Notre-Dame de Paris
the vault and the pavement, between fall and ascent, between
zenith and nadir.
If Gringoire had lived in our day, what a fine middle course he
would hold between classicism and romanticism!
But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred
years, and ’tis a pity. His absence is a void which is but too
sensibly felt to-day.
Moreover, for the purpose of thus following passers-by (and
especially female passers-by) in the streets, which Gringoire was
fond of doing, there is no better disposition than ignorance of
where one is going to sleep.
So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl, who
hastened her pace and made her goat trot as she saw the
_bourgeois_ returning home and the taverns—the only shops which
had been open that day—closing.
“After all,” he half thought to himself, “she must lodge
somewhere; gypsies have kindly hearts. Who knows?—”
And in the points of suspense which he placed after this
reticence in his mind, there lay I know not what flattering
ideas.
Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of
_bourgeois_ closing their doors, he caught some scraps of their
conversation, which broke the thread of his pleasant hypotheses.
Now it was two old men accosting each other.
“Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibaut Fernicle?”
(Gringoire had been aware of this since the beginning of the
winter.)
“Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have a
winter such as we had three years ago, in ’80, when wood cost
eight sous the measure?”
“Bah! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, compared with the winter of
1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day until Candlemas! and so
cold that the pen of the registrar of the parliament froze every
three words, in the Grand Chamber! which interrupted the
registration of justice.”
Further on there were two female neighbors at their windows,
holding candles, which the fog caused to sputter.
“Has your husband told you about the mishap, Mademoiselle la
Boudraque?”
“No. What is it, Mademoiselle Turquant?”
“The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary at the Châtelet, took
fright at the Flemings and their procession, and overturned
Master Philippe Avrillot, lay monk of the Célestins.”
“Really?”
“Actually.”
“A _bourgeois_ horse! ’tis rather too much! If it had been a
cavalry horse, well and good!”
And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had lost the thread of
his ideas, nevertheless.
Fortunately, he speedily found it again, and he knotted it
together without difficulty, thanks to the gypsy, thanks to
Djali, who still walked in front of him; two fine, delicate, and
charming creatures, whose tiny feet, beautiful forms, and
graceful manners he was engaged in admiring, almost confusing
them in his contemplation; believing them to be both young girls,
from their intelligence and good friendship; regarding them both
as goats,—so far as the lightness, agility, and dexterity of
their walk were concerned.
But the streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every
moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare
intervals now that they encountered a passer-by in the street, or
a light in the windows. Gringoire had become involved, in his
pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of alleys,
squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient sepulchre
of the Saints-Innocents, and which resembles a ball of thread
tangled by a cat. “Here are streets which possess but little
logic!” said Gringoire, lost in the thousands of circuits which
returned upon themselves incessantly, but where the young girl
pursued a road which seemed familiar to her, without hesitation
and with a step which became ever more rapid. As for him, he
would have been utterly ignorant of his situation had he not
espied, in passing, at the turn of a street, the octagonal mass
of the pillory of the fish markets, the open-work summit of which
threw its black, fretted outlines clearly upon a window which was
still lighted in the Rue Verdelet.
The young girl’s attention had been attracted to him for the last
few moments; she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with
uneasiness; she had even once come to a standstill, and taking
advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakery
to survey him intently, from head to foot, then, having cast this
glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little pout which he had
already noticed, after which she passed on.
This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for thought.
There was certainly both disdain and mockery in that graceful
grimace. So he dropped his head, began to count the
paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a little greater
distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to
lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.
He hastened his steps.
The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, a twist of tow
soaked in oil, which burned in a cage at the feet of the Holy
Virgin at the street corner, permitted Gringoire to make out the
gypsy struggling in the arms of two men, who were endeavoring to
stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered
his horns and bleated.
“Help! gentlemen of the watch!” shouted Gringoire, and advanced
bravely. One of the men who held the young girl turned towards
him. It was the formidable visage of Quasimodo.
Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance
another step.
Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the
pavement with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly
into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across one arm like
a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran
after them all, bleating plaintively.
“Murder! murder!” shrieked the unhappy gypsy.
“Halt, rascals, and yield me that wench!” suddenly shouted in a
voice of thunder, a cavalier who appeared suddenly from a
neighboring square.
It was a captain of the king’s archers, armed from head to foot,
with his sword in his hand.
He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her
across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback,
recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey,
fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely,
made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their
fists. It was a squad of the king’s police, which was making the
rounds, by order of Messire Robert d’Estouteville, guard of the
provostship of Paris.
Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed
at the mouth, he bit; and had it been broad daylight, there is no
doubt that his face alone, rendered more hideous by wrath, would
have put the entire squad to flight. But by night he was deprived
of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.
His companion had disappeared during the struggle.
The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer’s
saddle, placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and
gazed fixedly at him for several seconds, as though enchanted
with his good looks and with the aid which he had just rendered
her. Then breaking silence first, she said to him, making her
sweet voice still sweeter than usual,—
“What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?”
“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, at your service, my beauty!”
replied the officer, drawing himself up.
“Thanks,” said she.
And while Captain Phœbus was turning up his moustache in
Burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse, like an arrow
falling to earth, and fled.
A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.
“Nombrill of the Pope!” said the captain, causing Quasimodo’s
straps to be drawn tighter, “I should have preferred to keep the
wench.”
“What would you have, captain?” said one gendarme. “The warbler
has fled, and the bat remains.”
CHAPTER V. RESULT OF THE DANGERS.
Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the
pavement in front of the Holy Virgin at the street corner. Little
by little, he regained his senses; at first, for several minutes,
he was floating in a sort of half-somnolent revery, which was not
without its charm, in which æriel figures of the gypsy and her
goat were coupled with Quasimodo’s heavy fist. This state lasted
but a short time. A decidedly vivid sensation of cold in the part
of his body which was in contact with the pavement, suddenly
aroused him and caused his spirit to return to the surface.
“Whence comes this chill?” he said abruptly, to himself. He then
perceived that he was lying half in the middle of the gutter.
“That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!” he muttered between his
teeth; and he tried to rise. But he was too much dazed and
bruised; he was forced to remain where he was. Moreover, his hand
was tolerably free; he stopped up his nose and resigned himself.
“The mud of Paris,” he said to himself—for decidedly he thought
that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the
night; and what can one do in a refuge, except dream?—“the mud of
Paris is particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of
volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the opinion of
Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists—”
The word _alchemists_ suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of
Archdeacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he
had just witnessed in part; that the gypsy was struggling with
two men, that Quasimodo had a companion; and the morose and
haughty face of the archdeacon passed confusedly through his
memory. “That would be strange!” he said to himself. And on that
fact and that basis he began to construct a fantastic edifice of
hypothesis, that card-castle of philosophers; then, suddenly
returning once more to reality, “Come! I’m freezing!” he
ejaculated.
The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable. Each
molecule of the gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating
from Gringoire’s loins, and the equilibrium between the
temperature of his body and the temperature of the brook, began
to be established in rough fashion.
Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him. A group of
children, those little bare-footed savages who have always roamed
the pavements of Paris under the eternal name of _gamins_, and
who, when we were also children ourselves, threw stones at all of
us in the afternoon, when we came out of school, because our
trousers were not torn—a swarm of these young scamps rushed
towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter
which seemed to pay but little heed to the sleep of the
neighbors. They were dragging after them some sort of hideous