepare
      to set out on the march again. The recluse breathed freely once
      more.

      “Monseigneur,” suddenly said an archer, “ask the old elf why the
      bars of her window are broken in this manner.”

      This question brought anguish again to the heart of the miserable
      mother. Nevertheless, she did not lose all presence of mind.

      “They have always been thus,” she stammered.

      “Bah!” retorted the archer, “only yesterday they still formed a
      fine black cross, which inspired devotion.”

      Tristan cast a sidelong glance at the recluse.

      “I think the old dame is getting confused!”

      The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her
      self-possession, and, although with death in her soul, she began
      to grin. Mothers possess such strength.

      “Bah!” said she, “the man is drunk. ’Tis more than a year since
      the tail of a stone cart dashed against my window and broke in
      the grating. And how I cursed the carter, too.”

      “’Tis true,” said another archer, “I was there.”

      Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen
      everything. This unexpected testimony from the archer
      re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forcing to
      cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she was condemned to a
      perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.

      “If it was a cart which did it,” retorted the first soldier, “the
      stumps of the bars should be thrust inwards, while they actually
      are pushed outwards.”

      “Hé! hé!” said Tristan to the soldier, “you have the nose of an
      inquisitor of the Châtelet. Reply to what he says, old woman.”

      “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, driven to bay, and in a voice that
      was full of tears in despite of her efforts, “I swear to you,
      monseigneur, that ’twas a cart which broke those bars. You hear
      the man who saw it. And then, what has that to do with your
      gypsy?”

      “Hum!” growled Tristan.

      “The devil!” went on the soldier, flattered by the provost’s
      praise, “these fractures of the iron are perfectly fresh.”

      Tristan tossed his head. She turned pale.

      “How long ago, say you, did the cart do it?”

      “A month, a fortnight, perhaps, monseigneur, I know not.”

      “She first said more than a year,” observed the soldier.

      “That is suspicious,” said the provost.

      “Monseigneur!” she cried, still pressed against the opening, and
      trembling lest suspicion should lead them to thrust their heads
      through and look into her cell; “monseigneur, I swear to you that
      ’twas a cart which broke this grating. I swear it to you by the
      angels of paradise. If it was not a cart, may I be eternally
      damned, and I reject God!”

      “You put a great deal of heat into that oath;” said Tristan, with
      his inquisitorial glance.

      The poor woman felt her assurance vanishing more and more. She
      had reached the point of blundering, and she comprehended with
      terror that she was saying what she ought not to have said.

      Here another soldier came up, crying,—

      “Monsieur, the old hag lies. The sorceress did not flee through
      the Rue de Mouton. The street chain has remained stretched all
      night, and the chain guard has seen no one pass.”

      Tristan, whose face became more sinister with every moment,
      addressed the recluse,—

      “What have you to say to that?”

      She tried to make head against this new incident,

      “That I do not know, monseigneur; that I may have been mistaken.
      I believe, in fact, that she crossed the water.”

      “That is in the opposite direction,” said the provost, “and it is
      not very likely that she would wish to re-enter the city, where
      she was being pursued. You are lying, old woman.”

      “And then,” added the first soldier, “there is no boat either on
      this side of the stream or on the other.”

      “She swam across,” replied the recluse, defending her ground foot
      by foot.

      “Do women swim?” said the soldier.

      “_Tête Dieu!_ old woman! You are lying!” repeated Tristan
      angrily. “I have a good mind to abandon that sorceress and take
      you. A quarter of an hour of torture will, perchance, draw the
      truth from your throat. Come! You are to follow us.”

      She seized on these words with avidity.

      “As you please, monseigneur. Do it. Do it. Torture. I am willing.
      Take me away. Quick, quick! let us set out at once!—During that
      time,” she said to herself, “my daughter will make her escape.”

      “’S death!” said the provost, “what an appetite for the rack! I
      understand not this madwoman at all.”

      An old, gray-haired sergeant of the guard stepped out of the
      ranks, and addressing the provost,—

      “Mad in sooth, monseigneur. If she released the gypsy, it was not
      her fault, for she loves not the gypsies. I have been of the
      watch these fifteen years, and I hear her every evening cursing
      the Bohemian women with endless imprecations. If the one of whom
      we are in pursuit is, as I suppose, the little dancer with the
      goat, she detests that one above all the rest.”

      Gudule made an effort and said,—

      “That one above all.”

      The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch confirmed the old
      sergeant’s words to the provost. Tristan l’Hermite, in despair at
      extracting anything from the recluse, turned his back on her, and
      with unspeakable anxiety she beheld him direct his course slowly
      towards his horse.

      “Come!” he said, between his teeth, “March on! let us set out
      again on the quest. I shall not sleep until that gypsy is
      hanged.”

      But he still hesitated for some time before mounting his horse.
      Gudule palpitated between life and death, as she beheld him cast
      about the Place that uneasy look of a hunting dog which
      instinctively feels that the lair of the beast is close to him,
      and is loath to go away. At length he shook his head and leaped
      into his saddle. Gudule’s horribly compressed heart now dilated,
      and she said in a low voice, as she cast a glance at her
      daughter, whom she had not ventured to look at while they were
      there, “Saved!”

      The poor child had remained all this time in her corner, without
      breathing, without moving, with the idea of death before her. She
      had lost nothing of the scene between Gudule and Tristan, and the
      anguish of her mother had found its echo in her heart. She had
      heard all the successive snappings of the thread by which she
      hung suspended over the gulf; twenty times she had fancied that
      she saw it break, and at last she began to breathe again and to
      feel her foot on firm ground. At that moment she heard a voice
      saying to the provost: “_Corbœuf!_ Monsieur le Prevôt, ’tis no
      affair of mine, a man of arms, to hang witches. The rabble of the
      populace is suppressed. I leave you to attend to the matter
      alone. You will allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting
      for their captain.”

      The voice was that of Phœbus de Châteaupers; that which took
      place within her was ineffable. He was there, her friend, her
      protector, her support, her refuge, her Phœbus. She rose, and
      before her mother could prevent her, she had rushed to the
      window, crying,—

      “Phœbus! aid me, my Phœbus!”

      Phœbus was no longer there. He had just turned the corner of the
      Rue de la Coutellerie at a gallop. But Tristan had not yet taken
      his departure.

      The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She
      dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck. A
      tigress mother does not stand on trifles. But it was too late.
      Tristan had seen.

      “Hé! hé!” he exclaimed with a laugh which laid bare all his teeth
      and made his face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, “two mice in the
      trap!”

      “I suspected as much,” said the soldier.

      Tristan clapped him on the shoulder,—

      “You are a good cat! Come!” he added, “where is Henriet Cousin?”

