falsetto voice, “sorceresses in France go to the witches’ sabbath
without broomsticks, or grease, or steed, merely by means of some
magic words. The witches of Italy always have a buck waiting for
them at their door. All are bound to go out through the chimney.”
The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot, dominated
the uproar.
“Hurrah! hurrah!” he was shouting. “My first day in armor!
Outcast! I am an outcast. Give me something to drink. My friends,
my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and I am a gentleman. My
opinion is that if God were a _gendarme_, he would turn robber.
Brothers, we are about to set out on a fine expedition. Lay siege
to the church, burst in the doors, drag out the beautiful girl,
save her from the judges, save her from the priests, dismantle
the cloister, burn the bishop in his palace—all this we will do
in less time than it takes for a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of
soup. Our cause is just, we will plunder Notre-Dame and that will
be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do you know Quasimodo,
ladies? Have you seen him make himself breathless on the big bell
on a grand Pentecost festival! _Corne du Père!_ ’tis very fine!
One would say he was a devil mounted on a man. Listen to me, my
friends; I am a vagabond to the bottom of my heart, I am a member
of the slang thief gang in my soul, I was born an independent
thief. I have been rich, and I have devoured all my property. My
mother wanted to make an officer of me; my father, a sub-deacon;
my aunt, a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary
to the king; my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe,—and I
have made myself an outcast. I said this to my father, who spit
his curse in my face; to my mother, who set to weeping and
chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the and-irons.
Long live mirth! I am a real Bicêtre. Waitress, my dear, more
wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I want no more Surène
wine. It distresses my throat. I’d as lief, _corbœuf!_ gargle my
throat with a basket.”
Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter; and
seeing that the tumult was increasing around him, the scholar
cried,—.
“Oh! what a fine noise! _Populi debacchantis populosa
debacchatio!_” Then he began to sing, his eye swimming in
ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning vespers, _Quæ cantica!
quæ organa! quæ cantilenæ! quæ melodiæ hic sine fine decantantur!
Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angelorum melodia,
cantica canticorum mira!_ He broke off: “Tavern-keeper of the
devil, give me some supper!”
There was a moment of partial silence, during which the sharp
voice of the Duke of Egypt rose, as he gave instructions to his
Bohemians.
“The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of
the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old
Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and
causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is
baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck,
a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother
its hinder parts. ’Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to
make wenches dance stark naked.”
“By the mass!” interrupted Jehan, “I should like to be the demon
Sidragasum.”
Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and whisper
at the other end of the dram-shop.
“That poor Esmeralda!” said a Bohemian. “She is our sister. She
must be taken away from there.”
“Is she still at Notre-Dame?” went on a merchant with the
appearance of a Jew.
“Yes, pardieu!”
“Well! comrades!” exclaimed the merchant, “to Notre-Dame! So much
the better, since there are in the chapel of Saints Féréol and
Ferrution two statues, the one of John the Baptist, the other of
Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing together seven marks of
gold and fifteen estellins; and the pedestals are of silver-gilt,
of seventeen marks, five ounces. I know that; I am a goldsmith.”
Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw himself back
on the bosom of the wench beside him, he exclaimed,—
“By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint Goguelu, I am
perfectly happy. I have before me a fool who gazes at me with the
smooth face of an archduke. Here is one on my left whose teeth
are so long that they hide his chin. And then, I am like the
Marshal de Gié at the siege of Pontoise, I have my right resting
on a hillock. _Ventre-Mahom!_ Comrade! you have the air of a
merchant of tennis-balls; and you come and sit yourself beside
me! I am a nobleman, my friend! Trade is incompatible with
nobility. Get out of that! Holà hé! You others, don’t fight!
What, Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have such a fine nose are
going to risk it against the big fists of that lout! Fool! _Non
cuiquam datum est habere nasum_—not every one is favored with a
nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! ’tis a
pity that you have no hair! Holà! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my
brother is an archdeacon. May the devil fly off with him! All
that I tell you is the truth. In turning vagabond, I have gladly
renounced the half of a house situated in paradise, which my
brother had promised me. _Dimidiam domum in paradiso_. I quote
the text. I have a fief in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women
are in love with me, as true as Saint Éloy was an excellent
goldsmith, and that the five trades of the good city of Paris are
the tanners, the tawers, the makers of cross-belts, the
purse-makers, and the sweaters, and that Saint Laurent was burnt
with eggshells. I swear to you, comrades.
“Que je ne beuvrai de piment,
Devant un an, si je cy ment![57]
“’Tis moonlight, my charmer; see yonder through the window how
the wind is tearing the clouds to tatters! Even thus will I do to
your gorget.—Wenches, wipe the children’s noses and snuff the
candles.—Christ and Mahom! What am I eating here, Jupiter? Ohé!
innkeeper! the hair which is not on the heads of your hussies one
finds in your omelettes. Old woman! I like bald omelettes. May
the devil confound you!—A fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where the
hussies comb their heads with the forks!
“Et je n’ai moi,
Par la sang-Dieu!
Ni foi, ni loi,
Ni feu, ni lieu,
Ni roi,
Ni Dieu.”[58]
In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the distribution
of arms. He approached Gringoire, who appeared to be plunged in a
profound revery, with his feet on an andiron.
“Friend Pierre,” said the King of Thunes, “what the devil are you
thinking about?”
Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile.
“I love the fire, my dear lord. Not for the trivial reason that
fire warms the feet or cooks our soup, but because it has sparks.
Sometimes I pass whole hours in watching the sparks. I discover a
thousand things in those stars which are sprinkled over the black
background of the hearth. Those stars are also worlds.”
“Thunder, if I understand you!” said the outcast. “Do you know
what o’clock it is?”
“I do not know,” replied Gringoire.
Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt.
“Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good one. King
Louis XI. is said to be in Paris.”
“Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws,” replied
the old Bohemian.
“You speak like a man, Mathias,” said the King of Thunes.
“Moreover, we will act promptly. No resistance is to be feared in
the church. The canons are hares, and we are in force. The people
of the parliament will be well balked to-morrow when they come to
seek her! Guts of the pope I don’t want them to hang the pretty
girl!”
Clopin quitted the dram-shop.
Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice:
“I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre, the
Slaughterer, if you look at me like that again, I’ll fillip the
dust off your nose for you.”
Gringoire, torn from his meditations, began to watch the wild and
noisy scene which surrounded him, muttering between his teeth:
“_Luxuriosa res vinum et tumultuosa ebrietas_. Alas! what good
reason I have not to drink, and how excellently spoke
Saint-Benoît: ‘_Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!_’”
At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of
thunder: “Midnight!”
At this word, which produced the effect of the call to boot and
saddle on a regiment at a halt, all the outcasts, men, women,
children, rushed in a mass from the tavern, with great noise of
arms and old iron implements.
The moon was obscured.
The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a single
light. One could make out there a throng of men and women
conversing in low tones. They could be heard buzzing, and a gleam
of all sorts of weapons was visible in the darkness. Clopin
mounted a large stone.
“To your ranks, Argot!”[59] he cried. “Fall into line, Egypt!
Form ranks, Galilee!”
A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude appeared
to form in a column. After a few minutes, the King of Thunes
raised his voice once more,—
“Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is, ‘Little
sword in pocket!’ The torches will not be lighted till we reach
Notre-Dame! Forward, march!”
Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror
before a long procession of black and silent men which was
descending towards the Pont au Change, through the tortuous
streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the markets
in every direction.
CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.
That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made his last
round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when
he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him
and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring
with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large
leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude’s air was even more
preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure
in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did
he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed
the submission, patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful
bellringer. He endured everything on the part of the archdeacon,
insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the
most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended
the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained from
presenting himself again before the gypsy’s eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance
at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie,
and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and
there setting his dark lanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he
began to gaze at Paris. The night, as we have already said, was
very dark. Paris which, so to speak was not lighted at that
epoch, presented to the eye a confused collection of black
masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve of the Seine.
Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of one
window in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was
outlined well above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte
Sainte-Antoine. There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of
mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness.
For several days he had been upon his guard. He had perceived men
of sinister mien, who never took their eyes from the young girl’s
asylum, prowling constantly about the church. He fancied that
some plot might be in process of formation against the unhappy
refugee. He imagined that there existed a popular hatred against
her, as against himself, and that it was very possible that
something might happen soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on
the watch, “dreaming in his dream-place,” as Rabelais says, with
his eye directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping
faithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in
his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that
eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing
that it could almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo
lacked, it seemed to him that there was something singular about
the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there was a movement at
that point, that the line of the parapet, standing out blackly
against the whiteness of the water was not straight and tranquil,
like that of the other quays, but that it undulated to the eye,
like the waves of a river, or like the heads of a crowd in
motion.
