Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent
than Phœbus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk
than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several
moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him.
It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at
the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A
vertical section of this kennel, as Phœbus had so justly styled
it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither
window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from
standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust,
and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire;
rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit
of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose coolness
afforded him some relief.
What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the
archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.
In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phœbus,
Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by
him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps
dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these
images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed
in his mind a horrible group.
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that
he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking
of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The
trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a
tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put
his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in
the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to
emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phœbus, twirling
his moustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful
figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld her rise from below like
a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his
eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled and whirled
around him; he no longer saw nor heard anything.
When he recovered himself, Phœbus and Esmeralda were alone seated
on the wooden coffer beside the lamp which made these two
youthful figures and a miserable pallet at the end of the attic
stand out plainly before the archdeacon’s eyes.
Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a
spider’s web upon which rain has fallen, allowed a view, through
its rent meshes, of a corner of the sky, and the moon lying far
away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds.
The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her long,
drooping lashes shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, to whom
she dared not lift her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with
a charmingly unconscious gesture, she traced with the tip of her
finger incoherent lines on the bench, and watched her finger. Her
foot was not visible. The little goat was nestling upon it.
The captain was very gallantly clad; he had tufts of embroidery
at his neck and wrists; a great elegance at that day.
It was not without difficulty that Dom Claude managed to hear
what they were saying, through the humming of the blood, which
was boiling in his temples.
(A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace affair. It
is a perpetual “I love you.” A musical phrase which is very
insipid and very bald for indifferent listeners, when it is not
ornamented with some _fioriture;_ but Claude was not an
indifferent listener.)
“Oh!” said the young girl, without raising her eyes, “do not
despise me, monseigneur Phœbus. I feel that what I am doing is
not right.”
“Despise you, my pretty child!” replied the officer with an air
of superior and distinguished gallantry, “despise you,
_tête-Dieu!_ and why?”
“For having followed you!”
“On that point, my beauty, we don’t agree. I ought not to despise
you, but to hate you.”
The young girl looked at him in affright: “Hate me! what have I
done?”
“For having required so much urging.”
“Alas!” said she, “’tis because I am breaking a vow. I shall not
find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue. But what
matters it? What need have I of father or mother now?”
So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, moist
with joy and tenderness.
“Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phœbus. La
Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear dropped from
her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said,—“Oh! monseigneur, I
love you.”
Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue surrounded the
young girl, that Phœbus did not feel completely at his ease
beside her. But this remark emboldened him: “You love me!” he
said with rapture, and he threw his arm round the gypsy’s waist.
He had only been waiting for this opportunity.
The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the
point of a poniard which he wore concealed in his breast.
“Phœbus,” continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her waist from
the captain’s tenacious hands, “You are good, you are generous,
you are handsome; you saved me, me who am only a poor child lost
in Bohemia. I had long been dreaming of an officer who should
save my life. ’Twas of you that I was dreaming, before I knew
you, my Phœbus; the officer of my dream had a beautiful uniform
like yours, a grand look, a sword; your name is Phœbus; ’tis a
beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your
sword, Phœbus, that I may see it.”
“Child!” said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword with a
smile.
The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade; examined the cipher on
the guard with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, saying,—
“You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.” Phœbus
again profited by the opportunity to impress upon her beautiful
bent neck a kiss which made the young girl straighten herself up
as scarlet as a poppy. The priest gnashed his teeth over it in
the dark.
“Phœbus,” resumed the gypsy, “let me talk to you. Pray walk a
little, that I may see you at full height, and that I may hear
your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”
The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of
satisfaction,—
“What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, have you seen me
in my archer’s ceremonial doublet?”
“Alas! no,” she replied.
“It is very handsome!”
Phœbus returned and seated himself beside her, but much closer
than before.
“Listen, my dear—”
The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty hand on
his mouth, with a childish mirth and grace and gayety.
“No, no, I will not listen to you. Do you love me? I want you to
tell me whether you love me.”
“Do I love thee, angel of my life!” exclaimed the captain, half
kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for
thee. I love thee, and I have never loved any one but thee.”
The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many
similar conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath,
without committing a single mistake. At this passionate
declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served
for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.
“Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment when one should die!”
Phœbus found “the moment” favorable for robbing her of another
kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook.
“Die!” exclaimed the amorous captain, “What are you saying, my
lovely angel? ’Tis a time for living, or Jupiter is only a scamp!
Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing! _Corne-de-bœuf_, what a
jest! It is not that. Listen, my dear Similar, Esmenarda—Pardon!
you have so prodigiously Saracen a name that I never can get it
straight. ’Tis a thicket which stops me short.”
“Good heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought my name pretty
because of its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would
that I were called Goton.”
“Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! ’tis a name
to which one must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know
it by heart, all will go smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar;
I adore you passionately. I love you so that ’tis simply
miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over it—”
The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who?”
“What matters that to us?” said Phœbus; “do you love me?”
“Oh!”—said she.
“Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the
great devil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest
woman in the world. We will have a pretty little house somewhere.
I will make my archers parade before your windows. They are all
mounted, and set at defiance those of Captain Mignon. There are
_voulgiers, cranequiniers_ and hand _couleveiniers_[44]. I will
take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the storehouse
of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white
harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners
of the trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber
of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aides of the
mint; a devilish fine array, in short! I will conduct you to see
the lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. All women
love that.”
For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming
thoughts, was dreaming to the sound of his voice, without
listening to the sense of his words.
“Oh! how happy you will be!” continued the captain, and at the
same time he gently unbuckled the gypsy’s girdle.
“What are you doing?” she said quickly. This “act of violence”
had roused her from her revery.
“Nothing,” replied Phœbus, “I was only saying that you must
abandon all this garb of folly, and the street corner when you
are with me.”
“When I am with you, Phœbus!” said the young girl tenderly.
She became pensive and silent once more.
The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist
without resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child’s
corsage, and disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the
panting priest beheld the gypsy’s beautiful shoulder emerge from
the gauze, as round and brown as the moon rising through the
mists of the horizon.
The young girl allowed Phœbus to have his way. She did not appear
to perceive it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.
Suddenly she turned towards him,—
“Phœbus,” she said, with an expression of infinite love,
“instruct me in thy religion.”
“My religion!” exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, “I
instruct you in my religion! _Corne et tonnerre!_ What do you
want with my religion?”
“In order that we may be married,” she replied.
The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and
disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.
“Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”
The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her
breast.
“My beautiful love,” resumed Phœbus, tenderly, “what nonsense is
this? A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less
loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!”
While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely
near the gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around
her supple and delicate waist, his eye flashed more and more, and
everything announced that Monsieur Phœbus was on the verge of one
of those moments when Jupiter himself commits so many follies
that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.
But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly
rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for the passage of
his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest,
hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was
quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love
and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given over in
disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in
his-veins; his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all
those loosened pins. Any one who could, at that moment, have seen
the face of the unhappy man glued to the wormeaten bars, would
have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the
depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye
shone like a candle through the cracks of the door.