      A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a soldier,
      stepped from the ranks. He wore a costume half gray, half brown,
      flat hair, leather sleeves, and carried a bundle of ropes in his
      huge hand. This man always attended Tristan, who always attended
      Louis XI. “Friend,” said Tristan l’Hermite, “I presume that this
      is the sorceress of whom we are in search. You will hang me this
      one. Have you your ladder?”

      “There is one yonder, under the shed of the Pillar-House,”
      replied the man. “Is it on this justice that the thing is to be
      done?” he added, pointing to the stone gibbet.

      “Yes.”

      “Ho, hé!” continued the man with a huge laugh, which was still
      more brutal than that of the provost, “we shall not have far to
      go.”

      “Make haste!” said Tristan, “you shall laugh afterwards.”

      In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word since
      Tristan had seen her daughter and all hope was lost. She had
      flung the poor gypsy, half dead, into the corner of the cellar,
      and had placed herself once more at the window with both hands
      resting on the angle of the sill like two claws. In this attitude
      she was seen to cast upon all those soldiers her glance which had
      become wild and frantic once more. At the moment when Rennet
      Cousin approached her cell, she showed him so savage a face that
      he shrank back.

      “Monseigneur,” he said, returning to the provost, “which am I to
      take?”

      “The young one.”

      “So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult.”

      “Poor little dancer with the goat!” said the old sergeant of the
      watch.

      Rennet Cousin approached the window again. The mother’s eyes made
      his own droop. He said with a good deal of timidity,—

      “Madam”—

      She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice,—

      “What do you ask?”

      “It is not you,” he said, “it is the other.”

      “What other?”

      “The young one.”

      She began to shake her head, crying,—

      “There is no one! there is no one! there is no one!”

      “Yes, there is!” retorted the hangman, “and you know it well. Let
      me take the young one. I have no wish to harm you.”

      She said, with a strange sneer,—

      “Ah! so you have no wish to harm me!”

      “Let me have the other, madam; ’tis monsieur the provost who
      wills it.”

      She repeated with a look of madness,—

      “There is no one here.”

      “I tell you that there is!” replied the executioner. “We have all
      seen that there are two of you.”

      “Look then!” said the recluse, with a sneer. “Thrust your head
      through the window.”

      The executioner observed the mother’s finger-nails and dared not.

      “Make haste!” shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his troops in
      a circle round the Rat-Hole, and who sat on his horse beside the
      gallows.

      Rennet returned once more to the provost in great embarrassment.
      He had flung his rope on the ground, and was twisting his hat
      between his hands with an awkward air.

      “Monseigneur,” he asked, “where am I to enter?”

      “By the door.”

      “There is none.”

      “By the window.”

      “’Tis too small.”

      “Make it larger,” said Tristan angrily. “Have you not pickaxes?”

      The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of her
      cavern. She no longer hoped for anything, she no longer knew what
      she wished, except that she did not wish them to take her
      daughter.

      Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night
      man, under the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew from it also the
      double ladder, which he immediately set up against the gallows.
      Five or six of the provost’s men armed themselves with picks and
      crowbars, and Tristan betook himself, in company with them,
      towards the window.

      “Old woman,” said the provost, in a severe tone, “deliver up to
      us that girl quietly.”

      She looked at him like one who does not understand.

      “_Tête Dieu!_” continued Tristan, “why do you try to prevent this
      sorceress being hung as it pleases the king?”

      The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way.

      “Why? She is my daughter.”

      The tone in which she pronounced these words made even Henriet
      Cousin shudder.

      “I am sorry for that,” said the provost, “but it is the king’s
      good pleasure.”

      She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh,—

      “What is your king to me? I tell you that she is my daughter!”

      “Pierce the wall,” said Tristan.

      In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to
      dislodge one course of stone below the window. When the mother
      heard the picks and crowbars mining her fortress, she uttered a
      terrible cry; then she began to stride about her cell with
      frightful swiftness, a wild beasts’ habit which her cage had
      imparted to her. She no longer said anything, but her eyes
      flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the very soul.

      All at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it
      with both fists upon the workmen. The stone, badly flung (for her
      hands trembled), touched no one, and fell short under the feet of
      Tristan’s horse. She gnashed her teeth.

      In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad
      daylight; a beautiful rose color enlivened the ancient, decayed
      chimneys of the Pillar-House. It was the hour when the earliest
      windows of the great city open joyously on the roofs. Some
      workmen, a few fruit-sellers on their way to the markets on their
      asses, began to traverse the Grève; they halted for a moment
      before this group of soldiers clustered round the Rat-Hole,
      stared at it with an air of astonishment and passed on.

      The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, covering
      her with her body, in front of her, with staring eyes, listening
      to the poor child, who did not stir, but who kept murmuring in a
      low voice, these words only, “Phœbus! Phœbus!” In proportion as
      the work of the demolishers seemed to advance, the mother
      mechanically retreated, and pressed the young girl closer and
      closer to the wall. All at once, the recluse beheld the stone
      (for she was standing guard and never took her eyes from it),
      move, and she heard Tristan’s voice encouraging the workers. Then
      she aroused from the depression into which she had fallen during
      the last few moments, cried out, and as she spoke, her voice now
      rent the ear like a saw, then stammered as though all kind of
      maledictions were pressing to her lips to burst forth at once.

      “Ho! ho! ho! Why this is terrible! You are ruffians! Are you
      really going to take my daughter? Oh! the cowards! Oh! the
      hangman lackeys! the wretched, blackguard assassins! Help! help!
      fire! Will they take my child from me like this? Who is it then
      who is called the good God?”

      Then, addressing Tristan, foaming at the mouth, with wild eyes,
      all bristling and on all fours like a female panther,—

      “Draw near and take my daughter! Do not you understand that this
      woman tells you that she is my daughter? Do you know what it is
      to have a child? Eh! lynx, have you never lain with your female?
      have you never had a cub? and if you have little ones, when they
      howl have you nothing in your vitals that moves?”

      “Throw down the stone,” said Tristan; “it no longer holds.”

      The crowbars raised the heavy course. It was, as we have said,
      the mother’s last bulwark.

      She threw herself upon it, she tried to hold it back; she
      scratched the stone with her nails, but the massive block, set in
      movement by six men, escaped her and glided gently to the ground
      along the iron levers.

      The mother, perceiving an entrance effected, fell down in front
      of the opening, barricading the breach with her body, beating the
      pavement with her head, and shrieking with a voice rendered so
      hoarse by fatigue that it was hardly audible,—

      “Help! fire! fire!”

      “Now take the wench,” said Tristan, still impassive.

      The mother gazed at the soldiers in such formidable fashion that
      they were more inclined to retreat than to advance.

      “Come, now,” repeated the provost. “Here you, Rennet Cousin!”

      No one took a step.

