Notre-Dame de Paris
radiant. It was like the arrival of a Saviour, which the unhappy
man was greeting. But as soon as the mule was near enough to the
pillory to allow of its rider recognizing the victim, the priest
dropped his eyes, beat a hasty retreat, spurred on rigorously, as
though in haste to rid himself of humiliating appeals, and not at
all desirous of being saluted and recognized by a poor fellow in
such a predicament.
This priest was Archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo.
The cloud descended more blackly than ever upon Quasimodo’s brow.
The smile was still mingled with it for a time, but was bitter,
discouraged, profoundly sad.
Time passed on. He had been there at least an hour and a half,
lacerated, maltreated, mocked incessantly, and almost stoned.
All at once he moved again in his chains with redoubled despair,
which made the whole framework that bore him tremble, and,
breaking the silence which he had obstinately preserved hitherto,
he cried in a hoarse and furious voice, which resembled a bark
rather than a human cry, and which was drowned in the noise of
the hoots—“Drink!”
This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only
added amusement to the good Parisian populace who surrounded the
ladder, and who, it must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a
multitude, was then no less cruel and brutal than that horrible
tribe of robbers among whom we have already conducted the reader,
and which was simply the lower stratum of the populace. Not a
voice was raised around the unhappy victim, except to jeer at his
thirst. It is certain that at that moment he was more grotesque
and repulsive than pitiable, with his face purple and dripping,
his eye wild, his mouth foaming with rage and pain, and his
tongue lolling half out. It must also be stated that if a
charitable soul of a _bourgeois_ or _bourgeoise_, in the rabble,
had attempted to carry a glass of water to that wretched creature
in torment, there reigned around the infamous steps of the
pillory such a prejudice of shame and ignominy, that it would
have sufficed to repulse the good Samaritan.
At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a desperate
glance upon the crowd, and repeated in a voice still more
heartrending: “Drink!”
And all began to laugh.
“Drink this!” cried Robin Poussepain, throwing in his face a
sponge which had been soaked in the gutter. “There, you deaf
villain, I’m your debtor.”
A woman hurled a stone at his head,—
“That will teach you to wake us up at night with your peal of a
dammed soul.”
“He, good, my son!” howled a cripple, making an effort to reach
him with his crutch, “will you cast any more spells on us from
the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?”
“Here’s a drinking cup!” chimed in a man, flinging a broken jug
at his breast. “’Twas you that made my wife, simply because she
passed near you, give birth to a child with two heads!”
“And my cat bring forth a kitten with six paws!” yelped an old
crone, launching a brick at him.
“Drink!” repeated Quasimodo panting, and for the third time.
At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young girl,
fantastically dressed, emerged from the throng. She was
accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and carried
a tambourine in her hand.
Quasimodo’s eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had attempted
to carry off on the preceding night, a misdeed for which he was
dimly conscious that he was being punished at that very moment;
which was not in the least the case, since he was being chastised
only for the misfortune of being deaf, and of having been judged
by a deaf man. He doubted not that she had come to wreak her
vengeance also, and to deal her blow like the rest.
He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite
suffocate him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble
into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt
death, the gypsy would have been reduced to powder before she
reached the platform.
She approached, without uttering a syllable, the victim who
writhed in a vain effort to escape her, and detaching a gourd
from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the
miserable man.
Then, from that eye which had been, up to that moment, so dry and
burning, a big tear was seen to fall, and roll slowly down that
deformed visage so long contracted with despair. It was the
first, in all probability, that the unfortunate man had ever
shed.
Meanwhile, he had forgotten to drink. The gypsy made her little
pout, from impatience, and pressed the spout to the tusked month
of Quasimodo, with a smile.
He drank with deep draughts. His thirst was burning.
When he had finished, the wretch protruded his black lips, no
doubt, with the object of kissing the beautiful hand which had
just succoured him. But the young girl, who was, perhaps,
somewhat distrustful, and who remembered the violent attempt of
the night, withdrew her hand with the frightened gesture of a
child who is afraid of being bitten by a beast.
Then the poor deaf man fixed on her a look full of reproach and
inexpressible sadness.
It would have been a touching spectacle anywhere,—this beautiful,
fresh, pure, and charming girl, who was at the same time so weak,
thus hastening to the relief of so much misery, deformity, and
malevolence. On the pillory, the spectacle was sublime.