All at once, Phœbus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy’s
gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy,
awoke with a start; she recoiled hastily from the enterprising
officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck and shoulders,
red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful
arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame
which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and
motionless, one would have declared her a statue of Modesty. Her
eyes were lowered.
But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet
which she wore about her neck.
“What is that?” he said, seizing this pretext to approach once
more the beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.
“Don’t touch it!” she replied, quickly, “’tis my guardian. It
will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so.
Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine! My mother! My poor mother!
My mother! Where art thou? Come to my rescue! Have pity, Monsieur
Phœbus, give me back my gorgerette!”
Phœbus retreated amid said in a cold tone,—
“Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!”
“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same
time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside
her. “I do not love thee, my Phœbus? What art thou saying, wicked
man, to break my heart? Oh, take me! take all! do what you will
with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet! What matters
to me my mother! ’Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee!
Phœbus, my beloved Phœbus, dost thou see me? ’Tis I. Look at me;
’tis the little one whom thou wilt surely not repulse, who comes,
who comes herself to seek thee. My soul, my life, my body, my
person, all is one thing—which is thine, my captain. Well, no! We
will not marry, since that displeases thee; and then, what am I?
a miserable girl of the gutters; whilst thou, my Phœbus, art a
gentleman. A fine thing, truly! A dancer wed an officer! I was
mad. No, Phœbus, no; I will be thy mistress, thy amusement, thy
pleasure, when thou wilt; a girl who shall belong to thee. I was
only made for that, soiled, despised, dishonored, but what
matters it?—beloved. I shall be the proudest and the most joyous
of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phœbus, when I am no
longer good to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still.
Others will embroider scarfs for you; ’tis I, the servant, who
will care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your
doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will have that pity, will
you not, Phœbus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phœbus, all this
belongs to thee, only love me! We gypsies need only air and
love.”
So saying, she threw her arms round the officer’s neck; she
looked up at him, supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and all
in tears. Her delicate neck rubbed against his cloth doublet with
its rough embroideries. She writhed on her knees, her beautiful
body half naked. The intoxicated captain pressed his ardent lips
to those lovely African shoulders. The young girl, her eyes bent
on the ceiling, as she leaned backwards, quivered, all
palpitating, beneath this kiss.
All at once, above Phœbus’s head she beheld another head; a
green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near
this face was a hand grasping a poniard. It was the face and hand
of the priest; he had broken the door and he was there. Phœbus
could not see him. The young girl remained motionless, frozen
with terror, dumb, beneath that terrible apparition, like a dove
which should raise its head at the moment when the hawk is gazing
into her nest with its round eyes.
She could not even utter a cry. She saw the poniard descend upon
Phœbus, and rise again, reeking.
“Maledictions!” said the captain, and fell.
She fainted.
At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in
her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted upon her
lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the
executioner.
When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of
the watch they were carrying away the captain, bathed in his
blood the priest had disappeared; the window at the back of the
room which opened on the river was wide open; they picked up a
cloak which they supposed to belong to the officer and she heard
them saying around her,
“’Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”
BOOK EIGHTH.
CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.
Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering mortal
anxiety. For a whole month they had not known what had become of
la Esmeralda, which greatly pained the Duke of Egypt and his
friends the vagabonds, nor what had become of the goat, which
redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One evening the gypsy had
disappeared, and since that time had given no signs of life. All
search had proved fruitless. Some tormenting bootblacks had told
Gringoire about meeting her that same evening near the Pont
Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after
the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and
besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his
wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the
unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the
amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the
resistance of that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he
was at ease on that score.
Still he could not understand this disappearance. It was a
profound sorrow. He would have grown thin over it, had that been
possible. He had forgotten everything, even his literary tastes,
even his great work, _De figuris regularibus et irregularibus_,
which it was his intention to have printed with the first money
which he should procure (for he had raved over printing, ever
since he had seen the “Didascalon” of Hugues de Saint Victor,
printed with the celebrated characters of Vindelin de Spire).
One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle,
he perceived a considerable crowd at one of the gates of the
Palais de Justice.
“What is this?” he inquired of a young man who was coming out.
“I know not, sir,” replied the young man. “’Tis said that they
are trying a woman who hath assassinated a gendarme. It appears
that there is sorcery at the bottom of it, the archbishop and the
official have intervened in the case, and my brother, who is the
archdeacon of Josas, can think of nothing else. Now, I wished to
speak with him, but I have not been able to reach him because of
the throng, which vexes me greatly, as I stand in need of money.”
“Alas! sir,” said Gringoire, “I would that I could lend you some,
but, my breeches are worn to holes, and ’tis not crowns which
have done it.”
He dared not tell the young man that he was acquainted with his
brother the archdeacon, to whom he had not returned after the
scene in the church; a negligence which embarrassed him.
The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow the
crowd which was mounting the staircase of the great chamber. In
his opinion, there was nothing like the spectacle of a criminal
process for dissipating melancholy, so exhilaratingly stupid are
judges as a rule. The populace which he had joined walked and
elbowed in silence. After a slow and tiresome march through a
long, gloomy corridor, which wound through the court-house like
the intestinal canal of the ancient edifice, he arrived near a
low door, opening upon a hall which his lofty stature permitted
him to survey with a glance over the waving heads of the rabble.
The hall was vast and gloomy, which latter fact made it appear
still more spacious. The day was declining; the long, pointed
windows permitted only a pale ray of light to enter, which was
extinguished before it reached the vaulted ceiling, an enormous
trellis-work of sculptured beams, whose thousand figures seemed
to move confusedly in the shadows, many candles were already
lighted here and there on tables, and beaming on the heads of
clerks buried in masses of documents. The anterior portion of the
hall was occupied by the crowd; on the right and left were
magistrates and tables; at the end, upon a platform, a number of
judges, whose rear rank sank into the shadows, sinister and
motionless faces. The walls were sown with innumerable
fleurs-de-lis. A large figure of Christ might be vaguely descried
above the judges, and everywhere there were pikes and halberds,
upon whose points the reflection of the candles placed tips of
fire.
“Monsieur,” Gringoire inquired of one of his neighbors, “who are
all those persons ranged yonder, like prelates in council?”
“Monsieur,” replied the neighbor, “those on the right are the
counsellors of the grand chamber; those on the left, the
councillors of inquiry; the masters in black gowns, the messires
in red.”
“Who is that big red fellow, yonder above them, who is sweating?”
pursued Gringoire.
“It is monsieur the president.”
“And those sheep behind him?” continued Gringoire, who as we have
seen, did not love the magistracy, which arose, possibly, from
the grudge which he cherished against the Palais de Justice since
his dramatic misadventure.
“They are messieurs the masters of requests of the king’s
household.”
“And that boar in front of him?”
“He is monsieur the clerk of the Court of Parliament.”
“And that crocodile on the right?”
“Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king.”
“And that big, black tom-cat on the left?”
“Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator of the king in the
Ecclesiastical Court, with the gentlemen of the officialty.”
“Come now, monsieur,” said Gringoire, “pray what are all those
fine fellows doing yonder?”
“They are judging.”
“Judging whom? I do not see the accused.”
“’Tis a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She has her back turned
to us, and she is hidden from us by the crowd. Stay, yonder she
is, where you see a group of partisans.”