      The provost swore,—

      “_Tête de Christ!_ my men of war! afraid of a woman!”

      “Monseigneur,” said Rennet, “do you call that a woman?”

      “She has the mane of a lion,” said another.

      “Come!” repeated the provost, “the gap is wide enough. Enter
      three abreast, as at the breach of Pontoise. Let us make an end
      of it, death of Mahom! I will make two pieces of the first man
      who draws back!”

      Placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the
      soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and
      advanced towards the Rat-Hole.

      When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung
      aside her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall
      by her side. Then great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes;
      they flowed down her cheeks through a furrow, like a torrent
      through a bed which it has hollowed for itself.

      At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so
      supplicating, so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that
      more than one old convict-warder around Tristan who must have
      devoured human flesh wiped his eyes.

      “Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There is one
      thing which I must say to you. She is my daughter, do you see? my
      dear little daughter whom I had lost! Listen. It is quite a
      history. Consider that I knew the sergeants very well. They were
      always good to me in the days when the little boys threw stones
      at me, because I led a life of pleasure. Do you see? You will
      leave me my child when you know! I was a poor woman of the town.
      It was the Bohemians who stole her from me. And I kept her shoe
      for fifteen years. Stay, here it is. That was the kind of foot
      which she had. At Reims! La Chantefleurie! Rue Folle-Peine!
      Perchance, you knew about that. It was I. In your youth, then,
      there was a merry time, when one passed good hours. You will take
      pity on me, will you not, gentlemen? The gypsies stole her from
      me; they hid her from me for fifteen years. I thought her dead.
      Fancy, my good friends, believed her to be dead. I have passed
      fifteen years here in this cellar, without a fire in winter. It
      is hard. The poor, dear little shoe! I have cried so much that
      the good God has heard me. This night he has given my daughter
      back to me. It is a miracle of the good God. She was not dead.
      You will not take her from me, I am sure. If it were myself, I
      would say nothing; but she, a child of sixteen! Leave her time to
      see the sun! What has she done to you? nothing at all. Nor have
      I. If you did but know that she is all I have, that I am old,
      that she is a blessing which the Holy Virgin has sent to me! And
      then, you are all so good! You did not know that she was my
      daughter; but now you do know it. Oh! I love her! Monsieur, the
      grand provost. I would prefer a stab in my own vitals to a
      scratch on her finger! You have the air of such a good lord! What
      I have told you explains the matter, does it not? Oh! if you have
      had a mother, monseigneur! you are the captain, leave me my
      child! Consider that I pray you on my knees, as one prays to
      Jesus Christ! I ask nothing of any one; I am from Reims,
      gentlemen; I own a little field inherited from my uncle, Mahiet
      Pradon. I am no beggar. I wish nothing, but I do want my child!
      oh! I want to keep my child! The good God, who is the master, has
      not given her back to me for nothing! The king! you say the king!
      It would not cause him much pleasure to have my little daughter
      killed! And then, the king is good! she is my daughter! she is my
      own daughter! She belongs not to the king! she is not yours! I
      want to go away! we want to go away! and when two women pass, one
      a mother and the other a daughter, one lets them go! Let us pass!
      we belong in Reims. Oh! you are very good, messieurs the
      sergeants, I love you all. You will not take my dear little one,
      it is impossible! It is utterly impossible, is it not? My child,
      my child!”

      We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, of the
      tears which she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands which she
      clasped and then wrung, of the heart-breaking smiles, of the
      swimming glances, of the groans, the sighs, the miserable and
      affecting cries which she mingled with her disordered, wild, and
      incoherent words. When she became silent Tristan l’Hermite
      frowned, but it was to conceal a tear which welled up in his
      tiger’s eye. He conquered this weakness, however, and said in a
      curt tone,—

      “The king wills it.”

      Then he bent down to the ear of Rennet Cousin, and said to him in
      a very low tone,—

      “Make an end of it quickly!” Possibly, the redoubtable provost
      felt his heart also failing him.

      The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell. The mother
      offered no resistance, only she dragged herself towards her
      daughter and threw herself bodily upon her. The gypsy beheld the
      soldiers approach. The horror of death reanimated her,—

      “Mother!” she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress,
      “Mother! they are coming! defend me!”

      “Yes, my love, I am defending you!” replied the mother, in a
      dying voice; and clasping her closely in her arms, she covered
      her with kisses. The two lying thus on the earth, the mother upon
      the daughter, presented a spectacle worthy of pity.

      Rennet Cousin grasped the young girl by the middle of her body,
      beneath her beautiful shoulders. When she felt that hand, she
      cried, “Heuh!” and fainted. The executioner who was shedding
      large tears upon her, drop by drop, was about to bear her away in
      his arms. He tried to detach the mother, who had, so to speak,
      knotted her hands around her daughter’s waist; but she clung so
      strongly to her child, that it was impossible to separate them.
      Then Rennet Cousin dragged the young girl outside the cell, and
      the mother after her. The mother’s eyes were also closed.

      At that moment, the sun rose, and there was already on the Place
      a fairly numerous assembly of people who looked on from a
      distance at what was being thus dragged along the pavement to the
      gibbet. For that was Provost Tristan’s way at executions. He had
      a passion for preventing the approach of the curious.

      There was no one at the windows. Only at a distance, at the
      summit of that one of the towers of Notre-Dame which commands the
      Grève, two men outlined in black against the light morning sky,
      and who seemed to be looking on, were visible.

      Rennet Cousin paused at the foot of the fatal ladder, with that
      which he was dragging, and, barely breathing, with so much pity
      did the thing inspire him, he passed the rope around the lovely
      neck of the young girl. The unfortunate child felt the horrible
      touch of the hemp. She raised her eyelids, and saw the fleshless
      arm of the stone gallows extended above her head. Then she shook
      herself and shrieked in a loud and heartrending voice: “No! no! I
      will not!” Her mother, whose head was buried and concealed in her
      daughter’s garments, said not a word; only her whole body could
      be seen to quiver, and she was heard to redouble her kisses on
      her child. The executioner took advantage of this moment to
      hastily loose the arms with which she clasped the condemned girl.
      Either through exhaustion or despair, she let him have his way.
      Then he took the young girl on his shoulder, from which the
      charming creature hung, gracefully bent over his large head. Then
      he set his foot on the ladder in order to ascend.

      At that moment, the mother who was crouching on the pavement,
      opened her eyes wide. Without uttering a cry, she raised herself
      erect with a terrible expression; then she flung herself upon the
      hand of the executioner, like a beast on its prey, and bit it. It
      was done like a flash of lightning. The headsman howled with
      pain. Those near by rushed up. With difficulty they withdrew his
      bleeding hand from the mother’s teeth. She preserved a profound
      silence. They thrust her back with much brutality, and noticed
      that her head fell heavily on the pavement. They raised her, she
      fell back again. She was dead.