This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention. The
movement seemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no
light. It lasted for some time on the quay; then it gradually
ceased, as though that which was passing were entering the
interior of the island; then it stopped altogether, and the line
of the quay became straight and motionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed
to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis,
which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the façade of
Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the
head of a column debouch from that street, and in an instant a
crowd—of which nothing could be distinguished in the gloom except
that it was a crowd—spread over the Place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that this
singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing
itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence no less
profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped it, were it
only a trampling. But this noise did not even reach our deaf man,
and this great multitude, of which he saw hardly anything, and of
which he heard nothing, though it was marching and moving so near
him, produced upon him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute,
impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld
advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows
moving in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against
the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. He was
conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was
approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel with
himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would have
expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awaken the
gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested,
the church backed on the river. No boat, no issue!—There was but
one thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the
threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived,
if it should arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda’s sleep.
This resolution once taken, he set to examining the enemy with
more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square.
Only, he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since
the windows on the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame
flashed up, and in an instant seven or eight lighted torches
passed over the heads of the crowd, shaking their tufts of flame
in the deep shade. Quasimodo then beheld distinctly surging in
the Parvis a frightful herd of men and women in rags, armed with
scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose thousand points
glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed horns to the
hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought
that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of
the Fools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one
hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to
be haranguing them. At the same time the strange army executed
several evolutions, as though it were taking up its post around
the church. Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the
platform between the towers, in order to get a nearer view, and
to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of
Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle.
Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent
general, to preserve an order which would permit him to face, at
need, a sudden attack of the watch or the police. He had
accordingly stationed his brigade in such a manner that, viewed
from above and from a distance, one would have pronounced it the
Roman triangle of the battle of Ecnomus, the boar’s head of
Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of
this triangle rested on the back of the Place in such a manner as
to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced
Hôtel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. Clopin
Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of
Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking
against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the
Middle Ages. What we now call the “police” did not exist then. In
populous cities, especially in capitals, there existed no single,
central, regulating power. Feudalism had constructed these great
communities in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a
thousand seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all
shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of
police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,
independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid claim
to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to a manor
and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who had
five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who
had four. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain
authority of the king only in name. All possessed the right of
control over the roads. All were at home. Louis XI., that
indefatigable worker, who so largely began the demolition of the
feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the
profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the benefit of
the people,—Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break this
network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violently
across them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in
1465, an order to the inhabitants to light candles in their
windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of
death; in the same year, an order to close the streets in the
evening with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or
weapons of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short
time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into
abeyance. The _bourgeois_ permitted the wind to blow out their
candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains
were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear
daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue
Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge[60] which is an
evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions
remained standing; an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and
seignories crossing each other all over the city, interfering
with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing each other,
trespassing on each other; a useless thicket of watches,
sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with armed force,
passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in this disorder,
deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against a
palace, a hôtel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters,
were not unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases,
the neighbors did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging
extended to themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket
shots, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the
matter to be concluded with or without the watch, and the next
day it was said in Paris, “Étienne Barbette was broken open last
night. The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc.”
Hence, not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace,
the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,
the Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’Angoulême,
etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over
their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, among
the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés was castellated like a baronial mansion,
and more brass expended about it in bombards than in bells. Its
fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day, barely its church
remains.
Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to
the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin’s orders were
executed in silence, and with admirable precision, the worthy
chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the church square,
and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning towards
Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, tossed by the
wind, and veiled every moment by its own smoke, made the reddish
façade of the church appear and disappear before the eye.
“To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in the
Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand
Coësre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister,
falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in your church,
you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court of Parliament wishes
to seize her once more there, and you consent to it; so that she
would be hanged to-morrow in the Grève, if God and the outcasts
were not here. If your church is sacred, so is our sister; if our
sister is not sacred, neither is your church. That is why we call
upon you to return the girl if you wish to save your church, or
we will take possession of the girl again and pillage the church,
which will be a good thing. In token of which I here plant my
banner, and may God preserve you, bishop of Paris.”
Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with
a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his
banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two
paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a
bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over
his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally
with their pikes. After a momentary pause,—“Forward, my Sons!” he
cried; “to work, locksmiths!”
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces,
stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron
on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the principal door
of the church, ascended the steps, and were soon to be seen
squatting under the arch, working at the door with pincers and
levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them to help or look on.
The eleven steps before the portal were covered with them.
But the door stood firm. “The devil! ’tis hard and obstinate!”
said one. “It is old, and its gristles have become bony,” said
another. “Courage, comrades!” resumed Clopin. “I wager my head
against a dipper that you will have opened the door, rescued the
girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single beadle is
awake. Stay! I think I hear the lock breaking up.”
Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-sounded
behind him at that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had
just fallen from above; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the
pavement with the sound of a cannon, breaking in addition, legs
here and there in the crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with
cries of terror. In a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the
church parvis were cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by
the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin
himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.
“I had a narrow escape!” cried Jehan. “I felt the wind, of it,
_tête-de-bœuf!_ but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!”
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright
which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air,
more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king’s twenty
thousand archers.
“Satan!” muttered the Duke of Egypt, “this smacks of magic!”
“’Tis the moon which threw this log at us,” said Andry the Red.
“Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!” went on
François Chanteprune.
“A thousand popes!” exclaimed Clopin, “you are all fools!” But he
did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.
Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to whose
summit the light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay
in the middle of the enclosure, and groans were heard from the
poor wretches who had received its first shock, and who had been
almost cut in twain, on the angle of the stone steps.
The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an
explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.
“Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack,
then! to the sack!”
“To the sack!” repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A
discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the
church followed.
At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding
houses woke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and
hands holding candles appeared at the casements.
“Fire at the windows,” shouted Clopin. The windows were
immediately closed, and the poor _bourgeois_, who had hardly had
time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of gleams and
tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their wives, asking
themselves whether the witches’ sabbath was now being held in the
parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there was an assault of
Burgundians, as in ’64. Then the husbands thought of theft; the
wives, of rape; and all trembled.
“To the sack!” repeated the thieves’ crew; but they dared not
approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the church. The
beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm and deserted
air; but something chilled the outcasts.
“To work, locksmiths!” shouted Trouillefou. “Let the door be
forced!”
No one took a step.
“Beard and belly!” said Clopin, “here be men afraid of a beam.”
An old locksmith addressed him—
“Captain, ’tis not the beam which bothers us, ’tis the door,
which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless
against it.”
“What more do you want to break it in?” demanded Clopin.
“Ah! we ought to have a battering ram.”
The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed
his foot upon it: “Here is one!” he exclaimed; “’tis the canons
who send it to you.” And, making a mocking salute in the
direction of the church, “Thanks, canons!”
This piece of bravado produced its effects,—the spell of the beam
was broken. The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy
joist, raised like a feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was
flung with fury against the great door which they had tried to
batter down. At the sight of that long beam, in the half-light
which the infrequent torches of the brigands spread over the
Place, thus borne by that crowd of men who dashed it at a run
against the church, one would have thought that he beheld a
monstrous beast with a thousand feet attacking with lowered head
the giant of stone.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an
immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral
trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice were heard to
echo.
At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from
the top of the façade on the assailants.
“The devil!” cried Jehan, “are the towers shaking their
balustrades down on our heads?”
But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the
example. Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they
only battered the door with the more rage, in spite of the stones
which cracked skulls right and left.
It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but they
followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two at a
time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There were few
which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of dead and
wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet of the
assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other without
intermission. The long beam continued to belabor the door, at
regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the stones to rain
down, the door to groan.
The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance
which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his
ideas were all in confusion. He had run up and down along the
gallery for several minutes like a madman, surveying from above,
the compact mass of vagabonds ready to hurl itself on the church,
demanding the safety of the gypsy from the devil or from God. The
thought had occurred to him of ascending to the southern belfry
and sounding the alarm, but before he could have set the bell in
motion, before Marie’s voice could have uttered a single clamor,
was there not time to burst in the door of the church ten times
over? It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were
advancing upon it with their tools. What was to be done?
All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at work all
day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof of the
south tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was of stone,
the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That prodigious
timber-work, so dense that it was called “the forest.”)
Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers were, in
fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough blocks of
stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy beams
already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.
Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work below. With
a strength which the sense of danger increased tenfold, he seized
one of the beams—the longest and heaviest; he pushed it out
through a loophole, then, grasping it again outside of the tower,
he made it slide along the angle of the balustrade which
surrounds the platform, and let it fly into the abyss. The
enormous timber, during that fall of a hundred and sixty feet,
scraping the wall, breaking the carvings, turned many times on
its centre, like the arm of a windmill flying off alone through
space. At last it reached the ground, the horrible cry arose, and
the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement, resembled a
serpent leaping.
Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam,
like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage of their
fright, and while they were fixing a superstitious glance on the
club which had fallen from heaven, and while they were putting
out the eyes of the stone saints on the front with a discharge of
arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster,
stones, and rough blocks of stone, even the sacks of tools
belonging to the masons, on the edge of the balustrade from which
the beam had already been hurled.
Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower
of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them
that the church itself was being demolished over their heads.
Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have
been frightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had
piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on
the platform itself. As fast as the blocks on the exterior edge
were exhausted, he drew on the heap. Then he stooped and rose,
stooped and rose again with incredible activity. His huge gnome’s
head bent over the balustrade, then an enormous stone fell, then
another, then another. From time to time, he followed a fine
stone with his eye, and when it did good execution, he said,
“Hum!”
Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door
on which they were venting their fury had already trembled more
than twenty times beneath the weight of their oaken
battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a hundred men. The
panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters, the hinges,
at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks yawned, the
wood crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing.
Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.
Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although
he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated
simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it. From
above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and rage,
shaking their fists at the gloomy façade; and both on the gypsy’s
account and his own he envied the wings of the owls which flitted
away above his head in flocks.
His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the
assailants.
At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than
the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone
gutters which discharged immediately over the great door; the
internal orifice of these gutters terminated on the pavement of
the platform. An idea occurred to him; he ran in search of a
fagot in his bellringer’s den, placed on this fagot a great many
bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, munitions which he had
not employed so far, and having arranged this pile in front of
the hole to the two gutters, he set it on fire with his lantern.
During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts
ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of
hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously
round the great door, all disfigured by the battering ram, but
still standing. They were waiting with a quiver for the great
blow which should split it open. They vied with each other in
pressing as close as possible, in order to dash among the first,
when it should open, into that opulent cathedral, a vast
reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up.
They reminded each other with roars of exultation and greedy
lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade,
the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of
the choir, the dazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling
with torches, the Easters sparkling with sunshine,—all those
splendid solemneties wherein chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles,
and reliquaries, studded the altars with a crust of gold and
diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment, thieves and pseudo
sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, were thinking much
less of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We
could even easily believe that for a goodly number among them la
Esmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.
All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves
round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and
stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all his force to
the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than that which
had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose among them.
Those who did not cry out, those who were still alive, looked.
Two streams of melted lead were falling from the summit of the
edifice into the thickest of the rabble. That sea of men had just
sunk down beneath the boiling metal, which had made, at the two
points where it fell, two black and smoking holes in the crowd,
such as hot water would make in snow. Dying men, half consumed
and groaning with anguish, could be seen writhing there. Around
these two principal streams there were drops of that horrible
rain, which scattered over the assailants and entered their
skulls like gimlets of fire. It was a heavy fire which
overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand hailstones.
The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling the
beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most timid, and
the parvis was cleared a second time.
All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They beheld there
an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the highest gallery,
higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame
rising between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast,
disordered, and furious flame, a tongue of which was borne into
the smoke by the wind, from time to time. Below that fire, below
the gloomy balustrade with its trefoils showing darkly against
its glare, two spouts with monster throats were vomiting forth
unceasingly that burning rain, whose silvery stream stood out
against the shadows of the lower façade. As they approached the
earth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like
water springing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above
the flame, the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were
visible in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly
red, seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow
which they cast even to the sky.
Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a
lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move
to the eye. There were griffins which had the air of laughing,
gargoyles which one fancied one heard yelping, salamanders which
puffed at the fire, tarasques[61] which sneezed in the smoke. And
among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was
seen, from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the
pile, like a bat in front of a candle.
Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away,
the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, terrified to behold the
gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame quivering over his
heaths.
A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which
nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut up
in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning
stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily opened and still
more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses and
of the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle
of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead
upon the pavement.
In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the
porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of
war.
The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated the
phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet
in the air, with religious terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his
huge fists with rage.
“Impossible to get in!” he muttered between his teeth.
“An old, enchanted church!” grumbled the aged Bohemian, Mathias
Hungadi Spicali.
“By the Pope’s whiskers!” went on a sham soldier, who had once
been in service, “here are church gutters spitting melted lead at
you better than the machicolations of Lectoure.”
“Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of the
fire?” exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.
“Pardieu, ’tis that damned bellringer, ’tis Quasimodo,” said
Clopin.
The Bohemian tossed his head. “I tell you, that ’tis the spirit
Sabnac, the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications. He has
the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion. Sometimes he
rides a hideous horse. He changes men into stones, of which he
builds towers. He commands fifty legions ’Tis he indeed; I
recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a handsome golden robe,
figured after the Turkish fashion.”
“Where is Bellevigne de l’Étoile?” demanded Clopin.
“He is dead.”
Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: “Notre-Dame is making
work for the hospital,” said he.
“Is there, then, no way of forcing this door,” exclaimed the King
of Thunes, stamping his foot.
The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling
lead which did not cease to streak the black façade, like two
long distaffs of phosphorus.
“Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all by
themselves,” he remarked with a sigh. “Saint-Sophia at
Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three times
in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her domes, which
are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this one was a
magician.”
“Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?” said
Clopin. “Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves
will hang to-morrow.”
“And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!” added a
vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.
“Beard of Mahom!” cried Trouillefou.
“Let us make another trial,” resumed the vagabond.
Mathias Hungadi shook his head.
“We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in
the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint
or other.”
“Who will go with me?” said Clopin. “I shall go at it again. By
the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in
iron?”
“He is dead, no doubt,” some one replied; “we no longer hear his
laugh.”
The King of Thunes frowned: “So much the worse. There was a brave
heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, “he slipped away before we
reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs.”
Clopin stamped his foot. “_Gueule-Dieu!_ ’twas he who pushed us
on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle of the job!
Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du
Parvis, “yonder is the little scholar.”
“Praised be Pluto!” said Clopin. “But what the devil is he
dragging after him?”
It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy
outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the
pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed to
a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.
“Victory! _Te Deum!_” cried the scholar. “Here is the ladder of
the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry.”
Clopin approached him.
“Child, what do you mean to do, _corne-dieu!_ with this ladder?”
“I have it,” replied Jehan, panting. “I knew where it was under
the shed of the lieutenant’s house. There’s a wench there whom I
know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to
get the ladder, and I have the ladder, _Pasque-Mahom!_ The poor
girl came to open the door to me in her shift.”
“Yes,” said Clopin, “but what are you going to do with that
ladder?”
Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked
his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his
head he wore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth
century, which frightened the enemy with their fanciful crests.
His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan could have
disputed with Nestor’s Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of
δεκέμβολος.
“What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see
that row of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder,
above the three portals?”
“Yes. Well?”
“’Tis the gallery of the kings of France.”
“What is that to me?” said Clopin.
“Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is never
fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this ladder I
ascend, and I am in the church.”
“Child let me be the first to ascend.”
“No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the second.”
“May Beelzebub strangle you!” said surly Clopin, “I won’t be
second to anybody.”
“Then find a ladder, Clopin!”
Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder and
shouting: “Follow me, lads!”
In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against the
balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the lateral doors.
The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations, crowded to
its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his right, and was the
first to set foot on the rungs. The passage was tolerably long.
The gallery of the kings of France is to-day about sixty feet
above the pavement. The eleven steps of the flight before the
door, made it still higher. Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal
incommoded by his heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand,
and clinging to a rung with the other. When he reached the middle
of the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead
outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. “Alas!” said he,
“here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!”
Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds followed him. There
was one on every rung. At the sight of this line of cuirassed
backs, undulating as they rose through the gloom, one would have
pronounced it a serpent with steel scales, which was raising
itself erect in front of the church. Jehan who formed the head,
and who was whistling, completed the illusion.
The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and
climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond
tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and
suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of Quasimodo
concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind one of the
statues of the kings.
Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery,
the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder,
without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with
his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall,
balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from
top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish,
then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men
backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the most
resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect
and standing for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then
wavered, then suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle
eighty feet in radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of
ruffians, more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break.
There arose an immense imprecation, then all was still, and a few
mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the heap of dead.
A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of triumph
among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both elbows
propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had the air of an old,
bushy-headed king at his window.
As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He found
himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer, alone,
separated from his companions by a vertical wall eighty feet
high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the ladder, the scholar
had run to the postern which he believed to be open. It was not.