“Who is the woman?” asked Gringoire. “Do you know her name?”
“No, monsieur, I have but just arrived. I merely assume that
there is some sorcery about it, since the official is present at
the trial.”
“Come!” said our philosopher, “we are going to see all these
magistrates devour human flesh. ’Tis as good a spectacle as any
other.”
“Monsieur,” remarked his neighbor, “think you not, that Master
Jacques Charmolue has a very sweet air?”
“Hum!” replied Gringoire. “I distrust a sweetness which hath
pinched nostrils and thin lips.”
Here the bystanders imposed silence upon the two chatterers. They
were listening to an important deposition.
“Messeigneurs,” said an old woman in the middle of the hall,
whose form was so concealed beneath her garments that one would
have pronounced her a walking heap of rags; “Messeigneurs, the
thing is as true as that I am la Falourdel, established these
forty years at the Pont Saint Michel, and paying regularly my
rents, lord’s dues, and quit rents; at the gate opposite the
house of Tassin-Caillart, the dyer, which is on the side up the
river—a poor old woman now, but a pretty maid in former days, my
lords. Some one said to me lately, ‘La Falourdel, don’t use your
spinning-wheel too much in the evening; the devil is fond of
combing the distaffs of old women with his horns. ’Tis certain
that the surly monk who was round about the temple last year, now
prowls in the City. Take care, La Falourdel, that he doth not
knock at your door.’ One evening I was spinning on my wheel,
there comes a knock at my door; I ask who it is. They swear. I
open. Two men enter. A man in black and a handsome officer. Of
the black man nothing could be seen but his eyes, two coals of
fire. All the rest was hat and cloak. They say to me,—‘The
Sainte-Marthe chamber.’—’Tis my upper chamber, my lords, my
cleanest. They give me a crown. I put the crown in my drawer, and
I say: ‘This shall go to buy tripe at the slaughter-house of la
Gloriette to-morrow.’ We go up stairs. On arriving at the upper
chamber, and while my back is turned, the black man disappears.
That dazed me a bit. The officer, who was as handsome as a great
lord, goes down stairs again with me. He goes out. In about the
time it takes to spin a quarter of a handful of flax, he returns
with a beautiful young girl, a doll who would have shone like the
sun had she been coiffed. She had with her a goat; a big
billy-goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That
set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the goat! I
love not those beasts, they have a beard and horns. They are so
like a man. And then, they smack of the witches, sabbath.
However, I say nothing. I had the crown. That is right, is it
not, Monsieur Judge? I show the captain and the wench to the
upper chamber, and I leave them alone; that is to say, with the
goat. I go down and set to spinning again—I must inform you that
my house has a ground floor and story above. I know not why I
fell to thinking of the surly monk whom the goat had put into my
head again, and then the beautiful girl was rather strangely
decked out. All at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something
falls on the floor and the window opens. I run to mine which is
beneath it, and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and
fall into the water. It was a phantom clad like a priest. It was
a moonlight night. I saw him quite plainly. He was swimming in
the direction of the city. Then, all of a tremble, I call the
watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not knowing just at
the first moment what the matter was, and being merry, they beat
me. I explain to them. We go up stairs, and what do we find? my
poor chamber all blood, the captain stretched out at full length
with a dagger in his neck, the girl pretending to be dead, and
the goat all in a fright. ‘Pretty work!’ I say, ‘I shall have to
wash that floor for more than a fortnight. It will have to be
scraped; it will be a terrible job.’ They carried off the
officer, poor young man, and the wench with her bosom all bare.
But wait, the worst is that on the next day, when I wanted to
take the crown to buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in its place.”
The old woman ceased. A murmur of horror ran through the
audience.
“That phantom, that goat,—all smacks of magic,” said one of
Gringoire’s neighbors.
“And that dry leaf!” added another.
“No doubt about it,” joined in a third, “she is a witch who has
dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering
officers.”
Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as
altogether alarming and probable.
“Goody Falourdel,” said the president majestically, “have you
nothing more to communicate to the court?”
“No, monseigneur,” replied the crone, “except that the report has
described my house as a hovel and stinking; which is an
outrageous fashion of speaking. The houses on the bridge are not
imposing, because there are such multitudes of people; but,
nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are
wealthy folk, and married to very proper and handsome women.”
The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile rose,—
“Silence!” said he. “I pray the gentlemen not to lose sight of
the fact that a dagger was found on the person of the accused.
Goody Falourdel, have you brought that leaf into which the crown
which the demon gave you was transformed?
“Yes, monseigneur,” she replied; “I found it again. Here it is.”
A bailiff handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a
doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, who
gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical
court, and thus it made the circuit of the hall.
“It is a birch leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmolue. “A fresh
proof of magic.”
A counsellor took up the word.
“Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black
man, whom you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the
Seine, with his priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the
two handed you the crown?” The old woman pondered for a moment
and then said,—
“The officer.”
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“Ah!” thought Gringoire, “this makes some doubt in my mind.”
But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king,
interposed once more.
“I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken
at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he
had a vague idea when the black man accosted him that the latter
might be the surly monk, added that the phantom had pressed him
eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the accused; and upon
his, the captain’s, remarking that he had no money, he had given
him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence,
that crown is the money of hell.”
This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts
of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience.
“You have the documents, gentlemen,” added the king’s advocate,
as he took his seat; “you can consult the testimony of Phœbus de
Châteaupers.”
At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the
throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda.
She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and
spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her
hollow eyes were terrible. Alas!
“Phœbus!” she said, in bewilderment; “where is he? O
messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether
he still lives?”
“Hold your tongue, woman,” replied the president, “that is no
affair of ours.”
“Oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me if he is alive!” she repeated,
clasping her beautiful emaciated hands; and the sound of her
chains in contact with her dress, was heard.
“Well!” said the king’s advocate roughly, “he is dying. Are you
satisfied?”
The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal’s seat, speechless,
tearless, white as a wax figure.
The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap
and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand.
“Bailiff, bring in the second accused.”
All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the
great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with
horns and hoofs of gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on
the threshold, stretching out its neck as though, perched on the
summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an immense horizon.
Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over the
table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees;
then it rolled gracefully on its mistress’s feet, soliciting a
word or a caress; but the accused remained motionless, and poor
Djali himself obtained not a glance.
“Eh, why—’tis my villanous beast,” said old Falourdel, “I
recognize the two perfectly!”
Jacques Charmolue interfered.
“If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of
the goat.” He was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more
simple in those days than a suit of sorcery instituted against an
animal. We find, among others in the accounts of the provost’s
office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the expenses of the
trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, “executed for their
demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens
in which to place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood
purchased at the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the
bread, the last repast of the victim fraternally shared by the
executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and food for the
sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even
further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of
Louis le Débonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms
which presume to appear in the air.
Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: “If the demon which
possesses this goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms,
persists in its deeds of witchcraft, if it alarms the court with
them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in requisition
against it the gallows or the stake. Gringoire broke out into a
cold perspiration. Charmolue took from the table the gypsy’s
tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner,
asked the latter,—
“What o’clock is it?”
The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded
hoof, and struck seven blows.