      The executioner, who had not loosed his hold on the young girl,
      began to ascend the ladder once more.



      CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)

      When Quasimodo saw that the cell was empty, that the gypsy was no
      longer there, that while he had been defending her she had been
      abducted, he grasped his hair with both hands and stamped with
      surprise and pain; then he set out to run through the entire
      church seeking his Bohemian, howling strange cries to all the
      corners of the walls, strewing his red hair on the pavement. It
      was just at the moment when the king’s archers were making their
      victorious entrance into Notre-Dame, also in search of the gypsy.
      Quasimodo, poor, deaf fellow, aided them in their fatal
      intentions, without suspecting it; he thought that the outcasts
      were the gypsy’s enemies. He himself conducted Tristan l’Hermite
      to all possible hiding-places, opened to him the secret doors,
      the double bottoms of the altars, the rear sacristries. If the
      unfortunate girl had still been there, it would have been he
      himself who would have delivered her up.

      When the fatigue of finding nothing had disheartened Tristan, who
      was not easily discouraged, Quasimodo continued the search alone.
      He made the tour of the church twenty times, length and breadth,
      up and down, ascending and descending, running, calling,
      shouting, peeping, rummaging, ransacking, thrusting his head into
      every hole, pushing a torch under every vault, despairing, mad. A
      male who has lost his female is no more roaring nor more haggard.

      At last when he was sure, perfectly sure that she was no longer
      there, that all was at an end, that she had been snatched from
      him, he slowly mounted the staircase to the towers, that
      staircase which he had ascended with so much eagerness and
      triumph on the day when he had saved her. He passed those same
      places once more with drooping head, voiceless, tearless, almost
      breathless. The church was again deserted, and had fallen back
      into its silence. The archers had quitted it to track the
      sorceress in the city. Quasimodo, left alone in that vast
      Notre-Dame, so besieged and tumultuous but a short time before,
      once more betook himself to the cell where the gypsy had slept
      for so many weeks under his guardianship.

      As he approached it, he fancied that he might, perhaps, find her
      there. When, at the turn of the gallery which opens on the roof
      of the side aisles, he perceived the tiny cell with its little
      window and its little door crouching beneath a great flying
      buttress like a bird’s nest under a branch, the poor man’s heart
      failed him, and he leaned against a pillar to keep from falling.
      He imagined that she might have returned thither, that some good
      genius had, no doubt, brought her back, that this chamber was too
      tranquil, too safe, too charming for her not to be there, and he
      dared not take another step for fear of destroying his illusion.
      “Yes,” he said to himself, “perchance she is sleeping, or
      praying. I must not disturb her.”

      At length he summoned up courage, advanced on tiptoe, looked,
      entered. Empty. The cell was still empty. The unhappy deaf man
      walked slowly round it, lifted the bed and looked beneath it, as
      though she might be concealed between the pavement and the
      mattress, then he shook his head and remained stupefied. All at
      once, he crushed his torch under his foot, and, without uttering
      a word, without giving vent to a sigh, he flung himself at full
      speed, head foremost against the wall, and fell fainting on the
      floor.

      When he recovered his senses, he threw himself on the bed and
      rolling about, he kissed frantically the place where the young
      girl had slept and which was still warm; he remained there for
      several moments as motionless as though he were about to expire;
      then he rose, dripping with perspiration, panting, mad, and began
      to beat his head against the wall with the frightful regularity
      of the clapper of his bells, and the resolution of a man
      determined to kill himself. At length he fell a second time,
      exhausted; he dragged himself on his knees outside the cell, and
      crouched down facing the door, in an attitude of astonishment.

      He remained thus for more than an hour without making a movement,
      with his eye fixed on the deserted cell, more gloomy, and more
      pensive than a mother seated between an empty cradle and a full
      coffin. He uttered not a word; only at long intervals, a sob
      heaved his body violently, but it was a tearless sob, like summer
      lightning which makes no noise.

      It appears to have been then, that, seeking at the bottom of his
      lonely thoughts for the unexpected abductor of the gypsy, he
      thought of the archdeacon. He remembered that Dom Claude alone
      possessed a key to the staircase leading to the cell; he recalled
      his nocturnal attempts on the young girl, in the first of which
      he, Quasimodo, had assisted, the second of which he had
      prevented. He recalled a thousand details, and soon he no longer
      doubted that the archdeacon had taken the gypsy. Nevertheless,
      such was his respect for the priest, such his gratitude, his
      devotion, his love for this man had taken such deep root in his
      heart, that they resisted, even at this moment, the talons of
      jealousy and despair.

      He reflected that the archdeacon had done this thing, and the
      wrath of blood and death which it would have evoked in him
      against any other person, turned in the poor deaf man, from the
      moment when Claude Frollo was in question, into an increase of
      grief and sorrow.

      At the moment when his thought was thus fixed upon the priest,
      while the daybreak was whitening the flying buttresses, he
      perceived on the highest story of Notre-Dame, at the angle formed
      by the external balustrade as it makes the turn of the chancel, a
      figure walking. This figure was coming towards him. He recognized
      it. It was the archdeacon.

      Claude was walking with a slow, grave step. He did not look
      before him as he walked, he was directing his course towards the
      northern tower, but his face was turned aside towards the right
      bank of the Seine, and he held his head high, as though trying to
      see something over the roofs. The owl often assumes this oblique
      attitude. It flies towards one point and looks towards another.
      In this manner the priest passed above Quasimodo without seeing
      him.

      The deaf man, who had been petrified by this sudden apparition,
      beheld him disappear through the door of the staircase to the
      north tower. The reader is aware that this is the tower from
      which the Hôtel-de-Ville is visible. Quasimodo rose and followed
      the archdeacon.

      Quasimodo ascended the tower staircase for the sake of ascending
      it, for the sake of seeing why the priest was ascending it.
      Moreover, the poor bellringer did not know what he (Quasimodo)
      should do, what he should say, what he wished. He was full of
      fury and full of fear. The archdeacon and the gypsy had come into
      conflict in his heart.

      When he reached the summit of the tower, before emerging from the
      shadow of the staircase and stepping upon the platform, he
      cautiously examined the position of the priest. The priest’s back
      was turned to him. There is an openwork balustrade which
      surrounds the platform of the bell tower. The priest, whose eyes
      looked down upon the town, was resting his breast on that one of
      the four sides of the balustrades which looks upon the Pont
      Notre-Dame.

      Quasimodo, advancing with the tread of a wolf behind him, went to
      see what he was gazing at thus.

      The priest’s attention was so absorbed elsewhere that he did not
      hear the deaf man walking behind him.

