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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.