It was, in fact, seven o’clock. A movement of terror ran through
the crowd.
Gringoire could not endure it.
“He is destroying himself!” he cried aloud; “You see well that he
does not know what he is doing.”
“Silence among the louts at the end of the hall!” said the
bailiff sharply.
Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manœuvres of the
tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks connected
with the date of the day, the month of the year, etc., which the
reader has already witnessed. And, by virtue of an optical
illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same spectators
who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square
Djali’s innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of
the Palais de Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil.
It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied
upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, which
Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract with his
hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of _Phœbus_. The
witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared
irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy,
that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by
with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire.
However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali’s graceful
evolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed
imprecations of the spectators any longer reached her mind.
In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her
unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice,—
“Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of
witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat implicated
in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth of March last,
murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness, by
the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the
king’s arches of the watch, Phœbus de Châteaupers. Do you persist
in denying it?”
“Horror!” exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands.
“My Phœbus! Oh, this is hell!”
“Do you persist in your denial?” demanded the president coldly.
“Do I deny it?” she said with terrible accents; and she rose with
flashing eyes.
The president continued squarely,—
“Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge?”
She replied in a broken voice,—
“I have already told you. I do not know. ’Twas a priest, a priest
whom I do not know; an infernal priest who pursues me!”
“That is it,” retorted the judge; “the surly monk.”
“Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl—”
“Of Egypt,” said the judge.
Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly,—
“In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the
application of the torture.”
“Granted,” said the president.
The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the
command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably
firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the
officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized
door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which
produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a
horrible mouth which had just devoured her.
When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the
little goat mourning.
The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having
remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a
long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president
replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to
his duty.
“What an annoying and vexatious hussy,” said an aged judge, “to
get herself put to the question when one has not supped!”
CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A
DRY LEAF.
After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors,
which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at midday, La
Esmeralda, still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust
by the police into a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in
form, occupied the ground floor of one of those great towers,
which, even in our own century, still pierce through the layer of
modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient
Paris. There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening
than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an enormous iron
door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had been
constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was
lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson
reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one
corner, of all radiance. The iron grating which served to close
the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the
mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower
extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set
flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths
of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the
light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the
room, frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In
the centre lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the
ground, over which hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached
to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in
the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares,
filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap
on the coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in
the chamber only a confused mass of horrible things.
This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.
On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the
official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces,
leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the iron
instruments on the coals.
In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this
chamber she was stricken with horror.
The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one
side, the priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk,
inkhorn, and a table were in one corner.
Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a very sweet
smile.
“My dear child,” said he, “do you still persist in your denial?”
“Yes,” she replied, in a dying voice.
“In that case,” replied Charmolue, “it will be very painful for
us to have to question you more urgently than we should like.
Pray take the trouble to seat yourself on this bed. Master
Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close the door.”
Pierrat rose with a growl.
“If I shut the door,” he muttered, “my fire will go out.”
“Well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue, “leave it open then.”
Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That leather bed
on which so many unhappy wretches had writhed, frightened her.
Terror chilled the very marrow of her bones; she stood there
bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from Charmolue, the two
assistants took her and placed her in a sitting posture on the
bed. They did her no harm; but when these men touched her, when
that leather touched her, she felt all her blood retreat to her
heart. She cast a frightened look around the chamber. It seemed
to her as though she beheld advancing from all quarters towards
her, with the intention of crawling up her body and biting and
pinching her, all those hideous implements of torture, which as
compared to the instruments of all sorts she had hitherto seen,
were like what bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects
and birds.
“Where is the physician?” asked Charmolue.
“Here,” replied a black gown whom she had not before noticed.
She shuddered.
“Mademoiselle,” resumed the caressing voice of the procucrator of
the Ecclesiastical court, “for the third time, do you persist in
denying the deeds of which you are accused?”
This time she could only make a sign with her head.
“You persist?” said Jacques Charmolue. “Then it grieves me
deeply, but I must fulfil my office.”
“Monsieur le Procureur du Roi,” said Pierrat abruptly, “How shall
we begin?”
Charmolue hesitated for a moment with the ambiguous grimace of a
poet in search of a rhyme.
“With the boot,” he said at last.
The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and
men, that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which
has no power in itself.
The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At
the same time, the two assistants began to fumble among their
hideous arsenal.
At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child
quivered like a dead frog which is being galvanized. “Oh!” she
murmured, so low that no one heard her; “Oh, my Phœbus!” Then she
fell back once more into her immobility and her marble silence.
This spectacle would have rent any other heart than those of her
judges. One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being
tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell. The
miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and
racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being who was
about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners and
pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain
of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible
mills of torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of
Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had bared that charming leg, that
tiny foot, which had so often amazed the passers-by with their
delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.
“’Tis a shame!” muttered the tormentor, glancing at these
graceful and delicate forms.
Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled
at that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the
unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes,
beheld the boot approach; she soon beheld her foot encased
between iron plates disappear in the frightful apparatus. Then
terror restored her strength.
“Take that off!” she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with
her hair all dishevelled: “Mercy!”
She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the
king’s procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak
and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a
bee with a lump of lead on its wing.
At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two
coarse hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung
from the ceiling.
“For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?”
demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.
“I am innocent.”
“Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to
your charge?”
“Alas, monseigneur, I do not know.”
“So you deny them?”
“All!”
“Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.
Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was
contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible
cries which have no orthography in any human language.
“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” he said to
the gypsy.
“All!” cried the wretched girl. “I confess! I confess! Mercy!”
She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture.
Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so
pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!
“Humanity forces me to tell you,” remarked the king’s procurator,
“that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.”
“I certainly hope so!” said she. And she fell back upon the
leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang
suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.
“Come, fair one, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, raising
her. “You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which
hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne’s neck.”
Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,
“Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your
participation in the feasts, witches’ sabbaths, and witchcrafts
of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer.”
“Yes,” she said, so low that her words were lost in her
breathing.
“You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to
appear in the clouds to call together the witches’ sabbath, and
which is beheld by socerers alone?”
“Yes.”
“You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those
abominable idols of the Templars?”
“Yes.”
“To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of
a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit?”
“Yes.”
“Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the
demon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on
the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and
assassinated a captain named Phœbus de Châteaupers?”
She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and
replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or
agitation,—
“Yes.”
It was evident that everything within her was broken.
“Write, clerk,” said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers,
“Release the prisoner, and take her back to the court.”
When the prisoner had been “unbooted,” the procurator of the
ecclesiastical court examined her foot, which was still swollen
with pain. “Come,” said he, “there’s no great harm done. You
shrieked in good season. You could still dance, my beauty!”
Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality,—
“Behold justice enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen!
Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we have acted with all
possible gentleness.”
CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.
When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was
received with a general murmur of pleasure. On the part of the
audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified which one
experiences at the theatre at the end of the last entr’acte of
the comedy, when the curtain rises and the conclusion is about to
begin. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting
their suppers sooner.
The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards
his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench.
