Notre-Dame de Paris
The torture of the wheel and axle! ’Tis the most effectual! He
shall taste it!”
Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to
Charmolue,—
“Master Pierrat—Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc
Cenaine.”
“Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like
Mummol. What an idea to go to the witches’ sabbath! a butler of
the Court of Accounts, who ought to know Charlemagne’s text;
_Stryga vel masca!_—In the matter of the little girl,—Smelarda,
as they call her,—I will await your orders. Ah! as we pass
through the portal, you will explain to me also the meaning of
the gardener painted in relief, which one sees as one enters the
church. Is it not the Sower? Hé! master, of what are you
thinking, pray?”
Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to
him. Charmolue, following the direction of his glance, perceived
that it was fixed mechanically on the great spider’s web which
draped the window. At that moment, a bewildered fly which was
seeking the March sun, flung itself through the net and became
entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous spider
made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound,
rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore
antennæ, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head.
“Poor fly!” said the king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical
court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as
though roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive
violence.
“Master Jacques,” he cried, “let fate take its course!” The
procurator wheeled round in affright; it seemed to him that
pincers of iron had clutched his arm. The priest’s eye was
staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the horrible
little group of the spider and the fly.
“Oh, yes!” continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to
proceed from the depths of his being, “behold here a symbol of
all. She flies, she is joyous, she is just born; she seeks the
spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but let her come in
contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it,
the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let
things take their course, Master Jacques, ’tis fate! Alas!
Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also! Thou
wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other
care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal
truth; but in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window
which opens upon the other world,—upon the world of brightness,
intelligence, and science—blind fly! senseless, learned man! thou
hast not perceived that subtle spider’s web, stretched by destiny
betwixt the light and thee—thou hast flung thyself headlong into
it, and now thou art struggling with head broken and mangled
wings between the iron antennæ of fate! Master Jacques! Master
Jacques! let the spider work its will!”
“I assure you,” said Charmolue, who was gazing at him without
comprehending him, “that I will not touch it. But release my arm,
master, for pity’s sake! You have a hand like a pair of pincers.”
The archdeacon did not hear him. “Oh, madman!” he went on,
without removing his gaze from the window. “And even couldst thou
have broken through that formidable web, with thy gnat’s wings,
thou believest that thou couldst have reached the light? Alas!
that pane of glass which is further on, that transparent
obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, which
separates all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have
overcome it? Oh, vanity of science! how many wise men come flying
from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems
vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!”
He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him
back from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him.
Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of reality by
addressing to him this question: “Come, now, master, when will
you come to aid me in making gold? I am impatient to succeed.”
The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. “Master
Jacques read Michel Psellus’ ‘_Dialogus de Energia et Operatione
Dæmonum_.’ What we are doing is not wholly innocent.”
“Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it,” said Jacques
Charmolue. “But one must practise a bit of hermetic science when
one is only procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court,
at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only speak low.”
At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication, which
proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue’s uneasy
ear.
“What’s that?” he inquired.
It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his
hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust
and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the
whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast. As
he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, and he
accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and alarmed the
procurator.
“’Tis a cat of mine,” said the archdeacon, quickly, “who is
regaling herself under there with a mouse.”
This explanation satisfied Charmolue.
“In fact, master,” he replied, with a respectful smile, “all
great philosophers have their familiar animal. You know what
Servius saith: ‘_Nullus enim locus sine genio est_,—for there is
no place that hath not its spirit.’”
But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on the part
of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had some figures
on the façade to study together, and the two quitted the cell, to
the accompaniment of a great “ouf!” from the scholar, who began
to seriously fear that his knee would acquire the imprint of his
chin.
CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN
PRODUCE.
“_Te Deum laudamus_!” exclaimed Master Jehan, creeping out from
his hole, “the screech-owls have departed. Och! och! Hax! pax!
max! fleas! mad dogs! the devil! I have had enough of their
conversation! My head is humming like a bell tower. And mouldy
cheese to boot! Come on! Let us descend, take the big brother’s
purse and convert all these coins into bottles!”