The deaf man had closed it behind him when he entered the
gallery. Jehan had then concealed himself behind a stone king,
not daring to breathe, and fixing upon the monstrous hunchback a
frightened gaze, like the man, who, when courting the wife of the
guardian of a menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous,
mistook the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found
himself face to face with a white bear.
For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to him; but
at last he turned his head, and suddenly straightened up. He had
just caught sight of the scholar.
Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf man
remained motionless; only he had turned towards the scholar and
was looking at him.
“Ho ho!” said Jehan, “what do you mean by staring at me with that
solitary and melancholy eye?”
As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his
crossbow.
“Quasimodo!” he cried, “I am going to change your surname: you
shall be called the blind man.”
The shot sped. The feathered vireton[62] whizzed and entered the
hunchback’s left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more moved by it than
by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his hand on the arrow,
tore it from his arm, and tranquilly broke it across his big
knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor, rather than
threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity to fire a second
time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing heavily, bounded like
a grasshopper, and he fell upon the scholar, whose armor was
flattened against the wall by the blow.
Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a
terrible thing was seen.
Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of Jehan,
who did not offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he feel that
he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf man detached one by
one, in silence, with sinister slowness, all the pieces of his
armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the cuirass, the leg
pieces. One would have said that it was a monkey taking the shell
from a nut. Quasimodo flung the scholar’s iron shell at his feet,
piece by piece. When the scholar beheld himself disarmed,
stripped, weak, and naked in those terrible hands, he made no
attempt to speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously
in his face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a
child of sixteen, the then popular ditty:—
“Elle est bien habillée,
La ville de Cambrai;
Marafin l’a pillée....”[63]
He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of the
gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand and
whirling him over the abyss like a sling; then a sound like that
of a bony structure in contact with a wall was heard, and
something was seen to fall which halted a third of the way down
in its fall, on a projection in the architecture. It was a dead
body which remained hanging there, bent double, its loins broken,
its skull empty.
A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.
“Vengeance!” shouted Clopin. “To the sack!” replied the
multitude. “Assault! assault!”
There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled all tongues,
all dialects, all accents. The death of the poor scholar imparted
a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized with shame, and the
wrath of having been held so long in check before a church by a
hunchback. Rage found ladders, multiplied the torches, and, at
the expiration of a few minutes, Quasimodo, in despair, beheld
that terrible ant heap mount on all sides to the assault of
Notre-Dame. Those who had no ladders had knotted ropes; those who
had no ropes climbed by the projections of the carvings. They
hung from each other’s rags. There were no means of resisting
that rising tide of frightful faces; rage made these fierce
countenances ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat;
their eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these
horrors laid siege to Quasimodo. One would have said that some
other church had despatched to the assault of Notre-Dame its
gorgons, its dogs, its drées, its demons, its most fantastic
sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the stone
monsters of the façade.
Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. This
scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was suddenly
flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and cast a
radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on the lofty platform
was still burning, and illuminated the city far away. The
enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on the
roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this light.
The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in the
distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed; and
Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering for the
gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching ever nearer and
nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven for a miracle, and wrung
his arms in despair.
CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS
PRAYERS.
The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment before
catching sight of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, Quasimodo, as
he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell tower, perceived
only one light burning, which gleamed like a star from a window
on the topmost story of a lofty edifice beside the Porte
Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille. That star was the
candle of Louis XI. King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in
Paris. He was to take his departure on the next day but one for
his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but seldom and brief
appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not feel
about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.
He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great
chamber five toises[64] square, which he had at the Louvre, with
its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and
thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by
twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid all
this grandeur. This good _bourgeois_ king preferred the Bastille
with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was
stronger than the Louvre.
This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the
famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the
topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep. It was
circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining straw, ceiled
with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal with
interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods sown with
rosettes of white metal, and with others painted a fine, bright
green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.
There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with
brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored
panes with the arms of the king and of the queen, each pane being
worth two and twenty sols.
There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a flat arch,
garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the
outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices of
cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which were still to be
seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they
disfigure and embarrass the places,” says Sauvel in despair, “our
old people are still unwilling to get rid of them, and keep them
in spite of everybody.”
In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes
ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms,
nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools
sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece.
Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen; the
wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of ruby
Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, and
studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of this
chair made it apparent that only one person had a right to sit
down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite close to the
window, there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of
birds. On this table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some
parchments, several pens, and a large goblet of chased silver. A
little further on was a brazier, a praying stool in crimson
velvet, relieved with small bosses of gold. Finally, at the
extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and yellow
damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary
fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the
sleeplessness of Louis XI., was still to be seen two hundred
years ago, at the house of a councillor of state, where it was
seen by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name
_Arricidie_ and of _la Morale Vivante_.
Such was the chamber which was called “the retreat where Monsieur
Louis de France says his prayers.”
At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this
retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour
before; night was come, and there was only one flickering wax
candle set on the table to light five persons variously grouped
in the chamber.
The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in
breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose
coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures. This
splendid costume, on which the light played, seemed glazed with
flame on every fold. The man who wore it had his armorial
bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid colors; a chevron
accompanied by a deer passant. The shield was flanked, on the
right by an olive branch, on the left by a deer’s antlers. This
man wore in his girdle a rich dagger whose hilt, of silver gilt,
was chased in the form of a helmet, and surmounted by a count’s
coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien, and a head held
high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at
the second, craft.
He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand,
behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully
doubled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a very
badly accoutred personage. Let the reader imagine in fact, on the
rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked knees, two thin thighs,
poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a body enveloped in a cloak
of fustian, with fur trimming of which more leather than hair was
visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort
of black cloth, bordered with a circular string of leaden
figures. This, in company with a dirty skull-cap, which hardly
allowed a hair to escape, was all that distinguished the seated
personage. He held his head so bent upon his breast, that nothing
was to be seen of his face thus thrown into shadow, except the
tip of his nose, upon which fell a ray of light, and which must
have been long. From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one
divined that he was an old man. It was Louis XI. At some distance
behind them, two men dressed in garments of Flemish style were
conversing, who were not sufficiently lost in the shadow to
prevent any one who had been present at the performance of
Gringoire’s mystery from recognizing in them two of the principal
Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the sagacious pensioner of Ghent,
and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. The reader will
remember that these men were mixed up in the secret politics of
Louis XI. Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door,
in the dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with
thickset limbs, a military harness, with a surcoat of armorial
bearings, whose square face pierced with staring eyes, slit with
an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large screens of flat
hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.
All were uncovered except the king.
The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a sort of
long memorial to which his majesty seemed to be listening
attentively. The two Flemings were whispering together.
“Cross of God!” grumbled Coppenole, “I am tired of standing; is
there no chair here?”
Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet
smile.
“Croix-Dieu!” resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at being
obliged to lower his voice thus, “I should like to sit down on
the floor, with my legs crossed, like a hosier, as I do in my
shop.”
“Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques.”
“Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?”
“Or on his knees,” said Rym.
At that moment the king’s voice was uplifted. They held their
peace.
“Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for
the mantles of the clerks of our crown! That’s it! Pour out gold
by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?”
As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden shells
of the collar of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on his
neck. The candle fully illuminated his gaunt and morose profile.
He tore the papers from the other’s hand.
“You are ruining us!” he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the
scroll. “What is all this? What need have we of so prodigious a
household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month each, and, a
chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-chambre at ninety
livres a year. Four head cooks at six score livres a year each! A
spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a butler, two
sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month each! Two scullions
at eight livres! A groom of the stables and his two aids at four
and twenty livres a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two
carters, each sixty livres a year! And the farrier six score
livres! And the master of the chamber of our funds, twelve
hundred livres! And the comptroller five hundred. And how do I
know what else? ’Tis ruinous. The wages of our servants are
putting France to the pillage! All the ingots of the Louvre will
melt before such a fire of expenses! We shall have to sell our
plate! And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his
hat) lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!”
So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which gleamed
upon the table. He coughed and continued,—
“Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, like
kings and emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in their
houses; for the fire spreads thence through the province. Hence,
Master Olivier, consider this said once for all. Our expenditure
increases every year. The thing displease us. How, _pasque-Dieu!_
when in ’79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres, did
it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen
livres? I have the figures in my head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand
six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, by the faith of my
body, it will reach eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four
years! Monstrous!”
He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,—
“I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you
suck crowns from me at every pore.”
All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath which
are allowed to take their course. He continued,—
“’Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of France,
that we should re-establish what they call the grand charges of
the Crown! Charges in very deed! Charges which crush! Ah!
gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to reign _dapifero
nullo, buticulario nullo!_ We will let you see, _pasque-Dieu!_
whether we are not a king!”
Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this softened
his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,—
“Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the keys, the
grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the grand seneschal are not
worth the smallest valet. Remember this, Gossip Coppenole. They
serve no purpose, as they stand thus useless round the king; they
produce upon me the effect of the four Evangelists who surround
the face of the big clock of the palace, and which Philippe
Brille has just set in order afresh. They are gilt, but they do
not indicate the hour; and the hands can get on without them.”
He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking his aged
head,—
“Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I shall not
gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier.”
The person whom he designated by this name, took the papers into
his hands again, and began to read aloud,—
“To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the
provostship of Paris; for the silver, making, and engraving of
said seals, which have been made new because the others
preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn condition,
could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis.
“To Guillaume Frère, the sum of four livres, four sols parisis,
for his trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed the
doves in the two dove-cots of the Hôtel des Tournelles, during
the months of January, February, and March of this year; and for
this he hath given seven sextiers of barley.
“To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols parisis.”
The king listened in silence. From time to time he coughed; then
he raised the goblet to his lips and drank a draught with a
grimace.
“During this year there have been made by the ordinance of
justice, to the sound of the trumpet, through the squares of
Paris, fifty-six proclamations. Account to be regulated.
“For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in Paris as
well as elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed; but
nothing hath been found: forty-five livres parisis.”
“Bury a crown to unearth a sou!” said the king.
“For having set in the Hôtel des Tournelles six panes of white
glass in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen sols; for
having made and delivered by command of the king, on the day of
the musters, four shields with the escutcheons of the said
seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses all about, six livres;
for two new sleeves to the king’s old doublet, twenty sols; for a
box of grease to grease the boots of the king, fifteen deniers; a
stable newly made to lodge the king’s black pigs, thirty livres
parisis; many partitions, planks, and trap-doors, for the
safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul, twenty-two livres.”
“These be dear beasts,” said Louis XI. “It matters not; it is a
fine magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion whom I
love for his pleasant ways. Have you seen him, Master Guillaume?
Princes must have these terrific animals; for we kings must have
lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats. The great befits a
crown. In the days of the pagans of Jupiter, when the people
offered the temples a hundred oxen and a hundred sheep, the
emperors gave a hundred lions and a hundred eagles. This was wild
and very fine. The kings of France have always had roarings round
their throne. Nevertheless, people must do me this justice, that
I spend still less money on it than they did, and that I possess
a greater modesty of lions, bears, elephants, and leopards.—Go
on, Master Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish
friends.”
Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly mien,
had the air of one of the bears of which his majesty was
speaking. The king paid no heed. He had just dipped his lips into
the goblet, and he spat out the beverage, saying: “Foh! what a
disagreeable potion!” The man who was reading continued:—
“For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months in
the little cell of the flayer, until it should be determined what
to do with him, six livres, four sols.”
“What’s that?” interrupted the king; “feed what ought to be
hanged! _Pasque-Dieu!_ I will give not a sou more for that
nourishment. Olivier, come to an understanding about the matter
with Monsieur d’Estouteville, and prepare me this very evening
the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. Resume.”
Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of the
“rascally foot soldier,” and passed on.
“To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of justice
in Paris, the sum of sixty sols parisis, to him assessed and
ordained by monseigneur the provost of Paris, for having bought,
by order of the said sieur the provost, a great broad sword,
serving to execute and decapitate persons who are by justice
condemned for their demerits, and he hath caused the same to be
garnished with a sheath and with all things thereto appertaining;
and hath likewise caused to be repointed and set in order the old
sword, which had become broken and notched in executing justice
on Messire Louis de Luxembourg, as will more fully appear....”
The king interrupted: “That suffices. I allow the sum with great
good will. Those are expenses which I do not begrudge. I have
never regretted that money. Continue.”
“For having made over a great cage....”
“Ah!” said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in both
hands, “I knew well that I came hither to this Bastille for some
purpose. Hold, Master Olivier; I desire to see that cage myself.
You shall read me the cost while I am examining it. Messieurs
Flemings, come and see this; ’tis curious.”
Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a sign
to the sort of mute who stood before the door to precede him, to
the two Flemings to follow him, and quitted the room.
The royal company was recruited, at the door of the retreat, by
men of arms, all loaded down with iron, and by slender pages
bearing flambeaux. It marched for some time through the interior
of the gloomy donjon, pierced with staircases and corridors even
in the very thickness of the walls. The captain of the Bastille
marched at their head, and caused the wickets to be opened before
the bent and aged king, who coughed as he walked.
At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that of
the old man bent double with age. “Hum,” said he between his
gums, for he had no longer any teeth, “we are already quite
prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a low door, a bent
passer.”
At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded with
locks that a quarter of an hour was required to open it, they
entered a vast and lofty vaulted hall, in the centre of which
they could distinguish by the light of the torches, a huge cubic
mass of masonry, iron, and wood. The interior was hollow. It was
one of those famous cages of prisoners of state, which were
called “the little daughters of the king.” In its walls there
were two or three little windows so closely trellised with stout
iron bars; that the glass was not visible. The door was a large
flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the sort of door which serves
for entrance only. Only here, the occupant was alive.
The king began to walk slowly round the little edifice, examining
it carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed him, read aloud
the note.
“For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams, timbers and
wall-plates, measuring nine feet in length by eight in breadth,
and of the height of seven feet between the partitions, smoothed
and clamped with great bolts of iron, which has been placed in a
chamber situated in one of the towers of the Bastille
Saint-Antoine, in which cage is placed and detained, by command
of the king our lord, a prisoner who formerly inhabited an old,
decrepit, and ruined cage. There have been employed in making the
said new cage, ninety-six horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright
joists, ten wall plates three toises long; there have been
occupied nineteen carpenters to hew, work, and fit all the said
wood in the courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days.”
“Very fine heart of oak,” said the king, striking the woodwork
with his fist.
“There have been used in this cage,” continued the other, “two
hundred and twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet, and of
eight, the rest of medium length, with the rowels, caps and
counterbands appertaining to the said bolts; weighing, the said
iron in all, three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-five
pounds; beside eight great squares of iron, serving to attach the
said cage in place with clamps and nails weighing in all two
hundred and eighteen pounds, not reckoning the iron of the
trellises for the windows of the chamber wherein the cage hath
been placed, the bars of iron for the door of the cage and other
things.”
“’Tis a great deal of iron,” said the king, “to contain the light
of a spirit.”
“The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five
sols, seven deniers.”
“_Pasque-Dieu!_” exclaimed the king.
At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one
seemed to awaken in the interior of the cage; the sound of chains
was heard, grating on the floor, and a feeble voice, which seemed
to issue from the tomb was uplifted. “Sire! sire! mercy!” The one
who spoke thus could not be seen.
“Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers,”
repeated Louis XI. The lamentable voice which had proceeded from
the cage had frozen all present, even Master Olivier himself. The
king alone wore the air of not having heard. At his order, Master
Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly continued his
inspection of the cage.
“In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who hath
made the holes wherein to place the gratings of the windows, and
the floor of the chamber where the cage is, because that floor
could not support this cage by reason of its weight, twenty-seven
livres fourteen sols parisis.”
The voice began to moan again.
“Mercy, sire! I swear to you that ’twas Monsieur the Cardinal
d’Angers and not I, who was guilty of treason.”
“The mason is bold!” said the king. “Continue, Olivier.”
Olivier continued,—
“To a joiner for window frames, bedstead, hollow stool, and other
things, twenty livres, two sols parisis.”
The voice also continued.
“Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you that
’twas not I who wrote the matter to Monseigneur de Guyenne, but
Monsieur le Cardinal Balue.”
“The joiner is dear,” quoth the king. “Is that all?”
“No, sire. To a glazier, for the windows of the said chamber,
forty-six sols, eight deniers parisis.”
“Have mercy, sire! Is it not enough to have given all my goods to
my judges, my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my library to Master
Pierre Doriolle, my tapestry to the governor of the Roussillon? I
am innocent. I have been shivering in an iron cage for fourteen
years. Have mercy, sire! You will find your reward in heaven.”
“Master Olivier,” said the king, “the total?”
“Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers
parisis.
“Notre-Dame!” cried the king. “This is an outrageous cage!”
He tore the book from Master Olivier’s hands, and set to
reckoning it himself upon his fingers, examining the paper and
the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the prisoner could be heard
sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and their faces
turned pale as they looked at each other.
“Fourteen years, sire! Fourteen years now! since the month of
April, 1469. In the name of the Holy Mother of God, sire, listen
to me! During all this time you have enjoyed the heat of the sun.
Shall I, frail creature, never more behold the day? Mercy, sire!