Night was fully set in. The candles, whose number had not been
increased, cast so little light, that the walls of the hall could
not be seen. The shadows there enveloped all objects in a sort of
mist. A few apathetic faces of judges alone could be dimly
discerned. Opposite them, at the extremity of the long hall, they
could see a vaguely white point standing out against the sombre
background. This was the accused.
She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue had
installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he seated
himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too much
self-complacency at his success,—“The accused has confessed all.”
“Bohemian girl,” the president continued, “have you avowed all
your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phœbus de
Châteaupers.”
Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.
“Anything you like,” she replied feebly, “but kill me quickly!”
“Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts,”
said the president, “the chamber is ready to hear you in your
charge.”
Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to
read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the
pleader, an oration in Latin, wherein all the proofs of the suit
were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations
from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are
not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The
orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had
finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his
brow, and his eyes from his head.
All at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted
himself, and his glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid,
became menacing.
“Gentlemen,” he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was not in
his copy book), “Satan is so mixed up in this affair, that here
he is present at our debates, and making sport of their majesty.
Behold!”
So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing
Charmolue gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it
appropriate to do the same, and had seated himself on his
haunches, reproducing to the best of his ability, with his
forepaws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the
king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the
reader remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This
incident, this last proof, produced a great effect. The goat’s
hoofs were tied, and the king’s procurator resumed the thread of
his eloquence.
It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here is the
concluding phrase; let the reader add the hoarse voice and the
breathless gestures of Master Charmolue,
“_Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente,
intentione criminis existente, in nomine sanctæ ecclesiæ
Nostræ-Dominæ Parisiensis quæ est in saisina habendi omnimodam
altam et bassam justitiam in illa hac intemerata Civitatis
insula, tenore præsentium declaremus nos requirere, primo,
aliquamdam pecuniariam indemnitatem; secundo, amendationem
honorabilem ante portalium maximum Nostræ-Dominæ, ecclesiæ
cathedralis; tertio, sententiam in virtute cujus ista styrga cum
sua capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto_ la Grève, _seu in
insula exeunte in fluvio Secanæ, juxta pointam juardini regalis,
executatæ sint!_”[45]
He put on his cap again and seated himself.
“_Eheu!_” sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, “_bassa
latinitas_—bastard latin!”
Another man in a black gown rose near the accused; he was her
lawyer. The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble.
“Advocate, be brief,” said the president.
“Monsieur the President,” replied the advocate, “since the
defendant has confessed the crime, I have only one word to say to
these gentlemen. Here is a text from the Salic law; ‘If a witch
hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted of it, she shall pay a
fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount to two hundred sous
of gold.’ May it please the chamber to condemn my client to the
fine?”
“An abrogated text,” said the advocate extraordinary of the king.
“_Nego_, I deny it,” replied the advocate.
“Put it to the vote!” said one of the councillors; “the crime is
manifest, and it is late.”
They proceeded to take a vote without leaving the room. The
judges signified their assent without giving their reasons, they
were in a hurry. Their capped heads were seen uncovering one
after the other, in the gloom, at the lugubrious question
addressed to them by the president in a low voice. The poor
accused had the appearance of looking at them, but her troubled
eye no longer saw.
Then the clerk began to write; then he handed a long parchment to
the president.
Then the unhappy girl heard the people moving, the pikes
clashing, and a freezing voice saying to her,—
“Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem good to our lord
the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a tumbrel, in
your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your neck, before
the grand portal of Notre-Dame, and you will there make an
apology with a wax torch of the weight of two pounds in your
hand, and thence you will be conducted to the Place de Grève,
where you will be hanged and strangled on the town gibbet; and
likewise your goat; and you will pay to the official three lions
of gold, in reparation of the crimes by you committed and by you
confessed, of sorcery and magic, debauchery and murder, upon the
person of the Sieur Phœbus de Châteaupers. May God have mercy on
your soul!”
“Oh! ’tis a dream!” she murmured; and she felt rough hands
bearing her away.
CHAPTER IV. _LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA_—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE
WHO ENTER HERE.
In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was
almost as much of it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon
piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had
always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it was, in some sort,
another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind, and
mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and
reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it
was a sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison,
sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. These mighty
buildings, whose mode of formation and _vegetation_ we have
elsewhere explained, had not simply _foundations_, but, so to
speak, roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers,
galleries, and staircases, like the construction above. Thus
churches, palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their
bodies. The cellars of an edifice formed another edifice, into
which one descended instead of ascending, and which extended its
subterranean grounds under the external piles of the monument,
like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the
mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains
of the banks.
At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of
Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons.
The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew
constantly narrower and more gloomy. They were so many zones,
where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante could never
imagine anything better for his hell. These tunnels of cells
usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like
bottom, where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those
condemned to death. A miserable human existence, once interred
there; farewell light, air, life, _ogni speranza_—every hope; it
only came forth to the scaffold or the stake. Sometimes it rotted
there; human justice called this _forgetting_. Between men and
himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers
weighing down upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive
bastille was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock,
which barred him off from the rest of the world.
It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the
_oubliettes_ excavated by Saint-Louis, in the _inpace_ of the
Tournelle, that la Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned
to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colossal
court-house over her head. Poor fly, who could not have lifted
even one of its blocks of stone!
Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such
an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to
break so frail a creature.
There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any
one who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen
her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as
night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a
human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes;
snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and
a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed
under her by the sweating of the prison walls; without motion,
almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer;
Phœbus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of Paris, the
dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the
officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood,
the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her
mind, sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a
hideous nightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and
horrible struggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up
above ground, and which was no longer audible at the depth where
the unhappy girl had fallen.
Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In
that misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish
her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than
day from night. All this was mixed, broken, floating,
disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she
no longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only
dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into
nothingness.
Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two
or three occasions, the sound of a trapdoor opening somewhere
above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light,
and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.
Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer was the sole
communication which was left her with mankind.
A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her
head, the dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the
vault, and a drop of water dropped from them at regular
intervals. She listened stupidly to the noise made by this drop
of water as it fell into the pool beside her.
This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was
the only movement which still went on around her, the only clock
which marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all
the noise made on the surface of the earth.
To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in
that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over
her foot or her arm, and she shuddered.
How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a
recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against
some one, then of having been herself carried away, and of waking
up in darkness and silence, chilled to the heart. She had dragged
herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles,
and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all
around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered
with moisture and a truss of straw; but neither lamp nor
air-hole. Then she had seated herself on that straw and,
sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude, on the last
stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the
black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that
melancholy labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in
her head, and had left her in stupor.
At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were
of the same color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a
louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he brought
her bread and jug of water. She raised her head, and beheld a ray
of reddish light passing through the crevices in the sort of
trapdoor contrived in the roof of the _inpace_.
At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its
rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the
lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door being too low
to admit of her seeing their heads. The light pained her so
acutely that she shut her eyes.
When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was
deposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood
before her. A monk’s black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the
same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person,
neither face nor hands. It was a long, black shroud standing
erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving. She
gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre. But
neither he nor she spoke. One would have pronounced them two
statues confronting each other. Two things only seemed alive in
that cavern; the wick of the lantern, which sputtered on account
of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of water from the
roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous
splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric
waves on the oily water of the pool.
At last the prisoner broke the silence.