He cast a glance of tenderness and admiration into the interior
of the precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed up his
boots, dusted his poor half sleeves, all gray with ashes,
whistled an air, indulged in a sportive pirouette, looked about
to see whether there were not something more in the cell to take,
gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet in glass
which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, on
Isabeau la Thierrye, finally pushed open the door which his
brother had left unfastened, as a last indulgence, and which he,
in his turn, left open as a last piece of malice, and descended
the circular staircase, skipping like a bird.
In the midst of the gloom of the spiral staircase, he elbowed
something which drew aside with a growl; he took it for granted
that it was Quasimodo, and it struck him as so droll that he
descended the remainder of the staircase holding his sides with
laughter. On emerging upon the Place, he laughed yet more
heartily.
He stamped his foot when he found himself on the ground once
again. “Oh!” said he, “good and honorable pavement of Paris,
cursed staircase, fit to put the angels of Jacob’s ladder out of
breath! What was I thinking of to thrust myself into that stone
gimlet which pierces the sky; all for the sake of eating bearded
cheese, and looking at the bell-towers of Paris through a hole in
the wall!”
He advanced a few paces, and caught sight of the two screech
owls, that is to say, Dom Claude and Master Jacques Charmolue,
absorbed in contemplation before a carving on the façade. He
approached them on tiptoe, and heard the archdeacon say in a low
tone to Charmolue: “’Twas Guillaume de Paris who caused a Job to
be carved upon this stone of the hue of lapis-lazuli, gilded on
the edges. Job represents the philosopher’s stone, which must
also be tried and martyrized in order to become perfect, as saith
Raymond Lulle: _Sub conservatione formæ specificæ salva anima_.”
“That makes no difference to me,” said Jehan, “’tis I who have
the purse.”
At that moment he heard a powerful and sonorous voice articulate
behind him a formidable series of oaths. “_Sang Dieu!
Ventre-Dieu! Bédieu! Corps de Dieu! Nombril de Belzébuth! Nom
d’un pape! Corne et tonnerre_.”
“Upon my soul!” exclaimed Jehan, “that can only be my friend,
Captain Phœbus!”
This name of Phœbus reached the ears of the archdeacon at the
moment when he was explaining to the king’s procurator the dragon
which is hiding its tail in a bath, from which issue smoke and
the head of a king. Dom Claude started, interrupted himself and,
to the great amazement of Charmolue, turned round and beheld his
brother Jehan accosting a tall officer at the door of the
Gondelaurier mansion.
It was, in fact, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers. He was backed up
against a corner of the house of his betrothed and swearing like
a heathen.
“By my faith! Captain Phœbus,” said Jehan, taking him by the
hand, “you are cursing with admirable vigor.”
“Horns and thunder!” replied the captain.
“Horns and thunder yourself!” replied the student. “Come now,
fair captain, whence comes this overflow of fine words?”
“Pardon me, good comrade Jehan,” exclaimed Phœbus, shaking his
hand, “a horse going at a gallop cannot halt short. Now, I was
swearing at a hard gallop. I have just been with those prudes,
and when I come forth, I always find my throat full of curses, I
must spit them out or strangle, _ventre et tonnerre!_”
“Will you come and drink?” asked the scholar.
This proposition calmed the captain.
“I’m willing, but I have no money.”
“But I have!”
“Bah! let’s see it!”
Jehan spread out the purse before the captain’s eyes, with
dignity and simplicity. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, who had
abandoned the dumbfounded Charmolue where he stood, had
approached them and halted a few paces distant, watching them
without their noticing him, so deeply were they absorbed in
contemplation of the purse.
Phœbus exclaimed: “A purse in your pocket, Jehan! ’tis the moon
in a bucket of water, one sees it there but ’tis not there. There
is nothing but its shadow. Pardieu! let us wager that these are
pebbles!”
Jehan replied coldly: “Here are the pebbles wherewith I pave my
fob!”
And without adding another word, he emptied the purse on a
neighboring post, with the air of a Roman saving his country.
“True God!” muttered Phœbus, “targes, big-blanks, little blanks,
mailles,[38] every two worth one of Tournay, farthings of Paris,