      Paris is a magnificent and charming spectacle, and especially at
      that day, viewed from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, in the
      fresh light of a summer dawn. The day might have been in July.
      The sky was perfectly serene. Some tardy stars were fading away
      at various points, and there was a very brilliant one in the
      east, in the brightest part of the heavens. The sun was about to
      appear; Paris was beginning to move. A very white and very pure
      light brought out vividly to the eye all the outlines that its
      thousands of houses present to the east. The giant shadow of the
      towers leaped from roof to roof, from one end of the great city
      to the other. There were several quarters from which were already
      heard voices and noisy sounds. Here the stroke of a bell, there
      the stroke of a hammer, beyond, the complicated clatter of a cart
      in motion.

      Already several columns of smoke were being belched forth from
      the chimneys scattered over the whole surface of roofs, as
      through the fissures of an immense sulphurous crater. The river,
      which ruffles its waters against the arches of so many bridges,
      against the points of so many islands, was wavering with silvery
      folds. Around the city, outside the ramparts, sight was lost in a
      great circle of fleecy vapors through which one confusedly
      distinguished the indefinite line of the plains, and the graceful
      swell of the heights. All sorts of floating sounds were dispersed
      over this half-awakened city. Towards the east, the morning
      breeze chased a few soft white bits of wool torn from the misty
      fleece of the hills.

      In the Parvis, some good women, who had their milk jugs in their
      hands, were pointing out to each other, with astonishment, the
      singular dilapidation of the great door of Notre-Dame, and the
      two solidified streams of lead in the crevices of the stone. This
      was all that remained of the tempest of the night. The bonfire
      lighted between the towers by Quasimodo had died out. Tristan had
      already cleared up the Place, and had the dead thrown into the
      Seine. Kings like Louis XI. are careful to clean the pavement
      quickly after a massacre.

      Outside the balustrade of the tower, directly under the point
      where the priest had paused, there was one of those fantastically
      carved stone gutters with which Gothic edifices bristle, and, in
      a crevice of that gutter, two pretty wallflowers in blossom,
      shaken out and vivified, as it were, by the breath of air, made
      frolicsome salutations to each other. Above the towers, on high,
      far away in the depths of the sky, the cries of little birds were
      heard.

      But the priest was not listening to, was not looking at, anything
      of all this. He was one of the men for whom there are no
      mornings, no birds, no flowers. In that immense horizon, which
      assumed so many aspects about him, his contemplation was
      concentrated on a single point.

      Quasimodo was burning to ask him what he had done with the gypsy;
      but the archdeacon seemed to be out of the world at that moment.
      He was evidently in one of those violent moments of life when one
      would not feel the earth crumble. He remained motionless and
      silent, with his eyes steadily fixed on a certain point; and
      there was something so terrible about this silence and immobility
      that the savage bellringer shuddered before it and dared not come
      in contact with it. Only, and this was also one way of
      interrogating the archdeacon, he followed the direction of his
      vision, and in this way the glance of the unhappy deaf man fell
      upon the Place de Grève.

      Thus he saw what the priest was looking at. The ladder was
      erected near the permanent gallows. There were some people and
      many soldiers in the Place. A man was dragging a white thing,
      from which hung something black, along the pavement. This man
      halted at the foot of the gallows.

      Here something took place which Quasimodo could not see very
      clearly. It was not because his only eye had not preserved its
      long range, but there was a group of soldiers which prevented his
      seeing everything. Moreover, at that moment the sun appeared, and
      such a flood of light overflowed the horizon that one would have
      said that all the points in Paris, spires, chimneys, gables, had
      simultaneously taken fire.

      Meanwhile, the man began to mount the ladder. Then Quasimodo saw
      him again distinctly. He was carrying a woman on his shoulder, a
      young girl dressed in white; that young girl had a noose about
      her neck. Quasimodo recognized her.

      It was she.

      The man reached the top of the ladder. There he arranged the
      noose. Here the priest, in order to see the better, knelt upon
      the balustrade.

      All at once the man kicked away the ladder abruptly, and
      Quasimodo, who had not breathed for several moments, beheld the
      unhappy child dangling at the end of the rope two fathoms above
      the pavement, with the man squatting on her shoulders. The rope
      made several gyrations on itself, and Quasimodo beheld horrible
      convulsions run along the gypsy’s body. The priest, on his side,
      with outstretched neck and eyes starting from his head,
      contemplated this horrible group of the man and the young
      girl,—the spider and the fly.

      At the moment when it was most horrible, the laugh of a demon, a
      laugh which one can only give vent to when one is no longer
      human, burst forth on the priest’s livid face.

      Quasimodo did not hear that laugh, but he saw it.

      The bellringer retreated several paces behind the archdeacon, and
      suddenly hurling himself upon him with fury, with his huge hands
      he pushed him by the back over into the abyss over which Dom
      Claude was leaning.

      The priest shrieked: “Damnation!” and fell.

      The spout, above which he had stood, arrested him in his fall. He
      clung to it with desperate hands, and, at the moment when he
      opened his mouth to utter a second cry, he beheld the formidable
      and avenging face of Quasimodo thrust over the edge of the
      balustrade above his head.

      Then he was silent.

      The abyss was there below him. A fall of more than two hundred
      feet and the pavement.

      In this terrible situation, the archdeacon said not a word,
      uttered not a groan. He merely writhed upon the spout, with
      incredible efforts to climb up again; but his hands had no hold
      on the granite, his feet slid along the blackened wall without
      catching fast. People who have ascended the towers of Notre-Dame
      know that there is a swell of the stone immediately beneath the
      balustrade. It was on this retreating angle that miserable
      archdeacon exhausted himself. He had not to deal with a
      perpendicular wall, but with one which sloped away beneath him.

      Quasimodo had but to stretch out his hand in order to draw him
      from the gulf; but he did not even look at him. He was looking at
      the Grève. He was looking at the gallows. He was looking at the
      gypsy.

      The deaf man was leaning, with his elbows on the balustrade, at
      the spot where the archdeacon had been a moment before, and
      there, never detaching his gaze from the only object which
      existed for him in the world at that moment, he remained
      motionless and mute, like a man struck by lightning, and a long
      stream of tears flowed in silence from that eye which, up to that
      time, had never shed but one tear.

      Meanwhile, the archdeacon was panting. His bald brow was dripping
      with perspiration, his nails were bleeding against the stones,
      his knees were flayed by the wall.

      He heard his cassock, which was caught on the spout, crack and
      rip at every jerk that he gave it. To complete his misfortune,
      this spout ended in a leaden pipe which bent under the weight of
      his body. The archdeacon felt this pipe slowly giving way. The
      miserable man said to himself that, when his hands should be worn
      out with fatigue, when his cassock should tear asunder, when the
      lead should give way, he would be obliged to fall, and terror
      seized upon his very vitals. Now and then he glanced wildly at a
      sort of narrow shelf formed, ten feet lower down, by projections
      of the sculpture, and he prayed heaven, from the depths of his
      distressed soul, that he might be allowed to finish his life,
      were it to last two centuries, on that space two feet square.
      Once, he glanced below him into the Place, into the abyss; the
      head which he raised again had its eyes closed and its hair
      standing erect.