“Who are you?”
“A priest.”
The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.
The priest continued, in a hollow voice,—
“Are you prepared?”
“For what?”
“To die.”
“Oh!” said she, “will it be soon?”
“To-morrow.”
Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her
breast.
“’Tis very far away yet!” she murmured; “why could they not have
done it to-day?”
“Then you are very unhappy?” asked the priest, after a silence.
“I am very cold,” she replied.
She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy
wretches who are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the
recluse of the Tour-Roland, and her teeth chattered.
The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from
beneath his cowl.
“Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!”
“Yes,” she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had
given her. “The day belongs to every one, why do they give me
only night?”
“Do you know,” resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, “why
you are here?”
“I thought I knew once,” she said, passing her thin fingers over
her eyelids, as though to aid her memory, “but I know no longer.”
All at once she began to weep like a child.
“I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am
afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body.”
“Well, follow me.”
So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen
to her very soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold
upon her.
“Oh!” she murmured, “’tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?”
The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the sinister
visage which had so long pursued her; that demon’s head which had
appeared at la Falourdel’s, above the head of her adored Phœbus;
that eye which she last had seen glittering beside a dagger.
This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus
driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture,
roused her from her stupor. It seemed to her that the sort of
veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. All the
details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal scene at
la Falourdel’s to her condemnation to the Tournelle, recurred to
her memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but
distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs,
half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering, were
revived by the sombre figure which stood before her, as the
approach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with
invisible ink, to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her
that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously.
“Hah!” she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive
trembling, “’tis the priest!”
Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated,
with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still
trembling.
The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long
been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor
lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently
contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has
suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning,
and holds it panting in his talons.
She began to murmur in a low voice,—
“Finish! finish! the last blow!” and she drew her head down in
terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of
the butcher’s axe.
“So I inspire you with horror?” he said at length.
She made no reply.
“Do I inspire you with horror?” he repeated.
Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.
“Yes,” said she, “the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he
has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months!
Had it not been for him, my God, how happy it should have been!
It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who
killed him! my Phœbus!”
Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,—
“Oh! wretch, who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then,
hate me so? Alas! what have you against me?”
“I love thee!” cried the priest.
Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an
idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes
of flame.
“Dost thou understand? I love thee!” he cried again.
“What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.
He resumed,—
“The love of a damned soul.”
Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the
weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.
“Listen,” said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come
over him; “you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I
have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively
interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night when
it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us.
Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.”
“So was I!” she sighed feebly.
“Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed
myself to be so. I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid
light. No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than
mine. Priests consulted me on chastity; doctors, on doctrines.
Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister to me, and a
sister sufficed. Not but that with age other ideas came to me.
More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman’s form passed
by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I
had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once,
convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a
miserable wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting,
prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my
soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women.
Moreover, I had but to open a book, and all the impure mists of
my brain vanished before the splendors of science. In a few
moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I
found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence
of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon
sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed
occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the
fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished
him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with me, it is the
fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal
force. Listen. One day—”
Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish
break from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.
He resumed,—
“One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I
reading then? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was
reading. The window opened upon a Square. I heard a sound of
tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my
revery, I glanced into the Square. What I beheld, others saw
beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human
eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was midday, the
sun was shining brightly,—a creature was dancing. A creature so
beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and
have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her
if she had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were
black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs
through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her
feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly
turning wheel. Around her head, in her black tresses, there were
disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and formed a coronet
of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with spangles, blue,
and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night.
Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like
two scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh!
what a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even
in the sunlight! Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised,
intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I
looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that
fate was seizing hold of me.”
The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he
continued,—
“Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and
hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan
had already set for me. The creature before my eyes possessed
that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell.
It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly
lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman’s soul. It was
an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light. At the
moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a
beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun
gave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon,
and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you
had come thence for my perdition. I believed it.”
Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added,
coldly,—
“I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by
little; your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the
mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened
was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt
pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once, you
began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was
still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee.
Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemed to me
that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I was
forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head
was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you
disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the
reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from
my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the
window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base.
The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas!
something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had
come upon me from which I could not flee.”
He made another pause and went on,—
“Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did
not know. I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister,
the altar, work, books,—follies! Oh, how hollow does science
sound when one in despair dashes against it a head full of
passions! Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth between
my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous
apparition which had one day crossed the space before me. But
this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre, funereal,
gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the
imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.
“Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever
in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt
even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I
desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to
see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I
had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with
reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would
efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I
sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you
twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you
always. Then—how stop myself on that slope of hell?—then I no
longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the
demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I
became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you
under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street
corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every
evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more
bewitched, more lost!
“I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy,
zingara. How could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a
trial would free me from the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno
d’Ast; he had her burned, and was cured. I knew it. I wanted to
try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in
front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no
more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of
abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There
were two of us. We already had you in our power, when that
miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin
your unhappiness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing
what to do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the
official.
“I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d’Ast. I also had a
confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that,
as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there
you could not escape from me; that you had already possessed me a
sufficiently long time to give me the right to possess you in my
turn. When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. ’Tis
madness to halt midway in the monstrous! The extreme of crime has
its deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight
upon the truss of straw in a dungeon!
“Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you
when we met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm
which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats
and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its
terrible sides which made me shrink back.
“Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought
would have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought
that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue
this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and
insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all
powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! ’tis fate which
has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the
machine which I had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the
end.
“One day,—again the sun was shining brilliantly—I behold a man
pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality
in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest.”
He ceased.
The young girl could find but one word:
“Oh, my Phœbus!”
“Not that name!” said the priest, grasping her arm violently.
“Utter not that name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, ’tis
that name which has ruined us! or, rather we have ruined each
other by the inexplicable play of fate! you are suffering, are
you not? you are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon
envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom
of your soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man
who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeon within me;
within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in my soul.
“Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I
was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of the
priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When
you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was
there.—Den of wolves!—It was my crime, it was my gallows that I
beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for every
witness, every proof, every plea; I could count each of your
steps in the painful path; I was still there when that ferocious
beast—oh! I had not foreseen torture! Listen. I followed you to
that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped and handled, half
naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your
foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and
die, that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I
should have felt such rapture,—I beheld it encased in that
horrible boot, which converts the limbs of a living being into
one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! while I looked on at that, I held
beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast.
When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a
second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that
it still bleeds.”
He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the
claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed
wound.
The prisoner recoiled with horror.
“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think
yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is.
Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with
all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the
least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s
salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the
other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God,
in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet;
to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams and one’s thoughts,
and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to
have nothing to offer her but a priest’s dirty cassock, which
will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s
jealousy and one’s rage, while she lavishes on a miserable,
blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that
body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much
sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of
another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to
think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for
whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to
behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in
torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the
leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the
fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks,
or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture
is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning
arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your
teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors which turn you incessantly, as
upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love, of jealousy, and
of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few ashes
on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration
which trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me
with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young
girl! Have pity upon me!”
The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against
the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and
listened to him.
When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low
voice,—
“Oh my Phœbus!”
The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.