The very populace were captivated by it, and began to clap their
hands, crying,—
“Noël! Noël!”
It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight, from the
window of her bole, of the gypsy on the pillory, and hurled at
her her sinister imprecation,—
“Accursed be thou, daughter of Egypt! Accursed! accursed!”
CHAPTER V. END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.
La Esmeralda turned pale and descended from the pillory,
staggering as she went. The voice of the recluse still pursued
her,—
“Descend! descend! Thief of Egypt! thou shalt ascend it once
more!”
“The sacked nun is in one of her tantrums,” muttered the
populace; and that was the end of it. For that sort of woman was
feared; which rendered them sacred. People did not then willingly
attack one who prayed day and night.
The hour had arrived for removing Quasimodo. He was unbound, the
crowd dispersed.
Near the Grand Pont, Mahiette, who was returning with her two
companions, suddenly halted,—
“By the way, Eustache! what did you do with that cake?”
“Mother,” said the child, “while you were talking with that lady
in the bole, a big dog took a bite of my cake, and then I bit it
also.”
“What, sir, did you eat the whole of it?” she went on.
“Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not listen to
me. Then I bit into it, also.”
“’Tis a terrible child!” said the mother, smiling and scolding at
one and the same time. “Do you see, Oudarde? He already eats all
the fruit from the cherry-tree in our orchard of Charlerange. So
his grandfather says that he will be a captain. Just let me catch
you at it again, Master Eustache. Come along, you greedy fellow!”
VOLUME II.
BOOK SEVENTH.
CHAPTER I. THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’S SECRET TO A GOAT.
Many weeks had elapsed.
The first of March had arrived. The sun, which Dubartas, that
classic ancestor of periphrase, had not yet dubbed the
“Grand-duke of Candles,” was none the less radiant and joyous on
that account. It was one of those spring days which possesses so
much sweetness and beauty, that all Paris turns out into the
squares and promenades and celebrates them as though they were
Sundays. In those days of brilliancy, warmth, and serenity, there
is a certain hour above all others, when the façade of Notre-Dame
should be admired. It is the moment when the sun, already
declining towards the west, looks the cathedral almost full in
the face. Its rays, growing more and more horizontal, withdraw
slowly from the pavement of the square, and mount up the
perpendicular façade, whose thousand bosses in high relief they
cause to start out from the shadows, while the great central rose
window flames like the eye of a cyclops, inflamed with the
reflections of the forge.
This was the hour.
Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, on the
stone balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic house, which
formed the angle of the square and the Rue du Parvis, several
young girls were laughing and chatting with every sort of grace
and mirth. From the length of the veil which fell from their
pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their heels, from the
fineness of the embroidered chemisette which covered their
shoulders and allowed a glimpse, according to the pleasing custom
of the time, of the swell of their fair virgin bosoms, from the
opulence of their under-petticoats still more precious than their
overdress (marvellous refinement), from the gauze, the silk, the
velvet, with which all this was composed, and, above all, from
the whiteness of their hands, which certified to their leisure
and idleness, it was easy to divine they were noble and wealthy
heiresses. They were, in fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de
Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de
Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little de
Champchevrier maiden; all damsels of good birth, assembled at
that moment at the house of the dame widow de Gondelaurier, on
account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and Madame his wife, who were
to come to Paris in the month of April, there to choose maids of
honor for the Dauphiness Marguerite, who was to be received in
Picardy from the hands of the Flemings. Now, all the squires for
twenty leagues around were intriguing for this favor for their
daughters, and a goodly number of the latter had been already
brought or sent to Paris. These four maidens had been confided to
the discreet and venerable charge of Madame Aloïse de
Gondelaurier, widow of a former commander of the king’s
cross-bowmen, who had retired with her only daughter to her house
in the Place du Parvis, Notre-Dame, in Paris.
The balcony on which these young girls stood opened from a
chamber richly tapestried in fawn-colored Flanders leather,
stamped with golden foliage. The beams, which cut the ceiling in
parallel lines, diverted the eye with a thousand eccentric
painted and gilded carvings. Splendid enamels gleamed here and
there on carved chests; a boar’s head in faïence crowned a
magnificent dresser, whose two shelves announced that the
mistress of the house was the wife or widow of a knight banneret.
At the end of the room, by the side of a lofty chimney blazoned
with arms from top to bottom, in a rich red velvet arm-chair, sat
Dame de Gondelaurier, whose five and fifty years were written