      There was something frightful in the silence of these two men.
      While the archdeacon agonized in this terrible fashion a few feet
      below him, Quasimodo wept and gazed at the Grève.

      The archdeacon, seeing that all his exertions served only to
      weaken the fragile support which remained to him, decided to
      remain quiet. There he hung, embracing the gutter, hardly
      breathing, no longer stirring, making no longer any other
      movements than that mechanical convulsion of the stomach, which
      one experiences in dreams when one fancies himself falling. His
      fixed eyes were wide open with a stare. He lost ground little by
      little, nevertheless, his fingers slipped along the spout; he
      became more and more conscious of the feebleness of his arms and
      the weight of his body. The curve of the lead which sustained him
      inclined more and more each instant towards the abyss.

      He beheld below him, a frightful thing, the roof of Saint-Jean le
      Rond, as small as a card folded in two. He gazed at the
      impressive carvings, one by one, of the tower, suspended like
      himself over the precipice, but without terror for themselves or
      pity for him. All was stone around him; before his eyes, gaping
      monsters; below, quite at the bottom, in the Place, the pavement;
      above his head, Quasimodo weeping.

      In the Parvis there were several groups of curious good people,
      who were tranquilly seeking to divine who the madman could be who
      was amusing himself in so strange a manner. The priest heard them
      saying, for their voices reached him, clear and shrill: “Why, he
      will break his neck!”

      Quasimodo wept.

      At last the archdeacon, foaming with rage and despair, understood
      that all was in vain. Nevertheless, he collected all the strength
      which remained to him for a final effort. He stiffened himself
      upon the spout, pushed against the wall with both his knees,
      clung to a crevice in the stones with his hands, and succeeded in
      climbing back with one foot, perhaps; but this effort made the
      leaden beak on which he rested bend abruptly. His cassock burst
      open at the same time. Then, feeling everything give way beneath
      him, with nothing but his stiffened and failing hands to support
      him, the unfortunate man closed his eyes and let go of the spout.
      He fell.

      Quasimodo watched him fall.

      A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The
      archdeacon, launched into space, fell at first head foremost,
      with outspread hands; then he whirled over and over many times;
      the wind blew him upon the roof of a house, where the unfortunate
      man began to break up. Nevertheless, he was not dead when he
      reached there. The bellringer saw him still endeavor to cling to
      a gable with his nails; but the surface sloped too much, and he
      had no more strength. He slid rapidly along the roof like a
      loosened tile, and dashed upon the pavement. There he no longer
      moved.

      Then Quasimodo raised his eyes to the gypsy, whose body he beheld
      hanging from the gibbet, quivering far away beneath her white
      robe with the last shudderings of anguish, then he dropped them
      on the archdeacon, stretched out at the base of the tower, and no
      longer retaining the human form, and he said, with a sob which
      heaved his deep chest,—“Oh! all that I have ever loved!”



      CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.

      Towards evening on that day, when the judiciary officers of the
      bishop came to pick up from the pavement of the Parvis the
      dislocated corpse of the archdeacon, Quasimodo had disappeared.

      A great many rumors were in circulation with regard to this
      adventure. No one doubted but that the day had come when, in
      accordance with their compact, Quasimodo, that is to say, the
      devil, was to carry off Claude Frollo, that is to say, the
      sorcerer. It was presumed that he had broken the body when taking
      the soul, like monkeys who break the shell to get at the nut.

      This is why the archdeacon was not interred in consecrated earth.

      Louis XI. died a year later, in the month of August, 1483.

      As for Pierre Gringoire, he succeeded in saving the goat, and he
      won success in tragedy. It appears that, after having tasted
      astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics,—all vanities, he
      returned to tragedy, vainest pursuit of all. This is what he
      called “coming to a tragic end.” This is what is to be read, on
      the subject of his dramatic triumphs, in 1483, in the accounts of
      the “Ordinary:” “To Jehan Marchand and Pierre Gringoire,
      carpenter and composer, who have made and composed the mystery
      made at the Châtelet of Paris, at the entry of Monsieur the
      Legate, and have ordered the personages, clothed and dressed the
      same, as in the said mystery was required; and likewise, for
      having made the scaffoldings thereto necessary; and for this
      deed,—one hundred livres.”

      Phœbus de Châteaupers also came to a tragic end. He married.



      CHAPTER IV. THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.

      We have just said that Quasimodo disappeared from Notre-Dame on
      the day of the gypsy’s and of the archdeacon’s death. He was not
      seen again, in fact; no one knew what had become of him.

      During the night which followed the execution of la Esmeralda,
      the night men had detached her body from the gibbet, and had
      carried it, according to custom, to the cellar of Montfaucon.

      Montfaucon was, as Sauval says, “the most ancient and the most
      superb gibbet in the kingdom.” Between the faubourgs of the
      Temple and Saint Martin, about a hundred and sixty toises from
      the walls of Paris, a few bow shots from La Courtille, there was
      to be seen on the crest of a gentle, almost imperceptible
      eminence, but sufficiently elevated to be seen for several
      leagues round about, an edifice of strange form, bearing
      considerable resemblance to a Celtic cromlech, and where also
      human sacrifices were offered.

      Let the reader picture to himself, crowning a limestone hillock,
      an oblong mass of masonry fifteen feet in height, thirty wide,
      forty long, with a gate, an external railing and a platform; on
      this platform sixteen enormous pillars of rough hewn stone,
      thirty feet in height, arranged in a colonnade round three of the
      four sides of the mass which support them, bound together at
      their summits by heavy beams, whence hung chains at intervals; on
      all these chains, skeletons; in the vicinity, on the plain, a
      stone cross and two gibbets of secondary importance, which seemed
      to have sprung up as shoots around the central gallows; above all
      this, in the sky, a perpetual flock of crows; that was
      Montfaucon.

      At the end of the fifteenth century, the formidable gibbet which
      dated from 1328, was already very much dilapidated; the beams
      were wormeaten, the chains rusted, the pillars green with mould;
      the layers of hewn stone were all cracked at their joints, and
      grass was growing on that platform which no feet touched. The
      monument made a horrible profile against the sky; especially at
      night when there was a little moonlight on those white skulls, or
      when the breeze of evening brushed the chains and the skeletons,
      and swayed all these in the darkness. The presence of this gibbet
      sufficed to render gloomy all the surrounding places.