“I beseech you,” he cried, “if you have any heart, do not repulse
me! Oh! I love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name,
unhappy girl, it is as though you crushed all the fibres of my
heart between your teeth. Mercy! If you come from hell I will go
thither with you. I have done everything to that end. The hell
where you are, shall be paradise; the sight of you is more
charming than that of God! Oh! speak! you will have none of me? I
should have thought the mountains would be shaken in their
foundations on the day when a woman would repulse such a love.
Oh! if you only would! Oh! how happy we might be. We would flee—I
would help you to flee,—we would go somewhere, we would seek that
spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest,
where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we
would pour our two souls into each other, and we would have a
thirst for ourselves which we would quench in common and
incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustible love.”
She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.
“Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!”
The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with
his eyes fixed upon his hand.
“Well, yes!” he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, “insult
me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us
make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the
Grève, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to
see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never
felt the power of my love for you.—Oh! follow me. You shall take
your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as
long as you will. But come. To-morrow! to-morrow! the gallows!
your execution! Oh! save yourself! spare me!”
He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag her
away.
She fixed her eye intently on him.
“What has become of my Phœbus?”
“Ah!” said the priest, releasing her arm, “you are pitiless.”
“What has become of Phœbus?” she repeated coldly.
“He is dead!” cried the priest.
“Dead!” said she, still icy and motionless “then why do you talk
to me of living?”
He was not listening to her.
“Oh! yes,” said he, as though speaking to himself, “he certainly
must be dead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his
heart with the point. Oh! my very soul was at the end of the
dagger!”
The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and
pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural
force.
“Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the
blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be
thine, priest! Never! never! Nothing shall unite us! not hell
itself! Go, accursed man! Never!”
The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled
his feet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again,
and slowly began the ascent of the steps which led to the door;
he opened the door and passed through it.
All at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear; it wore a
frightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and
despair,—
“I tell you he is dead!”
She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer
any sound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water
which made the pool palpitate amid the darkness.
CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.
I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than
the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her
child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for
Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a
shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has
so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk,
that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She
smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself
whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be
absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile
creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see
it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round
head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it
is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is
laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles
lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls
about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the
paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses,
without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes
the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and
earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays
around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun
which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets
of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her
heart melt as fire melts wax.
But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of
charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe,
become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe is no
longer anything but an instrument of torture which eternally
crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fibre
which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of
an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it.
One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark
blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents
from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of
wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Grève. She was
somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her ears in order
to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation, on her knees,
of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years.
This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already
said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more
to quit it except at death. The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland
alone knew how many bitter imprecations, touching complaints,
prayers and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that
charming bauble of rose-colored satin. Never was more despair
bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful thing.
It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently
than usual; and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud
and monotonous voice which rent the heart.
“Oh my daughter!” she said, “my daughter, my poor, dear little
child, so I shall never see thee more! It is over! It always
seems to me that it happened yesterday! My God! my God! it would
have been better not to give her to me than to take her away so
soon. Did you not know that our children are part of ourselves,
and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in
God? Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord!
to have taken her from me thus; you could never have looked at me
with her, when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she
laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my
breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you
would have taken pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me
the only love which lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so
miserable a creature, that you could not look at me before
condemning me?—Alas! Alas! here is the shoe; where is the foot?
where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter! my daughter!
what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees
have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is
not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one
minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for all
eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your garment
trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you would be
obliged to give me back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty
little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for
fifteen years? Good Virgin! good Virgin of heaven! my infant
Jesus has been taken from me, has been stolen from me; they
devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her
bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my
daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want
your angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh!
I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my
forehead, and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if
you keep my child from me! you see plainly that my arms are all
bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?—Oh! give me only salt
and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a
sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God, I am only a vile
sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion for
the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as through an
opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once, just once more, a
single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I
would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will
be grown up now!—Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I
shall never see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go
there myself. Oh! what misery to think that here is her shoe, and
that that is all!”
The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation
and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with
sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother who has lost her
child, it is always the first day. That grief never grows old.
The mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart
remains dark.
At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in
front of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or
struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest
corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said, that she sought
to plunge her head into the stone in order not to hear them. This
time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start, and
listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said,—
“They are going to hang a gypsy to-day.”
With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling
itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her
air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the Place de
Grève. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against the
permanent gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busying himself
with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain.
There were some people standing about.
The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked
nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question.
All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a
pretext of reading the public breviary, but who was much less
occupied with the “lectern of latticed iron,” than with the
gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from
time to time. She recognized monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a
holy man.
“Father,” she inquired, “whom are they about to hang yonder?”
The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her
question. Then he said,—
“I know not.”
“Some children said that it was a gypsy,” went on the recluse.
“I believe so,” said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.
“Sister,” said the archdeacon, “do you then hate the gypsies
heartily?”
“Do I hate them!” exclaimed the recluse, “they are vampires,
stealers of children! They devoured my little daughter, my child,
my only child! I have no longer any heart, they devoured it!”
She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.
“There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have cursed,”
she resumed; “it is a young one, of the age which my daughter
would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter. Every time that
that young viper passes in front of my cell, she sets my blood in
a ferment.”
“Well, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, icy as a sepulchral
statue; “that is the one whom you are about to see die.”
His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.
The recluse writhed her arms with joy.
“I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! Thanks,
priest!” she cried.
And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the
grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flashing,
with her shoulder striking against the wall, with the wild air of
a female wolf in a cage, who has long been famished, and who
feels the hour for her repast drawing near.
CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.
Phœbus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When
Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king, had
said to poor Esmeralda; “He is dying,” it was an error or a jest.
When the archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl; “He is
dead,” the fact is that he knew nothing about it, but that he
believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not doubt it,
that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to
give favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any
man would have done the same in his place.
It was not that Phœbus’s wound had not been serious, but it had
not been as much so as the archdeacon believed. The physician, to
whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him at the first
moment, had feared for his life during the space of a week, and
had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the upper
hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications
and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man
under the physician’s very nose. It was while he was still lying
on the leech’s pallet that he had submitted to the interrogations
of Philippe Lheulier and the official inquisitors, which had
annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself
better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment,
and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the
progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself
very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal
suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was
necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against la
Esmeralda. They had supposed Phœbus to be dead, and that was the
end of the matter.
Phœbus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his
company in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Isle-de-France, a
few stages from Paris.
After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this
suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous
figure in it. On the whole, he did not know what to think of the
whole affair. Superstitious, and not given to devoutness, like
every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to question
himself about this adventure, he did not feel assured as to the
goat, as to the singular fashion in which he had met La
Esmeralda, as to the no less strange manner in which she had
allowed him to divine her love, as to her character as a gypsy,
and lastly, as to the surly monk. He perceived in all these
incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress,
perhaps the devil; a comedy, in short, or to speak in the
language of that day, a very disagreeable mystery, in which he
played a very awkward part, the role of blows and derision. The
captain was quite put out of countenance about it; he experienced
that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably
defined,—
Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl.
Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised abroad,
that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any
case it would not go beyond the courts of the Tournelle. In this
he was not mistaken, there was then no _Gazette des Tribunaux;_
and as not a week passed which had not its counterfeiter to boil,
or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some one of the
innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to
seeing in all the squares the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed,
with sleeves stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the
ladders, and the pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it.
