Notre-Dame de Paris
a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never
passed the façade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal
Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the
affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of
Horace, _Olim truncus eram ficulnus_. He had done this with so
much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, _Eduensis
episcopus_, had become almost effaced. Therefore, he halted
before the statue according to his wont. The street was utterly
deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder
knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching
him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe
that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it
halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal
Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phœbus two intent eyes, full
of that vague light which issues in the night time from the
pupils of a cat.
The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a
highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue,
this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in
circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler
about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his
memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and
finally broke the silence with a forced laugh.
“Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce
upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son
of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your hand near by here.
In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true
cross set in silver.”
The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and
descended upon the arm of Phœbus with the grip of an eagle’s
talon; at the same time the shadow spoke,—
“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!”
“What, the devil!” said Phœbus, “you know my name!”
“I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle,
with his sepulchral voice. “You have a _rendezvous_ this
evening.”
“Yes,” replied Phœbus in amazement.
“At seven o’clock.”
“In a quarter of an hour.”
“At la Falourdel’s.”
“Precisely.”
“The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”
“Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.”
“Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”
“_Confiteor_,—I confess—.”
“Who is called—?”
“La Smeralda,” said Phœbus, gayly. All his heedlessness had
gradually returned.
At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phœbus in a
fury.
“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, thou liest!”
Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s
inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he
disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air
with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the
presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the
cloak,—any one who could have beheld this would have been
frightened. There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and
the statue.
“Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which
rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers! Thou wilt not dare
repeat it.”
“Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly.
The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom,
superstitions,—he had forgotten all at that moment. He no longer
beheld anything but a man, and an insult.
“Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage.
He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear
makes a man tremble: “Here! On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords!
Blood on the pavement!”
But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary on
guard and ready to parry,—
“Captain Phœbus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness,
“you forget your appointment.”
The rages of men like Phœbus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is
calmed by a drop of cold water. This simple remark caused the
sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.
“Captain,” pursued the man, “to-morrow, the day after to-morrow,
a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut
your throat; but go first to your rendezvous.”
“In sooth,” said Phœbus, as though seeking to capitulate with
himself, “these are two charming things to be encountered in a
rendezvous,—a sword and a wench; but I do not see why I should
miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have both.”
He replaced his sword in its scabbard.
“Go to your rendezvous,” said the man.
“Monsieur,” replied Phœbus with some embarrassment, “many thanks
for your courtesy. In fact, there will be ample time to-morrow
for us to chop up father Adam’s doublet into slashes and
buttonholes. I am obliged to you for allowing me to pass one more
agreeable quarter of an hour. I certainly did hope to put you in
the gutter, and still arrive in time for the fair one, especially
as it has a better appearance to make the women wait a little in
such cases. But you strike me as having the air of a gallant man,
and it is safer to defer our affair until to-morrow. So I will
betake myself to my rendezvous; it is for seven o’clock, as you
know.” Here Phœbus scratched his ear. “Ah. _Corne Dieu!_ I had
forgotten! I haven’t a sou to discharge the price of the garret,
and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She
distrusts me.”
“Here is the wherewithal to pay.”
Phœbus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip into his a large piece
of money. He could not refrain from taking the money and pressing
the hand.
“_Vrai Dieu!_” he exclaimed, “you are a good fellow!”
“One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I have been
wrong and that you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some
corner whence I can see whether this woman is really the one
whose name you uttered.”
“Oh!” replied Phœbus, “’tis all one to me. We will take, the
Sainte-Marthe chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel
hard by.”
“Come then,” said the shadow.
“At your service,” said the captain, “I know not whether you are
Messer Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this
evening; to-morrow I will repay you all my debts, both of purse
and sword.”
They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few
minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that they were
on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses.
“I will first show you the way,” said Phœbus to his companion, “I
will then go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near
the Petit-Châtelet.”
His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they
had been walking side by side. Phœbus halted before a low door,
and knocked roughly; a light made its appearance through the
cracks of the door.
“Who is there?” cried a toothless voice.
“_Corps-Dieu! Tête-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu!_” replied the captain.
The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-comers to see an
old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman
was bent double, clad in tatters, with a shaking head, pierced
with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish clout; wrinkled
everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips retreated under
her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which
gave her the whiskered look of a cat.
The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there
were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled
chimney-piece, spiders’ webs in all the corners, in the middle a
staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty child among
the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, a wooden
ladder, which ended in a trapdoor in the ceiling.
On entering this lair, Phœbus’s mysterious companion raised his
mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a
Saracen, hastened to “make the sun shine in a crown” as saith our
admirable Régnier.
“The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he.
The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown
in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the black mantle
had given to Phœbus. While her back was turned, the bushy-headed
and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes, adroitly
approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in its place
a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.
The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called
them, to follow her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them.
On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on a coffer,
and, Phœbus, like a frequent visitor of the house, opened a door
which opened on a dark hole. “Enter here, my dear fellow,” he
said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a
word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phœbus bolt it,
and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag.
The light had disappeared.
CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.
Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent
than Phœbus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk
than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several
moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him.
It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at
the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A
vertical section of this kennel, as Phœbus had so justly styled
it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither
window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from
standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust,
and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire;
rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit
of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose coolness
afforded him some relief.
What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the
archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.
In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phœbus,
Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by
him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps
dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these
images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed
in his mind a horrible group.
He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that
he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking
of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The
trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a
tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put
his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in
the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to
emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phœbus, twirling