      The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the odious
      edifice was hollow. A huge cellar had been constructed there,
      closed by an old iron grating, which was out of order, into which
      were cast not only the human remains, which were taken from the
      chains of Montfaucon, but also the bodies of all the unfortunates
      executed on the other permanent gibbets of Paris. To that deep
      charnel-house, where so many human remains and so many crimes
      have rotted in company, many great ones of this world, many
      innocent people, have contributed their bones, from Enguerrand de
      Marigni, the first victim, and a just man, to Admiral de Coligni,
      who was its last, and who was also a just man.

      As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all
      that we have been able to discover.

      About eighteen months or two years after the events which
      terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the
      body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously,
      and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried
      in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those
      hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in
      its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman,
      still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white,
      and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads
      with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was
      open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the
      executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which
      held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It
      was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated
      on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the
      other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the
      nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged.
      Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had
      died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held
      in his embrace, he fell to dust.



      NOTE
      ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.

      It is by mistake that this edition was announced as augmented by
      many _new_ chapters. The word should have been _unpublished_. In
      fact, if by new, _newly made_ is to be understood, the chapters
      added to this edition are not new. They were written at the same
      time as the rest of the work; they date from the same epoch, and
      sprang from the same thought, they have always formed a part of
      the manuscript of “Notre-Dame-de-Paris.” Moreover, the author
      cannot comprehend how fresh developments could be added to a work
      of this character after its completion. This is not to be done at
      will. According to his idea, a romance is born in a manner that
      is, in some sort, necessary, with all its chapters; a drama is
      born with all its scenes. Think not that there is anything
      arbitrary in the numbers of parts of which that whole, that
      mysterious microcosm which you call a drama or a romance, is
      composed. Grafting and soldering take badly on works of this
      nature, which should gush forth in a single stream and so remain.
      The thing once done, do not change your mind, do not touch it up.
      The book once published, the sex of the work, whether virile or
      not, has been recognized and proclaimed; when the child has once
      uttered his first cry he is born, there he is, he is made so,
      neither father nor mother can do anything, he belongs to the air
      and to the sun, let him live or die, such as he is. Has your book
      been a failure? So much the worse. Add no chapters to an
      unsuccessful book. Is it incomplete? You should have completed it
      when you conceived it. Is your tree crooked? You cannot
      straighten it up. Is your romance consumptive? Is your romance
      not capable of living? You cannot supply it with the breath which
      it lacks. Has your drama been born lame? Take my advice, and do
      not provide it with a wooden leg.

      Hence the author attaches particular importance to the public
      knowing for a certainty that the chapters here added have not
      been made expressly for this reprint. They were not published in
      the preceding editions of the book for a very simple reason. At
      the time when “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was printed the first time,
      the manuscript of these three chapters had been mislaid. It was
      necessary to rewrite them or to dispense with them. The author
      considered that the only two of these chapters which were in the
      least important, owing to their extent, were chapters on art and
      history which in no way interfered with the groundwork of the
      drama and the romance, that the public would not notice their
      loss, and that he, the author, would alone be in possession of
      the secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole truth
      must be confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task of
      rewriting the three lost chapters. He would have found it a
      shorter matter to make a new romance.

      Now the chapters have been found, and he avails himself of the
      first opportunity to restore them to their place.

      This now, is his entire work, such as he dreamed it, such as he
      made it, good or bad, durable or fragile, but such as he wishes
      it.

      These recovered chapters will possess no doubt, but little value
      in the eyes of persons, otherwise very judicious, who have sought
      in “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” only the drama, the romance. But there
      are perchance, other readers, who have not found it useless to
      study the æsthetic and philosophic thought concealed in this
      book, and who have taken pleasure, while reading
      “Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” in unravelling beneath the romance
      something else than the romance, and in following (may we be
      pardoned these rather ambitious expressions), the system of the
      historian and the aim of the artist through the creation of the
      poet.

      For such people especially, the chapters added to this edition
      will complete “Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” if we admit that
      “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was worth the trouble of completing.

      In one of these chapters on the present decadence of
      architecture, and on the death (in his mind almost inevitable) of
      that king of arts, the author expresses and develops an opinion
      unfortunately well rooted in him, and well thought out. But he
      feels it necessary to say here that he earnestly desires that the
      future may, some day, put him in the wrong. He knows that art in
      all its forms has everything to hope from the new generations
      whose genius, still in the germ, can be heard gushing forth in
      our studios. The grain is in the furrow, the harvest will
      certainly be fine. He merely fears, and the reason may be seen in
      the second volume of this edition, that the sap may have been
      withdrawn from that ancient soil of architecture which has been
      for so many centuries the best field for art.

      Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much
      life, power, and, so to speak, predestination, that in our
      schools of architecture in particular, at the present time, the
      professors, who are detestable, produce, not only unconsciously
      but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils; quite the
      reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphoræ
      and produced pots. _Currit rota, urcens exit_.

      But, in any case, whatever may be the future of architecture, in
      whatever manner our young architects may one day solve the
      question of their art, let us, while waiting for new monument,
      preserve the ancient monuments. Let us, if possible, inspire the
      nation with a love for national architecture. That, the author
      declares, is one of the principal aims of this book; it is one of
      the principal aims of his life.

      “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” has, perhaps opened some true perspectives
      on the art of the Middle Ages, on that marvellous art which up to
      the present time has been unknown to some, and, what is worse,
      misknown by others. But the author is far from regarding as
      accomplished, the task which he has voluntarily imposed on
      himself. He has already pleaded on more than one occasion, the
      cause of our ancient architecture, he has already loudly
      denounced many profanations, many demolitions, many impieties. He
      will not grow weary. He has promised himself to recur frequently
      to this subject. He will return to it. He will be as
      indefatigable in defending our historical edifices as our
      iconoclasts of the schools and academies are eager in attacking
      them; for it is a grievous thing to see into what hands the
      architecture of the Middle Ages has fallen, and in what a manner
      the botchers of plaster of the present day treat the ruin of this
      grand art, it is even a shame for us intelligent men who see them
      at work and content ourselves with hooting them. And we are not
      speaking here merely of what goes on in the provinces, but of
      what is done in Paris at our very doors, beneath our windows, in
      the great city, in the lettered city, in the city of the press,
      of word, of thought. We cannot resist the impulse to point out,
      in concluding this note, some of the acts of vandalism which are
      every day planned, debated, begun, continued, and successfully
      completed under the eyes of the artistic public of Paris, face to
      face with criticism, which is disconcerted by so much audacity.
      An archbishop’s palace has just been demolished, an edifice in
      poor taste, no great harm is done; but in a block with the
      archiepiscopal palace a bishop’s palace has been demolished, a
      rare fragment of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing
      architect could not distinguish from the rest. He has torn up the
      wheat with the tares; ’tis all the same. They are talking of
      razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, in order to make, with
      its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not need,
      however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is
      being repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial
      storms are allowed to destroy the magnificent painted windows of
      the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last few days there has been a
      scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie; and
      one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has
      been found to build a little white house between the venerable
      towers of the Palais de-Justice. Another has been found willing
      to prune away Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the feudal abbey with three
      bell towers. Another will be found, no doubt, capable of pulling
      down Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. All these masons claim to be
      architects, are paid by the prefecture or from the petty budget,
      and wear green coats. All the harm which false taste can inflict
      on good taste, they accomplish. While we write, deplorable
      spectacle! one of them holds possession of the Tuileries, one of
      them is giving Philibert Delorme a scar across the middle of his
      face; and it is not, assuredly, one of the least of the scandals
      of our time to see with what effrontery the heavy architecture of
      this gentleman is being flattened over one of the most delicate
      façades of the Renaissance!