Be pitiful! Clemency is a fine, royal virtue, which turns aside
the currents of wrath. Does your majesty believe that in the hour
of death it will be a great cause of content for a king never to
have left any offence unpunished? Besides, sire, I did not betray
your majesty, ’twas Monsieur d’Angers; and I have on my foot a
very heavy chain, and a great ball of iron at the end, much
heavier than it should be in reason. Eh! sire! Have pity on me!”
“Olivier,” cried the king, throwing back his head, “I observe
that they charge me twenty sols a hogshead for plaster, while it
is worth but twelve. You will refer back this account.”
He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the room.
The miserable prisoner divined from the removal of the torches
and the noise, that the king was taking his departure.
“Sire! sire!” he cried in despair.
The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and heard only
the hoarse voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears this ditty,—
“Maître Jean Balue,
A perdu la vue
De ses évêchés.
Monsieur de Verdun.
N’en a plus pas un;
Tous sont dépêchés.”[65]
The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite
followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned man.
All at once his majesty turned to the Governor of the Bastille,—
“By the way,” said he, “was there not some one in that cage?”
“Pardieu, yes sire!” replied the governor, astounded by the
question.
“And who was it?”
“Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun.”
The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a mania
of his.
“Ah!” said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for the
first time, “Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Monsieur the
Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop!”
At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat had
opened again, then closed upon the five personages whom the
reader has seen at the beginning of this chapter, and who resumed
their places, their whispered conversations, and their attitudes.
During the king’s absence, several despatches had been placed on
his table, and he broke the seals himself. Then he began to read
them promptly, one after the other, made a sign to Master Olivier
who appeared to exercise the office of minister, to take a pen,
and without communicating to him the contents of the despatches,
he began to dictate in a low voice, the replies which the latter
wrote, on his knees, in an inconvenient attitude before the
table.
Guillaume Rym was on the watch.
The king spoke so low that the Flemings heard nothing of his
dictation, except some isolated and rather unintelligible scraps,
such as,—
“To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the sterile by
manufactures....—To show the English lords our four bombards,
London, Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-Omer....—Artillery is the
cause of war being made more judiciously now....—To Monsieur de
Bressuire, our friend....—Armies cannot be maintained without
tribute, etc.”
Once he raised his voice,—
“_Pasque Dieu!_ Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his letters
with yellow wax, like a king of France. Perhaps we are in the
wrong to permit him so to do. My fair cousin of Burgundy granted
no armorial bearings with a field of gules. The grandeur of
houses is assured by the integrity of prerogatives. Note this,
friend Olivier.”
Again,—
“Oh! oh!” said he, “What a long message! What doth our brother
the emperor claim?” And running his eye over the missive and
breaking his reading with interjection: “Surely! the Germans are
so great and powerful, that it is hardly credible—But let us not
forget the old proverb: ‘The finest county is Flanders; the
finest duchy, Milan; the finest kingdom, France.’ Is it not so,
Messieurs Flemings?”
This time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume Rym. The
hosier’s patriotism was tickled.
The last despatch made Louis XI. frown.
“What is this?” he said, “Complaints and fault finding against
our garrisons in Picardy! Olivier, write with diligence to M. the
Marshal de Rouault:—That discipline is relaxed. That the
gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal nobles, the free
archers, and the Swiss inflict infinite evils on the
rustics.—That the military, not content with what they find in
the houses of the rustics, constrain them with violent blows of
cudgel or of lash to go and get wine, spices, and other
unreasonable things in the town.—That monsieur the king knows
this. That we undertake to guard our people against
inconveniences, larcenies and pillage.—That such is our will, by
our Lady!—That in addition, it suits us not that any fiddler,
barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad like a prince, in
velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold.—That these vanities are
hateful to God.—That we, who are gentlemen, content ourselves
with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the ell, of Paris.—That
messieurs the camp-followers can very well come down to that,
also.—Command and ordain.—To Monsieur de Rouault, our
friend.—Good.”
He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. At
the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave passage
to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the chamber,
crying in affright,—
“Sire! sire! there is a sedition of the populace in Paris!” Louis
XI.’s grave face contracted; but all that was visible of his
emotion passed away like a flash of lightning. He controlled
himself and said with tranquil severity,—
“Gossip Jacques, you enter very abruptly!”
“Sire! sire! there is a revolt!” repeated Gossip Jacques
breathlessly.
The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm, and said
in his ear, in such a manner as to be heard by him alone, with
concentrated rage and a sidelong glance at the Flemings,—
“Hold your tongue! or speak low!”
The new comer understood, and began in a low tone to give a very
terrified account, to which the king listened calmly, while
Guillaume Rym called Coppenole’s attention to the face and dress
of the new arrival, to his furred cowl, (_caputia fourrata_), his
short cape, (_epitogia curta_), his robe of black velvet, which
bespoke a president of the court of accounts.
Hardly had this personage given the king some explanations, when
Louis XI. exclaimed, bursting into a laugh,—
“In truth? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier! What call is there for
you to talk so low? Our Lady knoweth that we conceal nothing from
our good friends the Flemings.”
“But sire...”
“Speak loud!”
Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise.
“So,” resumed the king,—“speak sir,—there is a commotion among
the louts in our good city of Paris?”
“Yes, sire.”
“And which is moving you say, against monsieur the bailiff of the
Palais-de-Justice?”
“So it appears,” said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly
astounded by the abrupt and inexplicable change which had just
taken place in the king’s thoughts.
Louis XI. continued: “Where did the watch meet the rabble?”
“Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the
Pont-aux-Changeurs. I met it myself as I was on my way hither to
obey your majesty’s commands. I heard some of them shouting:
‘Down with the bailiff of the palace!’”
“And what complaints have they against the bailiff?”
“Ah!” said Gossip Jacques, “because he is their lord.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles. They have
been complaining this long while, of the bailiff, whose vassals
they are. They do not wish to recognize him either as judge or as
voyer?”[66]
“Yes, certainly!” retorted the king with a smile of satisfaction
which he strove in vain to disguise.
“In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have but
two masters. Your majesty and their God, who is the devil, I
believe.”
“Eh! eh!” said the king.
He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth which
makes the countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate his joy,
although he endeavored at moments to compose himself. No one
understood it in the least, not even Master Olivier. He remained
silent for a moment, with a thoughtful but contented air.
“Are they in force?” he suddenly inquired.
“Yes, assuredly, sire,” replied Gossip Jacques.
“How many?”
“Six thousand at the least.”
The king could not refrain from saying: “Good!” he went on,—
“Are they armed?”
“With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very
violent weapons.”
The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list.
Jacques considered it his duty to add,—
“If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, he
is lost.”
“We will send,” said the king with an air of false seriousness.
“It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff is our
friend. Six thousand! They are desperate scamps! Their audacity
is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it. But we have only
a few people about us to-night. To-morrow morning will be time
enough.”
Gossip Jacques exclaimed, “Instantly, sire! there will be time to
sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the seignory, to
hang the bailiff. For God’s sake, sire! send before to-morrow
morning.”
The king looked him full in the face. “I have told you to-morrow
morning.”
It was one of those looks to which one does not reply. After a
silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more,—
“You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was—”
He corrected himself. “What is the bailiff’s feudal
jurisdiction?”
“Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far as
the Rue de l’Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the localities
vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the church of
Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised the brim of his
hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the Cour des Miracles,
plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, plus the whole highway
which begins at that Maladerie and ends at the Porte
Sainte-Jacques. Of these divers places he is voyer, high, middle,
and low, justiciary, full seigneur.”
“Bless me!” said the king, scratching his left ear with his right
hand, “that makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur the
bailiff was king of all that.”
This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily, and
as though speaking to himself,—
“Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between your
teeth a pretty slice of our Paris.”
All at once he broke out explosively, “_Pasque-Dieu!_ What people
are those who claim to be voyers, justiciaries, lords and masters
in our domains? who have their tollgates at the end of every
field? their gallows and their hangman at every cross-road among
our people? So that as the Greek believed that he had as many
gods as there were fountains, and the Persian as many as he
beheld stars, the Frenchman counts as many kings as he sees
gibbets! Pardieu! ’tis an evil thing, and the confusion of it
displeases me. I should greatly like to know whether it be the
mercy of God that there should be in Paris any other lord than
the king, any other judge than our parliament, any other emperor
than ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day
must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one
king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise
but one God!”
He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with the
air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of hounds:
“Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your
duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack
them!... Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs? On, my people
on!”
Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though to
take back his thought which had already half escaped, bent his
piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons who surrounded
him, and suddenly grasping his hat with both hands and staring
full at it, he said to it: “Oh! I would burn you if you knew what
there was in my head.”
Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy glance
of the fox re-entering his hole,—
“No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff. Unfortunately,
we have but few troops here at the present moment, against so
great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow. The order will be
transmitted to the City and every one who is caught will be
immediately hung.”