Fashionable society of that day hardly knew the name of the
victim who passed by at the corner of the street, and it was the
populace at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse
fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public
highways, like the braising-pan of the baker or the
slaughter-house of the knacker. The executioner was only a sort
of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.
Hence Phœbus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the
enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning
the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it
mattered little which to him), and as to the issue of the trial.
But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction,
Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phœbus’s heart, like the
physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.
Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village
of farriers, and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long line of
poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders the grand
road on both sides for half a league; a tail (queue), in short,
as its name imports.
Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a
charming dowry; accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and
assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohemian affair
must be completely finished and forgotten, the amorous cavalier
arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the Gondelaurier
mansion.
He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had
assembled in the Place du Parvis, before the portal of
Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was the month of May; he
supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some
festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly
ascended the stairs to his beautiful betrothed.
She was alone with her mother.
The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and
Phœbus’s long absences, still weighed on Fleur-de-Lys’s heart.
Nevertheless, when she beheld her captain enter, she thought him
so handsome, his doublet so new, his baldrick so shining, and his
air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble
damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blond
hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed entirely
in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of
coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were
swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better.
Phœbus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left
the village maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated with
Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to our officer so eager and gallant
an air, that his peace was immediately made. Madame de
Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big
arm-chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s
reproaches, they expired in tender cooings.
The young girl was seated near the window still embroidering her
grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her
chair, and she was addressing her caressing reproaches to him in
a low voice.
“What has become of you these two long months, wicked man?”
“I swear to you,” replied Phœbus, somewhat embarrassed by the
question, “that you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to
dreaming.”
She could not repress a smile.
“Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A
fine beauty, in sooth!”
“Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.
“And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to
say farewell?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to
avoid the second.
“But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to
see me a single time?”
Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed.
“Because—the service—and then, charming cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.
“Yes, wounded!”
“Wounded!”
The poor child was completely upset.
“Oh! do not be frightened at that,” said Phœbus, carelessly, “it
was nothing. A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?”
“What is that to me?” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her
beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Oh! you do not say what you
think when you speak thus. What sword cut was that? I wish to
know all.”
“Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fédy, you
know? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open
a few inches of skin for each other. That is all.”
The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of
honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In
fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with
fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely
reassured.
“Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phœbus!” said she. “I do
not know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a villanous man. And whence
arose this quarrel?”
Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre
power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a
means of extricating himself for his prowess.
“Oh! how do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair
cousin,” he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation,
“what noise is this in the Cathedral Square?”
He approached the window.
“Oh! _Mon Dieu_, fair cousin, how many people there are on the
Place!”
“I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys; “it appears that a witch is to
do penance this morning before the church, and thereafter to be
hung.”
The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda’s
affair was concluded, that he was but little disturbed by
Fleur-de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions.
“What is the name of this witch?”
“I do not know,” she replied.
“And what is she said to have done?”
She shrugged her white shoulders.
“I know not.”
“Oh, _mon Dieu Jésus!_” said her mother; “there are so many
witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing
their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in
the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his
register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window.
“Good Lord! you are right, Phœbus,” said she. “The rabble is
indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!
Do you know, Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The
entrance of King Charles VII., when, also, there were many
people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak
of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,—does it not?—the
effect of something very old, and upon me of something very
young. Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They
even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses
came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that
they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was
very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier
of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very
fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their
oriflammes waving red before the eye. There were some with
pennons and some with banners. How can I tell? the Sire de Calan
with a pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant with a banner; the Sire de
Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ’tis a sad thing to think that
all that has existed and exists no longer!”
The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager.
Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of his
betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance
plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This
gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phœbus, dazzled
by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can
any one love anything but a fair skin?”
Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to
him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring
sunshine.
“Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, “we are to
be married three months hence; swear to me that you have never
loved any other woman than myself.”
“I swear it, fair angel!” replied Phœbus, and his passionate
glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing
Fleur-de-Lys.
Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on
terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the
apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus observed it,
and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange
ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her
betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had
re-awakened, not with all its freshness but with all its ardor;
after all, there is no great harm in tasting one’s wheat while it
is still in the blade; I do not know whether these ideas passed
through his mind, but one thing is certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was
suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked
round and saw that her mother was no longer there.
“Good heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “how very warm I
am!”
“I think, in fact,” replied Phœbus, “that it cannot be far from
midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains.”
“No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, I
need air.”
And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she
rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.
Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her.
The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as
the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and
sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the timid
Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.
An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring
streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little
wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would not have
sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a thick hedge
of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this
thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial
bearings of the bishop. The large doors of the church were
closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the
Place, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of
thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in
a park of artillery.
The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The
spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort
which possess the privilege of bringing out and calling together
the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise
which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In
that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than
men.
From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the
general clamor.
“Ohé! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?”
“Fool! ’tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift!
the good God is going to cough Latin in her face! That is always
done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that you wish, go to
the Grève.”
“I will go there, afterwards.”
“Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a
confessor?”
“It appears so, La Bechaigne.”
“You see what a pagan she is!”
“’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to
deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a
layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of
the bishopric.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!”
This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon
the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with
that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle
behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling.
“Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she
would see your hand!”
At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of
Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The
last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when
all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense
shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs,
“There she is!”
Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not
see.
“Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?”
“No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes
which she had closed through fear.
A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by
cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched
upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The
sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the
crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode
several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their
black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques
Charmolue paraded at their head.
In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her
back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her
long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the
foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat
and shoulders.
Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a
raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and
knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the
charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower.
Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of
green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the
windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which
she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.
At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held
together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would
have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being
thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is
not made for such shocks.
“Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair
cousin, ’tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.”
So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on the
tumbrel. He was very pale.
“What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered.
“What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?”
Phœbus interrupted her.
“I do not know what you mean.”
He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose
jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had
just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of
penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment
having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch.
“What is the matter with you?” she said to Phœbus, “one would
say, that this woman had disturbed you.”
Phœbus forced a sneer,—
“Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!”
“Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the
end.”
The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat
reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her
eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely la
Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she
was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger,
because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was
pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same
degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of
Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate.
Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some
sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not
let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and
despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a
dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was
still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to
speak.
Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid
cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian,
we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed,
many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them.
The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.
It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves
in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst
of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of
the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges,
which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became
visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in
black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on
the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was
dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very
extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was
visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the
pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests
could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and,
at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the
church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over
the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy
psalms,—
“_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine;
salvum me fac, Deus!_”
“_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad animam
meam_.
“_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_.”
At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned
upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,—
“_Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam
æternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in
vitam._”[46]
This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from
afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life,
caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was
the mass for the dead.
The people listened devoutly.
The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness
in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as
though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to
assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word
in a low tone,—“Phœbus.”
They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat,
which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at
finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard
pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope
about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a
serpent following her.
Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and
a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The
halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later,
a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in
dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they
drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the
crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head,
immediately after the cross-bearer.