      PARIS, October 20, 1832.



      FOOTNOTES:


1 (return) The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally
employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept
it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the
architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is
the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of
which the semi-circle is the father.

2 (return) _Faire le diable à quatre_.

3 (return) _Thibaut au des_,—Thibaut of the dice.

4 (return) An old French coin, equal to the two hundred and fortieth
part of a pound.

5 (return) Got the first idea of a thing.

6 (return) The ancient French _hurrah_.

7 (return) A chamber of the ancient parliament of Paris.

8 (return) A blank: an old French coin; six blanks were worth two sous
and a half; targe, an ancient coin of Burgundy, a farthing.

9 (return)
A coffer of great richness
    In a pillar’s heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
    With figures to astound.

10 (return) Alms.

11 (return) Give me the means to buy a bit of bread, sir.

12 (return) A high-toned sharper.

13 (return) Thieves.

14 (return) L’argot.

15 (return) A small dessert apple, bright red on one side and
greenish-white on the other.

16 (return) When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth—

17 (return)
My father is a bird,
my mother is a bird.
I cross the water without a barque,
I cross the water without a boat.
My mother is a bird,
my father is a bird.

18 (return) Time is a devourer; man, more so.

19 (return) _Histoire Gallicane_, liv. II. Periode III. fo. 130, p. 1.

20 (return) This is the same which is called, according to locality,
climate, and races, Lombard, Saxon, or Byzantine. There are four sister
and parallel architectures, each having its special character, but
derived from the same origin, the round arch.

_Facies non omnibus una,
Non diversa tamen, qualem_, etc.

Their faces not all alike, nor yet different, but such as the faces of
sisters ought to be.

21 (return) This portion of the spire, which was of woodwork, is
precisely that which was consumed by lightning, in 1823.

22 (return) The wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur.

23 (return) We have seen with sorrow mingled with indignation, that it
is the intention to increase, to recast, to make over, that is to say,
to destroy this admirable palace. The architects of our day have too
heavy a hand to touch these delicate works of the Renaissance. We still
cherish a hope that they will not dare. Moreover, this demolition of
the Tuileries now, would be not only a brutal deed of violence, which
would make a drunken vandal blush—it would be an act of treason. The
Tuileries is not simply a masterpiece of the art of the sixteenth
century, it is a page of the history of the nineteenth. This palace no
longer belongs to the king, but to the people. Let us leave it as it
is. Our revolution has twice set its seal upon its front. On one of its
two façades, there are the cannon-balls of the 10th of August; on the
other, the balls of the 29th of July. It is sacred. Paris, April 7,
1831. (_Note to the fifth edition._)

24 (return) The tenth month of the French republican calendar, from the
19th of June to the 18th of July.

25 (return) An official of Notre-Dame, lower than a beneficed
clergyman, higher than simple paid chanters.

26 (return) Hugo II. de Bisuncio, 1326-1332.

27 (return) This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia,
ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.

28 (return) Comptes du domaine, 1383.

29 (return) A _Queue_ was a cask which held a hogshead and a half.

30 (return) A captain of fifty men.

31 (return) Ox-eye daisy.

32 (return) Easter daisy.

33 (return) A rope for the gallows bird!  A fagot for the ape.

34 (return) An ancient Burgundian coin.

35 (return) An ancient French coin.

36 (return) Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing!

37 (return) Peter the Slaughterer; and Baptist Crack-Gosling.

38 (return) An ancient copper coin, the forty-fourth part of a sou or
the twelfth part of a farthing.

39 (return) Une vielle qui _scie_ une _anse_

40 (return) Cut-Weazand Street.

41 (return) Cut-Throat Street.

42 (return) The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves be hung
like calves.

43 (return) When the rats eat the cats, the king will be lord of Arras;
when the sea which is great and wide, is frozen over at St. John’s
tide, men will see across the ice, those who dwell in Arras quit their
place.

44 (return) Varieties of the crossbow.

45 (return) The substance of this exordium is contained in the
president’s sentence.

46 (return) “He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me,
hath eternal life, and hath not come into condemnation; but is passed
from death to life.”

47 (return) “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my
voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas,
and the floods compassed me about.”

48 (return) “Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy
upon thee.”

49 (return) “Lord have mercy upon us.”

50 (return) “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.”

51 (return) Bark, Grève, grumble, Grève!  Spin, spin, my distaff, spin
her rope for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a
beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre. The
thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Grève, bark,
Grève! To see the dissolute wench hang on the blear-eyed gibbet,
windows are eyes.

52 (return) Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart.  The
heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in
which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is
not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter.
Alas! What is the use of saying that? That which is not beautiful has
no right to exist; beauty loves only beauty; April turns her back on
January. Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the
only thing which does not exist by halves. The raven flies only by day,
the owl flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by night.

53 (return) _Sols neufs: poulets tués_.

54 (return) An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral
wings, by which a rotatory motion was communicated.

55 (return) A game played on a checker-board containing three
concentric sets of squares, with small stones. The game consisted in
getting three stones in a row.

56 (return) Good night, father and mother, the last cover up the fire.

57 (return) That I will drink no spiced and honeyed wine for a year, if
I am lying now.

58 (return) And by the blood of God, I have neither faith nor law, nor
fire nor dwelling-place, nor king nor God.

59 (return) Men of the brotherhood of slang: thieves.

60 (return) Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for
cut-weazand.

61 (return) The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn
about in Tarascon and other French towns.

62 (return) An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral
wings by which a rotatory motion was communicated.

63 (return) The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.

64 (return) An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet and
nearly five inches English measure.

65 (return) Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics.
Monsieur of Verdun has no longer one; all have been killed off.

66 (return) One in charge of the highways.

67 (return) A lord having a right on the woods of his vassals.

68 (return) When thou shalt find its mate, thy mother will stretch out
her arms to thee.