“By the way, sire,” said Gossip Coictier, “I had forgotten that
in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards of the
band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they are here.”
“If I desire to see them!” cried the king. “What! _Pasque-Dieu!_
You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier! Go, seek
them!”
Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment later with
the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first
had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was
clothed in rags, and walked with one knee bent and dragging his
leg. The second had a pallid and smiling countenance, with which
the reader is already acquainted.
The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then
addressing the first one abruptly,—
“What’s your name?”
“Gieffroy Pincebourde.”
“Your trade.”
“Outcast.”
“What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?”
The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid
air.
He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is
about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.
“I know not,” said he. “They went, I went.”
“Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord,
the bailiff of the palace?”
“I know that they were going to take something from some one.
That is all.”
A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized
on the person of the vagabond.
“Do you recognize this weapon?” demanded the king.
“Yes; ’tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser.”
“And do you recognize this man as your companion?” added Louis
XI., pointing to the other prisoner.
“No, I do not know him.”
“That will do,” said the king, making a sign with his finger to
the silent personage who stood motionless beside the door, to
whom we have already called the reader’s attention.
“Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice to two
archers, who led away the poor vagabond.
In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner, who
was perspiring in great drops: “Your name?”
“Sire, Pierre Gringoire.”
“Your trade?”
“Philosopher, sire.”
“How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our friend,
monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you to say
concerning this popular agitation?”
“Sire, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended by the
watch in that bad company?”
“No, sire, there is a mistake. ’Tis a fatality. I make tragedies.
Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I am a poet. ’Tis
the melancholy way of men of my profession to roam the streets by
night. I was passing there. It was mere chance. I was unjustly
arrested; I am innocent of this civil tempest. Your majesty sees
that the vagabond did not recognize me. I conjure your majesty—”
“Hold your tongue!” said the king, between two swallows of his
ptisan. “You split our head!”
Tristan l’Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire,—
“Sire, can this one be hanged also?”
This was the first word that he had uttered.
“Phew!” replied the king, “I see no objection.”
“I see a great many!” said Gringoire.
At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive. He
perceived from the king’s cold and indifferent mien that there
was no other resource than something very pathetic, and he flung
himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming, with gestures of
despair:—
“Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break not in
thunder over so small a thing as myself. God’s great lightning
doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an august and, very
puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man who is honest, and who
would find it more difficult to stir up a revolt than a cake of
ice would to give out a spark! Very gracious sire, kindness is
the virtue of a lion and a king. Alas! rigor only frightens
minds; the impetuous gusts of the north wind do not make the
traveller lay aside his cloak; the sun, bestowing his rays little
by little, warms him in such ways that it will make him strip to
his shirt. Sire, you are the sun. I protest to you, my sovereign
lord and master, that I am not an outcast, thief, and disorderly
fellow. Revolt and brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo.
I am not the man to fling myself into those clouds which break
out into seditious clamor. I am your majesty’s faithful vassal.
That same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of
his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of his
father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king; he
should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the
aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which should
transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my maxims of
state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and thieving rascal
because my garment is worn at the elbows. If you will grant me
mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees in praying to God
for you night and morning! Alas! I am not extremely rich, ’tis
true. I am even rather poor. But not vicious on that account. It
is not my fault. Every one knoweth that great wealth is not to be
drawn from literature, and that those who are best posted in good
books do not always have a great fire in winter. The advocate’s
trade taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other
scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs
anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire!
clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of so
great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other
virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after God in
the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as clemency,
causeth the love of subjects, which is the most powerful
bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your majesty, who
dazzles all faces, if there is one poor man more on earth, a poor
innocent philosopher spluttering amid the shadows of calamity,
with an empty pocket which resounds against his hollow belly?
Moreover, sire, I am a man of letters. Great kings make a pearl
for their crowns by protecting letters. Hercules did not disdain
the title of Musagetes. Mathias Corvin favored Jean de Monroyal,
the ornament of mathematics. Now, ’tis an ill way to protect
letters to hang men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he
had hung Aristoteles! This act would not be a little patch on the
face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant
ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium
for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august
Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees
that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied
excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have
mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed
to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at
the idea of being hanged!”
So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, and
Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: “He doth well to
drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the Jupiter of Crete,
they have ears only in their feet.” And without troubling himself
about the Jupiter of Crete, the hosier replied with a heavy
smile, and his eyes fixed on Gringoire: “Oh! that’s it exactly! I
seem to hear Chancellor Hugonet craving mercy of me.”
When Gringoire paused at last, quite out of breath, he raised his
head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged in scratching
a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger-nail; then his
majesty began to drink from the goblet of ptisan. But he uttered
not a word, and this silence tortured Gringoire. At last the king
looked at him. “Here is a terrible bawler!” said, he. Then,
turning to Tristan l’Hermite, “Bah! let him go!”
Gringoire fell backwards, quite thunderstruck with joy.
“At liberty!” growled Tristan “Doth not your majesty wish to have
him detained a little while in a cage?”
“Gossip,” retorted Louis XI., “think you that ’tis for birds of
this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hundred and
sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece? Release him
at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this word which
formed, with _Pasque-Dieu_, the foundation of his joviality), and
put him out with a buffet.”
“Ugh!” cried Gringoire, “what a great king is here!”
And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door,
which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grace. The soldiers
left the room with him, pushing him before them with stout
thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical philosopher.
The king’s good humor since the revolt against the bailiff had
been announced to him, made itself apparent in every way. This
unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tristan l’Hermite in
his corner wore the surly look of a dog who has had a bone
snatched away from him.
Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the arm of
his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dissembling
prince, but one who understood far better how to hide his
troubles than his joys. These external manifestations of joy at
any good news sometimes proceeded to very great lengths thus, on
the death, of Charles the Bold, to the point of vowing silver
balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours; on his advent to the
throne, so far as forgetting to order his father’s obsequies.
“Hé! sire!” suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, “what has become
of the acute attack of illness for which your majesty had me
summoned?”
“Oh!” said the king, “I really suffer greatly, my gossip. There
is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest.”
Coictier took the king’s hand, and begun to feel of his pulse
with a knowing air.
“Look, Coppenole,” said Rym, in a low voice. “Behold him between
Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court. A physician for
himself, a headsman for others.”
As he felt the king’s pulse, Coictier assumed an air of greater
and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some anxiety.
Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man had no other
farm than the king’s bad health. He speculated on it to the best
of his ability.
“Oh! oh!” he murmured at length, “this is serious indeed.”
“Is it not?” said the king, uneasily.
“_Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis_,” continued
the leech.
“_Pasque-Dieu!_”
“This may carry off its man in less than three days.”
“Our Lady!” exclaimed the king. “And the remedy, gossip?”
“I am meditating upon that, sire.”
He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head, made a
grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations,—
“Pardieu, sire,” he suddenly said, “I must tell you that there is
a receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and that I have
a nephew.”
“I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques,” replied
the king; “but draw this fire from my breast.”
“Since your majesty is so clement,” replied the leech, “you will
not refuse to aid me a little in building my house, Rue
Saint-André-des-Arcs.”
“Heugh!” said the king.
“I am at the end of my finances,” pursued the doctor; “and it
would really be a pity that the house should not have a roof; not
on account of the house, which is simple and thoroughly
_bourgeois_, but because of the paintings of Jehan Fourbault,
which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying in the air,
but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so ingenuous an
action, her hair so well coiffed and adorned with a crescent, her
flesh so white, that she leads into temptation those who regard
her too curiously. There is also a Ceres. She is another very
fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves of wheat and crowned with
a gallant garland of wheat ears interlaced with salsify and other
flowers. Never were seen more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a
nobler air, or a more gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the
most innocent and most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever
produced.”
“Executioner!” grumbled Louis XI., “what are you driving at?”
“I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although ’tis
but a small matter, I have no more money.”
“How much doth your roof cost?”
“Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand livres
at the most.”
“Ah, assassin!” cried the king, “He never draws out one of my
teeth which is not a diamond.”
“Am I to have my roof?” said Coictier.
“Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me.”
Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,—
“Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to
your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole,
white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and
we will answer for your majesty.”
A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master Olivier,
perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the
moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.
“Sire—”
“What is it now?” said Louis XI. “Sire, your majesty knoweth that
Simon Radin is dead?”
“Well?”
“He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts of the
treasury.”
“Well?”
“Sire, his place is vacant.”
As he spoke thus, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its
arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change which
ever takes place in a courtier’s visage. The king looked him well
in the face and said in a dry tone,—“I understand.”
He resumed,—
“Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say,
‘There’s no master save the king, there are no fishes save in the
sea.’ I see that you agree with Monsieur de Boucicaut. Now listen
to this; we have a good memory. In ’68 we made you valet of our
chamber: in ’69, guardian of the fortress of the bridge of
Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of Tournay in wages (you wanted
them of Paris). In November, ’73, by letters given to Gergeole,
we instituted you keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place
of Gilbert Acle, equerry; in ’75, gruyer[67] of the forest of
Rouvray-lez-Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in
’78, we graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed
doubly with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you
and your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the
School Saint-Germain; in ’79, we made you gruyer of the forest of
Senart, in place of that poor Jehan Daiz; then captain of the
Château of Loches; then governor of Saint-Quentin; then captain
of the bridge of Meulan, of which you cause yourself to be called
comte. Out of the five sols fine paid by every barber who shaves
on a festival day, there are three sols for you and we have the
rest. We have been good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais
(The Evil), which resembled your face too closely. In ’76, we
granted you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial
bearings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of a
peacock. _Pasque-Dieu!_ Are not you surfeited? Is not the draught
of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you not afraid
that one salmon more will make your boat sink? Pride will be your
ruin, gossip. Ruin and disgrace always press hard on the heels of
pride. Consider this and hold your tongue.”
These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier’s face
revert to its insolence.
“Good!” he muttered, almost aloud, “’tis easy to see that the
king is ill to-day; he giveth all to the leech.”
Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult,
resumed with some gentleness, “Stay, I was forgetting that I made
you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen,”
added the king turning to the Flemings, “this man hath been an
ambassador. There, my gossip,” he pursued, addressing Master
Olivier, “let us not get angry; we are old friends. ’Tis very
late. We have terminated our labors. Shave me.”
Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the present
moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible Figaro whom
Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled so artistically in
the long and bloody comedy of the reign of Louis XI. We will not
here undertake to develop that singular figure. This barber of
the king had three names. At court he was politely called Olivier
le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real
name was Olivier le Mauvais.
Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking at
the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.
“Yes, yes, the physician!” he said between his teeth.
“Ah, yes, the physician!” retorted Louis XI., with singular good
humor; “the physician has more credit than you. ’Tis very simple;
he has taken hold upon us by the whole body, and you hold us only
by the chin. Come, my poor barber, all will come right. What
would you say and what would become of your office if I were a
king like Chilperic, whose gesture consisted in holding his beard
in one hand? Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go
get what you need therefor.”
Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to laugh,
and that there was no way of even annoying him, went off
grumbling to execute his orders.
The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it
with extraordinary agitation,—
“Oh! yes!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands, “yonder is a redness
in the sky over the City. ’Tis the bailiff burning. It can be
nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here you are aiding me
at last in tearing down the rights of lordship!”
Then turning towards the Flemings: “Come, look at this,
gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?”
The two men of Ghent drew near.
“A great fire,” said Guillaume Rym.
“Oh!” exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, “that
reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur
d’Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder.”
“You think so, Master Coppenole?” And Louis XI.’s glance was
almost as joyous as that of the hosier. “Will it not be difficult
to resist?”
“Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of
men of war thereon.”
“Ah! I! ’tis different,” returned the king. “If I willed.”
The hosier replied hardily,—
“If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain.”
“Gossip,” said Louis XI., “with the two companies of my
unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work
is made of a populace of louts.”
The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym,
appeared determined to hold his own against the king.
“Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy
was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble
rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried: ‘Men of the
cannon! Fire on the villains!’ and he swore by Saint-George. But
Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome duke with his
battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian
army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew
in pieces like a pane of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many
lords were then slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de
Château-Guyon, the greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead,
with his gray horse, in a little marsh meadow.”
“Friend,” returned the king, “you are speaking of a battle. The
question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper hand of
it as soon as it shall please me to frown.”
The other replied indifferently,—
“That may be, sire; in that case, ’tis because the people’s hour
hath not yet come.”
Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,—
“Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.”
“I know it,” replied the hosier, gravely.
“Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend,” said the king; “I love
this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was
accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead,
and that she had found no confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth
me.”
Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole’s shoulder,—
“You were saying, Master Jacques?”
“I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the
hour of the people may not yet have come with you.”
Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,—
“And when will that hour come, master?”
“You will hear it strike.”
“On what clock, if you please?”
Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the
king approach the window.
“Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons,
_bourgeois_, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the
cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins amid
great noise, when _bourgeois_ and soldiers shall howl and slay
each other, the hour will strike.”
Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a
moment, then he gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the
donjon, as one strokes the haunches of a steed.
“Oh! no!” said he. “You will not crumble so easily, will you, my
good Bastille?”
And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,—
“Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I have made them,” said the hosier.
“How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a
hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the
city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the
inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They
always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. Well! One
morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me:
‘Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the
Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save her ministers, the grand
bailiff is doubling the impost on shagreen, or something
else,’—what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I come out of
my hosier’s stall, and I shout: ‘To the sack?’ There is always
some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the
first words that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when
one is of the people, sire, one always has something on the
heart. Then people troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm
bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the soldiers,
the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always
be thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories,
_bourgeois_ in the bourgs, and peasants in the country.”
“And against whom do you thus rebel?” inquired the king; “against
your bailiffs? against your lords?”
“Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes.”
Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,—
“Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs.”
At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two
pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles; but what struck Louis
XI. was that he was also accompanied by the provost of Paris and
the chevalier of the watch, who appeared to be in consternation.
The spiteful barber also wore an air of consternation, which was
one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who spoke first.
“Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news which
I bring.”
The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the
feet of his chair,—
“What does this mean?”
“Sire,” resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man
who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, “’tis not
against the bailiff of the courts that this popular sedition is
directed.”
“Against whom, then?”
“Against you, sire?’
The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,—
“Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for
I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if you lie to us at
this hour, the sword which severed the head of Monsieur de
Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot yet sever yours!”
The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the
course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.
Olivier opened his mouth to reply.
“Sire—”
“On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tristan, have
an eye to this man.”
Olivier knelt down and said coldly,—
“Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of
parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying
to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the provost and
monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have just come from the
riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the truth. The
populace is besieging Notre-Dame.”
“Yes, indeed!” said the king in a low voice, all pale and
trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my
good mistress in her cathedral!—Rise, Olivier. You are right. I
give you Simon Radin’s charge. You are right. ’Tis I whom they
are attacking. The witch is under the protection of this church,
the church is under my protection. And I thought that they were
acting against the bailiff! ’Tis against myself!”
Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with
long strides. He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and
came; the fox was changed into a hyæna. He seemed suffocated to
such a degree that he could not speak; his lips moved, and his
fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised his head,
his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth
like a clarion: “Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these
rascals! Go, Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!”
This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said
with cold and concentrated wrath,—
“Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty
lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse:
you will take them. There is also the company of our unattached
archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers: you will take it. You are
provost of the marshals; you have the men of your provostship:
you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty
archers of monsieur the dauphin’s new guard: you will take them.
And, with all these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah!
messieurs, louts of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against
the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of
this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not
a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.”
Tristan bowed. “’Tis well, sire.”
He added, after a silence, “And what shall I do with the
sorceress?”
This question caused the king to meditate.
“Ah!” said he, “the sorceress! Monsieur d’Estouteville, what did
the people wish to do with her?”
“Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I imagine that since the
populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-Dame, ’tis
because that impunity wounds them, and they desire to hang her.”
The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan
l’Hermite, “Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the
sorceress.”
“That’s it,” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, “punish the
people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish.”
“Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. “If the sorceress is still in
Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?”
“_Pasque-Dieu!_ the sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his
ear. “But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.”
Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on
his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the
seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which
loaded it down, “Oh!” said he, with clasped hands, “our Lady of
Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it this
once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the
virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not
worthy of your amiable protection. You know, madame, that many
very pious princes have overstepped the privileges of the
churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the State.
Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a
witch in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master,
transgressed, with the same object, the church of Monsieur
Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem,
the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this
once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will
give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last
year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.”
He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more,
and said to Tristan,—
“Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with you. You
will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace.
You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. And I mean the business of
the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of
it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this night. Shave me.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing
Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,—
“God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take
a little repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the
morning than the evening.”
Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of
the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,—
“Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen
Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis
XI. when ailing.”
“Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “’tis because wine renders kings
less cruel than does barley water.”
CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.
On emerging from the Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue
Saint-Antoine with the swiftness of a runaway horse. On arriving
at the Baudoyer gate, he walked straight to the stone cross which
rose in the middle of that place, as though he were able to
distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and cloaked
in black, who was seated on the steps of the cross.
“Is it you, master?” said Gringoire.
The personage in black rose.